John Bird (bishop)

John Bird (died 1558) was an English Carmelite friar who became the first Protestant Bishop of Chester.

Bird entered the Carmelite order and studied at Oxford, earning a doctorate in divinity. He became provincial of his order around 1516. He preached against papal supremacy during Henry VIII's divorce proceedings and supported the King's Act of Supremacy. He was appointed the first Bishop of Chester in 1541, following the dissolution of the monasteries and the creation of the diocese from part of the diocese of Lichfield. As bishop, he surrendered the temporalities of his see to Edward VI.

During the reign of Mary I, Bird renounced his Protestant views and was deprived of his bishopric in 1554 for having married. He subsequently served as an assistant bishop in the diocese of Salisbury. He died in 1558.