 Hans Holbein. Portrait of William Warham. 1527. Oil on wood. Louvre, Paris, France. |
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WILLIAM WARHAM, Archbishop of Canterbury, belonged to a Hampshire family, and was educated at Winchester and New College,
Oxford, afterwards practising and teaching law both in London and Oxford. Later he took holy orders, held two livings, and became
master of the rolls in 1494, while Henry VII found him a useful and clever diplomatist. He helped to
arrange the marriage between Henry's son, Arthur, and Catherine of Aragon;
he went to Scotland with Richard Foxe, then Bishop of Durham,
in 1497; and he was partly responsible for several commercial and other treaties with Flanders, Burgundy and the German king,
Maximilian I.
In 1502 Warham was consecrated Bishop of London and became Keeper of the Great Seal, but his tenure of both these offices was
short, as in 1504 he became Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1509 the Archbishop married and then crowned
Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon,
but gradually withdrawing into the background he resigned the office of Lord Chancellor in 1515, and was succeeded by
Wolsey, whom he had consecrated as Bishop of Lincoln in the previous year. This resignation was
possibly due to his dislike of Henry's foreign policy.
He was present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, and assisted Wolsey as assessor during
the secret inquiry into the validity of Henry's marriage with Catherine in 1527. Throughout the divorce proceedings Warham's
position was essentially that of an old and weary man. He was named as one of the counsellors to assist the queen, but, fearing
to incur the King's displeasure and using his favourite phrase ira principis mors est, he gave her very little help; and
he signed the letter to Clement VII which urged the pope to assent to Henry's wish.
Afterwards it was proposed that the Archbishop himself should try the case, but this suggestion came to nothing. He presided over
the Convocation of 1531 when the clergy of the province of Canterbury voted £100,000 to the king in order to avoid the
penalties of praemunire, and accepted Henry as supreme head of the church with the saving
clause "so far as the law of Christ allows."
In his concluding years, however, the Archbishop showed rather more independence. In February 1532 he protested against all acts
concerning the church passed by the parliament which met in 1529, but this did not prevent the important proceedings which secured
the complete submission of the church to the state later in the same year. Against this further compliance with Henry's wishes Warham
drew up a protest; he likened the action of Henry VIII to that of Henry II, and urged Magna Carta in defence of the liberties of
the church.
He died on the 22nd of August 1532 and was buried in Canterbury Cathedral. Warham, who was Chancellor of Oxford University from 1506
until his death, was munificent in his public, and moderate in his private life. As Archbishop he seems to have been somewhat arbitrary,
and his action led to a serious quarrel with Bishop Foxe of Winchester
and others in 1512.
Excerpted from:
Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Ed. Vol XXVIII.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910. 326.
Other Local Resources:
Archbishop William Warham on the Web:
- Biography - Catholic Encyclopedia
Books for further study:
Wood-Legh, K. L. Kentish Visitations of Archbishop William Warham
and His Deputies, 1511-1512.
Kent Archaeological Society, 1984.
Weir, Alison. Henry VIII: The King and His Court.
New York: Ballantine, 2001.
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