The Archbishop was both bishop of the diocese of York, and head of all the dioceses which together formed the Northern Province of the two provinces into which England was divided for the purpose of Church rule.  His diocese formerly extended so far south as to include Nottingham and Southwell.

The Archbishop was a Primate and occupied a high position in the State.  Besides being supreme head of the Church in the northern province, he was a great landowner.  He possessed, besides his palace near the Minster, a number of seats (like Cawood Castle) in the country.  When he was in London he resided at his fine official palace, York House.  The Archbishops were great lords of the realm in every way.  Archbishop Neville, brother of Warwick “the king-maker,” celebrated his installation in 1465 with a very famous feast.  The huge amount and delicacy of the dishes prepared, the number of retainers employed, the splendour of the scene, which was honoured by the presence of the Duke of Gloucester and members of some of the most noble families in the kingdom, all the details of this sumptuous feast, were intended to impress King Edward IV. with the might of the Nevilles.

Ecclesiastical preferment was often a reward for services in other branches of the service of the State.  Sometimes great offices in the Church and the State were held simultaneously.  Thus, Archbishop Rotherham was also Chancellor of England for a time.  Both Richard Scrope and William Booth, archbishops of the century, had been lawyers.  The appointment of George Neville, who had been nominated when only twenty-three to the see of Exeter, was a purely political one, the bestowing of a high and lucrative office on a member of a noble family that was enjoying the full sunshine of popularity and power.  The King could also benefit from Church positions otherwise than by presenting them to partisans.  During the two and a half years that the see of York was kept vacant between the time of the execution of Archbishop Scrope and the appointment of Henry Bowett (in 1407), the revenues went, in accordance with the established practice, to the royal purse.

There were also “clerks,” educated men, but not priests, who were in “minor orders.”  Many a man, asserting that he was a clerk, made application for trial by an ecclesiastical court, so as to get the benefit of the less stringent judgment of the Church courts, to which belonged the right of dealing with ecclesiastical offenders.

One abuse within the Church was pluralism, that is, the holding of more than one office at the same time with the result that the holder was drawing revenue for work he could not himself do.  William Sever, for instance, while Abbot of St. Mary’s, York, became Bishop of Carlisle.  These two high offices, one monastic and the other secular, he held simultaneously from 1495 to 1502.