Thomas Pierce or Peirse (1622–1691) was an English churchman and controversialist, a high-handed President of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Dean of Salisbury.
He spent some years in travelling with his pupil through France and Italy, and in 1656 he was presented by the countess to the rectory of Brington, Northamptonshire, which he held until 1676.
[4] Controversy raged about these works until 1660, and in further tracts Pierce replied to attacks by William Barlee, rector of Brockhall, Northamptonshire, Edward Bagshawe, Henry Hickman, and Richard Baxter.
He became the seventh canon of Canterbury on 9 July 1660, and prebendary of Langford Major at Lincoln on 25 September 1662, holding both preferments until his death.
After a strong opposition from some of the fellows, which was silenced by a letter from court, he was elected President of Magdalen College, Oxford, on 9 November 1661.
He deprived Thomas Jeanes of his fellowship, ostensibly for a pamphlet justifying the proceedings of the parliament against Charles I, but really for criticising the latinity of his 'Concio Synodica ad Clerum'.
He himself wrote to Henry More that he had vacated his place for reasons of climate and love of private life, but he had been promised other preferment; and Humphry Prideaux says that he sold the headship of the college.
Years later, John Evelyn complained of a sermon by him at Whitehall 'against our late schismatics,' that it was 'a rational discourse, but a little oversharp, and not at all proper for the auditory there.'
He asserted that the dignities connected with the cathedral church of Salisbury were in the gift of the crown, and communicated this view to the ecclesiastical commissioners.
His grave represented a small stone banqueting house; an inscription, made by himself a little before his death, was engraved on a brass plate fastened to the roof of the church.
Robert, his son, became rector of North Tidworth in 1680, and through the favour of Anne, then princess of Denmark, was appointed prebendary of Chardstock in Salisbury Cathedral in 1689.
Pierce corrected, amended, and completed for the press the Annales Mundi, 1655, and compiled the Variantes Lectiones ex Annotatis Hug.
Grotii, cum ejusdem de iis judicio, which forms the fifteenth article in the last volume of Brian Walton's Polyglot Bible.
He was also the author of the anonymous poem Caroli τοῦ μακαρίτου Παλιγγενεσία, 1649, which was included in the same year in Monumentum Regale, a Tombe for Charles I.