of the members of the council of the north. On 29 September 1537 the king granted to him a canonry and prebend in the collegiate church of St. Stephen, in the palace of Westminster, and on the 15th of the following month he was present at the christening of Prince Edward (afterwards Edward VI) at Hampton Court. On 2 May 1538 a royal commission was issued to Stephen Gardiner, Sir Francis Brian, and Thirlby, as ambassadors, to treat with Francis I, king of France, not only for a league of friendship, but for the projected marriage of the Princess Mary to the Duke of Orleans. The three ambassadors were recalled in August 1538. Thirlby was one of the royal commissioners appointed on 1 October 1538 to search for and examine anabaptists. On 23 December 1539 he was presented to the mastership of the hospital of St. Thomas à Becket in Southwark, and on 14 January 1539/40 he surrendered that house, with all its possessions, to the king. At this period he was prebendary of Yeatminster in the cathedral church of Salisbury, and rector of Ribchester, Lancashire. In 1540 he was prolocutor of the convocation of the province of Canterbury, and signed the decree declaring the nullity of the king's marriage with Anne of Cleves. In the same year he was one of the commissioners appointed by the king to deliberate upon sundry points of religion then in controversy, and especially upon the doctrine of the sacraments. By letters patent dated 17 December 1540 the king erected the abbey of Westminster into an episcopal see, and appointed Thirlby the first and, as it happened, the last bishop of the new Diocese of Westminster. He was consecrated on 29 December in St. Saviour's Chapel in the cathedral church of Westminster. Soon afterwards he was appointed by the convocation to revise the translation of the epistles of St. James, St. John, and St. Jude. In January 1540–1 he interceded with the crown for the grant of the university of the house of Franciscan friars at Cambridge. In 1542 he appears as a member of the privy council, and was also despatched as ambassador to the emperor in Spain. He returned the same year. In April 1543 he took part in the revision of the "Institution of a Christian Man", and on 17 June in that year he was one of those empowered to