On Stratford's death in 1348 the monks of Christ Church, thinking to please the king, and doubtless also to found a precedent, elected Edward's chaplain, Thomas Bradwardine, without waiting for the _conge d'elire_. Bradwardine, the _Doctor Profundus_, as he was called, a famous philosopher and theologian, was the champion of the Augustinian doctrine of predestination against the Scotists. He had accompanied the king in his victorious campaigns against France, and had been employed by him to treat of peace. Edward, though he was willing enough that he should be archbishop, would not allow the chapter to act independently, and so caused Clement VI. to provide his chancellor, John Ufford, who was an aged man. The pestilence now reached England, and Ufford died of it before he was consecrated. Bradwardine was then raised to the archbishopric by the common action of the king, the chapter, and the Pope; for after the English victories Clement was ready to oblige Edward, declaring that "if the king of England asked a bishopric for an ass he could not refuse him." His subservience to Edward displeased the cardinals, and at the consecration feast of the great English doctor at Avignon one of them sent into the hall a buffoon mounted on an ass, with a petition that the Pope would make him archbishop of Canterbury. A week after Bradwardine came to England he too died of the pestilence, which both now and in its later outbreaks fell as heavily on the clergy as on the laity, carrying off four bishops in a single year. [Sidenote: Simon Islip, 1349-1366.] [Sidenote: Simon Langham, 1366-1368.] [Sidenote: William Whittlesey, archbishop, 1368-1374.]