Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Smith, Thomas (1615-1702)
SMITH, THOMAS (1615–1702), bishop of Carlisle, born in 1615, son of John Smith of Whitewell in the parish of Asby, Cumberland, after education at the free school, Appleby, matriculated from Queen's College, Oxford, on 4 Nov. 1631, aged 16. Having graduated B.A. in 1635 and M.A. in 1639, he became a fellow of his college and distinguished himself as a tutor. He was a select preacher before Charles I at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1645. When that city fell he ‘retired to the north,’ where he married Catharine, widow of Sir Henry Fletcher of Hutton in Cumberland, and only emerged on the Restoration, proceeding B.D. on 2 Aug. 1660, and D.D. by diploma in the following November. He was appointed chaplain to Charles II, and was rewarded with the first prebendal stall in Carlisle Cathedral (November 1660). Within a few months of this he was collated to a rich prebend in the cathedral of Durham, the prebendal house attached to which he restored. On the promotion of Guy Carleton [q. v.] to the see of Bristol, Smith was instituted dean of Carlisle (4 March 1671–2), in which capacity he rebuilt the deanery and presented the cathedral with an organ. In conjunction with his first cousin, Thomas Barlow [q. v.], bishop of Lincoln, and Randall Sanderson, he gave 600l. for the improvement of Appleby school.
The profusion with which he endowed Carlisle grammar school, the chapter library, and the cathedral treasury (as well as donations to his old college at Oxford and to the poor), made him highly popular. He succeeded Edward Rainbowe as bishop in 1684 (consecrated 19 June), and died at Rose Castle on 12 April 1702. A flat stone near the altar in the cathedral is inscribed to his memory. A number of his letters are calendared among the Rydal MSS. (Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. App. vii. passim). His portrait was engraved by J. Smith after an oil-painting by Stephenson, a full-length, now preserved at Rose Castle. He was succeeded at Carlisle by another fellow of Queen's, the great antiquary, William Nicolson [q. v.]
[Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Wood's Athenæ, ed. Bliss, iv. 892; Le Neve's Fasti, iii.; Nicolson and Burn's Cumberland, ii. 290; Cumberland and Westmoreland Archæological Soc. Trans. iv. 6, 59 (where Smith's will is printed); Jefferson's Hist. and Antiq. of Carlisle, 1838, pp. 182, 231–2; Carlisle's Endowed Grammar Schools, i. 175, ii. 695; Noble's Continuation of Granger, i. 82.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.254
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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