Robert Winchelsey

Winchelsey held various benefices in England and was the Chancellor of Oxford University before being elected to Canterbury in early 1293.

Following the election of a former royal clerk as Pope Clement V in 1305, the king was able to secure the archbishop's exile that same year.

[1] He was not consecrated immediately because of a papal vacancy; Celestine V eventually performed the ceremony at Aquila on 12 September 1294.

All through his term as archbishop he refused to allow Edward to tax the clergy beyond certain levels, and withstood severe pressure to change his mind.

Winchelsey did concede though that if the war with France, which was what the money was requested to fund, continued into the following year, then the clergy would be amenable to making further contributions.

[1] The king was not the only one to be upset by the archbishop; the abbot of Oseney, in 1297, was so affected by a rebuke from him that he suffered a fatal heart attack.

One of the reasons which led the archbishop to ally with the barons was his hostility to Edward's adviser, Walter Langton, Bishop of Lichfield.

The king took no action against Winchelsey until the Gascon and former royal clerk Bertrand de Got was named Pope Clement V in 1305.

[14] The archbishop, along with the Earl of Warwick, were the only people to object to the return of the new king's favourite Piers Gaveston to England in 1309.

[1][4] Winchelsey was a preacher of some note, and when preaching at St. Paul's he attracted large crowds to his sermons and lectures.

The quaestiones disputatae from those sessions survive, and illustrate his highly orthodox trinitarian views and his scholastic method.