Power and principles

GWILYM DODD applauds a biography of a cleric and statesman who combined political clout with spiritual integrity

- Chris Given-Wilson

In September 1401, the monks of the monastery of Bury St Edmunds awaited with trepidation the impending visit of their archbishop. Every effort was taken to please their esteemed visitor - including laying on a sumptuous banquet - for, as the abbot remarked, this was a man who “apart from the king, was greater and more powerful than anyone else in the kingdom of England”.

His observation accurately sums up the career of one of the most remarkable and impactful Englishmen of the Middle Ages, and the subject of an outstanding biography by Chris Given-Wilson. Thomas Arundel belonged to a new breed of aristocratic prelate that became common in 14th-century England. The youngest son of the Earl of Arundel, he almost certainly owed his first career break to his father’s connections — he became bishop of Ely in 1373, aged only 20 years — but his subsequent meteoric rise to a position of unparalleled influence was due to the singular qualities that his contemporaries saw in him.