Nicholas Close

Nicholas Close
Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield
Appointed30 August 1452
Term endedlate October 1452
PredecessorWilliam Booth
SuccessorReginald Boulers
Previous post(s)Bishop of Carlisle
Archdeacon of Colchester
Orders
Consecration15 March 1450
Personal details
Diedlate October 1452
DenominationRoman Catholic

Nicholas Close (died 1452) was an English priest.

Close is widely regarded as having been born in Westmorland, in Birkbeck Fells,[1] but may have been of Flemish descent.[2] He was educated at King's College, Cambridge, being elected a fellow in 1443, one of the first six fellows on the foundation.[3][4] He held the curacy of St John Zachary,[4] a church demolished to make way for King's College Chapel, the construction of which he was appointed overseer by Henry VI.[5]

He served as a commissioner to Scotland in 1449. He was provided to the see of Carlisle in January 1450, and consecrated on 15 March 1450.[6] On 19 March he was granted an indult from the King "for life and as long as he is bishop of Carlisle, to visit his city and diocese by deputy (he being hindered so much by the service of Henry, king of England that he cannot conveniently do so in person)."[2]

Also in 1450 he was elected to the then annual position of Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.[7] He was Bishop of Carlisle from 1450 to 1452, and was then translated to Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield on 30 August 1452, serving for a short time before his death in late October 1452.[8]

  1. ^ Thomas Harwood (1797). "John Chedworth". Alumni Etonenses: Or, A Catalogue of the Provosts & Fellows of Eton College and King's College, Cambridge.
  2. ^ a b W. G. Wiseman (1996). "The hospital of St Nicholas, Carlisle and its masters; Part 2 — The period from 1333" (PDF). Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society. 96. Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archæological Society: 62.
  3. ^ "Close, Nicholas (CLS450N)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  4. ^ a b Frederick Mackenzie (1840). Observations on the Construction of the Roof of King's College Chapel, Cambridge.
  5. ^ Horace Walpole (1937). The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence, Volume 1. Yale University Press. p. 18.
  6. ^ Fryde, et al. Handbook of British Chronology p. 236
  7. ^ J.R. Tanner, ed. (1917). The historical register of the University of Cambridge, being a supplement to the Calendar with a record of University offices, honours and distinctions to the year 1910. Cambridge University Press.
  8. ^ Fryde, et al. Handbook of British Chronology p. 254