Cuthbert Tunstall

Cuthbert Tunstall was born at Hackforth near Bedale in North Yorkshire in 1474, son of Thomas Tunstall of Thurland Castle in Lancashire, who was later an esquire of the body of Richard III.[2] His half-brother, Brian Tunstall, the so-called "stainless knight," was killed at the Battle of Flodden in 1513. Sir Walter Scott mentions "stainless Tunstall's banner white" in Canto Six, line 790 of Marmion.

Little is known of Tunstall's early life, except that he spent two years as a kitchen boy in the household of Sir Thomas Holland, perhaps at Lynn, Norfolk.[2] He was admitted to Balliol College, Oxford around 1491, where he studied mathematics, theology, and law. Around 1496, he became a scholar of the King's Hall, Cambridge. He did not receive a degree from either Oxford or Cambridge; he graduated from the University of Padua in 1505 as a Doctor of Civil Law and a Doctor of Canon Law. At Padua, he studied under some of the leading humanists and became proficient in Greek and Hebrew.[2]

William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, made Tunstall his chancellor on 25 August 1511, and shortly afterward he appointed him rector of Harrow on the Hill. He became a canon of Lincoln in 1514, and archdeacon of Chester in 1515. Soon thereafter, he was employed on diplomatic business by King Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey. In 1515, Tunstall was sent to Flanders with Sir Thomas More, a friend since his school days, which More mentions in a glowing tribute in the opening paragraph of Utopia.[3] At Brussels, he met Erasmus as well, becoming the intimate friend of both scholars and Peter Gilles, becoming the godfather to Gilles' daughter.[4] He helped Erasmus make corrections to the second edition of his New Testament.[5] In 1519, he was sent to Cologne; a visit to Worms (1520–21) gave him a sense of the significance held by the Lutheran movement and its literature.

Tunstall was made Master of the Rolls in 1516 and Dean of Salisbury in 1521. In 1522, he published the first book of mathematics printed in England, based on the Italian Luca Pacioli.[5] In 1522, he became Bishop of London by papal provision, and on 25 May 1523, he was made Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal. In 1525, he negotiated with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V after the Battle of Pavia, and he helped to arrange the Peace of Cambrai in 1529.[6]

Tunstall met William Tyndale in 1523 seeking patronage to translate the Bible (into contemporaneous Early Modern English), which Tunstall declined, saying he already funded several scholars. Tunstall, who preferred to burn heretical books not heretics,[7] later presided over buying up and the burning of the first edition of Tyndale’s New Testament at Paul’s Cross in October 1526. According to some scholars this helped fund Tyndale's subsequent improved edition, as Thomas More had warned.[8]^: 81

Bishop Tunstall burning a translation of the Bible in London, 1870 illustration

On 22 February 1530, again by papal provision, Tunstall succeeded Cardinal Wolsey as Bishop of Durham. This role involved the assumption of quasi-regal power and authority within the territory of the diocese. In 1537, he was made President of the new Council of the North. Although he was often engaged in time-consuming negotiations with the Scots, he took part in other public business and attended parliament where, in 1539, he participated in the discussion on the Bill of Six Articles.[6]

In the question of King Henry's divorce, Tunstall acted as one of Queen Catherine's counselors. Unlike Bishop John Fisher and Sir Thomas More, Tunstall adopted a policy of passive obedience and acquiescence in many matters regarding which he likely had little support during the troubled years that followed the English Reformation. While Tunstall adhered firmly to Roman Catholic doctrine and practices, after some hesitation, he accepted Henry as head of the Church of England, and he publicly defended this position, accepting a schism with Rome.[6]

Tunstall disliked the religious policy pursued by the advisers of King Edward VI and voted against the first Act of Uniformity in 1549. However, he continued to discharge his public duties without interruption and hoped in vain that the Earl of Warwick might be convinced to reverse the anti-Catholic policy of the Duke of Somerset. After Somerset's fall, Tunstall was summoned to London in May 1551 and confined to his house there. During this captivity, he composed a treatise on the Eucharist, which was published in Paris in 1554. At the end of 1551, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London, and a bill for his deprivation was introduced into the House of Commons. When this failed, he was tried by a commission on 4–5 October 1552 and deprived of his bishopric.[6]

On the accession of the Catholic Queen Mary I to the throne in 1553, Tunstall was granted liberty. His bishopric, which had been dissolved by Act of Parliament in March 1553, was re-established by a further Act in April 1554. Tunstall assumed his office as Bishop of Durham once more. He maintained his earlier conciliatory approach, indulging in no systematic persecution of Protestants.[6] Through Mary's reign he ruled his diocese in peace.

When the Protestant Elizabeth I ascended to the throne, Tunstall refused to take the Oath of Supremacy and would not participate in the consecration of the Anglican Matthew Parker as Archbishop of Canterbury. He was arrested, deprived again of his diocese in September 1559, and held prisoner at Lambeth Palace,[6] where he died within a few weeks, aged 85. He was one of eleven Roman Catholic bishops to die in custody during Elizabeth's reign.[9]

He was buried in the parish church of St Mary-at-Lambeth, now a deconsecrated building.[10]

The Anglican historian Albert F. Pollard wrote:[11]

Tunstall's long career of eighty-five years, for thirty-seven of which he was a bishop, is one of the most consistent and honourable in the sixteenth century. The extent of the religious revolution under Edward VI caused him to reverse his views on the royal supremacy and he refused to change them again under Elizabeth.

• De arte supputandi libri quattuor (1522)

Based on the Summa of Luca Pacioli, this was the first printed work published in England that was devoted exclusively to mathematics.

• Confutatio cavillationum quibus SS. Eucharistiae Sacramentum ab impiis Caphernaitis impeti solet (Paris, 1552)
• De veritate corporis et sanguinis domini nostri Jesu Christi in eucharistia (Paris, 1554)
• Compendium in decem libros ethicorum Aristotelis (Paris, 1554)
• Certaine godly and devout prayers made in Latin by C. Tunstall and translated into Englishe by Thomas Paynelle, Clerke (London, 1558).
• Tunstall's correspondence as president of the Council of the North is in the British Library.

• James Stonnes (b. 1513; d. after 1585) Catholic priest, ordained by Tunstall in 1539

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Tunstall, Cuthbert". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 27 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 410.
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Burton, Edwin (1912). "Cuthbert Tunstall". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 15. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Pollard, Albert Frederick (1899). "Tunstall, Cuthbert" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 57. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
• Newcombe, D. G. "Tunstal, Cuthbert (1474–1559)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/27817. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Cuthbert Tunstall", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews