Thomas Thirlby (or Thirleby; –1570), was the first and only bishop of Westminster (1540–50), and afterwards successively bishop of Norwich (1550–54) and bishop of Ely (1554–59). While he acquiesced in the Henrician schism, with its rejection in principle of the Roman papacy, he remained otherwise loyal to the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church during the English Reformation. Life Thomas, was the son of John Thirleby, scrivener and town clerk of Cambridge, and Joan his wife, and was born in the parish of St. Mary the Great, Cambridge, in or about 1506. He received his education at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, graduated bachelor of the civil law in 1521, was elected a fellow of his college, and proceeded doctor of the civil law in 1528, and doctor of the canon law in 1530. It is said that while at the university he, with other learned men who were the favourers of the gospel, though they afterwards relapsed, received an allowance from Queen Anne Boleyn, the Earl of Wiltshire, her father, and Lord Rochford, her brother. In 1532 he was official to the archdeacon of Ely. He appears to have taken a prominent part in the affairs of the university between 1528 and 1534, and is supposed to have held the office of commissary. In 1534 he was appointed provost of the collegiate church of St. Edmund at Salisbury. Archbishop Cranmer and Dr. Butts, physician to the king, were his early patrons. Cranmer "liked his learning and his qualities so well that he became his good lord towards the king's majesty, and commended him to him, to be a man worthy to serve a prince, for such singular qualities as were in him. And indeed the king soon employed him in embassies in France and elsewhere: so that he grew in the king's favour by the means of the archbishop, who had a very extraordinary love for him, and thought nothing too much to give him or to do for him." In 1533 he was one of the king's chaplains, and in May communicated to Cranmer "the king's commands" relative to the sentence of divorce from Catherine of Aragon. In 1534 he was presented by the king to the archdeaconry of Ely, and he was a member of the convocation which recognised the king's supremacy in ecclesiastical matters. Soon afterwards he was appointed dean of the chapel royal, and in 1536 one