Thomas Morton, Bishop of Durham and Chester

THOMAS MORTON, English bishop, was born at York, and was educated at York and Halifax grammarschools and St John's College, Cambridge, where he became fellow on taking his degree. He was ordained in 1592, and held the office of university lecturer in logic till in 1598 he was presented to the living of Long Marston, Yorkshire. He gained a considerable reputation as a Protestant controversialist, and published numerous works against Roman Catholicism, chief among them being the Apologia catholica (1605) and A Catholicke Appeale (1609). He held successively the deaneries of Gloucester (1606), Winchester (1609), and a canonry at York (1610). In 1616 he became Bishop of Chester, in 1618 Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and in 1632 Bishop of Durham. On the abolition of the episcopate in 1646 he was assigned a pension, but it was never paid, and the remainder of his life was passed in retirement.

In the 1680s Richard Baxter, who as a schoolboy received confirmation from Morton in Durham, called him "one of the learnedest and best bishops that ever I knew".

He died unmarried, having early in life ' resolved to die a single man' (Walton, Life of Donne, p. 636).

Family

Morton was born in York on 20 March 1564,[1] the sixth of the nineteen children of Richard Morton, mercer, of York, and alderman of the city, by his wife Elizabeth Leedale, and was born in the parish of All Saints Pavement.

Sources

1. Luminarium, Wikipedia