Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury (c.1404-1486) [Archbishop Bourchier]

Stained Glass Window of Thomas Bourchier

St. Nicholas Church, Sevenoaks, Kent

Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury (c.1404-1486)

THOMAS BOURCHIER (c.1404-1486), English archbishop, Lord Chancellor and cardinal, was a younger son of William Bourchier, count of Eu (d. 1420), and through his mother, Anne, a daughter of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, was a descendant of Edward III. One of his brothers was Henry, Earl of Essex (d.1483), and his grand-nephew was John, Lord Berners, the translator of Froissart.

Educated at Oxford and then entering the church, he obtained rapid promotion, and after holding some minor appointments he became Bishop of Worcester in 1434. In the same year he was Chancellor of the university of Oxford, and in 1443 he was appointed Bishop of Ely; then in April 1454 he was made Archbishop of Canterbury, becoming Lord Chancellor of England in the following March. Bourchier's short term of office as Chancellor coincided with the opening of the Wars of the Roses, and at first he was not a strong partisan, although he lost his position as Chancellor when Richard, Duke of York, was deprived of power in October 1456. Afterwards, in 1458, he helped to reconcile the contending parties, but when the war was renewed in 1459 he appears as a decided Yorkist; he crowned Edward IV in June 1461, and four years later he performed a similar service for the queen, Elizabeth Woodville.

In 1457 Bourchier took the chief part in the trial of Reginald Pecock, Bishop of Chichester, for heresy; in 1467 he was created a cardinal; and in 1475 he was one of the four arbitrators appointed to arrange the details of the treaty of Picquigny between England and France. After the death of Edward IV in 1483 Bourchier persuaded the queen to allow her younger son, Richard, Duke of York, to share his brother's residence in the Tower of London; and although he had sworn to be faithful to Edward V before his father's death, he crowned Richard III in July 1483. He was, however, in no way implicated in the murder of the young princes, and he was probably a participant in the conspiracies against Richard.

The third English king crowned by Bourchier was Henry VII, whom he also married to Elizabeth of York in January 1486. The archbishop died on the 30th of March 1486 at his residence, Knole, near Sevenoaks, and was buried in Canterbury cathedral.

      Excerpted from:

      Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Ed. Vol IV.
      Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910. 329.

Other Local Resources:

Books for further study: Hicks, Michael. The Wars of the Roses 1455-1485.
New York: Routledge, 2003.

Weir, Alison. The Wars of the Roses.
New York: Ballantine Books, 1996.

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