Nicholas Shaxton (c. 1485 – 1556) was an English Reformer and Bishop of Salisbury. Early life He was a native of the diocese of Norwich, and studied at Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1507. M.A. in 1510, B.D. in 1521 and D.D. in 1531. He was elected a fellow of Gonville Hall in 1510. In 1520 he was appointed a university preacher. He is mentioned by John Strype among those propagators of new views who used to frequent the 'White Horse'. He was president of Physick's Hostel, which was attached to Gonville Hall, 1512–3. Reformer In February 1530 he was one of the committee of divines at Cambridge to whom the question of the king's marriage with Catherine of Aragon was referred, and his name was marked by Stephen Gardiner as favourable to the king's views. In May following he was one of the twelve Cambridge divines appointed to serve on a joint committee with twelve of Oxford in examining English books likely to disturb the faith of the people. But his own orthodoxy was called in question not long afterwards; and in May next year, when he was admitted inceptor in divinity, though one of the regents wrote asking Richard Nix, bishop of Norwich, to give him a licence to preach in his diocese, the bishop was not so easily satisfied. From inquiries made at Cambridge he learned that the vice-chancellor had censured two points in a sermon which Shaxton had preached on Ash Wednesday: first, that it was wrong to assert publicly that there was no Purgatory, but not damnable to think so; and, secondly, that no man could be chaste by prayers or fasting unless God made him so. He had also confessed that he had prayed at mass that the clergy might be relieved of celibacy. These points he had been persuaded to give up so as to avoid open abjuration; but the vice-chancellor had compelled him and others who proceeded that year in divinity to take a special oath to renounce the errors of John Wiclif, John Huss, and Martin Luther. The bishop, however, still insisted on a formal act of abjuration, because he had purchased heretical books and conveyed them into his diocese. And when Thomas Bilney was burned shortly afterwards at Norwich, recanting at the stake heresies much the same as Shaxton's, the bishop is reported to have said, 'Christ's mother! I