Richard Mayhew, A.D. 1504-1516, was made in 1480 the first regular president of Bishop Waynflete's new College of St. Mary Magdalene at Oxford. He was also Chancellor of the University, and almoner to King Henry VII., by whom he had been sent in 1501 to bring the Infanta Katharine of Aragon from Spain as the bride of Prince Arthur.
He was buried near the effigy of St. Ethelbert on the south side of the choir, where his tomb is still to be seen.
Charles Booth, A.D. 1516-1535, Archdeacon of Buckingham, and Chancellor of the Welsh Marches, left a lasting memorial in the north porch of the cathedral, which bears upon it the date of his death. He seems to have been much in the King's favour, and was summoned in 1520 to make one of the illustrious company on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. He was attached to the company of Henry's "dearest wife, the queen," and was accompanied by thirty "tall personages."
On his death he left some books to the library, as well as a tapestry for the high altar; also to his successor a gold ring and other articles which have disappeared.
Edward Foxe, A.D. 1535-1538. This "principal pillar of the Reformation," as Fuller calls him, is said by Strype to have been "an excellent instrument" in its general progress.
A Gloucestershire worthy, having been born at Dursley in that county, he was sent first to Eton and then to Cambridge, becoming, in 1528, Provost of King's College. In 1531 he succeeded Stephen Gardiner as Archdeacon of Leicester. For many years almoner to the King, he was employed in embassies to France, Italy, and Germany, the most important of these diplomatic missions being in February, 1527, when he was sent to Rome with Gardiner to negotiate in the matter of Henry's separation from his "dearest wife."
Foxe first introduced Cranmer to the King; and he, again, wrote the book called The Difference between the Kingly and the Ecclesiastical Power, which Henry wished people to think he had partly written himself, intended, as it was, to make easier his assumption of ecclesiastical supremacy.
In August, 1536, Bishop Foxe began, by deputy, a visitation of the diocese for the valuation of all church property therein, in accordance with the order referred to above. Dr. Coren, his vicar-general, actually carried out the valuation, and its results are to be found in the pages of Valor Ecclesiasticus, printed by the Record Commissioners in 1802.
In March, 1535-6, an Act was passed by Parliament granting to the King all religious houses possessing a revenue under £200 per annum. There were about eighteen houses in the diocese, excluding the cathedral, and of these only the priories of Wenlock,[pg 103] Wigmore, and Leominster possessed revenues exempting them from appropriation. Bishop Foxe died in London in May, 1538, and was buried in the Church of St. Mary Monthalt.
John Skypp, A.D. 1539-1552. The Archdeacon of Leicester, Edmund Bonner, was appointed to the see on Foxe's death, but was removed to London before his consecration, and John Skypp, Abbat of Wigmore, Archdeacon of Dorset, and chaplain and almoner to Ann Boleyn, became the next Bishop.