William Barlow (bishop of Chichester)
Labelled by some a "weathercock reformer",[2] he was in fact a staunch evangelical, an anti-Catholic and collaborator in the Dissolution of the Monasteries and dismantling of church estates; and largely consistent in his approach, apart from an early anti-Lutheran tract and a supposed recantation under Mary I.This letter of October 1535 introduces "our trusty and right welbeloved Counsaillour Mr Barlowe, Clerke, Pryour of the Monastery of Bisham, being sufficiently instructed in the specialities of certain grete and weighty causes.What is apparent is that William Barlow was appointed as prior of Haverfordwest Priory, in 1534; the position was in the gift of Anne Boleyn as Marchioness of Pembroke.[16] William experienced hostile opposition to his reformist ideas and teaching and, with the support of Thomas Cromwell, was moved from Haverfordwest and made prior of Bisham Priory in Berkshire.He had been a merchant and a companion of Sebastian Cabot[18] voyaging to South America; Thomas Barlow remained unmarried and was rector of Catfield.In Edinburgh, Barlow encountered the suspicions of the King's Catholic advisors, who feared he had come to preach or take away Henry VIII's sister Margaret Tudor.[20] Howard and Barlow were in Edinburgh in May 1536, and learnt of a plan for James V to marry his mistress Margaret Erskine although they thought it was 'against the heart of all his nobles.'Barlow stayed in Scotland some days after Howard's return at request of Margaret Tudor, and he joked to Cromwell that it would be no more unpleasant to leave Edinburgh than for Lot to pass out of Sodom.Extreme Erastianism, which maintained that simple appointment by the monarch was enough, without episcopal consecration, to constitute a lawful bishop, he shared with Thomas Cranmer.But the other opinions he maintained—that confession was not enjoined by Scripture; that there were just three sacraments; that laymen were as competent to excommunicate heretics as bishops or priests; that purgatory was a delusion—were extreme and incautious for the end of Henry VIII's reign.[1] At this period he was one of Cranmer's few close allies on the evangelical wing of the bishops: they two with Hugh Latimer were the main clerical supporters of humanist education, and with Thomas Goodrich were the most advanced reformers on some matters of doctrine.This marriage or relationship apparently anticipated the formal lifting of the requirement of clerical celibacy; the subsequent tradition around the large family of the Barlows has been attributed to compensatory apologetics.[37] The long-held view that Barlow was the minister in Emden is based, not on any contemporary evidence, but on a book written about 100 years later by Thomas Fuller.[38] A year later, however, following disagreements between the English and the local council, the Countess and her husband left, taking Barlow with them, and travelled to Weinheim where they were offered refuge.