The Prebendaries' Plot was an attempt during the English Reformation by religious conservatives to oust Thomas Cranmer from office as Archbishop of Canterbury. The events took place in 1543 and saw Cranmer formally accused of being a heretic. The hope was that this would stop further religious reforms in Kent and end Protestant influence at the royal court of Henry VIII.
Henry VIII's chaplain Richard Cox was charged with investigating and suppressing it, and his success (240 priests and 60 laypeople of both sexes were accused of involvement) led to his being made Cranmer's chancellor (and later, under Elizabeth, bishop of Ely). Gardiner survived, but his nephew German Gardiner, who had acted as his secretary and intermediary to the plotters in Kent, was executed in 1544 for questioning the Royal Supremacy.
The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. The current archbishop is Justin Welby, who was enthroned at Canterbury Cathedral on 21 March 2013. Welby is the 105th in a line which goes back more than 1400 years to Augustine of Canterbury, the "Apostle to the English", sent from Rome in the year 597. Welby succeeded Rowan Williams.
Thomas Cranmer was a leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and, for a short time, Mary I. He helped build the case for the annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, which was one of the causes of the separation of the English Church from union with the Holy See. Along with Thomas Cromwell, he supported the principle of royal supremacy, in which the king was considered sovereign over the Church within his realm.
Nicholas Ridley was an English Bishop of London. Ridley was one of the Oxford Martyrs burned at the stake during the Marian Persecutions, for his teachings and his support of Lady Jane Grey. He is remembered with a commemoration in the calendar of saints in some parts of the Anglican Communion on 16 October.
Stephen Gardiner was an English Catholic bishop and politician during the English Reformation period who served as Lord Chancellor during the reign of Queen Mary I and King Philip.
John Bell was a Bishop of Worcester (1539–1543), who served during the reign of Henry VIII of England.
Thomas Watson was a Catholic Bishop, notable among Catholics for his descriptions of the Protestant Reformation. Historian Albert Pollard described Watson as "one of the chief Catholic controversialists" of Mary Tudor's reign.
John Ponet, sometimes spelled John Poynet, was an English Protestant churchman and controversial writer, the bishop of Winchester and Marian exile. He is now best known as a resistance theorist who made a sustained attack on the divine right of kings.
John Scory was an English Dominican friar who later became a bishop in the Church of England.
Events from the 1530s in England.
The English Reformation took place in 16th-century England when the Church of England broke away from the authority of the pope and the Catholic Church. These events were part of the wider European Reformation, a religious and political movement that affected the practice of Christianity in Western and Central Europe.
Richard Nykke became bishop of Norwich under Pope Alexander VI in 1515. Norwich at this time was the second-largest conurbation in England, after London.
John White was a Headmaster and Warden of Winchester College during the English Reformation who, remaining staunchly Roman Catholic in duty to his mentor Stephen Gardiner, became Bishop of Lincoln and finally Bishop of Winchester during the reign of Queen Mary. For several years he led the college successfully through very difficult circumstances. A capable if somewhat scholastic composer of Latin verse, he embraced the rule of Philip and Mary enthusiastically and vigorously opposed the Reformation theology.
William Barlow was an English Augustinian prior turned bishop of four dioceses, a complex figure of the Protestant Reformation. Aspects of his life await scholarly clarification. Labelled by some a "weathercock reformer", he was in fact a staunch evangelical, an anti-Catholic and collaborator in the Dissolution of the Monasteries and dismantling of church estates; and largely consistent in his approach, apart from an early anti-Lutheran tract and a supposed recantation under Mary I. He was one of the four consecrators and the principal consecrator of Matthew Parker, as archbishop of Canterbury in 1559.
William Kingsmill alias William Basyng (?–1549) was Prior of St. Swithun's Priory, Winchester until the Dissolution of the Monastery in 1539; it was a Benedictine monastic house and its shrine to the saint popularly associated with determining the entire period of pre-harvest weather was a place of pilgrimage. He was appointed as the first Dean of Winchester Cathedral at the foundation of the new chapter in 1541.
Edward Lee was Archbishop of York from 1531 until his death.
Dr Richard Gwent was a senior ecclesiastical jurist, pluralist cleric and administrator through the period of the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII. Of south Welsh origins, as a Doctor of both laws in the University of Oxford he rose swiftly to become Dean of the Arches and Archdeacon of London and of Brecon, and later of Huntingdon. He became an important figure in the operations of Thomas Cromwell, was a witness to Thomas Cranmer's private protestation on becoming Archbishop of Canterbury, and was Cranmer's Commissary and legal draftsman. He was an advocate on behalf of Katherine of Aragon in the proceedings against her, and helped to deliver the decree of annulment against Anne of Cleves.
John London, DCL was Warden of New College, Oxford, and a prominent figure in the Dissolution of the Monasteries during the reign of Henry VIII of England.
Roger Tonge otherwise Roger Tong or Tongue was an English clergyman who served as a chaplain to Edward VI and was later appointed dean of Winchester Cathedral in 1549.
Edmund Steward otherwise Stewart or Stewarde was an English lawyer and clergyman who served as Chancellor and later Dean of Winchester Cathedral until his removal in 1559.
William Fleshmonger(? -1541/42), the son of a Winchester College tenant, was born in Hambledon, Hampshire. He was a Doctor of Canon Law and Dean of Chichester during the turmoil of the English Reformation.
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