page_title: Thomas Wilson (bishop)
section_title: Preferment
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Wilson (bishop) / Early life (1663–87) / Preferment
caption_attribution_description: Malew Church
context_page_description: Thomas Wilson was Bishop of Sodor and Man between 1697 and 1755.
  He was born in Burton and Ness, in the Wirral, Cheshire, in December 1663. Having studied medicine at Trinity College, Dublin, he was ordained priest in 1689. In 1692 the Lord of Mann, William Stanley the Earl of Derby, appointed him personal chaplain and tutor to the earl's son. Five years later, at Lord Derby's urging, Wilson reluctantly accepted promotion to the vacant bishopric of Sodor and Man.
  When he came to the Isle of Man, he found the buildings of the diocese in a ruinous condition. The building of new churches was one of his first acts, and he eventually rebuilt most of the churches of the diocese along with establishing public libraries. He oversaw the passing in the Tynwald of the Act of Settlement 1704 that provided tenants with rights to sell and pass on their land, subject only to continued fixed rents and alienation fees. Wilson worked to restore ecclesiastical discipline on the island, although he clashed with civil authorities partly because of the reduction of revenue from Wilson mitigating fines in the spiritual court.
context_section_description: On 27 November 1696 Lord Derby offered him the Bishopric of Sodor and Man, vacant since the death of Baptist Levinz, and insisted on his taking it. Derby had previously offered the position to Wilson who had "modestly declined". The background to the insistent offer was a complaint made to William III by the Archbishop of York, John Sharp about the length of the vacancy; the prior and largely absentee incumbent Baptist Levinz had died in 1693. William gave an ultimatum to Derby of an immediate nomination, or else an imposition at the King's will. William assented to Wilson's elevation on 25 December 1697 and ordered the Archbishop of York to consecrate Wilson as bishop. On 10 January 1697 he was created LL.D. by Thomas Tenison, Archbishop of Canterbury (a so-called Lambeth degree). On 16 January 1697, he was consecrated bishop at the Savoy Chapel, London. On 28 January the rectory of Badsworth was again offered to him in commendam, and again refused, though the see of Man was worth no more than £300 a year. His first business was to recover the arrears of royal bounty (an annuity of £100, granted 1675).
caption: A church in Malew in the Isle of Man.
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