Life
The son of Nigel Theobald, Sudbury (as he later became known) was born at Sudbury in Suffolk, studied at the University of Paris, and became one of the chaplains of Pope Innocent VI, one of the Avignon popes, who in 1356 sent him on a mission to Edward III of England.
In 1361 Sudbury was made Chancellor of Salisbury and in October that year the pope provided him to be Bishop of London, Sudbury's consecration occurring on 20 March 1362. He was soon serving Edward III as an ambassador and in other ways. On 4 May 1375 he succeeded William Whittlesey as archbishop of Canterbury, and during the rest of his life was a partisan of John of Gaunt.
In July 1377, following the death of Edward III in June, Sudbury crowned the new king, Richard II at Westminster Abbey, and in 1378 John Wycliffe appeared before him at Lambeth, but he only undertook proceedings against the reformer under great pressure.
In January 1380, Sudbury became Lord Chancellor of England, and the insurgent peasants regarded him as one of the principal authors of their woes. Having released John Ball from his prison at Maidstone, the Kentish insurgents attacked and damaged the archbishop's property at Canterbury and Lambeth; then, rushing into the Tower of London, they seized the archbishop himself. So unpopular was Sudbury that guards simply allowed the rebels through the gates.
Read more about this topic: Simon Sudbury
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)
“We all come from our own little planets. That’s why we’re all different. That’s what makes life interesting.”
—Robert E. Sherwood (1896–1955)
“I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)