Chronicle of the Picts and Scots, pp. 66, 411, 435; Stokes's Calendar of Oengus, p. clxxx.]
BULKELEY or BOKELEY, ARTHUR (d. 1553), bishop of Bangor, was the son of Richard Bulkeley, a member of a Welsh family of that name. Bulkeley graduated in law at Oxford, possibly from New Inn Hall, suggests Anthony à Wood, who also says that he was held in esteem as a good canonist. Upon taking his degree he was appointed to the living of Llanddeusant in Anglesey, and about the same time was made canon of St. Asaph, 1525. In 1531 he became rector of St. James, Garlick Hythe, in London, and in 1537 was made prebendary of Clynnoc Vechan, or Llangeinwen. This last preferment occasioned him much trouble. According to Bishop Humphreys, Thomas Cromwell, earl of Essex, ‘obtaining a blank institution’ of Clynnoc from John Capon, then bishop of Bangor, inducted his nephew, Gregory Williamson, a boy eight years old, into the prebend. On Bulkeley's resisting this invasion of his rights, Cromwell applied to his kinsman, Sir Richard Bulkeley, through whom he made threats of such a nature to Bulkeley that the latter yielded, but upon Cromwell's fall in the year 1540 resumed possession of the living on the plea that his resignation was a forced one, and not made of his own free will. In 1541, not long after the execution of Cromwell, Bulkeley was consecrated bishop of Bangor, and, we are told, continued to hold his prebend of Clynnoc Vechan in commendam for some years longer. Bulkeley was the first bishop of Bangor who had resided in his diocese for a hundred years, and he appears to have devoted himself with zeal to the duties of his office, in some respects with a result not wholly satisfactory. He incurred heavy expenses in lawsuits upon which he entered for the purpose of recovering advowsons of livings alienated by some of his predecessors. Godwin (Comm. de Præsulibus Angliæ), followed by Fuller in his ‘Worthies’ (where Bulkeley meets with much abuse on the strength of the story), says that Bulkeley sold five bells belonging to the cathedral of Bangor, and, going to see them shipped off, was on his return struck with total blindness by way of punishment for the sacrilege. Browne Willis, on the other hand, asserts that there is no foundation whatever for the statement that Bulkeley ever was blind. Bulkeley died on 14 March 1552–3 at Bangor, and was buried in the cathedral without monument or inscription. His will directed that his body should be buried with the heart of Thomas Skeffington, bishop of Bangor, 1509–33.
[Godwin, De Præsulibus, p. 626; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), ii. 764; Willis's Survey of the Cathedral Church of Bangor, p. 101.]
BULKELEY, LAUNCELOT (1568?–1650), archbishop of Dublin, was the eleventh and youngest son of Sir Richard Bulkeley of Beaumaris and Cheadle, but the eldest by his second wife, Agnes, daughter of Thomas Needham of Stenton (Earwaker's East Cheshire, i. 182). He was thus half-brother of Sir Richard Bulkeley [q. v.]. He was entered in the beginning of 1587 a commoner in Brasenose College, Oxford, where he proceeded B.A.; he afterwards moved to St. Edmund Hall, where he took his M.A. degree in 1593. On 13 Nov. of the same year he was ordained deacon by Hugh Bellot, bishop of Bangor. Some years later he became archdeacon of Dublin, and he was promoted to its see in 1619. Subsequently he was named by James I a privy councillor of that kingdom. He revived the controversy regarding the primacy of Ireland, and on the question being submitted to Strafford, lord deputy, the precedency was given to Armagh. Bulkeley was one of the council who in 1646 issued a proclamation confirmatory of peace concluded in that month between the Marquis of Ormonde and the Roman catholics. For resisting the act prohibiting the use of the Book of Common Prayer he was in 1647 committed to prison. On 8 March 1649 it was decreed that all honours, castles, &c. belonging to the archbishopric of Dublin should be vested in General Ireton, president of Munster. The archbishop died at Tallaght on 8 Sept. 1650, in his eighty-second year, and was buried in St. Patrick's Cathedral under the communion-table. By his wife Alice, daughter of Roland Bulkeley of Conway, he left issue. He was the author of a pamphlet, 'Proposals for sending back the Nobility and Gentry of Ireland.'
[Wood's Athenae Oxon. (Bliss), iv. 806-7; D'Alton's Memoirs of the Archbishops of Dublin, 258-75; Cotton's Fasti Eccles. Hibern. ii. 21; Ware's Works, ed. Harris, i. 355-6; Fuller's Worthies of England, ed. Nichols, ii. 572; Ormerod's Cheshire; Earwaker's East Cheshire.]
BULKELEY, Sir RICHARD (1533–1621), knight, the eldest son of Sir Richard Bulkeley of Cheadle and Beaumaris, and Margaret, daughter of Sir John Savage of Clifton and Rocksavage, Cheshire, was descended from an old Cheshire family (see pedigree in Ormerod's Cheshire, ed. Helsby, iii. 628; and in Earwaker's East Cheshire, i. 181). In 1561, while his father was still
