Early life
A Son of the Fitzalans
Thomas Arundel was born in 1353, a younger son of Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, one of the richest nobles in England. Family power opened every door. He studied at Oxford, and in 1373, at about twenty, he was named bishop of Ely, years below the age the church's law required. He held Ely for fifteen years, then became archbishop of York in 1388 and archbishop of Canterbury in 1396.
He was as much a statesman as a churchman. He served as Lord Chancellor of England five times, first in 1386, when a council of lords that included his brother, the earl, took control of the government from the young Richard II.
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