Early career Nykke was the son of Thomas and Johanna (née Stillington) Nykke; Johanna was the sister of
Robert Stillington,
Bishop of Bath and Wells. He became
Rector of
Ashbury in 1473;
Rector of
Cadbury and
Prebendary of
Wells in 1489;
Archdeacon of Exeter in 1492;
Vicar general of
Bath and Wells in 1493;
Prebendary of
Southwell in 1493;
Archdeacon of Wells in 1494;
Prebendary of
York in 1494;
Vicar general of
Durham and
Rector of
Bishopswearmouth in 1495;
Canon of Windsor in 1497; and
Dean of the Chapel Royal and
Rector of
High Ham in 1499.
Later career Nykke became bishop of Norwich in 1501. After a fire in 1509, he had wooden roofing in
Norwich Cathedral replaced with stone vaulting. Nykke complained bitterly against the early Tudor use of
praemunire to limit ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Involved in
King's Bench cases, he made his case to
William Warham (
Archbishop of Canterbury), and denounced James Hobart,
Attorney-General for most of the reign of Henry VII. Nykke clashed with
John Skelton, who was vicar of
Diss in his diocese, from 1507. It is said that Skelton's hostility to the
Dominicans led them to denounce him to Nykke for living with a woman. Skelton, however, became a folkloric character and it is not known how much of various tales about him is factual. Nykke consistently attempted to maintain Roman orthodoxy, against
Lollards, new theological thinking coming out of Cambridge – he was particularly suspicious of
Gonville Hall—and the early Protestant reformers. He expressed anxiety about the distribution of
William Tyndale's translation into English of the
New Testament. The reformer
Thomas Bilney was burned as a heretic in Norwich, in 1531. Another suspected heretic of the same time was
Nicholas Shaxton, a Lutheran sympathiser, but in his case Nykke pressured him into a recantation which saved his life. When
Thomas Cranmer was newly appointed
Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1533, Nykke was one of the bishops who found ways to defy his authority. He was "brought to heel" in late 1534. There is a confused story that in 1534 Nykke ran afoul of
Henry VIII, by correspondence with the
Holy See. According to the account, he was made the subject of a
praemunire charge, imprisoned in the
Marshalsea, and then pardoned; but this story has been doubted. In a more complex picture, Henry VIII used the legal pressure of a
praemunire to force an exchange of manors of the Norwich diocese for
St Benet's Abbey, Holme, Norfolk, which some claim escaped the
Dissolution of the monasteries. The 1911
Encyclopædia Britannica article on Thomas Bilney says that the bishop's legal problem was proceeding to the execution of Bilney without state authority, and an impending Parliamentary inquiry. There was a charge also of infringing the liberties of the mayor of
Thetford, and the bishop apparently was imprisoned. This was a King's Bench matter, and therefore formally distinct from the Cranmer issue. Money Henry extracted as a fine from the bishop went to pay for windows in
King's College Chapel. ==Death==