OVERTON, William (1524/8-1609)

Of unknown parentage, Overton is said to have been schooled at Glastonbury Abbey, and to have matriculated at Magdalen College, Oxford in July 1539, shortly before the abbey was dissolved. By the time he graduated BA in 1547 he had moved to Christ Church, but returned to Magdalen as a fellow under Edward VI. He absented himself from Oxford during Mary’s reign, but shortly after the queen’s death he acquired prebends at Winchester and Chichester cathedrals, and a string of livings in both dioceses. He should not be confused with a William Overton or Cureton who briefly served as rector of Swynnerton, Staffordshire in 1554-5, and it is unlikely he was the man presented to the rectory of Cotton, Suffolk in 1559.22 Ath. Ox. ii.49; Al. Ox.; CCEd; Oxford DNB, xlii.175.

In 1566 Overton resigned his fellowship upon his marriage to a daughter of William Barlow^†, bishop of Chichester. He subsequently secured the patronage of Robert Dudley^†, earl of Leicester, who apparently sponsored his appointment as a royal chaplain; he may also have been one of the earl’s own chaplains. After Barlow’s death in 1568, he unsuccessfully recommended his brother-in-law William Day^† (later bishop of Winchester) for the vacancy, and may even have had designs on the see for himself. However, William Cecil^†, 1st Lord Burghley secured the appointment for his protégé, Richard Curteys^†, and the two men spent much of the 1570s struggling for control of the cathedral chapter.23 Oxford DNB, xlii. 175; Manning, 67-70, 73-5; B. Usher, William Cecil and Episcopacy, 1559-77, p. 109.

It was doubtless Leicester who, in 1580, sponsored Overton’s appointment as bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, in which diocese many of the Dudley estates lay. On taking office he surrendered all his other preferments, but later complained that his promotion had cost him over £1,300 in first fruits and in repairs to his episcopal properties. Perhaps because of these financial problems, he was accused of asset-stripping his estates and ordaining candidates without due care. However, one seventeenth-century commentator remembered him for his charity, and another commended him as ‘sufficiently severe to suppress such, whom he suspected of nonconformity’.24 Usher, William Cecil and Episcopacy, 154, 156; Oxford DNB, xlii. 175-6; J. Harington, Briefe View of the State of the Church of England (1653), 84; T. Fuller, Church Hist. of Eng. (1656), x. 55.

In his later seventies on the accession of James I in 1603, Overton erected his funeral monument that same year at the church in Eccleshall, Staffordshire, where his episcopal seat lay. Although still active as a local magistrate, he played little part in the politics of the new reign. He was not present at the Hampton Court Conference in January 1604, and while he attended the opening of Parliament on 19 Mar., he appeared only twice more during the session, granting his proxy to Tobie Matthew^*, bishop of Durham (later archbishop of York) and four others. He never sat in the Lords again, but appointed proxies for the next two sessions.25 Ath. Ox. ii. 49; K. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, 99, 227, 324; LPL, ms 3203, f. 572; LJ, ii. 263a, 355a, 449a. The royal campaign against nonconformity in 1605 had little impact in his diocese: one man may have been deprived, but Overton quietly granted a preaching licence to Arthur Hildersham, a leading puritan cleric, who had been ejected from his living in Lincoln diocese.26 Fincham, 227. 324. Overton died on 9 Apr. 1609, and was buried at Eccleshall; no will or administration has been found. He is said to have been heavily in debt to the crown at his death.27 Ath. Ox. ii. 49; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 505.