penses, adding that at Cawood he found no horse, nor stuff, nor provision (ib. 1670). His money difficulties made it specially advisable for him to please the king and Cromwell, and he did not neglect his opportunities of gratifying them in the matter of patronage (ib. vi. 1219, 1451). In common with Gardiner, however, he refused in February 1533 to sign the declaration that the marriage with Catharine had been void from the beginning (Friedmann, i. 189), but shortly afterwards procured from the convocation of York an approbation of the grounds of the divorce. On 29 June he received the king's appeal from the pope to the next general council (Fœdera, xiv. 478). The execution of Elizabeth Barton [q. v.] and her associates, in April 1534, occasioned many surmises, and it was rumoured that York, Durham, and Winchester were to be sent to the Tower (Cal. State Papers, vii. 522). This was mere idle talk. In company with Bishop Stokesley, Lee visited Houghton, the prior of the London Charterhouse, in the Tower, and represented to him that the succession was not a matter to die for, and he used a like expression with reference to the cause in which Bishop Fisher suffered (Gasquet, i. 209; Strype, Memorials, i. 294). On 21 May he and the Bishop of Durham were sent to Catharine at Kimbolton to expound to her the act of succession, and urge her to submission (Cal. State Papers, vii. 695, 1209). He forwarded to the king on 1 June the declaration of the York convocation held the previous month, that the pope had no greater jurisdiction within the realm of England than any other foreign bishop, and on 17 Feb. 1535 wrote to the king professing his willingness to obey his will. Nevertheless, he was suspected of disliking the royal supremacy. The king sent to him, as to other bishops, his commands that his new style should be published in his cathedral, and that the clergy should be instructed to set it forth in their parishes; and he also received Cranmer's order for preaching, and form for bidding the beads, in which the king's style was inserted, with the king's order that every preacher should declare the just cause for rejecting the papal supremacy, and defend the divorce and marriage with Anne Boleyn. Henry was informed that Lee had neglected these orders, and wrote to him reminding him that he had subscribed to the supremacy. Lee answered on 14 June that he had, according to order, preached solemnly in his cathedral on the injury done to the king by the pope and on the divorce, taking as his text, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come,’ but he acknowledged that he had made no mention of the royal supremacy. He besought the king not to suspect him, or listen to the accusations of his enemies (ib. viii. 869). Moreover, on 1 July he wrote to Cromwell, sending him two books which he had prepared, one for his clergy to read and ‘extend’ to their congregations, the other a brief declaration to the people of the royal supremacy, adding that the livings in his diocese were so poor that no learned man would take them, that he did not know in it more than twelve secular priests who could preach, and that therefore he feared that the king's orders concerning preaching would not be carried out satisfactorily, but that he would do his best (ib. p. 963; Memorials, i. 287–92). New cause of suspicion arose against him, and a few months later he was strictly examined by the king's visitor, Richard Layton [q. v.], concerning certain words he was alleged to have used to the general confessor of Sion, and concerning the supremacy. He wrote his defence to the king on 14 Jan. 1536. On 23 April he interceded with Cromwell for two religious houses in his province—Hexham, which, besides being the burying-place of many eminent persons, was useful as a place of refuge during Scottish invasions, and St. Oswald's at Nostell, Yorkshire, which he claimed as a free chapel belonging to his see. In June he argued against the condemnation of catholic customs in convocation, and was regarded as the head of the anti-reformation party.
When the northern insurrection broke out, Lee took refuge on 13 Oct. with Lord Darcy, who held Pomfret. On the 20th Pomfret was surrendered to the rebels, and the archbishop was compelled to take the oath of the ‘Pilgrimage of Grace.’ It was believed that he was at first in favour of the movement, but he changed his opinion; for when on 27 Nov. he and the clergy met in the church to consider certain articles proposed to them, he preached to the contrary effect. The clergy, however, would not be led by him, and he was roughly dragged from the pulpit. He seems to have for some time been out of the king's favour, but Cromwell stood his friend, and in July 1537 Lee wrote to him thanking him for giving Henry a good report of his sermons. In his diocesan duties he was assisted by a suffragan bishop. He was strict in requiring proof of orders from all who officiated in his diocese, and this bore hardly on the disbanded friars (Gasquet, ii. 276). His strictness in this matter was probably connected with his dislike of ‘novelties,’ as well as his fear of offending the king (Memorials, i. 469). He
