Ireland. In April 1828 he married Mary, daughter of John Black of Glasgow. His eldest son, Whitley (1830–1909), became a legal member of council in India, and was well known as a Celtic scholar; while another of his sons was an eminent Dublin surgeon Sir William Stokes. One of his daughters, Miss Margaret Stokes, has published several works on Irish art and its history.
[Information from Miss Margaret Stokes; Stokes's works; Ormsby's Medical History of the Meath Hospital; personal knowledge.]
STOKESLEY, JOHN (1475?–1539), bishop of London, was born at Collyweston, Northamptonshire, on 8 Sept., probably in 1475. He was doubtless related to the Richard Stokesley, parson of North Luffenham, Rutland, not far from Collyweston, on whose death in 1526 Stokesley was presented to that church. His mother was Margaret, daughter of Edward Spendlove or Spendlowe; the John Spendlove (d. 1581) whom Stokesley in 1534 collated to the prebend of Hoxton and in 1537 to that of Holywell, both in St. Paul's Cathedral, was no doubt his cousin (Le Neve, Fasti, ii. 396, 402, 408; Bridges, Northamptonshire, ii. 606). Stokesley was elected fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, about 1495, and for a month in 1497 he was usher in Magdalen College school. In 1498 he was appointed prelector in logic and principal of Magdalen Hall, and bursar in 1502. In 1503 he was dean of divinity and northern proctor. He was ordained deacon on 8 March, and priest on 22 March 1504–5, and in the same year was appointed prælector in philosophy and vice-president of Magdalen College. In that capacity Stokesley became involved in the fierce dissensions among the fellows which between 1504 and 1507 reduced the college to a condition of the utmost disorder and laxity. He seems to have been an adherent of the absent president, Richard Mayhew, bishop of Hereford, and the opposite faction accused Stokesley of every sort of offence, from heresy, theft, perjury, and adultery, to witchcraft, neglect of duties, spending the night at Sandford without leave, and christening a cat. Between 28 and 30 Jan. 1506–7 John Dowman, the commissionary of Richard Foxe [q. v.], bishop of Winchester, held a visitation to examine into the condition of the college. On the 27th Stokesley solemnly denied on oath all the charges against him, and, no witnesses appearing to substantiate them, he was admitted to compurgation. Finally the fellows ‘in sign of unity all drank of a loving-cup together’ (Macray, Register of Magdalen College, i. 37–60; Bloxam, ii. 20–4).
In February 1505–6 Stokesley was instituted to the vicarage of Willoughby, and soon afterwards to the rectory of Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, both college livings. After Henry VIII's accession, perhaps through Bishop Foxe's influence, he became chaplain and almoner to the king and a member of his council. Writing on 26 July 1518, Erasmus described him as ‘well versed in the schoolmen, and intimately acquainted with three languages,’ and on 23 July 1519 classed him with More, Linacre, Colet, and Tunstal as men who were a credit to Henry VIII's court (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, ed. Brewer, ii. 4340, iii. 394). In June 1520 he attended Henry as his chaplain to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and in the following month was present in a like capacity at the meeting between Henry and Charles V. In the parliament of 1523 he was a trier of petitions from Gascony and parts beyond sea, and on 23 March 1523–4 was collated to the vicarage of Ivychurch, Kent; he was also appointed dean of the chapel royal.
In 1529 Stokesley was sent with George Boleyn (afterwards Viscount Rochford) [q. v.] as ambassador to France in place of Sir Francis Bryan [q. v.] He was instructed to prevent Albany's return to Scotland and the formation of a league between France and Scotland. But the more important part of his mission was to induce Francis I to join Henry in preventing the assembling of a general council ‘considering the influence the emperor has over the pope,’ and to collect opinions from foreign universities in favour of Henry's divorce. He had already become a prominent advocate of this measure, and before his embassy had, with Edward Fox [q. v.], bishop of Hereford, and Nicholas de Burgo [see Nicholas], composed in Latin a book on the subject, which was translated into English with additions and alterations by Cranmer. It was published as ‘The Determinations of the most famous and most excellent Universities …,’ London, 1531, 8vo (Letters and Papers, viii. 1054). In pursuance of this object Stokesley proceeded in 1530 to Italy, spending the spring and summer in attempts to win over the universities of Bologna, Padua, Venice, and others. More than a hundred references to Stokesley in vol. iv. pt. iii. of the ‘Letters and Papers’ testify to his activity in this matter, and according to his own boast he ‘recovered’ the king's cause ‘when it had slipped through the ambassador's fingers and was despaired of’ (ib. vii. 15). His efforts satisfied Henry,
