Thomas Yale

Thomas Yale (1525/6–1577) was an English civil lawyer.

Thomas Yale was born in 1525 or 1526, graduated B.A. at Cambridge University in 1542–3, and was elected a fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge about 1544. He commenced M.A. in 1546, and filled the office of bursar to his college from 1549 to 1551. He was one of the proctors of the university for the year commencing Michaelmas 1552, but resigned before the expiration of his term of office. In 1554 he was appointed commissary of the diocese of Ely under the chancellor, John Fuller, and in 1555 he was keeper of the spiritualities of the diocese of Bangor during the vacancy after the death of Arthur Bulkeley. In that year he subscribed the Roman Catholic articles imposed upon all graduates of the university.

In November 1556 his name occurs in the commission for the suppression of heresy within the diocese of Ely, and he assisted in the search for heretical books during the visitation of the university by Cardinal Pole's delegates. In January 1556–7 he was among those empowered by the senate to reform the composition for the election of proctors and to revise the university statutes. He was created LL.D. in 1557, and admitted an advocate of the Court of Arches on 26 April 1559. In the same year he and four other leading civilians subscribed an opinion that the commission issued by the queen for the consecration of Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, was legally valid.

On 25 March 1560 he was admitted to the prebend of Offley in Lichfield Cathedral. In the same year he became rector of Leverington in the Isle of Ely, and was one of the archiepiscopal commissioners for visiting the churches and dioceses of Canterbury, Rochester, and Peterborough. On 24 April 1561 the archbishop commissioned him and Walter Wright to visit the church, city, and diocese of Oxford.

On 28 June 1561 he was constituted for life judge of the court of audience, official principal, chancellor, and vicar-general to the archbishop of Canterbury, and in the same year obtained the rectory of Llantressant in Anglesey. In 1562 he became chancellor of the diocese of Bangor, and in May was commissioned by the archbishop to visit All Souls and Merton College at Oxford. In 1563 he was on a commission to visit the diocese of Ely.

On 7 July 1564 he was instituted to the prebend of Vaynoll in the diocese of St Asaph. In 1566 he was one of the masters in ordinary of the court of chancery, and was placed on a commission to visit the diocese of Bangor. In 1567 he was appointed dean of the arches, a post which he resigned in 1573, and was one of the commissioners for the visitation of the church and diocese of Norwich. By a patent confirmed on 15 July 1571 he was constituted joint-keeper of the prerogative court of Canterbury.

On Parker's death in 1575 he acted as one of his executors, and Parker's successor, Edmund Grindal, appointed him his vicar-general. On 23 April 1576 he was placed on a commission for repressing religious malcontents . On 2 May he and Nicholas Robinson, bishop of Bangor, were empowered by Grindal to visit on his behalf the diocese of Bangor, and on 17 August he and Gilbert Berkeley, bishop of Bath and Wells, were similarly commissioned to visit the church at Wells. In the same year Yale represented to Grindal the need of reforms in the court of audience. On Grindal's suspension in June 1577, Yale discharged his judicial duties for him, continuing to act until November, when he fell ill. He died in November or December 1577. He married Joanna (died 12 September 1587), daughter of Nicholas Waleron.

For many years Yale was an ecclesiastical high commissioner. Some manuscript extracts by him entitled ‘Collecta ex Registro Archiepiscoporum Cantuar.’ are preserved among the Cottonian manuscripts (Cleopatra F. i. 267), and were printed in John Strype's Life of Parker, iii. 177–82. A statement of his case in a controversy for precedency with Bartholomew Clerke is among the Petyt manuscripts in the library of the Inner Temple. An elegy on Yale by Peter Leigh is preserved in the British Museum (Addit. MS. 26737, f. 43).