Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bryghtwell, Thomas
BRYGHTWELL or BRYTHWELL, THOMAS, D.D. (d. 1390), fellow of Merton College, Oxford, is chiefly known in connection with the proceedings against Wycliffe’s followers taken at the council of Blackfriars in London in 1382. He appeared before the council at its second session, 12 June, in company with Rygge, the chancellor of the university, to answer, as it seems, certain charges which were to be brought against Rygge by Peter Stokes, the archbishop’s agent at Oxford. The charge in which Bryghtwell was implicated was one of favouring Repyngdon, a notorious Wycliffite; but his action was in all probability due rather to jealousy of the archbishop's intrusion into academica affairs than to personal sympathy with Repyngdon’s opinions. Bryghtwell gave his assent to the condemnation of Wycliffe’s doctrine as declared by the council, and does not appear to have again exposed himself to any similar accusation. Indeed, in this very year (1382) he was appointed dean of the college of Newark at Leicester (Nichols, History of the County of Leicester, i. 338), In 1386 he was granted the prebend of Holborn in St. Paul’s Cathedral (Le Neve, Fasti, ed. Hardy, ii. 392), and perhaps before this date he possessed the prebend of Leicester St. Margaret in Lincoln Cathedral, which he held at the time of his death (Nichols, i. 561). Nor had he at all relinquished his connection with Oxford; he was elected chancellor of the university in May 1388 (Wood, Fasti Oxon. p. 33; cf. Anstey, Munimenta Academica, ii. 795) in succession to his old friend Robert Rygge, and retained the office in the following year. He died in 1390.
[Wood’s Hist. and Antiq. of the Univ. of Oxford, i. 493; Fasciculi Zizaniorum, ed. Shirley pp. 288, 297-308.]