Grindal, EDMUND, Archbishop of Canterbury, was born near St Bees in 1519, and educated at Cambridge, where he was in turn scholar, fellow, and master of Pembroke Hall. Already a prebendary of Westminster under Edward VI., he lived abroad during Mary's reign, and there imbibed the spirit of Geneva, returning to England on the accession of Elizabeth. On Bonner's deprivation in 1559 he was made Bishop of London, in 1570 Archbishop of York, and in 1575 he succeeded Parker in the see of Canterbury. His Puritanistic sympathies soon estranged him from the court, and his resolute refusal to put down against his own conscience 'prophesying's or private meetings of the clergy for mutual help in the interpretation of Scripture, led to his being sequestered from his functions by the imperious queen in 1577. Not for five years was he restored, and a year later he died at Croydon, July
6, 1583. 'Being really blind,' says Fuller, 'more with grief than age, he was willing to put off his clothes before he went to bed, and in his lifetime to resign his place to Doctor Whitgift, who refused such acceptance thereof. And the queen, commiserating his condition, was graciously pleased to say that, as she had made him, so he should die an archbishop.' His few writings, with a Life by the Rev. William Nicholson, were printed by the Parker Society in 1853.