ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



bishop's association with the cardinal was the means of supplying him 

 with a subordinate who was perhaps a more famous man than his 

 diocesan. William Byrbanke, the friend and correspondent of Erasmus, 

 became archdeacon of Carlisle about the same time that Kite became its 

 bishop. With the art of a courtier, which earned for him the sobriquet 

 of the ' flatteryng Byshope of Carel,' l Kite told Wolsey that he had 

 delayed Byrbanke's return from Rose Castle, as he wished to entertain 

 him for the favour he bore to the court he came from.* There is little 

 evidence of the archdeacon's personal residence in the diocese, but his 

 appointment and his tenure of office may be taken as symptomatic of 

 what was going on. Byrbanke was in the constant employment of 

 Wolsey, acting as his agent in all the schemes in which that prelate was 

 engaged. 3 A notable feature in the archdeacon's life was his friendship 

 with Erasmus. From the pen of that illustrious man we have a picture, 

 as he only could sketch it, of what Byrbanke was, the vir integerrimus of 

 all his friends. The archdeacon of Carlisle was one of a constellation 

 of brilliant men who dreamt of reforming ecclesiastical abuses without 

 disturbing the unity of the church. Of this band of scholars Erasmus 

 was the sun and the strength. While writing of these men he exclaimed 

 to Byrbanke : ' O vere splendldum Cardinalem, qui tales viros habet in consi- 

 //, cujus mensa talibus luminibus cingitur ! ' Even in the remote diocese 

 of Carlisle two of Wolsey's friends were posted to carry out the policy of 

 reformation in parish church and monastery with which his great 

 name is identified. 4 



borrow of the bishop of Carlisle and Sir Thomas Arundell both dishes to eat his meat in, and plate to 

 drink in, and also linen cloths to occupy ' (Life of Cardinal Wolsey, ed. Singer, pp. 225, 257-8). 



1 This nickname was given to Bishop Kite by the Earl of Northumberland in a letter to ' his beloved 

 cosyn Thomas Arundel, one of the gentlemen of my lord legates prevy chambre ' (Cavendish, Life of 

 Wolsey [ed. Singer], p. 463). 



* L. and P. of Henry VIII. , vol. iii. 2566. 



> Archdeacon Byrbanke appears to have been of Cumbrian extraction (Trans. Cumbld. and Westmorld. 

 Archaeol. Soc. xv. 38). We find him as early as 1488 in the service of Bishop Richard Bell as his chaplain. 

 In 1508 he was nominated by the Austin priory of Conishead in Lancashire as one of their proctors to the 

 diocesan synod of Carlisle by virtue of the appropriation of the church of Orton in Westmorland to that 

 house (Hist. MSB. Com. Rep. [Rydal MSS.], xii. App. vii. 5). He accompanied Archbishop Bainbridge to 

 Rome as one of his secretarial staff. In Rome he made the acquaintance of Erasmus, which afterwards 

 ripened into a life-long friendship. In 1512 he was appointed prebendary of Fenton in the church of 

 York, which he held till he resigned in 1531 (Hardy, Le Neve, iii. 185). On the death of Cardinal Bain- 

 bridge, he acted as one of his executors, and wrote some letters to Henry VIII. accusing the Bishop of 

 Worcester of poisoning the cardinal (Cotton MS. Vitellius, B. ii. ff. 94-97 ; Ellis, Orig. Letters, 1st ser. 

 i. 99-108). Bishop Silvester rewarded his traducer by defaming him in turn among his friends as ' that 

 scoundrel Burbanke,' or again that ' he does not know under heaven a greater dissembler ' (Ibid. Vitellius, 

 B. iii, f. 172). Pope Leo X. acted as peacemaker, absolving the bishop sub plumbo of all knowledge of the 

 crime, and creating Byrbanke a prothonotary apostolic with a strong recommendation, on his departure 

 from Rome, to the King's favour (L. and P. of Henry. VIII., vol. ii. 13 ; Dep. Keeper, Rep. ii. App. p. 190). 

 At least six impressions of his seal exist, and all of them of the same date in February, 1524-25. They 

 are attached to the deeds of survey and surrender of certain monastic houses taken by Byrbanke as com- 

 missioner for Henry VIII. and Wolsey (L. and P. of Henry V '111. vol. iv. 1137). The illustration of this 

 archdeacon's seal given above is the only seal of an archdeacon of Carlisle known to exist, and has been 

 reproduced from the impression attached to the Tonbridge surrender. The seal now used by arch- 

 deacons of Carlisle is a side vacante seal of uncertain date, procured at some date for the keeper of the 

 see, when vacant, and has no connexion with the archdeaconry (Trans. Cumbld. and Westmorld. Archaeol. 

 Soc. xv. 35-42). 



4 Erasmi Epistolae, lib. xvi. 3, p. 725 ; xviii. 41, p. 806 ; xxi. 57, p. 1 1 24 ; Jortin, Life of Erasmus, i. 

 150 ; L. and P. of Henry Vlll., vols. ii.-iv. passim. 



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