Christopher Bagshaw

Christopher Bagshaw (1552 – 1625?) was an English academic and Roman Catholic priest.

He came from a Derbyshire family. He graduated B.A. on 12 July 1572, at Balliol College, Oxford and, in the same year, was elected probationer fellow of his college. Before going to Oxford, he matriculated in 1566 at St John's College, Cambridge. According to Anthony à Wood, he owed his fellowship to the influence of Robert Parsons, but Wood's editor, Philip Bliss, contradicts him; connecting Bagshaw with the expulsion of Parsons from the college. On 21 June 1575, Bagshaw took the degree of M.A. At this time, he was a strong if quarrelsome Protestant.

About 1579, he became Principal of Gloucester Hall, where he made himself very unpopular. He resigned this office and, in 1582, went to France. Here, he became a convert to Catholicism and was made a priest. Then, with the permission of Cardinal William Allen, he was admitted to the English College, Rome; but his temper made him so unpopular that he was expelled by Cardinal Boncompagno. On leaving Rome, he returned to Paris, where he became a doctor of divinity at the Sorbonne. Jesuit writers styled him derisively doctor erraticus and doctor per saltum.

He went to England as a missioner and, in 1587, was imprisoned in the Tower of London. In 1593, he was confined with other Catholics in Wisbech Castle. He clashed with Father William Weston, who found him disobedient, setting off the "Wisbech Stirs". When examined at the Tower for treasonable practices, Edward Squire, an emissary from some English priests in Spain, affirmed that he had come with a letter (which he threw into the sea off Plymouth) from Father Henry Walpole to Bagshaw at Wisbech. After his liberation, Bagshaw continued to reside abroad.

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