Page:The History of the Church & Manor of Wigan part 1.djvu/100

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History of the Church and Manor of Wigan.

et Licit. spectans ordinabatur presbyter ad titulum ecclesiæ suæ de Wigan y cujus Rector extitit."[1]

He was still acting as King's physician at that time, for there is an entry of the payment of £12 10s. to him for a quarter's wages among the household expenses in 1520.[2]

In March, 1521, Sil[vester de Gigles], Bishop of Worcester, writing from Rome[3] to Pace, says "The Pope will comply with Linacre's wishes, the King's Physician."[4] And on May 7th of the same year Christopher Longolius, writing from Padua to Linacre refers to his generosity when Longolius was in England the previous year.[5]

On 12th May, 1521, Pace writes to Pope Leo X. from London, saying that the Pope has laid him under such a debt of gratitude as he can not even express. He says "Aloysius Gibraelon, my agent at Rome, has told me how promptly your Holiness not only granted to Thomas Linacre, the King's physician, what I had asked, but also added much to lay me under still greater obligations." He can only offer his prayers for the Pope's prosperity. As to the affairs of Luther, he has only proved himself a true ecclesiastic.[6]

On 25th Aug., 1521, Erasmus, writing to Linacre from Bruges, expresses his sorrow on hearing of his declining health; urges him to publish his writings, and not deprive the world of the fruits of many years' labour.[7]

On 8th March, 1522, the King's writ is issued for Thomas Linacre, the King's physician, to have a canonry in St. Stephen's Westminster, vice Thos. Waren, deceased;[8] and on 29th November, 1522, Edward Fynch, M.D.,has the King's writ for a prebend

  1. Tanner's Bibliotheca Britannico Hibernica, p. 482. Wood's Athenæ, Ed. Bliss, vol. i. p. 46.
  2. Letters and State Papers Foreign and Domestic, vol. iii. p. 408.
  3. He died at Rome on 16 April, 1521, when Julius de Medicis, a Cardinal, afterwards Pope Clement VII., was made Administrator of the See of Worcester by the Pope's Bull, dated 31 July, 1521, and so continued for about a year.
  4. Letters and State Papers Foreign and Domestic, vol. iii. p. 453
  5. Ibid. 481.
  6. Ibid. 485.
  7. Ibid., 618.
  8. Ibid., 898.