1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Boniface of Savoy

BONIFACE OF SAVOY (d. 1270), archbishop of Canterbury, became primate in 1243, through the favour of Henry III., of whose queen, Eleanor of Provence, he was an uncle. Boniface, though a man of violent temper and too often absent from his see, showed some sympathy with the reforming party in the English church. Though in 1250 he provoked the English bishops by claiming the right of visitation in their dioceses, he took the lead at the council of Merton (1258) in vindicating the privileges of his order. In the barons’ war he took the royalist side, but did not distinguish himself by great activity.

See Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora; François Mugnier, Les Savoyards en Angleterre (Chambéry, 1890).