Sunday had preached against the marriage (Strype, Parker, p. 255 folio). He became prebendary of Hunderton in the church of Hereford 29 Jan. 1537–8, and the see of Hereford being shortly afterwards vacant by the death of Dr. Edward Fox he was appointed by Archbishop Cranmer keeper of the spiritualities, and empowered to visit that church and diocese, as he accordingly did, giving the clergy certain injunctions, providing among other things for the free use of the holy scriptures in the vernacular (Strype, Cranmer, 70). On 1 Sept. 1538 he was admitted to the living of Great Mongeham, Kent, and probably he is identical with the Hugh Curryn who was prebendary of the college of Bridgnorth, Shropshire, and who at its dissolution had a pension allotted to him of 10l. a year. In the week before Easter 1540 he was sent to Calais with the Earl of Sussex, Lord Saint John, Sir John Gage, Sir John Baker, and others. They were commissioned by the king to inquire as to matters of religion, and Curwen on their arrival preached a notable sermon on charity. The result of the commission was the persecution of many for religious opinions, and the removal of Lord Lisle from the office of lord deputy of Calais.
On 1 June 1541 he was installed dean of Hereford, and in April 1551 was collated to the prebend of Bartonsham in his own cathedral. He acted as one of the keepers of the spiritualities of the church and diocese of Hereford during the vacancy occasioned by the death of Bishop Skip in 1551. Queen Mary wrote letters directing his appointment to the archbishopric of Dublin 18 Feb. 1554–5, and he was elected accordingly. It appears from the Consistorial Act, dated 21 June 1555, which makes Curwen the successor of John Allen, that George Browne [q. v.], who had been made archbishop of Dublin by Henry VIII in 1535, was ignored in the papal records (Brady, Episcopal Succession, i. 327). The pallium was granted by the pope 23 Aug. 1555, and Curwen was consecrated on 8 Sept. 1555 in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, according to the form of the Roman pontifical, together with William Glynne, bishop of Bangor, and James Turberville, bishop of Exeter (Machyn, Diary, p. 94; Stubbs, Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum, p. 81). By letters patent, dated at Greenwich on 13 Sept. the same year, Curwen was appointed lord chancellor of Ireland, in which country he arrived on 20 Oct. The next day he received restitution of the temporalities of his see, and on the 24th took his oath as lord chancellor before the lord deputy and council. Immediately after his elevation to the archbishopric of Dublin he resigned the deanery of Hereford, which, however, he resumed a month afterwards, and retained till 1558. He held a provincial synod in 1556, wherein many constitutions were enacted respecting the ceremonies of divine worship. He and Sir Henry Sidney were lords justices of Ireland from 5 Dec. 1557 till 6 Feb. following, during which period the Earl of Sussex, lord deputy, was absent from that realm.
Although Curwen had displayed remarkable zeal in restoring the Roman catholic religion in Ireland, he did not hesitate to avow himself a protestant on the accession of Queen Elizabeth. Indeed he is the only possessor of an Irish see who is proved to have changed his religion at that period. Strype truly describes him as ‘a complier in all reigns’ (Cranmer, p. 38, folio). On 14 Dec. 1558 Queen Elizabeth confirmed him in the office of lord chancellor of Ireland. He had other grants of that office dated 8 June 1559 and 5 Oct. 1552. He took his place in the parliament held in Ireland in 1559, which passed the Act of Uniformity, the act empowering the crown or lord deputy to collate to archbishoprics and bishoprics, the act restoring the jurisdiction of the crown over the state ecclesiastical, and the act annexing first-fruits and twentieths to the crown. In the same year he was in a commission for mustering the inhabitants of the county of Dublin, and he occurs as detecting an ‘impious fraud,’ said to have been concocted by Father Richard Leigh and others, who contrived that a marble image of our Saviour at Christ Church, Dublin, should appear to sweat blood. The impostors were obliged to stand for three Sundays upon a table before the pulpit, with their hands and legs tied, and with a paper on their breasts stating their crime; they were afterwards imprisoned and ultimately banished the realm (Strype, Parker, p. 45, folio). On the first Sunday they were thus exhibited the archbishop preached before the queen's lieutenant and the council from 2 Thess. ii. 11. He states that his sermon and the disgrace of the impostors converted above a hundred persons in Dublin, who vowed that they would never more hear mass. The image, which the archbishop had himself set up on his first coming to the see, he caused to be taken down 10 Sept. 1559.
The Earl of Sussex, lord deputy, writing to Cecil, 2 Nov. 1560, says the lord chancellor desired to have his revocation into England to the bishopric of Hereford, ‘in remembrance he is the man that of his cote hath surlyest stood to the crowne ether in Ingland or Irland, and therfor it shall be well her maty hath hym in remembrance accord-
