The Archbishop of Canterbury had a long-running battle with the Archbishop of York for primacy over the Church in England. Beginning before 1070, this disagreement was not fully resolved until 1540, when an Act of Parliament settled the matter, though it might be sometimes thought that perhaps it still rumbles on to this day.

Thomas Scot (d1660) was executed at the Restoration of the Monarchy by being hung drawn and quartered at Charing Cross in October 1660. He was one of the signatories to the king’s death warrant, was Secretary of State under Cromwell, and organised the information service on behalf of the Commonwealth, as well as representing Wycombe and Aylesbury in Parliament. He was a resolute Republican, resisting both the abitrary power of the King and the Lord Protector Cromwell. He was granted Lambeth Palace by Parliament. After the Restoration, Archbishop Sancroft (archbishop from 1678-1691) took as one of his first cares ‘...the restoration of the chapel at Lambeth, which had been wantonly desecrated by Thomas Scott, the regicide, to whom the archiepiscopal domain had been granted by the Round-head parliament in reward of his crimes. Scott scrupled not to profane this place of worship, by turning it into a carousing place for the inebriate orgies of himself and his companions in guilt, where, though professedly fighting in support of "the true evangile", they habitually danced with the wanton and disorderly women who resorted to them there every night.’ (Agnes Strickland, The Lives of the Seven Bishops, London 1866.) Where Ms Strickland got her information is not recorded, but the colourful and salacious description is certain to have aroused the prurient interest of her Victorian readers.

Archbishop Simon Sudbury (d1381) was noted as Lord Chancellor for introducing the Poll Tax, attempts to collect which led directly to Wat Tyler’s insurrection.

Wat Tyler (d1381) was the leader of the Peasants’ revolt in Kent. They rose in response to the third levy of poll tax in five years, sacking the manors of unpopular landlords, breaking open prisons, burning court records and forcing all to swear allegiance to ‘King and Commons’. They took Rochester Castle on 6th June, Canterbury on 10th June and Maidstone the next day, before descending on London. Here, still south of the River Thames, they attacked Lambeth Palace, the Marshalsea Prison and the homes of the Mayor and Treasurer of London, before entering London proper on the 13th when the gate of London Bridge was opened to them, probably by the London mob. Once in the City they broke open the Fleet Prison, destroyed the property of the Knights of St John, set the Savoy Palace of John of Gaunt on fire and sacked the Temple Law Courts. They then camped in front of the Tower, where the fourteen year old Richard II, his ministers and Archbishop Sudbury had taken refuge. The king agreed to meet them at Mile End the next day, where Wat Tyler presented him with a petition demanding the abolition of serfdom and all feudal dues, a general amnesty, the abolition of monopolies and a 4d per acre rent for all free tenants, to which the king agreed, handing out worthless charters to the mob. While he was still at Mile End, a party headed by Wat Tyler found Archbishop Sudbury and Treasurer Hales in the Tower and beheaded both of them. After further looting, the king agreed to meet Tyler again at Smithfield where more demands were put including the abolition of outlawry, the abolition of the nobility except for the king, the abolition of all bishops except one, and the distribution of church estates amongs the laity. The king agreed to grant ‘all that was in his power to grant’, but at this interview Tyler himself was struck down and the King proceeded to amaze everybody by riding at the mob and encouraging them to follow him as their leader, which they did, proving the old adage that the intelligence of a crowd is roughly equal to the intelligence of its least intelligent member.

Lollards derived their inspiration from John Wycliffe and believed, amongst other unreasonable things, that it was right and proper to read the Bible in English and that the bread of the eucharist is not the body of Christ, no matter how many times it is blessed by the officiating priest.

John Foxe (1516-1587) The full title of his book is : ‘Actes and Monuments of these latter and perilous Dayes, touching matters of the Church, wherein are comprehended and described the great Persecution and horrible Troubles that have been wrought and practised by the Romishe Prelates, especiallye in this Realme of England and Scotland, from the yeare of our Lorde a thousande to the time now present. Gathered and collected according to the true Copies and Wrytinges certificatorie as well of the Parties themselves that Suffered, as also out of the Bishop's Registers, which were the Doers thereof’. Its authenticity has been regularly contested, since, as later centuries well know, the martyr in one cause is a terrorist according to the opposing cause.

