Thomas Copley, alias Philip Fisher (1596 – 1652) was an English Jesuit missionary in North America.
[2] He arrived in Maryland in 1637, and, being a man of great executive ability, took over the care of the mission, "a charge which at that time required rather business men than missionaries".
In 1645, Fisher was arrested and carried in chains to England, with Father Andrew White, the founder of the English mission in America.
He made an effort to enter Virginia; this appears from a letter written 1 March 1648, to the Jesuit General Vincenzo Carafa in Rome, in which he says: A road has lately been opened through the forest to Virginia; this will make it but a two days' journey, and both places can now be united in one mission.
Neill, in his "Terra Mariae" (p. 70), and Smith in his "Religion under the Barons of Baltimore" (p. VII), confuse this Father Thomas Copley of Maryland with an apostate Catholic, John Copley, who was never a Jesuit.