Meaning of bitesheep | Babel Free

Definitions

A bishop, particularly a Catholic bishop persecuting Protestants.

derogatory, obsolete, slur

Examples

“Wherefore mine advice and most earnest desire is, with all other of your loving friends, that you still keep that order with those bloodthirsty bitesheeps (bishops, I should say) that you have begun. For though in conclusion they will surely have your blood, yet shall they come by it with shame enough, and to their perpetual infamy while the world doth endure.”

“Wherfore the bitesheepe and the recorder beinge owtragiously moved agaynst him, contrary to all justice all Law th[e]y condemned him to bee whipped at a Carts tayle and to bee boored through the eare wᵗʰ a hot iron, wᶜʰ was executed in most dispitful and cruellest manner that might bee executed to any Rooge, […]”

“If Thomas is rather fond of calling Geoffrey Riddell Archidiabolus instead of Archidiaconus, was it not the established joke of the Reformation to call a Bishop a Bitesheep, and to turn Cardinal Poole into Carnal Fool?”

CEFR level