Owen Oglethorpe

Owen Oglethorpe (died 1559) was an English academic and Roman Catholic Bishop of Carlisle, 1557–1559.^[1]

Childhood and education

Oglethorpe was born in Tadcaster, Yorkshire, England, (where he later founded a school) in approximately 1505–10 and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was elected a Fellow in 1526 and received his MA in 1529 and his DD in 1536. He was reputed to have taken a keen interest in his studies.

Career

He was appointed a Junior Proctor at Oxford University in 1533 and President of Magdalen in 1535. He was also Vice-Chancellor of the University from 1551^[2] and a canon of both Christ Church, Oxford, and St. George's Chapel, Windsor (1540–1553)

He was unpopular with the Puritans and was forced to resign his university offices in 1552, but was reappointed by Queen Mary I and was Dean of Windsor from 1553 to 1556.

Bishop of Carlisle (including the coronation of Queen Elizabeth)

He became Bishop of Carlisle in 1557. Whilst saying mass in the Chapel Royal of St James's Palace on 25 December 1558 he incurred the wrath of a furious Queen Elizabeth I (who had succeeded her half-sister Mary I on the latter's death on 17 November) when, contrary to her explicit instructions, he elevated the host, thereby implying the corporeal presence of Christ — an anathema to Elizabeth I's more Protestant religious beliefs. Elizabeth stormed out of the service. Nevertheless, being the only Bishop prepared to officiate at her coronation on 15 January 1559 in Westminster Abbey,^[3] he did so, again ignored her instructions not to elevate the host at the coronation mass which followed the crowning, again had the Queen walk out on him — this time from her own coronation service — and he was rewarded for his services by being deprived of his see later the same year (1559) very shortly before he died.^[4]

References

Sources

• Dictionary of National Biography.