In 1515 Richard Kidderminster, Abbot of Winchcombe, attacked a 1512 Act of Parliament restricting the benefit of clergy, to those in major orders.
Anti-clerical feelings were running high at the time, in the case of Richard Hunne, with its coroner's jury verdict of murder in a bishop's prison from February 1515.
In the end the King’s influence was brought to bear: the charges against Standish were not pressed, but the Act was not renewed in the Lords.
[8] His criticisms of the Greek New Testament of Erasmus was part of a wider controversy around 1520, that drew in Edward Lee, Archbishop of York.
Standish is described as essentially a combatant and an inheritor of the tradition of the friars of Wyclif's day, at once opposed to doctrinal innovations and clerical privilege,[10] and a conservative of the type of Stokesley and Tunstall.