John Bird (bishop)

John Bird (died 1558) was an English Carmelite friar and subsequently a bishop.

He was Warden of the Carmelite house in Coventry, and twice Provincial of his order.^[2][3] He attracted the attention of Henry VIII by his preaching in favour of the royal supremacy over the English Church.^[4]

He was one of the divines sent in 1531 to confer and argue with Thomas Bilney, the reformer, in prison; and in 1535 he was sent by Henry VIII along with Richard Foxe, the royal almoner, and Thomas Bedyll, a clerk of the council, to Catherine of Aragon, now divorced by Henry, to try to persuade her not to use the title queen.^[5]

He was suffragan to the Bishop of Llandaff (titled Bishop of Penrydd (then spelled Penreth), after Penrydd in Pembrokeshire^[6] and was then translated to become Bishop of Bangor. He then was appointed as the inaugural Bishop of Chester. The new diocese had both administrative and financial problems: Bird tried to address the finances, and dispensed with archdeacons, but succeeded only in making disadvantageous agreements with the Crown and with leaseholders.^[7]

After the accession of the Catholic Queen Mary he was deprived of his bishopric on 16 March 1554 since he had married.^[8] He at once repudiated his wife, and soon afterwards Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, appointed him as his suffragan, and on 6 November 1554 presented him to the vicarage of Great Dunmow in Essex.^[9]

Near the end of 1558, he died in an obscure condition and was buried in Chester Cathedral.^[5]

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cooper, Thompson (1886). "Bird, John (d.1558)". In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 5. London: Smith, Elder & Co.