Type: | Bishop |
Honorific Prefix: | The Right Reverend |
Bishop of Chester | |
Church: | Roman Catholic |
Consecration: | 1 April 1554 |
Consecrated By: | Edmund Bonner |
Term Start: | 6 July 1554 |
Term End: | 1556 |
Predecessor: | John Bird |
Successor: | Cuthbert Scott |
Coat Of Arms: | George Cotes Escutcheon.png |
Death Date: | 1556 |
George Cotes (or Cotys, Coates) (died 1556) was an English academic and Catholic Bishop of Chester during the English Reformation.
He had been a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford in 1522,[1] and then became a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford in 1527.[2] He was Junior Proctor of Oxford University in 1531.[3] It was some years before he was elected Master of Balliol College, in which post he served in the years 1539–1545.[2]
With the accession of Queen Mary, he was chosen to succeed the former Carmelite John Bird, who had been deprived because he was married, as Bishop of Chester.[4] Cotes was consecrated on 1 April 1554 by bishops Stephen Gardiner of Winchester, Edmund Bonner of London, and Cuthbert Tunstall of Durham, and received papal provision on 6 July 1554.[4] However, he held the post for only a short period of time before he died in c. January 1556.[4]
During the Marian Persecutions he had Protestant George Marsh burnt at the stake as a heretic.[5]