=Henry Standish=, of Standish in Lancashire, was D.D. of Oxford, and appears to have studied also at Cambridge[1734]. He was one of the court preachers at the beginning of Henry VIII’s reign, and frequently received payments for his services: the earliest grant to him in the State Papers was a sum of 20_s._ for preaching in 1511[1735]. In 1514 the King gave £10 to Dr. Standisshe and the Friars Minors for charges at the general chapter to be holden at Bridgwater[1736]. The next year the friar was in debt to the extent of 100 marcs[1737]. Standish was probably at this time warden of the Grey Friars of London[1738]. The time during which he was Provincial Minister cannot be determined[1739]. In 1515 he attended a council of divines and temporal lords summoned by the King to consider a sermon preached by Richard Kidderminster, Abbat of Winchcombe, on benefit of clergy. The Abbat maintained that a recent act which deprived ‘murderers, robbers of churches, and housebreakers’ of their clergy if they were not in holy orders, was contrary to the law of God and the liberties of the Church. The Franciscan doctor defended the act, arguing that ‘it was not against the liberty of the Church, because it was for the weal of the whole realm.’ Soon afterwards he was summoned to answer for his opinion before Convocation. He appealed to the King, and Henry quickly brought the bishops to submission by an assertion of the royal supremacy and a threat of _praemunire_[1740]. Standish thus won the goodwill of the court; he possessed the confidence of the people. The feeling against foreign traders was now very bitter in London, and in 1517 one John Lincoln, acting as spokesman of the citizens, urged the warden of the Franciscans ‘to take part with the commonalty against the strangers’ in a sermon he was to deliver on Easter Monday[1741]. Standish refused, wisely, as the event showed; for an inflammatory sermon the next day resulted in a serious riot. In 1518 Standish obtained the bishopric of St. Asaph by royal influence, in spite of the opposition of Wolsey[1742]. In 1524 he was sent as royal ambassador to Denmark[1743]. In 1528 he was one of the ‘counsellors appointed for the hearing of poor men’s causes in the King’s Court of Requests’[1744]. His administration of his diocese was not altogether blameless. His Vicar-General, Sir Robert ap Rice, was indicted for extortions on the King’s tenants in 1533, and relatives of Sir Robert had, three years previously, been indicted for maintaining thieves and had not yet been punished[1745].