Archbishop Chicheley (1364-1443) : in the first year of his reign the Church’s power to encourage conformity of belief was greatly increased. In 1414 the ecclesiastical courts obtained the power to determine what constituted heresy, and, once a decision had been reached in a particular case, the secular authorities were constrained to carry out the sentence. The legislation was increasingly used against ordinary citizens, particularly those who opposed the privileges of the clergy.

Archbishop Juxon (1582-1663) was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1660-1663. He accompanied Charles I to the scaffold (as Bishop of London) and received his last mysterious word ‘Remember’. He lived unmolested at Fulham Palace during the Civil War and retired to Gloucestershire during the Commonwealth where he had bought an estate, becoming famous there for his pack of hounds.

Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556) gained advancement under Henry VIII by accommodating his plans for divorce and remarriage. He prospered under the Protestant Edward VI, but fell under the Catholic Mary I, who had him tried for heresy and treason, and burnt at the stake.

Archbishop Morton (c1420-1500) benefits from a persuasive description left by Thomas More, who lived at Lambeth Palace as a boy and acted as the archbishop’s page : ‘He was of a mean stature, and though stricken in age, yet bare he his body upright. In his face did shine such an amiable reverence, as was pleasant to behold, gentle in communication, yet earnest and sage. He had great delight many times with rough speech to his suitors to prove, but without harm, what prompt wit, and what bold spirit were in every man. In the which as in a virtue much agreeing with his nature, so that therewith were not joined impudence, he took great delectation. And the same person, as apt and mete to have an administration in the weal publique, he did lovingly embrace. In his speech, he was fine, eloquent and pithy. In the law he had profound knowledge, in wit he was incomparable, and in memory wonderful excellent. These qualities, which in him were by nature singular, he by learning and use had made perfect. The King (Henry VII) put much trust in his counsel, the weal publique also in a manner leaned unto him, when I was there. For even in the chief of his youth, he was taken from school into the Court, and there passed all his time in much trouble and business, being continually tumbled and tossed in the ways of diverse misfortunes and adversities. And so by many and great dangers he learned the experience of the world, which being so learned can not easily be forgotten . . .’ Thomas More Utopia

Edward Blore (1787-1829) was an architect. He was, among other things, responsible for completing Buckingham Palace for William IV after Nashe had been dismissed for going over budget.

Archbishop Bancroft (1544-1610): was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1604 to 1610. He was strongly anti-puritan. According to a Baptist pamphlet of 1852: ‘Bishop Bancroft.... was one of the most bigoted and bloody sectarians in the civilized world.’ And Daniel Neal writes in History of the Puritans ‘Bancroft was a divine of a rough temper, a perfect creature of the prerogative, and a declared enemy of the religious and civil liberties of his country.’ He was also, according to the Preface to the King James translation of the Bible, ‘chief overseer and task-master under his Majesty, to whom were not only we, but also our whole Church, much bound.’ At any rate, the translation of the Bible he oversaw has endured, and has rare qualities of poetry and a remarkable consistency of expression.

John Evelyn (1620-1706) wrote, among other things, a diary covering the years 1657-1688.

Archbishop Laud (1573-1645) was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1633 to 1645. He pursued conformity in the Church of England as vigorously as his master Charles I, and it was largely his inflexibility and particularly his efforts to enforce the Book of Common Prayer in Scotland which led to the disastrous Civil War. Concerning his defence, Prynne wrote : ‘he made as full, as gallant, as pithy a defence of so bad a cause and spake as much for himself as was possible for the wit of man to invent. And that with much art, sophistry, vivacity, oratory, audacity and confidence, without the least blush or acknowledgement of guilt in anything.’

