Adam Moleyns (died 9 January 1450), Bishop of Chichester, was an English bishop, lawyer, royal administrator and diplomat. During the minority of Henry VI of England, he was clerk of the ruling council of the Regent.Paleography Exercises A document of Adam Moleyns accessed on 25 August 2007
Life
Moleyns had the living of Kempsey, Worcestershire from 1433.Priests of Kempsey accessed on 25 August 2007. 2009-10-24. He was Dean of Salisbury from 1441 to 1446. He became bishop of Chichester on 24 September 1445, and was consecrated bishop on 6 February 1446.Fryde, et al. Handbook of British Chronology p. 239 He was Lord Privy Seal in 1444,Fryde, et al. Handbook of British Chronology p. 95 at the same time that he was Protonotary of the Holy See. In 1447 he had permission to fortify the manor house at Bexhill.Bexhill Museum The History Of Bexhill accessed on 25 August 2007
Moleyns was a correspondent of the humanist Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, Pope Pius II, who complimented him in a letter of 29 May 1444: "And I congratulate you and England, since you care for the art of rhetoric".Alessandra Petrina, Cultural Politics in Fifteenth-Century England: The Case of 2004:216 and note In 1926 George Warner attributed The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye (1435–38) to Moleyns but this theory was partly based on Warner's mistaken identification of Adam Moleyns as a member of the family's Lancashire branch. The theory of Moleyns' authorship of the poem is now rejected by most historians and scholars.Smith "Moleyns, Adam (d. 1450)" Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
An active partisan of the unpopular William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, Moleyns was lynched in Portsmouth by discontented unpaid soldiers on 9 January 1450.Michael Miller The Wars of the Roses chapter 37 accessed on 25 August 2007;Steven Muhlberger Beginning of the Wars of the Roses accessed on 25 August 2007;The Royal Garrison Church accessed on 25 August 2007
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Further reading
Reeves, A.C., Lancastrian Englishmen (Washington: University Press of America) 1981. One of five fifteenth-century careers outlined through documents.