After remaining there three or four years he settled his paternal estate, which was considerable, on his younger brother, and went over to the English College at Rheims, where he began his theological studies; he then spent time at Rome.
When a dispute arose between George Blackwell, the archpriest, and a number of his clergy, who appealed against him for maladministration and exceeding his commission, Bishop and John Charnock were sent to Rome by their brethren to remonstrate against him.
On their arrival they were both taken into custody by order of Cardinal Henry Cajetan, the protector of the English nation, who had been informed that they were turbulent persons and the head of a factious party.
In the subsequent troubles Bishop was committed to the Gatehouse Prison; he and twelve other priests had declared civil allegiance, published by them in the last year of Queen Elizabeth's reign.
[1] In the following month a papal bull was issued for his consecration, followed almost immediately by a brief, conferring on him episcopal jurisdiction over the Catholics of England and Scotland.
Almost immediately, the Scots objected that given the history between the two countries, that Pope Alexander III had declared that no Englishman should have authority in Scotland, not Scotsman in England.
[3] Bishop instituted a dean and a chapter as a standing council for his own assistance, with power, during the vacancy of the see, to exercise episcopal ordinary jurisdiction.
He landed at Dover around midnight on 31 July, and walked thirteen miles to the house of William Roper at St. Dunstan's Manor, outside Canterbury.
His works are: In the second part of Thomas Scott's ‘Vox Populi, or Newes from Spayne’ (1624), there is an illustration of Bishop presiding at a meeting of the ‘Iesuits and prists: as they vse to sitt at Counsell in England to further ye Catholicke Cause.’[2] This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed.