Thomas Morton (bishop)

Thomas Morton (20 March 1564 - 20 September 1659) was an English churchman, bishop of several dioceses. Well-connected and in favour with James I, he was also a significant polemical writer against Roman Catholic views. He rose to become Bishop of Durham, but despite a record of sympathetic treatment of Puritans as a diocesan, and underlying Calvinist beliefs shown in the Gagg controversy, his royalism saw him descend into poverty under the Commonwealth. Morton was born in York on 20 March 1564, the sixth of the nineteen children of Richard Morton, mercer, of York, and alderman of the city, by his wife Elizabeth All Saints' Church, Pavement, York. He was brought up and grammar school educated in the city and nearby Halifax. In 1582, he became a pensioner at St John's College, Cambridge from which he graduated with a BA in 1584 and an MA in 1590. William Whitaker picked him out for a Fellow of the college, and he proceeded to the degree of BD in 1598, and that of DD 'with great distinction' in 1606. Morton was ordained in 1592, and held the office of university lecturer in logic till in 1598 when he obtained the living of All Saints' Church, Long Marston, in Yorkshire. He was then chaplain to Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon, Lord President of the North. In 1602, when the plague was raging at York, he devoted himself to the inmates of the pest-house. He conducted disputations with Roman Catholics; Herbert Croft, who became Bishop of Hereford, was claimed as Morton's convert to the Church of England. In 1602 he was selected, with Richard Crakanthorpe as his colleague, to accompany Ralph Eure, 3rd Baron Eure when sent by Elizabeth as ambassador extraordinary to Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor and Christian IV of Denmark. He made the acquaintance of foreign scholars and theologians, including Jesuits, and collected books at Frankfurt and elsewhere. He met Hugh Broughton, then residing at Middelburg, to whom he proposed scriptural difficulties. On Elizabeth's death Morton returned to England, and became chaplain to Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland.