# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Starkey, Thomas

​STARKEY, THOMAS (1499?–1538), writer, born about 1499, was the elder son of Thomas Starkey (d. 3 May 1529) of Wrenbury, Cheshire, by his wife Maud, daughter of Sir John Mainwaring of Peover in the same county. He was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating B.A. on 30 June 1516, and proceeding M.A. on 18 March ​1520–1. At Oxford he learnt both Latin and Greek, and after graduating was lecturer in natural philosophy at Magdalen. From May to Michaelmas 1522 he served as proctor on Wolsey's nomination. He was also fellow of Magdalen from 1522 to 1524. On 31 July 1530 Warham, on the resignation of Thomas Lupset [q. v.], presented Starkey to the living of Great Mongeham, Kent. He was in London in November 1531, but soon afterwards appears to have accepted some office in Reginald Pole's household at Venice and Padua. While abroad he graduated LL.D., possibly at the latter city. In 1533 he wrote to the king, suggesting that the divorce should be referred to a general council. He returned to London at the end of 1534, when he became chaplain to Pole's mother, the Countess of Salisbury, and was made, no doubt by the intervention of Cromwell, to whom he had written (Harl. MS. 283, art. 60), one of the king's chaplains. He was sent to visit the Carthusian Richard Reynolds (d. 1535) [q. v.] before his execution. That Henry thought well of him may be gathered from the fact that he commissioned him to write to Pole and get his opinion on the divorce and the pope's authority. This he did on 15 Feb. 1535 (ib. art. 61). Pole replied shortly, and important correspondence followed, with the result that Pole sent to Henry his ‘Pro Ecclesiasticæ Unitatis Defensione’ in 1536 (cf. Dixon, History of the Church of England, i. 433, 434, 442, 482). Starkey was now in some danger. He had raised hopes which were not satisfied, and he seems to have incurred suspicion through his somewhat wavering attitude towards the question of the royal supremacy. In a letter to the king, written in 1536, he gives a very fair statement of the wishes of the sincere but moderate reformers of the day.
In his troubles in 1536 he retired to Bosham, a little benefice which he held near Chichester; but there, owing to the neighbourhood of the Poles, he had no peace. He remained, however, chaplain to the king, who, on 14 Dec. 1536, appointed him master of the college of Corpus Christi, connected with the church of St. Lawrence, Candlewick Street, London. He was formally instituted on 26 Jan. 1536–7. On 24 March following the king summoned him to a conference with the bishops on the invocation of saints, purgatory, and other burning questions. On 7 Jan. 1537–8 he was placed on a commission to inquire into a case of witchcraft, and on 24 March preached for the last time before the king. He died in the last week in August 1538, his will being dated the 25th of that month, but not proved until 2 May 1544 (printed with his works, E. E. T. S. 1878).
Starkey wrote in 1535 ‘An Essay on Preaching,’ which is in manuscript in the Record Office. But his fame rests on two other works. His ‘Exhortation to Christian Unity,’ otherwise called ‘A Treatise against the Papal Supremacy,’ was written about 1534, and published by Berthelet (n.d.); it is extremely rare, but a copy was sold at Sotheby's on 1 July 1885. More celebrated is his ‘Dialogue between Pole and Lupset,’ which was found in manuscript by J. S. Brewer, and edited with notes by J. M. Cowper for the Early English Text Society in 1871. This dialogue gives a detailed account of many evils from which England suffered at the time it was written, and compares with the ‘Commonweal of this Realm of England’ [see under Stafford, William, (1554–1612)]. But Starkey's ‘Dialogue’ also has an important place in the history of the science of politics as an attempt to define the conditions of a true commonwealth. Many of Starkey's letters were edited by S. J. Herrtage in 1878 for the same society. Further letters are described in Macray's ‘Register of Magdalen College’ (i. 159–63).
W. A. J. A.