And when Thomas Bilney was burned shortly afterwards at Norwich, recanting at the stake heresies much the same as Shaxton's, the bishop is reported to have said, 'Christ's mother!
I fear I have burned Abel and let Cain go.’ In 1533, however, Shaxton was presented by the king to the parish church of Fuggleston in Wiltshire, and was made treasurer of Salisbury Cathedral; his promotion was by the influence of Anne Boleyn,[4] who appointed him her almoner; and next year Richard Sampson, dean of the Chapel Royal, agreed Thomas Cranmer's request that Shaxton should preach before the king the third Sunday in Lent.
On 4 June he wrote to Cromwell, cordially approving the king's letters directing the bishops to set forth his royal supremacy.
Early in 1536 Shaxton and Hugh Latimer were assessors, with Archbishop Cranmer, in examining a fanatic who said he had seen a vision of the Trinity and Our Lady, and had a message from the latter to preach that she insisted on being honoured as of old.
As a member of convocation, Shaxton signed not only the 'articles about religion' drawn up in 1536, but also the declaration 'touching the sacrament of holy orders,' and the reasons why general councils should be summoned by princes, and not by the sole authority of the pope.
When the Lincolnshire rebellion broke out in October, he was called on to furnish two hundred men out of his bishopric to serve the king, and he was one of the six bishops 'whom the rebels complained of as subverting the faith.
The mayor and aldermen wrote earnestly to Cromwell against Shaxton having a confirmation of the liberties granted to his predecessors, and ultimately imprisoned his under-bailiff Goodall.
Like other bishops of that day, however, he exercised his episcopal functions subject to the control of Cromwell, the king's vicegerent, who became tired of complaints against him.
In the spring of 1540 he, like Latimer, had the benefit of the general pardon, but was released only with a prohibition from preaching or coming near London or either of the universities, or returning to his former diocese.
He held a parochial charge as curate at Hadleigh in Suffolk,[10] and in the spring of 1546 was summoned to London to answer for maintaining false doctrine on the sacrament.
On 9 July Shaxton signed a recantation in thirteen articles, which was published at the time with a prefatory epistle to Henry VIII, acknowledging the king's mercy to him in his old age.
[11] He was then sent to Anne Askew to urge her to do likewise; but Bonner had already tried in vain to persuade her, and according to John Foxe in his Acts and Monuments she told Shaxton it would have been better for him that he had never been born.
On Sunday, 1 August he preached at St Paul's Cross, declaring how he fell into erroneous opinion, and urged his hearers to beware of heretical books.
Sitting at Ely on 9 October 1555, along with the bishop's chancellor, he passed sentence on two Protestant martyrs, William Wolsey and Robert Pygot.
Next year (1556) he was the chief of a body of divines and lawyers at Great St Mary's, Cambridge before whom, on Palm Sunday eve (28 March), another Protestant martyr, John Hullier, was examined.