25 Facts About Edmund Grindal

Grindal sought refuge in continental Europe during the reign of Mary I Upon Elizabeth's accession, Grindal returned and resumed his rise in the church, culminating in his appointment to the highest office.

Tradition, as retailed by Edmund Grindal's biographer John Strype, had long held that Edmund Grindal was born in Hensingham, now a suburb of Whitehaven.

Edmund Grindal himself described his birthplace in a letter to Sir William Cecil, Elizabeth I's Secretary of State: "the house wherein I was born, and the lands pertaining thereto, being a small matter, under twenty shillings rent, but well builded at the charges of my father and brother": which corresponds to Cross Hill House.

Sandys himself recalled that he and Edmund Grindal had lived "familiarly" and "as brothers" and were only separated between Sandys's 13th and 18th years.

Edmund Grindal was educated at Magdalene and Christ's colleges and then at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated BA and was elected a fellow in 1538.

Probably through the influence of Nicholas Ridley, who had been master of Pembroke Hall, Edmund Grindal was selected as one of the Protestant disputants during the visitation of 1549.

Edmund Grindal had a talent for this work and was often given similar tasks.

Edmund Grindal was gathered in to the body of men who would be at the centre of establishing the reformed church.

Edmund Grindal was appointed to the committee to revise the liturgy, and was one of the Protestant representatives at the Westminster conference.

Edmund Grindal had qualms about vestments and other traces of "popery" as well as about the Erastianism of Elizabeth's ecclesiastical government.

Edmund Grindal lacked that firm faith in the supreme importance of uniformity and autocracy which enabled John Whitgift to persecute nonconformists whose theology was identical to his own.

London, which was always a difficult see, involved Bishop Sandys in similar troubles when Edmund Grindal had gone to York.

Edmund Grindal repeatedly raided their services and imprisoned worshippers, but generally for short spells, agreeing with the Privy Council 'to move [them] to be conformable by gentleness'.

In 1570 Edmund Grindal became Archbishop of York, where Puritans were few and coercion would be required mainly for Roman Catholics.

Edmund Grindal must have given general satisfaction, for even before Parker's death two persons so different as Cecil, and Dean Nowell independently recommended Grindal's appointment as his successor, and Edmund Spenser spoke warmly of him in The Shepheardes Calender as the "gentle shepherd Algrind".

Burghley wished to conciliate the moderate Puritans and advised Edmund Grindal to mitigate the severity which had characterised Parker's treatment of the nonconformists.

Edmund Grindal indeed attempted a reform of the ecclesiastical courts, but his activity was cut short by a disagreement with the Queen.

Elizabeth wanted Edmund Grindal to suppress the "prophesyings" or meetings for sermon training and discussion which had come into vogue among the Puritan clergy, and she even wanted him to discourage preaching.

Edmund Grindal was dissuaded from this extreme course, but Grindal's sequestration was continued in spite of a petition from Convocation in 1581 for his reinstatement.

John Milton, who rejected episcopal church government, thought the Elizabethan bishops had been Laodiceans, neither hot nor cold, but thought Edmund Grindal had been "the best of them" in his tract Of Reformation of 1641.

Conversely, Edmund Grindal came to be attacked by High Church Tories.

Edmund Grindal left considerable benefactions to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, Queen's College, Oxford, and Christ's College, Cambridge; he endowed a free school at St Bees, and left money for the poor of St Bees, Canterbury, Lambeth and Croydon.

The most enduring monument to Edmund Grindal has proved to be the St Bees School, which he founded in his native village of St Bees, where he had not been for perhaps forty-five years.

Only three days before his death Edmund Grindal had published statutes for the school; a series of minute and specific regulations which are a noted treasury of information for historians of Tudor education.

Edmund Grindal played a part in the establishment of Highgate School in North London, for which he gave land, and he is credited with having introduced the tamarisk tree to the British Isles.