His paternal ancestry is a junior line of the Pilkington family who owned land at Rivington from 1212 where they were Lords of the manor.

His daughter Deborah (born 1564 – died unknown) married twice, first to Walter Dunch (circa 1552 – 4 June 1594), of Avebury Manor in Wiltshire, M.P.

[8] On the death of Edward VI in 1553 the line of succession fell to Queen Mary I, a Roman Catholic, intent on restoring England to the Church of Rome.

After turning down the bishopric of Winchester over a dispute about crown alienation of church land, he was nominated Bishop of Durham on 26 December 1560, consecrated on 2 March 1561, and enthroned on 10 April.

In the aftermath, he preached a sermon at Paul's Cross ascribing the destruction to the wrath of God and warning of worse to follow.

The sermon provoked an angry response from a Catholic apologist alleging the cause was abandoning the old faith and blasphemy.

[2] In early 1562, James Pilkington was in London where, in a sermon, he denounced a man from his native Lancashire known as Elias, who had claimed to have foresight and was famous during the reign of Queen Mary, to whom he is reputed to have spoken at Greenwich.

[13] As bishop, Pilkington sought to bring order to his diocese, dealing with recusancy and conflicts of power with the Earls of Westmorland and Northumberland, in which he was helped by the new dean, William Whittingham, appointed in 1563.

Pilkington and Whittingham worked to ensure the appointment of committed reformers in what had been an area of strong recusant Roman Catholic feeling.

In the 1560s and 1570s Pilkington exercised his patronage of cathedral prebends and invariably nominated zealous Protestants, many of them his relatives and friends.

The side lights illustrate events in the career of the bishop, his mastership of St John's College, Cambridge, the bishop fleeing to Europe, teaching children in Zürich, and revising the Book of Common Prayer with Matthew Parker, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

They celebrated Mass in Durham Cathedral and issued a proclamation claiming that their intention was to restore the Catholic religion, but not to unseat Queen Elizabeth.

A contemporary remarked that "this wicked country ... caused Mr James Pilkington to spend his life in continual pains and mournings and at length ended him".

In his will he left various items of furniture to his successor in lieu of dilapidations but this was unacceptable to the next bishop, Richard Barnes, who took action against James Pilkington's executors regarding the state of some of the episcopal residences.

He contributed to Book of Homilies, and published commentaries on the prophets Haggai (1560) and Obadiah (1562),[2] "A Confutation of an Addition, with an Apologye written and cast in the Streets of West Chester against the causes of burning Paules Churche", 1563.

The original picture measured 53 by 35 inches and was considerably damaged by a fire in 1834, and in 1904 its remains were in the possession of Colonel John Pilkington of Wavertree.

Augmented arms of Bishop Pilkington: Argent, a cross patonce gules voided of the field on a chief vert, three suns or, with the mark of cadency of a second son.