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 He recrossed the Channel with the Earls of Warwick, March, and Salisbury, giving their enterprise the sanction of the church. Bourchier met them at Sandwich with his cross borne before them. A statement of the Yorkist grievances had been forwarded to him by the earls before their coming, and apparently he had done his best to publish it. Accompanied by a great multitude, the earls, the legate, and the archbishop passed on to London, which opened its gates to them on 2 July 1460. Next day there was a convocation of the clergy at St. Paul's, at which the earls presented themselves before the archbishop, declared their grievances, and swore upon the cross of St. Thomas of Canterbury that they had no designs against the king. The political situation was discussed by the bishops and clergy, and it was resolved that the archbishop and five of his suffragans should go with the earls to the king at Northampton and use their efforts for a peaceful settlement. Eight days later was fought the battle of Northampton, at which Henry was taken prisoner. The archbishop, as agreed upon in convocation, accompanied the earls upon their march from London, and sent a bishop to the king to explain their attitude; but the bishop (of whose name we are not informed) acted in a totally different spirit and encouraged the king's party to fight.

When the Duke of York came over from Ireland later in the year and challenged the crown in parliament, the archbishop came up to him and asked if he would not first come and pay his respects to the king. 'I do not remember,' he replied, 'that there is any one in this kingdom who ought not rather to come and pay his respects to me.' Bourchier immediately withdrew to report this answer to Henry. When, after the second battle of St. Albans, the queen was threatening London, the archbishop had betaken himself to Canterbury, awaiting better news with the young Bishop of Exeter, George Nevill, whom the Yorkists had appointed lord chancellor. Bourchier, though he had shown in the house of peers that he did not favour York's repudiation of allegiance, could not possibly sympathise with the disturbance of a parliamentary settlement and the renewal of strife and tumult. From this time, at all events, he was a decided Yorkist; and when the Duke of York's eldest son came up to London and called a council at his residence of Baynard's Castle on 3 March, he was among the lords who attended and agreed that Edward was now rightful king. On 28 June he set the crown upon Edward's head. Four years later, on Sunday after Ascension day (26 May) 1465, he also crowned his queen, Elizabeth Woodville.

For some years nothing more is known of the archbishop's life except that Edward IV petitioned Pope Paul II to make him a cardinal in 1465, and it appears that he was actually named by that pope accordingly on Friday, 18 Sept. 1467. But some years elapsed before the red hat was sent and his title of cardinal was acknowledged in England. In 1469 the pope wrote to the king promising that it should be sent very shortly; but the unsettled state of the country, and the new revolution which for half a year restored Henry VI as king in 1470, no doubt delayed its transmission still further, and it was only sent by the succeeding pope, Sixtus IV, in 1473. It arrived at Lambeth on 31 May.

By this time the archbishop had given further proofs of his devotion to Edward. He and his brother, whom the king had created earl of Essex after his coronation, not only raised troops for his restoration in 1471, but were mediators with the Duke of Clarence before his arrival in England, and succeeded in winning him over again to his brother's cause. After the king was again peacefully settled on his throne he went on pilgrimage to Canterbury at Michaelmas, aprrently to attend the jubilee of St. Thomas à Becket, which, but for the state of the country, would have been held in the preceding year. Edward had visited Canterbury before, soon after the coronation of his queen, and bestowed on the cathedral a window representing Becket's martyrdom, of which, notwithstanding its destruction in the days of Henry VIII, some fragments are still visible.

Bourchier was hospitable after the fashion of his time. In 1468 he entertained at Canterbury an eastern patriarch, who is believed to have been Peter II of Antioch. In 1455—the year after he became archbishop—he had purchased of Lord Saye and Sele the manor of Knowle, in Sevenoaks, which he converted into a castellated mansion and bequeathed to the see of Canterbury. It remained as a residence for future archbishops till Cranmer gave it up to Henry VIII. Here Bourchier entertained much company, among whom men of letters like Botoner and patrons of learning like Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, were not unfrequent; also musicians like Hambois, Taverner, and others. That he was a promoter of the introduction of printing into England, even before the date of Caxton's first work, rests only on the evidence of a literary forgery published in the seventeenth century.

In 1475 Bourchier was one of the four arbitrators to whom the differences between England and France were referred by the