Thomas Sedgwick

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Thomas Sedgwick (Segiswycke) (d. in a Yorkshire prison, 1573) was an English Roman Catholic theologian. An unfriendly hand in 1562 describes him as "learned but not very wise".

He argued against Martin Bucer in 1550, alongside Andrew Perne and John Young^[1]; and against Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer, and Nicholas Ridley in April 1554, when he was incorporated Doctor of Divinity at the University of Oxford. A Fellow of Peterhouse, he was vice-master of Trinity College, Cambridge 1554-5^[2]. He had been defeated by Perne in a contest for the mastership at Peterhouse; sources differ on whether he had the support of Stephen Gardiner^[3]^[4].

He became Regius professor of divinity at Cambridge, in 1557, rector of Stanhope, Durham, and vicar of Gainford, Durham, both in 1558, under Mary of England. He was deprived of these three preferments after the accession of Elizabeth I of England. He had been rector of Edwarton, Suffolk, 1552. Lady Margaret professor of divinity, 1554, vicar of Enfield, Middlesex^[5], 1555, and rector of Toft, Cambridgeshire, 1556, but had given up these four preferments before Queen Mary died.

He was restricted to within ten miles of Richmond, Yorkshire, from 1562 to 1570, when he seems to have been sent to prison at York.

[edit] References

Cooper, in the 'Dictionary of National Biography, s.v.;
Catholic Record Society Publications, V (London, 1905), 193;
Record Office, State Papers Dom. Arc. Eliz., XVII, 72;
Gee, Elizabeth Clergy, passim.

[edit] Notes

^ Patrick Collinson, Elizabethan Essays (1994), p. 186.
^ John Foxe's Book of Martyrs
^ Charles Henry Cooper, George John Gray, Thompson Cooper, Athenae Cantabrigienses, p. 213.
^ Patrick Collinson, Elizabethans (2003), p. 187.
^ Enfield - Churches | British History Online