Thomas Pierce

Thomas Pierce or Peirse (1622–1691) was an English churchman and controversialist, a high-handed President of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Dean of Salisbury.

He was the son of John Pierce or Peirse, a woollen-draper and mayor of Devizes, Wiltshire. He was appointed chorister of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1633, while receiving an education in Magdalen College School under. William White, for whom in 1662 he obtained preferment. On 7 December 1638 he matriculated at the college, and in 1639 he became a demy. He graduated B.A. on 4 December 1641, and M. A. on 21 June 1644, noted as a poet and musician. In 1643 he was elected a fellow of his college, and was expelled on 15 May 1648 by the parliamentary visitors, a proceeding which gave rise to his satire on them.

He entered the household of Dorothy Spencer, Countess of Sunderland, as tutor to her only son Robert Spencer. He spent some years in travelling with his pupil through France and Italy, and in 1656 he was presented by the countess to the rectory of Brington, Northamptonshire, which he held until 1676. In 1659 he was appointed praelector of theology at his college. Until the end of 1644 Pierce was a Calvinist, but he then changed his views, and attacked his abandoned opinions with the zeal of a neo-convert. For some time he was content to confine his thoughts to manuscript, but in 1655 he expounded his creed, that the sin in him was due to his own and not to God's will, and that the good done by him was received from the special grace and favour of God. Pierce then further defined his position. Controversy raged about these works until 1660, and in further tracts Pierce replied to attacks by William Barlee, rector of Brockhall, Northamptonshire, Edward Bagshawe, Henry Hickman, and Richard Baxter. In 1658 he reprinted his contributions to the controversy.

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