Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/30

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

a G.C.B. It was practically the institution of a new order, with a new etiquette; for it had previously been the custom, if not the rule, not to confer the K.B. on men of higher rank in the table of precedence. He died on 20 Aug. 1825, and was succeeded by his eldest son, George Granville Waldegrave, second baron Radstock [q. v.]

[Ralfe's Nav. Biogr. ii. 27; Naval Chronicle (with a portrait), x. 265; Marshall's Roy. Nav. Biogr. i. 56; O'Byrne's Nav. Biogr. Dict. p. 947; Commission and Warrant Books in the Public Record Office; Foster's Peerage.]

J. K. L.

WALDEN, Lords HOWARD de. [See Griffin, John Griffin, 1719-1797; Ellis, Charles Augustus, 1799-1868.]

WALDEN, ROGER (d. 1406), archbishop of Canterbury, is said to have been of humble birth, the son of a butcher at Saffron Walden in Essex (Annales, p. 417; Usk, p. 37). But the statement comes from sources not free from prejudice, and cannot perhaps be entirely trusted. He had a brother John described as an esquire ‘of St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield,’ who, when he made his will in 1417, was possessed of considerable property in Essex (Wylie, iii. 127). Roger Walden's belle-mère (i.e. stepmother) was apparently living with John Walden at St. Bartholomew's in 1400 (Chronique de la Traïson, p. 75). There was a contemporary, Sir Alexander Walden in Essex, but there is no evidence that they were in any way connected with him. Nothing is known of Walden's education and first advance in life. Two not very friendly chroniclers give somewhat contradictory accounts of his acquirements when made archbishop—one describing him as a lettered layman, the other as almost illiterate (Eulogium, iii. 377; Annales, p. 213). His earliest recorded promotion, the first of an unusually numerous series of ecclesiastical appointments, was to the benefice of St. Heliers in Jersey on 6 Sept. 1371 (Fœdera, vi. 692; Le Neve, iii. 123). The Percy family presented him to the church of Kirkby Overblow in Yorkshire in 1374; but he was living in Jersey in 1378–9, and four years later received custody of the estates of Reginald de Carteret in that island (Hook, iv. 529; Fœdera, vii. 349; Cal. Rot. Pat. i. 269). He was ‘locum tenens seu deputatus’ of the Channel Islands, but between what dates is uncertain (Fœdera, viii. 64). He held the living of Fenny Drayton, Leicestershire, which he exchanged for that of Burton in Kendale in 1385, when he is described as king's clerk (ib. ii. 564; Fœdera, vii. 349). His rapid advancement from 1387 onwards shows that he had secured strong court favour. In the July of that critical year he was made archdeacon of Winchester, a position which he held until 1395, but he was ‘better versed in things of the camp and the world than of the church and the study’ (Usk, p. 37; Le Neve, iii. 26), and plenty of secular employment was found for him. Appointed captain of Mark, near Calais, in October 1387, which he vacated for the high-bailiffship of Guisnes in 1391, he held also from December 1387 (if not earlier) to 1392 the important position of treasurer of Calais, in which capacity he acted in various negotiations with the French and Flemings, and joined the captain of Calais on a cattle raid into French territory in 1388 (Froissart, xxv. 72, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove; Fœdera, vii. 565, 607, 669; Wylie, iii. 125).

From these employments Walden was recalled to become secretary to Richard II, and ultimately succeeded John de Waltham [q. v.], bishop of Salisbury, as treasurer of England in 1395 (Usk, p. 37; Walsingham, ii. 218). Meanwhile the stream of ecclesiastical promotion had not ceased to flow in his direction. At Lincoln, after a brief tenure of one prebend in the last months of 1389, he held another from October 1393 to January 1398 (Le Neve, ii. 126, 220; Fœdera, viii. 23); at Salisbury he was given two prebends in 1391 and 1392 (Jones, Fasti Ecclesiæ Sarisberiensis, pp. 364, 394); he had others at Exeter (till 1396) and at Lichfield (May 1394–May 1398; Stafford's Register, p. 168; Le Neve, i. 618). The rectory of Fordham, near Colchester, conferred upon him early in 1391, he at once exchanged for that of St. Andrew's, Holborn (Newcourt, i. 274, ii. 270). With the treasurership of England he received the deanery of York, and in February 1397 the prebend of Willesden in St. Paul's (Le Neve, ii. 451, iii. 124).

On the banishment and translation of Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, in the autumn of 1397, Richard got Walden provided to that see by papal bull, and invested him with the temporalities in January 1398 (Annales, p. 213; Le Neve, i. 21). John of Gaunt appointed him one of the surveyors of his will (Nichols, p. 165). He was present at the Coventry tournament, and took out a general pardon on 21 Nov. 1398 for all debts incurred or offences committed (including ‘insanum consilium’) in his secular offices (Traïson, p. 19; Fœdera, viii. 63).

When Arundel returned with Henry of Lancaster the pope quashed the bull he had executed in Walden's favour, on the ground that he had been deceived (Annales, p. 321). Walden's jewels, which he had removed from the palace at Canterbury, and six cart-