James Brooks (bishop)

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James Brooks or Brookes (1512–1560), Catholic bishop.

Born in May, 1512, in Hampshire, southern England, he became a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1532, took the B.A. that same year and in 1546 the D.D. He was Master of Balliol College, Oxford in the years 1547–1555. Widely known as an eloquent preacher, with the deprivation of John Hooper on the accession of Queen Mary, Brooks succeeded him as Bishop of Gloucester by papal provision in 1554 and was consecrated on April 1.

In 1555, Brooks was one of the papal sub-delegates in the royal commission for the trial of the Oxford Martyrs, Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer, and Nicholas Ridley. Brooks was a man not only of learning but also of integrity. He refused to degrade Ridley, probably on the ground that Ridley's consecration in 1547 had been according to the invalid form which was established by law very soon after that date. If, as the Protestant polemicist John Foxe asserts, Brooks refused to degrade Latimer as well, his position may have been based upon the fact that Latimer had lived for several years as a simple clergyman.

When Elizabeth I succeeded to the throne, he refused to follow the new religion and was deprived and imprisoned. He died a prisoner in 1560 and was buried in Gloucester Cathedral, but without a monument.

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