cording to Anthony à Wood he owed his fellowship to the influence of Robert Parsons; but Wood's editor, Bliss, prints in the footnotes to the life of Parsons (Athen. Oxon. ii. 657) a letter of Archbishop Abbot to Dr. Hussye, from which it appears that Bagshaw 'coming to be fellow was most hot in prosecution against Parson,' whose expulsion from the college he was instrumental in procuring. On 21 June 1575, Bagshaw took the degree of M.A. At this time he was zealous in his devotion to protestant principles, 'yet proved troublesome in his public disputes and in his behaviour towards persons.' About 1579 he became principal, whether in his own right or as deputy, of Gloucester Hall, where he made himself very unpopular. He soon resigned this office, and in 1582 Went into France. Here he became a convert to Romanism, and was made a priest. Then, with the permission of Cardinal Allen, he went to Rome, and was admitted to the English college, where his quarrelsome temper made him so unpopular that he was expelled by Cardinal Boncompagno. On leaving Rome he returned to Paris, where he became a doctor of divinity and one of the Sorbonne. The Jesuit writers used to style him derisively 'doctor erraticus' and 'doctor per saltum.' Afterwards he went to England to make converts, and in 1587 we find him imprisoned in the Tower (Foley, Records of the Society of Jesus, i. 481). In 1593 he was confined with other priests and gentlemen in Wisbeach Castle. His fellow prisoners held him at first in great esteem, but he was soon exposed by Father Edmonds, alias Weston, as 'a man of no worth, unruly, disordered, and a disobedient person, not to be favoured or respected by any' (Relation of the Faction begun at Wisbich, 1595 (1601), 4to, p. 38). When examined at the Tower for treasonable practices, Squier, an emissary from some English priests in Spain, affirmed that he had come with a letter (which he threw into the sea off Plymouth) from Father Walpole to Bagshaw at Wisbeach (Foley, Records, ii. 244). After his liberation, Bagshaw continued to reside abroad. In 1612 he held a disputation with Dr. Daniel Featley concerning transubstantiation. Notes of this disputation were printed many years afterwards in 'Transubstantiation exploded, or an Encounter with Richard, the titularie Bishop of Chalcedon. … By Daniel Featley, D.D. Whereunto is annexed a publique and solemne disputation held at Paris with Christopher Bagshawe, D. in Theologie and Rector of Avie Marie College,' 1638. Wood says that Bagshaw 'died and was buried at Paris after the year sixteen hundred and twenty-five, as I have been informed by Franc. à Santa Clara, who remembered and knew the doctor well, but had forgotten the exact date of his death.'
Bagshaw published at Paris in 1603 'An Answer to certain points of a Libel called An Apology of the Subordination in England,' 8vo. He is also thought to have been concerned in (1) 'Relatio compendiosa Turbarum quas Jesuitæ Angli una cum D. Georgio Blackwello, Archipresbytero, Sacerdotibus Seminariorum Populoque Catholico concivere,' &c., Rothomagi, 1601, 4to (published under the name of John Mush); (2) ' A true Relation of the Faction begun at Wisbich by Father Emonds, alias Weston, a Jesuit, 1595, and continued since by Father Walley, alias Garnet, the Provincial of the Jesuits in England, and by Father Parsons in Rome,' 1601, 4to.
[Wood's Athenæ, ed. Bliss, ii. 389-90, Fasti, i. 188. 199; Dodd's Church History, ii. 67; Foley's Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, i. 42, 481, ii. 239, 244.]
BAGSHAW, EDWARD, the elder (d. 1662), royalist, politician, and author, was of a Derbyshire family. In 1604 he entered at Brasenose College, Oxford, where his tutor was Robert Bolton, a puritan writer of some note, whose life was subsequently written by Bagshaw. He proceeded B.A. in 1608, and was entered of the Middle Temple, of which society he became in due course one of the benchers. At this time his leanings were entirely upon the side of the puritans, and when, in 1639, he was in his turn elected Lent reader, he took the opportunity of delivering two discourses to the effect that 'a parliament may be held without bishops,' and that 'bishops may not meddle in civil affairs.' The lectures attracted the notice of Laud, and Bagshaw was prohibited from continuing them. Through the popularity which these proceedings gained for him, he obtained in the following year his election to the Long parliament as a burgess for the borough of Southwark.
Bagshaw did not long continue to act with the party which he had adopted, and when the king retired to Oxford Bagshaw joined him there and sat in the so-called parliament which Charles convoked in that city. In 1644 he was taken prisoner by the parliamentary army, and consigned to the King's Bench prison in Southwark; and while in this confinement he composed the greater number of his works. He was set at liberty in 1646, died in 1662, and was buried at Morton Pinckney, in Northamptonshire, near
