The Horrific and Bloody Deaths of the Archbishops of Canterbury
Butchered by Vikings, burned at the stake, or beheaded by peasants… some Archbishops had very unfortunate endings
It is one of the oldest positions of authority in England, dating back to 597 AD, and places the holder in charge of the entire English church. It also comes with two palaces, a cathedral, and some very fancy clothes. But it’s not always easy being the Archbishop of Canterbury; extensive powers and responsibility also makes you a target for ransom, rivalry, and public hatred should anything go wrong. Five archbishops discovered this all too well…
Saint Alphege: Butchered by Vikings, 1012
Alphege was born in Bath in c.953 before joining the abbey there and serving as Abbot of Bath between 977 and 982.
In 984, he was made Bishop of Winchester by Archbishop Dunstan (later Saint Dunstan). When Vikings raided the city in 994, Alphege took part in the consequent peace negotiations and even baptised the Vikings’ leader, King Olaf I of Norway, who later played a large part in the conversion of the Norse to Christianity.
Alphege was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1006 after the death of Ælfric of Abingdon. Three years later, in August 1009, a large Viking army led by Thorkell the Tall landed in Sandwich, Kent and immediately set about pillaging the county. The people of Canterbury payed 3000 pounds of silver in danegeld to be spared, which Thorkell took and diverted his forces across the rest of southern England.
But, by September 1011, the money must have run out as Thorkell returned to Canterbury and began besieging it on the eighth, alongside the forces of King Olaf II of Norway. After holding out for three weeks, the city finally fell on 29 September and the Vikings entered Canterbury. They sacked the city, pillaged and burned the cathedral, and took many noble hostages for ransom, including Archbishop Alphege.
Alphege was taken to Greenwich and his ransom was put at 3000 pieces of silver. But the godly archbishop refused to be ransomed and ordered his people not to pay a penny to the Vikings. After a while, the Vikings had had enough. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, on 14 April 1012, a drunken mob launched an attack on Alphege:
They seized the bishop, led him to their hustings…and then pelted him there with bones and the heads of cattle; and one of them struck him on the head with the butt of an axe.
A horrified Thorkell tried to stop the violence and offered the mob everything but his ship. But it was too late; Alphege fell to the floor and died, ‘his holy blood falling to the earth’.
Owing to his martyrdom, in 1078 Alphege was canonised by Pope Gregory VII as Saint Alphege of Canterbury and now serves at the patron saint of kidnap victims.
Saint Thomas Becket: Murdered by knights, 1170
Thomas Becket was born the son of a landlord in Cheapside, London in 1119/1120. After leaving grammar school, he rose rapidly up the political ladder. He began as a clerk to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Theobald of Bec, before being promoted to Archdeacon of Canterbury in 1154.
The following year, Archbishop Theobald recommended to King Henry II that Becket should be made Lord Chancellor, akin to a modern-day Prime Minister. Henry II was impressed and Becket became Lord Chancellor at the age of just 35. Becket made Henry lots of money through taxing the church and nobility and they became close friends.
In 1162, Archbishop Theobald died and Henry decided to solve one of the great problems of medieval society, the battle between church and state, by having his friend Becket become both Archbishop and Chancellor. And so, on 3 June 1163, only a day after he had actually become a priest, Becket was enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury.
But, contrary to Henry’s vision, Becket made a dramatic about face. The man who had once taxed the church relentlessly was now its biggest defender; he resigned the chancellorship and immediately began fighting Henry’s intrusions. At Clarendon in January 1164, Henry had bullied the other bishops into agreeing to the Constitutions of Clarendon, which sought less church independence and weaker ties with Rome; but Becket refused to concede. Henry placed him on trial for treason at Northampton Castle that October, but Becket simply stormed out and fled to Pontigny Abbey in France.
Six years later, after some intercession from Pope Alexander III, Henry allowed Becket to return to England. But just before he crossed the Channel, Becket excommunicated the Bishops of London and Salisbury and the Archbishop of York after hearing they had stolen his prerogative of coronation in crowning Henry’s son, Henry, as co-king.
It was reportedly at dinner on Christmas Day 1170 that Henry, furious that his old friend was still causing trouble, supposedly uttered the words:
“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”
Though he probably meant it harmlessly, four knights, Reginald Fitzurse, Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy and Richard de Breton, took it as a royal command and quickly departed for Canterbury.
On the evening of 29 December 1170, Archbishop Becket heard that four knights had arrived outside the cathedral. They hid their chainmail under their cloaks, left their swords against a tree, and first tried to peacefully arrest him. Becket refused, and was convinced by his monks to seek sanctuary in the cathedral.
An eye-witness account of Becket’s death was given by Edward Grim, a Cambridge monk who was visiting Canterbury. He was with Becket inside the cathedral when the knights burst in through the door, shouting:
“Where is Thomas Becket, traitor to the king and the kingdom?”