William Prynne (1600-1669) was a lawyer who came to prominence on the publication of his Histriomastix, a turgid 1100 page attack on the stage and actors generally, which incidentally included a reference to actresses as ‘notorious whores’. As Queen Henrietta Maria (wife of Charles I) was then rehearsing a pastoral play for production at Whitehall, this reference was taken personally and Prynne was hauled before the Church’s High Commission. He was sentenced to stand in the pillory, to have his ears lopped, to be branded on both cheeks with the letters SL (indicating ‘seditious libeller’), to be fined £5000 and to be perpetually in prison. He was released by the Long Parliament, had  the satisfaction of attending the trial of Archbishop Laud, but was imprisoned again between 1650 and 1653 because of his opposition to the military rule of Oliver Cromwell. He finally came to favour at the restoration of the monarchy, and was rewarded with the position of keeper of records in the Tower of London.

Lord George Gordon (1751-1793) was a member of parliament and organised the Protestant opposition to the Catholic Relief Act of 1778. He encouraged the mob to meet at St Georges’ Fields in Southwark, where some 40-60,000 people congregated and subsequently marched to the House of Commons. They proved uncontrollable and destroyed Roman Catholic chapels, pillaged the houses of known Catholics, set fire to Newgate Prison, broke open other prisons and attacked the Bank of England and other public buildings before troops were brought in to quell the rioting. He was excommunicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1786 and convicted of a libel on the Queen of France, the French Ambassador and the administration of justice in England. Sentenced to five years imprisonment, he converted to Judaism shortly before his incarceration. He died in Newgate in 1793. 

Report : The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, and the Archbishop of York, Dr David Hope, said in a statement:
‘We are immensely grateful to Professor Mellows and his colleagues for their....report Resourcing Archbishops. They have produced, as we expected, a stimulating and challenging piece of work that we shall wish to study with the care and attention it deserves. We shall naturally wish to consult others and to invite views on the many recommendations the report contains.’

Philip Charles Hardwick (1822-1892), was trained by his father (also Philip Hardwick) and under Edward Blore. He was mainly employed in designing buildings for the City of London, including many banking offices, for which he used an Italianate style. 

Pedlar’s Acre : the legend associated with this piece of land is that once upon a time the incumbent of St Marys gave charity to a poor pedlar and his dog who, later prospering (the pedlar, not the dog), gave an acre of land to the church on condition that he and his dog were forever commemorated in a painted glass. The land was sold by Lambeth Borough Council to the London City Council in 1908 to form part of the new County Hall site. The Church disputed the sale, claiming that the land was part of an Ecclesiastical Trust, but as the court would not accept any evidence predating 1826, the case was lost.

Mary of Modena (1658-1718) was the second wife of James II. It was largely the birth and survival of her first male child on June 10 which precipitated the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the prospect of a continuing line of stubbornly Catholic monarchs being too much for the vested interests of the City, Parliament and Anglican Church to tolerate. Of the birth of the child who was to become known as The Old Pretender and, with his son Bonnie Prince Charlie, the focus of plotting, rebellion and treason until the disastrous conclusion of the Jacobite rising of 1745, Chambers writes ‘To his parents, indeed, his birth was as a miracle calling for devoutest gratitude; but to the great bulk of the English nation it was as the pledge of a continued attempt to re-establish the Church of Rome, and their hearts sunk within them at the news. Their only resource for a while was to support a very ill-founded rumour that the infant was suppositious—introduced in a warming-pan, it was said, into the queen's bedroom, that he might serve to exclude the Protestant princesses, Mary and Anne, from the throne.’ Chambers’ Book of Days.

Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury (1563-1612), hunchback son of William Cecil, was a leading member of the Privy Councils of both Queen Elizabeth and James I. His descendants still occupy Hatfield House.

Hatfield House is 21 miles north of London. It belonged to the Crown after Henry VIII expropriated it and used it to house his children. But James I did not like it and swapped it with Robert Cecil for Theobalds. Cecil transformed it between 1607 and 1611and improved the gardens. The descendants of Robert Cecil are still in residence.

