sitting in his chair of state. He presided in a committee "to establish and ordinate a "substantial rule for the king's honourable "household; and to ordain where ready pay"ment should grow for its expenses;" and signed the regulations. He is recorded among the lords spiritual and temporal who, with the duke of York, after a pardon of the insurgents, renewed their allegiance to the king in the great council-chamber, each singly taking him by the hand and repeating the oath. He was present at the council which advised the sending of a letter to the Pope, to desire that George Nevyll, son of the earl of Salisbury and brother of Warwick, might be promoted to the next vacant sce; and he subscribed the writ by which York was again constituted the king's lieu tenant. SECT. XI. THE queen with her Lancastrians was reinstated in power, after various struggles, in 1456. The court was at Coventry; and in the priory there, on the eleventh of October, the lord chancellor Bourchier, in the presence of the duke of York, who, with the earls of Salisbury and Warwick, had been invited to attend, and of many lords lords spiritual and temporal, produced to the king in his chamber the three royal seals a large one of gold; another; and one smaller, of silver P, in three leather bags under his own seal; and caused them to be opened. The king received the seals from his hands, and delivered them to the bishop of Winchester, whom he appointed his successor. Waynflete, after taking the usual oath and setting the large silver seal to a pardon prepared for the archbishop, ordered the seals to be replaced, and the bags to be sealed with his own signet by a clerk of chancery. It is mentioned that his salary was two hundred pounds a year. The prudence of the bishop was now to be "made "eminent in warilie wielding the weight of "his offices" of lord high chancellor. His advancement to it seems to have been a conciliatory measure, and enforced by, or agreeable to, both parties. P Biblioth. Cotton. Vitellius, C. xvii. 4 Rymer, t. xi. p. 383. See Budden, p. 76. r Holinshed, vol. ii. p. 628. Harpsfield, p. 643. Budden, to is 's not that judicious a omment either! This is of coupe CHAPTER V. Of Bishop Waynflete while Chancellor, with the I. SECT. ed the renowned Wickliff, the N the preceding century had liv first assertor of religious liberty a, and author of the heresy, as it was then deemed, called Lollardism. This had been nurtured in the university of Oxford, its birth-place; where bishop Flemmyng founded Lincoln college to oppose its increase and progress. Reginald Pecock, whom he ordained at the same time with Waynflete b, was a convert to the tenets of the reformer, which he propagated with success; and had become exceedingly famous by a sermon preached at St. Paul's Cross in 1447, the year of Waynflete's ad b Pecock was ordained acolite and sub-deacon when Waynflete was made sub-deacon. They became deacons together; Pecock, on the title of Oriel college, to which he belonged. He was ordained presbyter 20 Jan. 1421. Registr. Flemyng. vancement vancement to the mitre, which occasioned a most violent controversy. The populace, inflamed by his invectives against the higher clergy, committed many enormities; and the commotion thus excited, had hitherto continued to accompany the civil broils under king Henry. But Pecock, on the loss of his patron the duke of Suffolk, had declined in public favour. He had been already ordered to quit London; and, soon after Waynflete entered on his high station of chancellor, it was resolved to proceed to a review of his writings, and to decide on their orthodoxy. He was cited on the twentysecond of October, 1457, by the archbishop of Canterbury, to produce his works in the chapel of Lambeth, to be there examined by certain doctors, whose report was to be made to him and his assessors. These were the bishop of Winchester lord chancellor, and the bishops of Lincoln and Rochester. Pecock was sentenced to sit in his pontificals, as bishop of Chichester, at the feet of the archbishop, and to see his books delivered to the flames, in St. Paul's churchyard; besides undergoing other disgrace. He died of chagrin, at an abbey to which с he he was permitted to retire on a pension. It would be unfair to appreciate, according to our present ideas, the conduct of the associates in humbling and punishing this learned person. If Waynflete concurred with them, as apparently he did, it must be owned as not unlikely, that his temper, naturally mild, might be warped, on such an occasion, by zeal to preserve the church from innovation or danger. Perhaps too his influence was used, to procure from the university of Oxford, which was suspected of favouring the delinquent, a decree of convocation for burning his books; which was done at Carfax in the presence of the chancellord, Dr. Chaundler warden of New college, and a letter of apology sent to the bishop for their delay. SECT. II. THE bishop, however engaged by other important duties or concerns, had been uniformly attentive to the poor scholars, whose patronage he had so generously undertaken. The hall which he founded at Oxford, as soon as he was raised to the mitre, had met with an early benefactress, Joan a Budden, p. 78. Stow, p. 402. Lewis's Life of Pecock. See A. Wood, p. 230. Danvers, |