a parish in which the Tunstalls held land of Sir John Conyers (Cal. Inquis. post mortem, Henry VII, i. No. 675). His eldest surviving legitimate brother, Brian Tunstall, a noted soldier, inherited Thurland Castle, and was killed at Flodden Field on 9 Sept. 1513. He made Cuthbert supervisor of his will and guardian of his son Marmaduke, an arrangement which was confirmed by Henry VIII on 1 Aug. 1514 (Brian's will printed in Whitaker, ii. 273; cf. Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. i. No. 5288).
Cuthbert was said by George Holland in 1563 to have been ‘in his youth near two years brought up in my great-grandfather Sir Thomas Holland's kitchen unknown, 'till being known he was sent home to Sir Richard Tunstall his father [sic], and so kept at school, as he himself declared in manner the same to me’ (Blomefield, Norfolk, i. 232). About 1491 he entered Oxford University, matriculating, it is said, from Balliol College. An outbreak of the plague compelled him to leave, and he removed to King's Hall (afterwards merged in Trinity College), Cambridge. Subsequently he graduated LL.D. at Padua. He acquired, besides the ordinary scholastic and theological accomplishments, familiarity with Greek, Hebrew, mathematics, and civil law. Erasmus mentioned him as one of the men who did credit to Henry's court, and he enjoyed the friendship of Warham, More, and other leaders of the renascence in England, as well as of foreign scholars like Beatus Rhenanus and Budæus (see Erasmus, Epistolæ, 1642, pt. i. cols. 27, 120, 148, 172, 173, 400, 582, 783, 1158, 1509).
After his return to England, Tunstall was on 25 Dec. 1506 presented to the rectory of Barmston in Yorkshire, but he was not ordained subdeacon until 24 March 1509. He resigned Barmston before 26 March 1507, and in 1508 was collated to the rectory of Stanhope in the county of Durham. He also held the living of Aldridge in Staffordshire, which he resigned in 1509, being in that year collated to the rectory of Steeple Langford, Wiltshire (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, i. 1007). On 25 Aug. 1511 Archbishop Warham appointed Tunstall his chancellor, and on 16 Dec. following gave him the rectory of Harrow-on-the-Hill. Warham also introduced him at court, and from this time his rise was rapid. On 15 April 1514 he received the prebend of Stow Longa, Lincoln Cathedral, in succession to Wolsey, and on 17 Nov. 1515 was admitted archdeacon of Chester. On 7 May he had been appointed ambassador at Brussels to Charles, prince of Castile, to negotiate a continuance of the treaties made between Henry VIII and Philip, late king of Castile (ib. ii. 422). He was also instructed to prevent Charles from forming a treaty with France, and these diplomatic tasks detained him most of the following year in the Netherlands (ib. vol. ii. passim; Brewer, Hist. i. 65 et sqq.) During his residence at Brussels he lodged with Erasmus; but his mission was unsuccessful, and, according to his colleague, Sir Thomas More, not much to his taste (More to Erasmus, Epistolæ, ii. 16). On 12 May 1516 he was made master of the rolls. On 15 Oct. 1518 he was present at Greenwich at the betrothal of the king's daughter Mary to the dauphin of France, and delivered an oration in praise of matrimony, which was printed by Pynson in the same year as ‘C. Tonstalli in Laudem Matrimonii Oratio,’ London, 4to; a second edition was printed at Basle in 1519. In the latter year Tunstall became prebendary of Botevant in York Cathedral, and was again sent as ambassador to Charles V's court at Cologne. He returned to England in August 1520, but left again in September, and was at Worms during the winter of 1520–1. In his letters he gave an account of the spread of Lutheranism in Germany, and he earnestly urged Erasmus to write against that heresy (ib. i. col. 759). He returned to England in April, and in May was appointed dean of Salisbury, receiving about the same time the prebends of Combe and Hornham in that cathedral. In 1522 he was papally provided to the bishopric of London, the temporalities being restored on 5 July. On 25 May 1523 he was appointed keeper of the privy seal, and he delivered the king's speech at the opening of parliament in that year.
In April 1525 Tunstall was once more appointed ambassador, with Sir Richard Wingfield [q. v.] to Charles V (Stowe MS. 147, ff. 67, 86). He left Cowes on 18 April, and reached Toledo on 24 May. Francis I had been captured at Pavia, and Tunstall was entrusted with a proposal for the dismemberment of France and the exclusion of Francis I and his son from the French throne. It is, however, doubtful whether Wolsey was in earnest, and Charles V was not in the least likely to fall in with these schemes. He was equally reluctant to carry out his engagement to marry the Princess Mary, and as a result Wolsey accepted the French offers of peace, Tunstall returned to England through France in January 1526. Later in the year he was engaged in a visitation of his diocese, and his prohibition of Simon Fish's ‘Supplication for the Beggars,’ Tyndale's ‘New
