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 then bishop of Worcester, with others to the council of Basle; but it does not appear that he actually went (, Privy Council Proceedings, v. 92, 99). That he was often called to the king's councils at Westminster there is ample evidence to show.

In March 1454 Kemp, the archbishop of Canterbury, died. A deputation of the lords rode to Windsor to convey the intelligence to the king, and to signify to him, if possible, that a new chancellor, a new primate, and a new council required to be appointed. But Henry's intellectual prostration was complete, and he gave no sign that he understood the simplest inquiry. The lords accordingly appointed the Duke of York protector, and on 30 March the council, in compliance with a petition from the commons, recommended the Bishop of Ely's promotion to the see of Canterbury 'for his great merits, virtues, and great blood that he is of' (Rolls of Parl. v. 450). Bourchier was translated on 22 April following; and we may presume that he owed his promotion to the Duke of York's influence. On 6 Sept. in the same year William Paston writes from London to his brother: 'My lord of Canterbury hath received his cross, and I was with him in the king's chamber when he made his homage' (Paston Letters, i. 303). Apparently he paid a conventional reverence to the poor unconscious king; he was enthroned in February following.

On 7 March 1455 Bourchier was appointed lord chancellor, and received the seals at Greenwich from the king himself, who had recovered from his illness at the new year. His appointment, in fact, was one consequence of the king's recovery, as the Earl of Salisbury (the chancellor, and brother-in-law of the Duke of York) could not have been acceptable to the queen. Bourchier apparently had to some extent the good-will of both parties, and was expected to preserve the balance between them in peculiarly trying times. Little more than two months after his appointment, when the Duke of York and his friends took up arms and marched southwards, they addressed a letter to Bourchier as chancellor declaring that their intentions were peaceable and that they came to do the king service and to vindicate their loyalty. Bourchier sent a special messenger to the king at Kilburn, but the man was not allowed to come into the royal presence, and neither the letter to the archbishop nor an address sent by the lords actually reached the king (Rolls of Parl. v. 280-1). The result was the first battle of St. Albans, which was the commencement of the wars of the Roses.

A parliament was summoned for 9 July following, which Bourchier opened by a speech as chancellor. His brother Henry, viscount Bourchier, was at the same time appointed lord treasurer. The parliament was soon prorogued to November. Before it met again the king had fallen a second time into the same melancholy state of imbecility, and for a second time it was necessary to make York protector. The archbishop resigned the great seal in October 1456, when the queen had obtained a clear advantage over the Duke of York, and got the king, who had been long separated from her, down to Coventry, where a great council was held. These changes raised misgivings, even in some who were not of Yorkist leanings. The Duke of Buckingham, who was a son of the same mother as the two Bourchiers, was ill-pleased at seeing his brothers discharged from high offices of state, and it was^said that he had interposed to protect the Duke of York himself from unfair treatment at the council (Paston Letters, i. 408). But the archbishop was a peacemaker; and the temporary reconciliation of parties in the spring of 1458 appears to have been greatly owing to him. He and Waynflete drew up the terms of the agreement between the lords on both sides, which was sealed on 24 March, the day before the general procession at St. Paul's.

Shortly before this, in the latter part of the year 1457, the archbishop had been called upon to deprive Pecock, bishop of Chichester, as a heretic. The case was a remarkable one, for Pecock was anything but a Lollard. He was first turned out of the king's council, the archbishop as the chief person there ordering his expulsion, and then required to appear before the archbishop at Lambeth. His writings were examined by three other bishops and condemned as unsound. Then the archbishop, as his judge, briefly pointed out to him that high authorities were against him in several points, and told him to choose between recantation and burning. The poor man's spirit was quite broken, and he preferred recantation. Nevertheless he was imprisoned by the archbishop for some time at Canterbury and Maidstone, and afterwards committed by him to the custody of the abbot of Thorney.

In April 1459 Bourchier brought before the council a request from Pius II that the king would send an ambassador to a council at Mantua, where measures were to be concerted for the union of Christendom against the Turks (, Privy Council Proceedings, vi. 298). Coppini, the pope's nuncio, after remaining nearly a year and a half in England, gave up his mission as hopeless and recrossed the Channel. But at Calais the Earl of Warwick, who was governor there, won him over to the cause of the Duke of York.