Bancroft, Richard

BANCROFT, RICHARD: Archbishop of Canterbury; b. at Farnworth, Lancashire, 1544; d. in Lambeth Palace, London, Nov. 2, 1610. He was educated at Cambridge (B.A., 1567; D.D., 1585), was made rector, of Teversham, near Cambridge, 1576, and rose steadily till he became Bishop of London in 1597 and Archbishop of Canterbury in 1604. He was a High-churchman, asserting that the episcopal authority is based upon a divine right, and most violently opposed to the Puritans, whom he often attacked in his sermons. As president of the Convocation, he presented for adoption the Book of Canons now in force, and as Archbishop he was “the chief overseer" of the authorized version of the Bible, which he had opposed as a Puritan proposition at the Hampton Court Conference (1604). His literary remains are unimportant.