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Archaeologia Cantiana -  Vol. 1  1858   page 9 

Archbishop Warham's Letters (1518? to 1528?), (from H. M. State Paper Office)

THE following Letters, now for the first time published entire, may serve to throw light on the history of a man who owes more of his eminence to the friendship of Erasmus, and the reputed jealousy of Cardinal Wolsey, than to the capability and vigour with which he played his part in a stirring and momentous time. 
   William Warham was educated successively at Winchester, and New College in Oxford. Devoting himself to the study of the law, he practised in the Court of Arches, was made Master of the Rolls February 13, 1494-5, Keeper of the Great Seal August 11,1502, and Lord Chancellor in the following January. When that idlest of all political vaudevilles—Peterkin Warbeck—(idle but for its possible tragical ending in "bloody noses and cracked crowns") was being played out, Warham was despatched with others into Flanders on a mission of remonstrance; with small success on the first occasion, with so much satisfaction to himself and his employers on the second, that on the death of Archbishop Dean in 1504, Warham was nominated his successor in the See of Canterbury. His enthronisation feast on that occasion is celebrated as the very pattern of sumptuousness and good eating even in those days, when as yet dyspepsia was not, and men's appetites were upon the same scale as those of the Homeric heroes. In 1515 he resigned, or, as some say (trusting too much to that lying varlet Polydore Vergil), was compelled to

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