on a pension of £12. At this time he was also a servant to William Smyth, who was keeper of the hanaper in the Court of Chancery. In 1492 he was the receiver for Lady Margaret Beaufort's estates in the West Country, and by 1503 he had risen to be the chancellor of her household. In the years following 1490, Oldham was made a canon of the cathedrals of Exeter, Lichfield, Lincoln, St Paul's, Salisbury and York. In 1496 William Smyth, who was by then Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, appointed him to the non-residential post of master of the hospital of St John in Lichfield, to which Smyth had recently added a free grammar school and almshouse. The year 1499 saw him established as dean of Wimborne in Dorset, and in 1502 he was made archdeacon of Exeter. In 1503, he had sufficient prestige to be present at the placing of the foundation stone of the Henry VII Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey. Bishop of Exeter Possibly with some influence from Lady Margaret Beaufort (who was the mother of the then reigning king, Henry VII), Oldham was appointed as Bishop of Exeter on 24 November 1504, and was consecrated in the post on 12 January 1505. He evidently took his duties as bishop seriously and ensured that only educated people, such as university graduates, were raised to most of the important roles under his control. He also instigated examinations to select the best candidates for ordination. Bishop Oldham's coat of arms, shown here, are described as "Sable, a chevron or, between three Owls proper; on a chief of the second, three Roses gules." Oldham adopted the owl as his personal device. It was a play on words or rebus based on his surname, which would probably have been pronounced at the time as owl-dom. From 1510 to 1513 he was one of a group of bishops who resisted, largely successfully, what they considered were undue claims made by William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, regarding the probate courts. In 1511 he regulated many cathedral matters by the issue of statutes, and he was not shy in confronting other religious houses when he thought it appropriate. He successfully annexed Warland Hospital in Totnes from the Trinitarian Order in 1509. This was done, as was the similar annexation of Clyst Gabriel at Sowton, to help finance the provision of regular meals for