Thomas More was a family friend, and dedicated an early work, Life of John Picus, to Lee's sister Joyce, a Poor Clare.
[5] Thomas Cranmer took his MA in 1515, an early chance of contact with his future fellow-archbishop; Lee was later (1526) to give him his first court employment, as a junior member attached to a diplomatic mission to Spain.
[10] Lee provided substantive theological criticisms of In Praise of Folly, by close reading, in a fashion also later adopted by Noël Béda and Rodolfo Pio da Carpi.
[11][12] In dealing with the concept of ecstasy, Erasmus was accused by Lee of straying into territory explored by German mystical thinkers, and deemed heretical by the Church.
[13] Erasmus shrugged off the comparisons with the Beghards and Turlupins; but he found it less easy to place a distance between himself and Meister Eckhart or Johan Tauler.
[15] In 1523 the king sent Lee with Henry Parker, 10th Baron Morley, and Sir William Hussey on an embassy to the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria to carry him the Garter, with the diplomatic aims of encouraging his opposition to the Lutherans and Francis I of France.
In common with Stephen Gardiner, however, he refused in February 1533 to sign the declaration that the marriage with Catharine had been void from the beginning; but shortly afterwards got from the convocation of York an approbation of the grounds of the divorce.
Lee answered on 14 June that he had, according to order, preached solemnly in his cathedral on the injury done to the king by the pope and on the divorce, but he acknowledged that he had made no mention of the royal supremacy.
Moreover, on 1 July he wrote to Cromwell, sending him two books which he had prepared, one for his clergy to read and "extend" to their congregations, the other a brief declaration to the people of the royal supremacy, adding that the livings in his diocese were so poor that no learned man would take them, that he did not know in it more than twelve secular priests who could preach.
New cause of suspicion arose against him, and a few months later, he was examined by the king's visitor, Richard Layton, concerning words he was alleged to have used to the general confessor of Syon Abbey, and concerning the supremacy.
On 23 April, he interceded with Cromwell for two religious houses in his province: Hexham Abbey, useful as a place of refuge during Scottish invasions, and Nostell Priory, which he claimed as a free chapel belonging to his see.
Initially perhaps in favour of the movement, his opinion may have changed; for when on 27 November he and the clergy met in the church to consider certain articles proposed to them, he preached on the other side.
[5] For some time out of the king's favour, Cromwell stood by his friend, and in July 1537 Lee wrote to him thanking him for giving Henry a good report of his sermons.
He was on the commission appointed in the spring of 1540 to examine the doctrines and ceremonies retained in the church, and on that which had to determine on the invalidity of the king's marriage with Anne of Cleves.