William Downham (c. 1511 — 1577), otherwise known as William Downman, was Bishop of Chester early in the reign of Elizabeth I, having previously served as her domestic chaplain.
Early life and priesthood Generally said to have been a native of Norfolk,See, for example, Anthony a Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, 1691, Vol. I at 601. However, elsewhere he is recorded as a native of Herefordshire: Matthew Parker, Antiquitate Britannicae Ecclesiae of 1572 (ed. Samuel Drake, London, 1729) and John Strype, Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion in the Church of England during Queen Elizabeth’s Happy Reign, New Edition (The Clarendon Press, 1824), Vol. I, Part I, pp. 230, 371-372 Downham was probably born in 1511.He was aged 50 at his consecration in May 1561 (Parker, Antiquitate, p. 158), and his age at death in 1577 was recorded as 66 ("bis triginta et sex vixit") on a brass plate formerly affixed to his tomb (George Ormerod, History of the County Palatine and City of Chester, 1819, Vol. I, p. 164). He is first recorded as one of the Brothers of Penitence, a small Augustinian order based at Ashridge on the border of Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. When the order's collegiate church fell victim to the Dissolution in 1539, he was pensioned and obtained admission to Exeter College, Oxford, graduating B.A. in 1541 and becoming a Fellow of Magdalen College in 1543.Patricia Joan Cox, "Reformation Responses in Tudor Cheshire c. 1500-1577" (PhD dissertation, Department of History, University of Warwick, December 2013), pp. 289-290 ; Alumni Oxonienses 1500-1714, ed. Joseph Foster, Oxford, 1891. At the time of the Dissolution the brethren at Ashridge were seventeen in number: A History of the County of Buckingham, Vol. I, ed. William Page (London, 1905), p. 387. Five years later, he was appointed Rector of Datchworth, but, probably on account of having married during the reign of Edward VI, he was deprived of the parish following Queen Mary’s accession. His wife’s death may have been the circumstance that allowed his appointment to the vicarage of Edlesborough, near Ashridge, in October 1554.Cox, Reformation Responses, pp. 290, 292; William Downham (ID65611), Clergy of the Church of England Database (CCEd); C. S. Knighton, "Downham William (1510/11-1577)", ODNB.
In November 1555 he resigned the Edlesborough living. A month earlier the queen’s sister, Princess Elizabeth, had returned to her childhood home at the Old Palace in Hatfield following a year’s detention, and it was probably at this point Downham became one of her chaplains and was appointed Rector of the nearby parish of Ayot St Peter.Knighton, ODNB; David Starkey, Elizabeth: Apprenticeship, Vintage Books, 2001, p. 187; CCEd records his resignation from Ayot St Peter occurring on 1 March 1559 but gives no date for his appointment there. In his service as chaplain he displayed some adroitness, ostensibly adhering to the doctrine and practices of the Roman Church while allowing Elizabeth to perceive him as a candidate for preferment within a Protestant foundation. In 1560, following her accession to the throne and the passing of the Act of Uniformity, Elizabeth made him Archdeacon of Brecon and a Canon of Westminster.Knighton, ODNB. As one of the "old flock of Hatfield" he also enjoyed the favour of William Cecil who in the same year repeatedly proposed him for advancement to a bishopric.Cox, Reformation Responses, p. 298; Strype, Annals of the Reformation, Vol. I, Part 2, p. 265.
Appointment as Bishop of Chester Such advancement came in 1561 when Downham was made Bishop of Chester, the queen later declaring the appointment was of "our own motion, for the good opinion we conceived of you in your service to us".Letter from the Queen to Downham dated 21 February 1568: Strype, Annals of the Reformation, Vol. I, Part 2, pp. 254-255. He was consecrated by Archbishop Thomas Young on 4 May 1561 and on the following day became a member of the ecclesiastical commission formed to strengthen Young's hand in implementing the Elizabethan religious settlement in the northern province.Strype, Annals of the Reformation, Vol. I, Part 1, pp. 361-372; Knighton, ODNB. Later in the year he was, alongside Bishops Edmund Grindal and Richard Cox, one of the ecclesiastical commissioners who laid down the rules for dealing with ousted papist clergy, sparing them prosecution and imprisonment but placing restrictions on their movement and requiring security for their future quiet behaviour.Strype, Annals of the Reformation, Vol. I, Part 1, pp. 410-411.
