The outline shews us the effigy of the Archbishop _in pontificalibus_, with mitre and pastoral staff. He stands under a rich canopy with pinnacles and finials, supported on long buttresses that extend down to the base of the composition. Below his feet there was evidently a square panel which probably contained the "confabulatorie epitaph" seen and copied by Weever. Around the edge of the stone is a ledger-line, that probably had the emblems of the Evangelists at the angles. The Archbishop's gravestone has shared the common fate accorded to all the brass-inlaid stones, that doubtless formerly thickly adorned the pavement of the cathedral, but of which not a single undespoiled example now remains. On a boss in the vaulting immediately above, are the prelate's arms, being those of the See of Canterbury, impaling, _Or, on a chevron gules, a mitre argent, within a bordure engrailed sable_ (STAFFORD OF SUTHWYKE, _with difference_). Weever,[34] thus speaks of the Archbishop.-- [34] Edition, 1631. "Here (Canterbury Cathedral) lies interred in the Martyrdome an Archbishop, very noble, and no lesse learned, one of the honourable familie of the _Staffords_; sonne (saith the Catalogue of Bishops) vnto the Earle of Stafford, but I finde no such thing in all the Catalogues of Honour; a man much favoured by King _Henry_ the fifth, who preferred him first to the Deanrie of Wells, gave him a Prebend in the Church of Salisbury, and made him one of his privie Councell, and in the end Treasurer of England. And then although this renowned King was taken away by vntimely death, ye hee still went forward in the way of promotion, and obtained the Bishopricke of Bath and Welles, which with great wisedome hee governed eighteene yeares, from whence he was removed to this of Canterbury, in which he sate almost nine yeares; and in the meanetime was made Lord Chancellour of England, which office hee held eighteene years (which you shall hardly finde any other man to have done) vntill wearie of so painfull a place, he voluntarily resigned it over into the King's hands. And about three yeares after that died at Maidstone July 6. _Ann_: 1452. Vpon a flat marble stone over him I find this confabulatorie Epitaph:-- =Quis fuit enuclees quem celas saxea moles? Stafford Antistes fuerat dictusque Johannes. Qua sedit sede marmor queso simul ede? Pridem Bathonie. Regni totius et inde Primas egregius. Pro presule funde precatus Aureolam gratus huic det de Virgine natus.=" Of the Archbishop's public career as Metropolitan and Lord Chancellor, this belongs rather to the province of national history, and is altogether too extensive for even short notice here, it has been amply treated by Dean Hook in his _Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury_. Lord Campbell in his _Lives of the Chancellors_ thus speaks of Stafford in that capacity,--