[3] Bancroft was older than most students at Cambridge, reportedly due to money problems, and was apparently more successful at sports (wrestling, boxing and quarterstaff) than study.

He described their speeches and proceedings, caricatured their motives, denounced the exercise of the right of private judgment, and set forth the divine right of bishops in such strong language that Sir Francis Knollys, the Puritanically inclined Treasurer to the Household, held it to amount to a threat against the supremacy of the crown.

In June 1597, he was consecrated Bishop of London; and from this time, in consequence of the age and incapacity for business of Archbishop Whitgift, he was virtually invested with the power of primate, and had the sole management of ecclesiastical affairs.

Among the more noteworthy cases which fell under his direction were the proceedings against "Martin Marprelate", Thomas Cartwright and his friends, and John Penry, whose "seditious writings" he caused to be intercepted and given up to the Lord Keeper.

[7] In March 1604 Bancroft, on Whitgift's death, was appointed by royal writ president of convocation then assembled; and he there presented a book of canons collected by himself.

He continued to show the same zeal and severity as before, and with so much success that Lord Clarendon, writing in his praise, expressed the opinion that "if Bancroft had lived, he would quickly have extinguished all that fire in England which had been kindled at Geneva."

In 2016, during the refurbishment of the Garden Museum,[9] which is housed at the medieval church of St Mary-at-Lambeth,[10] 30 lead coffins were found; one with an archbishop's red and gold mitre on top of it.