Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Draycot, Anthony
DRAYCOT, ANTHONY (d. 1571), divine, belonged to an old family of that name and place in Staffordshire. He was principal of White Hall (afterwards included in Jesus College), Oxford, and of Pirye Hall adjoining. On 23 June 1522 he was admitted , bachelor of canon law, taking his doctor's degree on 21 July following (Reg. of Univ. of Oxford, Oxf. Hist. Soc., i. 72). He held the family rectory of Draycot. On 11 Dec.1527 he was instituted to the vicarage of Hitchin, Hertfordshire (Clutterbuck, Hertfordshire, iii. 36), which he exchanged on 5 March 1531 for the rectory of Cottingham, Northamptonshire (Bridges, Northamptonshire, ii. 299). He became prebendary of Bedford Major in the church of Lincoln, 11 Feb. 1538-9 (Le Neve, Fasti, ed. Hardy, ii. 107), was archdeacon of Stow, 15 Jan. 1542-3 (ib. ii. 80), and archdeacon of Huntingdon, 27 July 1543 (ib. ii. 52), both in the same church of Lincoln. On 2 Dec. 1547 he was appointed by convocation head of a committee to draw up a form of a statute for paying tithes in cities (Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, 8vo ed., i. 221). He was chancellor for a time to Longland, bishop of Lincoln, and to Baine, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, in which offices he acted with, the greatest cruelty against the protestants (Foxe, Acts and Monuments, ed. Townsend, v. 453, vii. 400-1, viii. 247-50, 255, 630, 638, 745, 764). In 1553 he was one of the committee for the restitution of Bishop Bonner (Strype, Memorials, 8vo ed., vol. iii. pt. i., p. 36). On 8 Sept. 1556 he was admitted prebendary of Longdon in the church of Lichfield (Le Neve, Fasti, ed. Hardy, i. 614). At Elizabeth's accession he refused to take the oath of supremacy, and was accordingly stripped of all his preferments, except the rectory of Draycot, which he contrived to keep. In 1560 he was a prisoner in the Fleet (Cal. State Papers, Dom.. Addenda 1547-65, p. 524). From 'An Ancient Editor's Notebook,' printed in Morris's 'Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers' (3rd series, p. 35), where, however, there is some confusion of dates, we learn that 'Dr. Draycott, long a prisoner, at length getting a little liberty, went to Draycot and there died,' 20 Jan. 1570-1 (monumental inscription preserved in Dodd, Church Hist., 1737, i. 516).
[Erdeswicke's Survey of Staffordshire (Harwood), p. 252; Wood's Fasti Oxon. (Bliss), i. 59, 61, 106; Gillow's English Catholics, ii. 105; General Index to Strype's Works (8vo), i. 239; Lansd. MS. 980, f. 282.]