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Wagstaffe]


Dictionary  of  English  Church  History


[Wake


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TTJ^AGSTAFFE,  Thomas  (1645-1712),
"  "  Nonjuror,  was  educated  at  Charter-
house and  New  Inn  Hall,  Oxford,  where  he
graduated  B.A.,  1664;  M.A.,  1667.  He  was
ordained  deacon  and  priest,  1669,  and  became
Rector  of  Martinsthorpe.  1684  he  was  pre-
sented to  a  prebendal  stall  and  the  chancellor-
ship at  Lichfield,  and  to  the  rectory  of  St.
Margaret  Pattens,  London.  In  1689  he  re-
fused the  oaths,  and  was  deprived.  Haying,
'  before  his  admission  to  holy  orders,'  studied
physic  with  great  diligence,  he  practised  in
London  as  a  physician  after  his  deprivation,
'  still  wearing  his  canonical  habit.'  He  was
with  Archbishop  Sancroft  (q.v.)  at  his  death,
and  wrote  a  touching  account  of  his  end.  He
was  one  of  the  two  selected  by  James  n.
at  St.  Germans,  1693,  for  consecration
as  bishop.  He  was  nominated  by  Bishop
Lloyd,  deprived  of  Norwich,  as  suffragan
Bishop  of  Ipswich,  and  was  consecrated,
24th  February  1694,  by  Lloyd,  Turner,  late
of  [Ely,  and  White,  late  of  Peterborough,  at
the  lodgings  of  Bishop  White  at  the  Rev.  W.
Giffard's  house  at  Southgate  in  Middlesex.
[Nonjurors.]  He  seems  not  to  have  per-
formed episcopal  functions ;  no  records  of
ordinations  by  him  exist;  and  he  was  practis-
ing physic  in  London  as  late  as  1707.  He  was
one  of  the  ablest  writers  on  the  Nonjuring  side.
He  was  arrested  with  Bishop  Ken  (q.v.)  and
others  for  raising  a  fund  for  the  poorer
Nonjurors,  1696,  but  was  soon  released.  In
his  latter  years  he  retired  to  his  own  property
at  Binley,  near  Coventry.  Before  his  death
he  desired  Holy  Communion  from  Francis
Brokesby,  a  Nonjuring  priest,  who  had,  un-
known to  him,  conformed  and  taken  the  oaths.
