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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 |