Date of Graduation

1982

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

This dissertation is a study of the political career of the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, sometime Lord High Chancellor of England, Keeper of the Great Seal, Master of the Rolls and Chancellor of Oxford University. It is based on various manuscripts and printed sources pertaining to Warham's political career. The work is intended to explore the several facets of his political life with emphasis on his work as a diplomat and on the final years of his life which were marked by his confrontation with the crown. The author has concluded that Warham was typical of Henry VII's royal servants and was an able but not a particularly brilliant statesman. His usefulness to the Tudors was his capability as a diplomat, his loyalty to the crown and the conscientiousness of his work. Under Henry VIII, however, Warham's services were not as highly prized as in the former reign. The second Tudor chose to rule in a less personal fashion and required different characteristics in his royal servants than his father. Despite his laudable work as a diplomat, his efforts as a statesman and his support of humanism, Warham has been mainly remembered, perhaps unfairly, for his acquiescence to the royal authority during the initial stages of the English Reformation.

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