English School, circa 1580

Edmund Grindal was in office during the reigns of Edward VI and Elizabeth I, having sought refuge on the Continent with other Protestant exiles during the reign of Mary I. He was educated in Cambridge at the colleges of Magdalene, Christ's and Pembroke, at the latter of which he was elected a fellow in 1538. Nicholas Ridley, who had been Master at Pembroke, made Grindal one of his chaplains when he became Bishop of London, and also gave him the precentorship of St Paul's Cathedral. Grindal was not long thereafter promoted to be one of Edward VI's chaplains, and was nominated to be Bishop of London in June 1553, but Mary's accession to the throne in October of that year put paid to this.

Having stayed in Strasbourg and Frankfurt for six years, Grindal returned to England on 15 January 1559, the day of Elizabeth I's coronation. In July he was elected Master of Pembroke, and later that year belatedly created Bishop of London. In London, Grindal was faced with criticism both for his moderate treatment of nonconformists and Catholics, and for his Puritan concerns over what he saw as ‘popery’ in the form of vestments and the use of wafer bread for Holy Communion. In 1570, however, he became Archbishop of York, and while there was recommended for the appointment of Archbishop of Canterbury, including by Edmund Spenser, who described him as ‘a Shepherd great in Gree’ [grace or gentleness].¹

Grindal was made Archbishop of Canterbury on 26 July 1575. In subsequent years, during which the present portrait was painted, he would have disagreements with Elizabeth I over the subject of ‘prophesyings’, unauthorised meetings for study, prayer and preaching, which she wanted him to discourage. Grindal responded with a bold letter stating that the queen's authority over ecclesiastical matters was not equal to that of God, and his duty was ultimately to Him, rather than the sovereign. These disputes led to Grindal being suspended from his jurisdictional, though not spiritual, duties in June 1577, and their conflict persisted until he was reinstated in 1582, followed shortly by his death in 1583.

A number of other portraits of Grindal are known, a few of which are also dated 1580, including the painting at Lambeth Palace, signed ‘De Vos’.²

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¹ E. Spenser, Shepheardes Calender VII: Julye, 1579.

² https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/edmund-grindall-c-15191583-archbishop-of-canterbury-87127; for other portraits, see J. Ingamells, The English Episcopal Portrait 1559–1835, London 1981, pp. 203–5.