Page "John de Stratford" Paragraph 4

On 3 November 1333 de Stratford was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury and he resigned the chancellorship in the following year ; however, he held this office again from 1335 to 1337 and for about two months in 1340.

In November 1340 Edward III, humiliated, impecunious and angry, returned suddenly to England from Flanders and vented his wrath upon the archbishop's brother, the chancellor, Robert de Stratford.

Fearing arrest the archbishop fled to Canterbury, and entered upon a violent war of words with the king, and by his firm conduct led to the establishment of the principle that peers were only to be tried in full parliament before their own order ( en pleyn parlement et devant les piers ).

But good relations were soon restored between the two, and the archbishop acted as president of the council during Edward's absence from England in 1345 and 1346, although he never regained his former position of influence.

His concluding years were mainly spent in the discharge of his spiritual duties, and he died at Mayfield, Sussex on 23 August 1348.