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Edmund Bonner Biography

Edmund Bonner Image

BONNER, EDMUND (c.1500-69). Bishop of London. He was born of obscure parentage about 1500. He was educated at Oxford and there admitted doctor of civil law in 1525. The reputation he gained at Oxford by his knowledge of the canon law recommended him to the notice of Wolsey, who made him his chaplain in 1529. After the fall of Wolsey (1530) Bonner took an active share in the endeavor to have Henry VIII divorced and received due promotion from that King. In 1533 he was deputed to appear before Clement VII in Marseilles to appeal for the excommunicated monarch to a general council; but the story that the violence of his threats on this occasion suggested to his Holiness the counter threats of having him burned alive, or thrown into a caldron of melted lead, may be dismissed as fabrications. In 1540 he was made Bishop of London. The death of Henry cooled his Protestant zeal; and having given proofs of his lukewarmness in the cause of Reformation, he was at length, in 1549, in the name of Henry's successor, Edward VI, committed to the Marshalsea and deprived of his bishopric. The accession of Queen Mary restored him to office (1553), and as vicegerent and president of the Convocation, he was the principal agent in the persecution which was carried on against the Reformers during Mary's reign. On the accession of Elizabeth, in 1558, Bonner accompanied his episcopal brethren to salute her at Highgate, but was, on account of his unpopularity, which antedated his career as persecutor, refused the honor of kissing her hand. On May 30, 1559, he was summoned before the Privy Council and there refused, with a consistency worthy of due respect, to take the oath of supremacy. He was accordingly deposed from his bishopric and shut up in the Marshalsea, where he died, Sept. 5, 1569.