Background
Thomas Copley appears in the domestic records of the Society of Jesus as Philip Fisher, which name he assumed upon joining the Order. His grandfather, Thomas Copley, was, at the close of the reign of Mary I, a wealthy and influential Protestant of Surrey, England, but became a Catholic early in the reign of Elizabeth and was driven into exile. William Copley, son of the exile, married Magdalen, daughter of Thomas Prideaux, and they were in Madrid, Spain, in 1595, when Thomas was born. The family returned to England in 1603.
Education
Thomas was educated as a Catholic until 1611, when he went to Louvain for the study of philosophy.
Career
In 1616 Copley joined the Society of Jesus. He returned to England about 1623 and soon became prominent in the affairs of the Society’s London mission. When, in 1633, Lord Baltimore was preparing to send out the first colonists for a plantation in Maryland, Father Copley was the business manager for the Society in cooperating with Lord Baltimore and in founding a Maryland mission. He remained in London “putting heat and spirit of action” into the business until 1637, when he sailed for Maryland to give personal direction to the missionary activities there.
Within a few months after his arrival in the province, he was engaged in a struggle with Lord Baltimore over the relation of church and state. In founding Maryland, Lord Baltimore was governed chiefly by economic motives and to that end he sought religious toleration and the complete subordination of all sects to the civil authorities. Father Copley contended that none had done so much in “peopling and planting this place’’ as he and his fellow missionaries, and he desired for the mission many of the exemptions from lay jurisdiction that had formerly been enjoyed by the Church of Rome. He asked that the missionaries be permitted to receive lands as gifts from converted Indians; that their churches and their houses have the privileges of sanctuary; that they be exempted from the jurisdiction of lay courts, from taxes, and trade regulations; and he warned that he who placed restrictions on ecclesiastical liberties might incur danger of excommunication. Lord Baltimore was alarmed.
He suspected that the missionaries designed his temporal destruction by forming an opposition party or by arming the Indians. He appealed to the English Provincial for the Society, and Copley was superseded as head of the Maryland mission. In 1645, during the Claiborne and Ingle rebellion, Copley was seized and carried to England where he was kept in prison for two years. He was then tried on the charge of coming to that country to seduce subjects of the Commonwealth, and was banished. He returned to Maryland and there the record of his activities terminated in 1652.
Religion
Copley was a member of the Society of Jesus.
Personality
Copley was characterized by a contemporary as a man of good talents but deficient in judgment and prudence.