William Cecil (1591-1668), son of Robert, grandson of William, according to Clarendon was ‘a man of no words, except in hunting and hawking in which he only knew how to behave himself; in matters of state and council he always concurred in what was proposed for the King and Council and repaired all those transgressions by concurring in all that was proposed against him, as soon as any such propositions were made.’ In this way, he survived all the reversals of fortune during the period in which he lived, which were considerable.

Salisbury House (aka Cecil House) was the London House of the Cecils, between the Strand and the Thames. It was demolished and replaced in 1886 by the Cecil Hotel, the largest hotel in Europe at the time. This was in turn demolished (except for its Strand façade, which survives) and replaced by Shell Mex House, identifiable by the absurdly art deco clock face stuck on the summit of its Thames side like a mantel clock. The building is generously described by Pevsner as ‘thoroughly unsubtle’.

Robert Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (1592-1628), became a favourite of James I from about 1615 when he was made a gentleman of the bedchamber, then Viscount in 1616, Earl in 1617, Marquess in 1618, Lord High Admiral in 1619 and Duke in 1623. He used his position to advance members of his family, and continued in favour under Charles I, who dissolved Parliament in 1626 to avoid Viller’s impeachment. He led various disastrous expeditions to continental Europe and was assassinated at Portsmouth by John Felton, a disgruntled naval officer, while organising another expediiton in 1628.

New Hall is just north of Chelmsford in Essex. It was was acquired in 1517 by Henry VIII, who greatly enlarged and beautified the building, renaming it the Palace of Beaulieu. For many years it was the home of Mary Tudor, and was later granted to the Earl of Sussex by Queen Elizabeth I. It was sold to Robert Villiers, Duke of Buckingham for £30,000 in 1622. 

Silkworms : it was James I who in 1608 addressed a letter to the ‘...Lord Lieutenant of the several Shires of England urging them to persuade and require such as are of ability to buy and distribute in that County the number of ten thousand Mulberry plants which shall be delivered to them ... at the rate of 3 farthings the plant, or at 6s. the hundred..’ in order to encourage the culture of silkworms in England. He also directed payments to 'Master William Stallinge of the sum of L935 for the charge of 4 acres of land taken in for His Majesty's use, near to his Palace of Westminster, for the planting of Mulberry trees, together with the charge of walling, levelling and planting thereof with Mulberry trees’. This 4 acres was the garden of what was to become Buckingham Palace. Most of the trees planted were, however, Morus Nigra, not the Morus Alba required for the cultivation of silkworms.

Oatlands Palace is at Weybridge on the Thames, approximately 25 miles west of London. It was appropriated by Henry VIII and extended as a palace for his Queen, Anne of Cleves, who, however, never actually lived there. It was used regularly by Elizabeth I, James I and Charles I. It was demolished in 1650.

Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach (1683-1734) studied literature and law at Strassbourg and Halle. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, he travelled through Germany, Holland and England collecting books and meeting scientists, at the same time keeping a meticulously detailed diary.

Isaak Walton (1593-1683) is most often remembered for his treatise on angling The Compleat Angler, first published in 1653, but he also completed biographies of the poet John Donne, the diplomat Sir Henry Wotton, the theologian Richard Hooker and the poet George Herbert. 

Elias Ashmole (1617-1692) was a lawyer with interests in alchemy, science and rich widows. He acquired the Tradescant collection from the younger John Tradescant by a deed of gift dated 1659, which Tradescant subsequently tried to revoke. The collection passed to Tradescant’s widow, Hester, on his death in 1662, and in subsequent litigation the Court of Chancery decided  that the collection should pass to Ashmole on her death. He moved in next door to her in 1674, with a view to keeping an eye on his inheritance. Hester died in 1678, mysteriously drowned in the shallow pond in her garden, and Ashmole took possession of the collection, donating it in 1682 to the University of Oxford. The dictionary of National Biography notes about him that ‘he had evidently.....a very keen eye to his own interest, and acquisitiveness was his master passion.’