‘Christ's mother! I fear I have burned Abel and let Cain go.’
In 1533, however, being then S.T.P., Shaxton was presented by the king to the parish church of Fuggleston (called Foulestone in the letters of presentation) in Wiltshire, and in the same year (3 Oct.) he was made treasurer of Salisbury Cathedral (Le Neve, ed. Hardy, ii. 647). His promotion was clearly due to Anne Boleyn, now queen, who appointed him her almoner; and next year Dr. Richard Sampson [q. v.], dean of the Chapel Royal, cordially conceded Cranmer's request that Shaxton should preach before the king the third Sunday in Lent, although other arrangements had already been made. On 27 April 1534 he was promoted to a canonry in St. Stephen's, Westminster, which he gave up early next year on obtaining the bishopric of Salisbury. He was elected to that see on 22 Feb. 1535, and consecrated by Cranmer and two other bishops at St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, on 11 April, the temporalities having been already restored to him on the 1st. He desired Cromwell to write to the canons of his cathedral to exact no oath of him for his bishopric, as he received it only from the king. A paper of this date speaks of a ‘book,’ apparently on political matters, which he had submitted to the king, and on which various judgments were passed by those to whom it was shown. On 4 June he wrote to Cromwell, cordially approving the king's letters directing the bishops to set forth his royal supremacy. On 8 July the liberties of his bishopric were restored, which were declared to have been forfeited by his predecessor, Cardinal Campeggio.
Early in 1536 Shaxton and Latimer were assessors, with Archbishop Cranmer, in examining a fanatic who said he had seen a vision of the Trinity and Our Lady, and had a message from the latter to preach that she insisted on being honoured as of old. Shortly after the same three bishops examined one Lambert (apparently the future martyr), who had said it was sin to pray to saints. His examiners were so far in sympathy with him that they all considered the practice unnecessary, but said it was not to be denounced as sin.
Shaxton owed his patroness, Anne Boleyn, at her death 200l., which became a debt to the king. Cromwell also assisted him in his promotion, and received favours in return, such as the reversion of the chantership of Shaxton's cathedral and the promise of a prebend for a friend. On Anne Boleyn's death he wrote to Cromwell, piously hoping that he would be no less diligent in setting forth God's word than when she was alive, although her conduct had unfortunately dishonoured the good cause which she had promoted. Shortly afterwards, as a member of convocation, he signed not only the ‘articles about religion’ drawn up in 1536, but also the declaration ‘touching the sacrament of holy orders,’ and the reasons why general councils should be summoned by princes, and not by the sole authority of the pope. When the Lincolnshire rebellion broke out in October, he was called on to furnish two hundred men out of his bishopric to serve the king, and he was one of the six bishops ‘of the king's late promotion’ whom the rebels complained of as subverting the faith. Nor was he much more respected in his own cathedral city, where the king's proclamations as head of the church were torn down. His own chaplain, a Scot, who had been a friar, was put in prison by the mayor and aldermen for a sermon in which he threatened to inform the king's council of such matters. Shaxton indeed had other disputes with the municipal authorities, who claimed that the city was the king's city, while he maintained that by a grant of Edward IV it was the bishop's. This was an old controversy, but complicated by the Reformation changes, which the city did not love. The mayor and aldermen wrote earnestly to Cromwell against Shaxton having a confirmation of the liberties granted to his predecessors, and ultimately imprisoned his under-bailiff Goodall, notwithstanding that Cromwell had shown him favour for his zeal against popish observances.
In 1537 he took part in the discussion among the bishops as to the number of the sacraments, opposing John Stokesley [q. v.], bishop of London, who maintained that there were seven. Along with John Capon alias Salcot [q. v.], bishop of Bangor, he gave an opinion in favour of confirmation as being a sacrament of the New Testament, though not instituted by Christ himself. He also signed ‘the bishops' book,’ entitled ‘The Institution of a Christian Man.’ In 1538 he issued injunctions to his clergy, which were printed at the time by John Byddell (Ames, Typogr. Antiq., ed. Herbert, p. 487). Like other bishops of that day, however, he exercised his episcopal functions subject to the control of Cromwell, the king's vicegerent, who, tired of the numerous complaints preferred against him, said once that Shaxton had ‘a stomach [i.e. temper] more meet for an emperor than for a bishop.’
Shaxton under-estimated the complete subservience required of him by the king and Cromwell. Writing to Cromwell in Decem-