The knights then rushed at him, roughly manhandling and dragging him, intending to kill him outside the church, or carry him away in chains.
Becket refused to move from the altar, apparently holding on to a pillar. It was now that the knights began to stab and slash him. But Becket wouldn’t die; he remained kneeling and whispering prayers. It was only when one knight brought his sword down upon Becket’s head so hard that his crown cracked off, his brains spilled everywhere, and the sword shattered on the floor that Becket finally died. A clerk who had accompanied the knights then:
put his foot on the neck of the holy priest and…scattered the brains with the blood over the pavement. “Let us go, knights…this fellow will not get up again.”
Christendom was appalled at this bloody assassination. Pilgrims almost instantaneously began visiting his tomb in the cathedral crypt and claiming miracles had been performed. These stories came in such a rapid wave that, on 21 February 1173, barely two years after his death, Pope Alexander II canonised Becket as Saint Thomas of Canterbury. King Henry paid for his horrendous crime on 12 July 1174, when he walked through the streets of Canterbury in a sack-cloth before begging forgiveness at Becket’s tomb whilst being flogged by monks.
Simon Sudbury: Beheaded by peasants, 1381
Simon Sudbury was born in c.1316 in Sudbury, Suffolk in East England. He studied at the University of Paris before serving as chaplain to Pope Innocent VI. In 1356, Pope Innocent sent Simon back home to England on as the papal ambassador to King Edward III.
After serving as Bishop of London, Sudbury became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1377. When Edward III died two years later, it was Sudbury who crowned Edward’s ten-year-old grandson King Richard II.
In 1380 Archbishop Sudbury was, like Becket before him, made Lord Chancellor of England. But it was a poor time to become manager of England’s finances; the Hundred Years War with France had drained the treasury, the army was due three months’ wages, and even the crown jewels had been pawned. To pay for this, Sudbury introduced a third poll tax.
It was an even more appalling time to introduce a new tax, however. Socio-economic problems remained from the huge death toll of the Black Death forty years before, taxation was already sky high and the peasantry were already baying for the blood of the London elite.
It was little wonder, then, when in May 1381, the Peasant’s Revolt began. Inspired by the preaching of the radical priest John Ball and led by Wat Tyler, a huge army of Peasant rebels from Kent marched on London, demanding a reduction in taxation, an end to serfdom, and the surrender of many royal ministers, especially Archbishop Sudbury.
With the royal army in France, King Richard, Sudbury, and the rest of the court retreated to the Tower of London. On 13 June, the peasants reached London and immediately sacked the city. The following day, the fourteen-year-old King Richard met with Wat Tyler and the rebels at Mile End, just outside of London, where he accepted their terms.
But whilst Tyler and the other rebels negotiated with the king, a large group of peasants stormed the Tower of London where Sudbury and the other ministers remained. So unpopular was Sudbury that the tower guards simply let the rebels through the gates without a fight. The Archbishop was halfway through a service in St John’s Chapel when he was dragged out of the church alongside the Lord High Treasurer, Sir Robert Hales, to Tower Hill, the place of execution for traitors.
But this was no official execution with a properly-trained axeman. The frenzied crowd was so inexperienced that it actually took eight blows of an axe to finish Sudbury off. Sudbury’s head was paraded around Westminster by the peasants and then stuck on a spike on London Bridge for all to see. When the rebels were defeated a few weeks later, Sudbury’s body was taken to Canterbury Cathedral for burial. But the Lord Mayor of London decided that the head should return to the Archbishop’s birthplace, and so it was gifted to St Gregory’s Church in Sudbury. The mummified skull still remains on public show in the church today.
Thomas Cranmer: Burned at the stake, 1556
Thomas Cranmer is best known as ‘the Reformation Archbishop’ and was the first Protestant to hold the position. Born in Nottinghamshire in 1489, he attended Cambridge University and was ordained as a fellow in 1520.
In 1532, Cranmer was made English ambassador to the Holy Roman Emperor. The empire was then in the inferno of the Protestant reformation, and it was in Lutheran Nuremburg that Cranmer was converted to the Protestant cause.
After being made Archbishop of Canterbury in October 1532 by Henry VIII, on the advice of his patron, Anne Boleyn, it was Cranmer who settled Henry’s “Great Matter”. He immediately began dissolving Henry and Catherine of Aragon’s marriage and declared it annulled in May 1533. He also declared valid Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, which had occurred in secret the previous January, and crowned Anne queen in June.
Cranmer attempted further reform of the church and prayer book, but Henry’s devotion to Catholicism meant he had little success beyond the translation of the Bible into English. But, when, in 1547, Henry died and was succeeded by the nine-year-old Edward VI, Cranmer and his fellow Protestants went into full reformation mode. The Book of Common Prayer, which became the centrepiece of English Protestantism, was published in 1549 and reissued in 1552.
