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Richard Bancroft
Richard Bancroft # Table of Contents
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Written by Matt Stefon
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# Table of Contents

Richard Bancroft, (baptized Sept. 12, 1544,

Farnworth, Lancashire, Eng.—died Nov. 2,
1610, London), 74th archbishop of Canterbury
(1604–10), notable for his stringent
opposition to Puritanism, his defense of
ecclesiastical hierarchy and tradition, and his
efforts to ensure doctrinal and liturgical
conformity among the clergy of the Church of
England. He also played a major role in the
preparation of the King James Version of the
Bible.

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Richard Bancroft

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Baptized: September 12, 1544 • England

Died: November 2, 1610 • London • England

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Bancroft studied at the University of

Cambridge, earning a bachelor’s degree from
Christ’s College in 1567 and a master’s degree
from Jesus College in 1572. He was ordained
an Anglican priest in 1574 and became a
university preacher at Cambridge two years
later. About 1581 he was appointed household
chaplain of Lord Chancellor Sir Christopher
Hatton. During this time Bancroft continued
to serve in other posts and became an
increasingly vocal defender of the Anglican
episcopacy against Puritan attempts at
restructuring or abolishing it. In 1583, as
preacher of the town court of Bury St.
Edmunds, he assisted in the arrest of two
“Brownists,” followers of the Puritan
separatist Robert Browne, for their purported
libel of Queen Elizabeth I as a “Jezebel.”

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James Bible?

After earning a doctorate in theology at

Cambridge in 1585, Bancroft began
investigating Puritan “heretics.” He also was
appointed to more prominent positions within
the Church of England, including treasurer of
St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1586 and canon of
Westminster (a high office at Westminster
Abbey) in 1587. The following year he located
the printing press used by “Martin
Marprelate,” the pseudonymous pamphleteer
(or group of pamphleteers) who critiqued the
institution of the episcopate and particularly
the conservative Calvinist archbishop of
Canterbury (and Bancroft’s predecessor in
that office) John Whitgift (see also Marprelate
Controversy). Early in 1589 Bancroft preached
a sermon at Paul’s Cross, the historic open-air
pulpit of St. Paul’s Cathedral, in which he
sharply rebuked the Marprelate tracts,
rejected the primacy that Puritans placed on
personal religious experience and the
authority of the Bible, and defended the role of
bishops within the church. The following
February he became a prebendary
(administrator) of St. Paul’s. He was
appointed one of Whitgift’s household
chaplains in 1592 and bishop of London in
1597; the latter position enabled him to act as
de facto primate when Whitgift was ill.

In April 1604, two months after Whitgift’s

death and with the backing of King James I,
Bancroft secured the acceptance by a
convocation of the clergy of a new canon law
for the church. On Dec. 10, 1604, Bancroft was
installed as archbishop of Canterbury. He used
the power of his position to institute doctrinal
and liturgical standards for priests and
bishops and to establish guidelines for the
compilers of a new English translation of the
Bible; the King James Version, as it was
subsequently known, was published in 1611,
after Bancroft’s death. Bancroft also increased
his attacks on Roman Catholics, becoming
more determined to root out any vestiges of
“Popery” in England. He was one of the
drafters of the oath of allegiance of 1606,
which required English subjects to reject the
pope’s authority and to swear allegiance to the
crown; the oath particularly targeted
recusants, or English Roman Catholics who
did not attend services of the Church of
England. As one of his final acts, Bancroft set
into motion the founding of the Episcopal
Church in Scotland by orchestrating the
consecration of three Scottish bishops in 1610.

Matt Stefon

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