[A.D. 1422-1448.] Thomas Spofford, Abbot of St. Mary’s at York; to which monastery he returned in 1448, having resigned his see. “The record of his abdication is printed in Rymer’s Fœdera, vol. x. p. 215: in Wilkins’s Concilia, vol. iii. p. 538, is a writ of pardon for abdicating in favour of his successor, who was to allow him one hundred pounds yearly out of the revenues. The Pope testified by his bull that Spofford had expended on the buildings of his cathedral upwards of two thousand eight hundred marks[53].” No part of the cathedral itself can be of Bishop Spofford’s time; but possibly he erected the cloisters.
[A.D. 1449, trans. to Salisbury 1450.] Richard Beauchamp. For this Bishop, one of the best architects of his time,—the superintendent of the works at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor,—see Salisbury Cathedral, Pt. II.
[A.D. 1451, trans. to Lichfield 1453.] Reginald Boulers, Abbot of Gloucester.
[A.D. 1453-1477.] John Stanbery, translated to Hereford from Bangor. Bishop Stanbery was born at Stanbery, in the parish of Morwenstow, on the north coast of Cornwall; and bequeathed a “cross of silver gilt” to his baptismal church there. “He was bred,” says Fuller, “a Carmelite in Oxford, and became generally as learned as any of his order, deserving all the dignity which the University did or could confer on him. King Henry the Sixth highly favoured, and made him the first Provost of Eton; being much ruled by his advice in ordering that, his new foundation. He was by the King designed Bishop of Norwich, but William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, got it from him for his own chaplain, and Stanbery was fain to stay his stomach on the poor bishopric of Bangor, till, anno 1453, he was advanced Bishop of Hereford[54].” The Bishop was faithful to Henry VI. throughout his adversity, but was taken prisoner after the battle of Northampton, (July, 1460,) and was long confined in Warwick Castle. After his release he retired to the Carmelite monastery at Ludlow, and died there in May, 1474. He was interred in his own cathedral, in the chantry which he had built and endowed during his life. (Pt. I. § XIV.)
[A.D. 1474-1492.] Thomas Milling, Abbot of Westminster, Privy Councillor of Edward IV., and godfather to his son, Edward V. He was buried at Westminster, where a stone coffin remains which is supposed to have contained his body.
[A.D. 1492, trans. to Salisbury 1502.] Edmund Audley. (See Salisbury, Pt. II.) During his tenure of the see of Hereford he constructed the chantry on the south side of the Lady-chapel. (Pt. I. § XIX.) He was interred in the chantry he afterwards built at Salisbury.
[A.D. 1502, trans. to Bath and Wells 1504.] Hadrian de Castello, who had been entrusted by Henry VII. with the management of all business between England and the Papal Court, received both his English bishoprics at Rome, and never saw either. (See, for a fuller notice of him, Wells Cathedral, Pt. II.)
[A.D. 1504-1516.] Richard Mayew, Archdeacon of Oxford, President of Magdalen College, and Chancellor of the University, was Henry the Seventh’s Almoner, and was sent to Spain in order to conduct Catherine of Arragon to England. He received the bishopric of Hereford after his return. His fine tomb and effigy remain on the south side of the choir. (Pt. I. § XXI.)
[A.D. 1516-1535.] Charles Booth, Chancellor of the Welsh Marches, is best known as the builder of the north porch of his cathedral at Hereford. His tomb adjoins it. (Pt. I. § VII.)
[A.D. 1535-1539.] Edward Fox, Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, Almoner to Henry VIII., by whom he was employed on various embassies. It was Fox who first introduced Cranmer to the King, and Fuller calls him “the principal pillar of the Reformation, as to the management of the politic and prudential part thereof, being of more activity, and no less ability, than Cranmer himself[55].” He had been the first to instigate Wolsey, as papal legate, to commence a visitation of the professed as well as secular clergy, in 1523, in consequence of the general complaint against their manners. Bishop Fox died in London in 1538, and was interred in the church of St. Mary Monthalt.