But, in July 1553, Edward died, and Cranmer was one of the small group that supported the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey as queen. But her nine-day reign was ended in August after the hugely popular and catholic Mary I, eldest daughter of Henry VIII, reclaimed the throne.
Devoutly Catholic, Mary was intent on turning the clock back to 1532 and removing all traces of the reformation. But Archbishop Cranmer refused to accept any return to the ‘papist’ orthodoxy; after refusing to have the catholic mass conducted, Cranmer was arrested for treason and sent to the Tower of London.
After two years in the Tower, in September 1555, Cranmer was placed on trial in Oxford for treason and heresy under the Papal jurisdiction. He was found guilty and, on 4 December, the Vatican deprived him of his archbishopric, allowing the English authorities to carry out his sentence. As a heretic, he would be burned at the stake.
Fearing for his life, Cranmer soon recanted all he had done as a protestant and Archbishop. He openly welcomed a return to Rome, and acknowledged the authority of the Pope and the sacrament of transubstantiation. But Mary wanted to make an example of the man who had divorced her parents and supported her rival, and his execution was only postponed.
On the day of his execution, 21 March 1556, Cranmer was supposed to make a final public recantation in University Church. But no sooner had he stepped up to the pulpit that, according to John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Cranmer renounced his former recantations and launched into a tirade against Catholicism, including calling the pope “Christ’s enemy, and antichrist, with all his false doctrine”. As punishment for his papist recantations, he swore his right hand that had written them would be burned first.
Cranmer was duly dragged from the pulpit to the stake outside, which he was tied to with an iron chain. According to Foxe:
When the wood was kindled, and the fire began to burn near him… he put his right hand into the flame, which he held so stedfast and immovable… His eyes were lifted up into heaven, and oftentimes he repeated “his unworthy right hand,” so long as his voice would suffer him; and using often the words of Stephen, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”
Thomas Cranmer remains the only Archbishop of Canterbury to be burned.
William Laud: Beheaded by Parliament, 1645
William Laud was born in Reading in 1573, the son of a clothmaker. He studied at Oxford where, at a time when Calvinism dominated English universities, he expressed his support for Episcopalianism (church government by a hierarchy of bishops). He was ordained a priest of the university in 1601 and made Dean of Gloucester Cathedral in 1616.
Laud was a follower of ‘Arminianism’, which argued against the Calvinist doctrines of predestination and a simple faith for a more traditional/pseudo-Catholic faith. For Laud, it also meant vehemently conforming to traditional forms of church government, so the complaints of the Puritans against King James I as Governor of the Church of England was abhorrent to him. When he stated this in a sermon given before King James at court in 1621, in which he redressed the Puritans as untrustworthy traitors, James was so pleased that he named Laud as Bishop of St David’s just ten days after.
When James’s son, Charles I, came to the throne in 1625, Laud quickly found himself as Bishop of Bath and Wells and Dean of the Chapel Royal, and then Bishop of London in 1628. When Charles permanently dissolved Parliament in 1629 and began his period of Personal Rule, Laud, who hated Parliament’s incessant bargaining, was devoutly supportive. As a reward, Charles fired the current Archbishop, George Abbot, and Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633.
Over the next seven years, Archbishop Laud brought in many reforms to restore the church, in his mind, to its former glory. Altars were moved to the east end of churches for the first time since 1547 and railed off; candles and eccentric clerical costumes were reintroduced, communal singing returned, and kneeling to receive the Eucharist made mandatory. To horrified hard-line Protestants and Puritans, these reforms were nothing less than a return to papist idolatry and superstition. Laud was universally hated for both his support of Personal Rule and his religious reforms.
In November 1640, the financial cost of a religious war in Scotland forced Charles to recall Parliament for the first time in eleven years. The Long Parliament, so called because it lasted until 1648, was predominantly Puritan and immediately set about to right the wrongs of the past decade.
In November 1641, they published the Grand Remonstrance, a list of 204 objections, grievances and commands, including the removal of all bishops, a purge of royal officials, and a Parliamentary veto of royal appointments. While Charles refused to remove any one of his bishops, he did decide to sacrifice his old friend, Archbishop Laud.
In late 1641, Laud was arrested for treason against the English nation and imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he remained for much of the English Civil War. Whilst some hard-line MPs wanted Laud put on trial and executed, most of Parliament hoped the old Archbishop (who was by now 68) would just die in the Tower.
When Laud was brought to trial for treason in the spring of 1644, it ended without verdict since there was nothing that could actually be defined as treasonable. Undeterred, Parliament passed a Bill of Attainder in late 1644 which named Laud a treasonous person and sentenced him to death.
Despite being issued a royal pardon by Charles (which was useless as the king himself was now on borrowed time and in exile in Oxford), the 71-year-old Laud climbed the scaffold on Tower Hill on 10 January 1645 and was beheaded.