Struggles He was still in daily attendance on the queen in November 1561, by which date Archbishop Young had commenced a six-month metropolitan visitation of Chester diocese that automatically suspended Downham's episcopal authority. By the time the suspension was lifted, nearly three years had elapsed since the expulsion of his predecessor, Cuthbert Scott. During this interval there had been no concerted enforcement of the Uniformity Act in the diocese, which was 120 miles in length and included the counties of Cheshire and Lancashire, a large part of North Yorkshire and most of Cumbria.Cox, Reformation Responses, pp. 292, 298; K. S. Wark, "Elizabethan Recusancy in Cheshire", Chetham Society, Vol. XIX, 3rd Series (1971), p. 4. The holding of a metropolitan visitation of a diocese and inhibition of the bishop’s powers for its duration have been presented by some commentators as implicit criticism of the bishop; for an explanation of the process and its actual significance, see Cox at pp. 298, 317-318. For an outline map of the diocese see ibid at p. 129 (Figure 10). Situated in the extreme south-western corner of this tract, the city of Chester was unhappily placed for its oversight and, the diocese having no manorial endowments, Downham was dependent on the hospitality of local gentry when travelling beyond the city.Knighton, ODNB; Cox, Reformation Responses, p. 320. Large numbers of such gentry were Roman Catholic in sympathy (predominantly so in Lancashire) and Downham alienated others by early attempts to correct their dissolute lifestyles.Cox, Reformation Responses, pp. 302-304.
In July 1562 a special ecclesiastical commission for Chester diocese was established under Downham's presidency, with power to impose fines and sentences of imprisonment for breach of church discipline. The queen later attributed such establishment to a request from Downham supported by his promise that it would preserve his diocese from "disorders".Calendar of State Papers of the Reigns of Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth, Vol. 1, 1547-1580, HMSO, 1856 (CSPD), p. 203; letter from the Queen to Downham, 21 February 1568 (Strype, Annals of the Reformation, Vol. I, Part 2, p. 255). Like other high commissions on which he had served, it was a secular court composed of both clergy and leading members of the laity such as the Earl of Derby, Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire and a cousin of the queen, and Sir John Southworth, High Sheriff of Lancashire in 1562 and MP for the county in the following year. Southworth was uncompromising in his attachment to Roman Catholicism and in 1566 his recusancy resulted in Downham bringing charges against him. Southworth refused to answer to Downham or to Archbishop Young, contending that he would "not find indifference at their hands", and the case was referred to the Privy Council.For Downham’s dealings with Southworth, see William A. Abram, A History of Blackburn Town and Parish (Blackburn, 1877), pp. 76-78. Southworth was High Sheriff of Lancashire in 1562; Downham considered him one who "if he could be reclaimed others would follow in embracing the Queen’s Majesty’s most goodly proceeding" (John Harland, ed., The Lancashire Lieutenancy under the Tudors and Stuarts, Chetham Society, 1859, p. 75); in the 1580s he was accused of sheltering the Jesuit Edmund Campion and was imprisoned. Southworth was removed from the commission in 1567, in which year Christopher Goodman became a member.Wark, "Elizabethan Recusancy", p. 9; David Mills, "‘Some Precise Cittizins’: Puritan Objections to Chester’s Plays", Leeds Studies in English, New Series, No. 29 (1998), p. 220.
Goodman had, with John Knox, been co-pastor of the English church in exile at Geneva during Queen Mary's reign and afterwards was presented to the living of Aldford by Sir Edward Fitton. He was as extreme in his puritanism as Southworth had been in his papistry and proved a continuing thorn in Downham's side, particularly during the Vestments Controversy; in 1569 he was suspended on Downham's instruction and in 1571 he was disciplined by Archbishop Matthew Parker, to whom Downham had reported him.Mills, Leeds Studies, p. 223; Cox, Reformation Responses, pp. 295, 307-308. In 1572 Goodman accused Downham of failing properly to support Archbishop Grindal’s attempt to block performance of the Chester Mystery Plays. Downham had made representations against the performance but it proceeded under the authority of the Earl of Derby: David Mills, Recycling the Cycle: The City of Chester and its Whitsun Plays, University of Toronto Press, 1988, p. 148; Cox, pp. 355-356.
Struggles for influence within the commission undermined its effectiveness as an instrument of governance but, from its inception, Downham was as assiduous in attending its sessions as he was regular in his presence at proceedings of his consistory court.Cox, Reformation Responses, pp. 304-305. In 1564 he compiled a perceptive and candid assessment of the magistracy on whom the enforcement of law was dependent within his diocese, concluding that, of twenty-five justices of the peace in Lancashire, only six could be trusted in religion and of these two were doubtful.Christopher Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire, Cambridge University Press, 1975, pp. 212-213; Wark, "Elizabethan Recusancy", p. 8. Downham’s report on the magistrates is printed in "A Collection of Original Letters from the Bishops to the Privy Council, 1564", ed. M. Bateson, Camden Miscellany IX, pp. 73-78. His commitment to the Elizabethan religious settlement seems to have been absolute and he enjoyed the confidence of Archbishop Young, assisting at the consecration of Young's suffragan, Robert Barnes, in 1567.John Strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, The Clarendon Press, 1821, Vol. I, p. 477. In the previous year he had been among five bishops on whom the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred at London.Anthony a Wood, Fasti Oxonienses, New Edition (ed. Philip Bliss), Part 1, 1815, p. 178.
Apparent loss of favour