With Laurence Humphrey, he played a leading part in the vestments controversy, a division along religious party lines in the early years of the reign of Elizabeth I of England.
[6] When the dean of Chichester, Bartholomew Traheron, resigned in December 1552, he recommended Sampson to succeed him, calling him a preacher … of such integrity as I would be glad to see placed here and he was duly preferred to the post the following February.
[1] In the controversy over clerical dress, Matthew Parker ordered the Anglican clergy to wear surplice and caps.
Sampson attempted to give the debate a broader Protestant dimension, involving correspondence with Heinrich Bullinger.
Spirit and St. Mary and almshouse set up by Richard Whittington at St. Michael Paternoster Royal had been shut down, first by Edward VI and then for good by Elizabeth,[13] but he lectured there regularly.
He prepared a summary of Martin Bucer's De Regno Christi, which he passed to Lord Burghley during the 1570s.
He died in Leicester in 1589, and was buried in St. Ursula's Chapel, attached to the Hospital, where his sons erected a memorial to him.