Had the original party of monks accompanying St. Augustine in the Summer of 596 had their way, they would have turned back in France and never set foot in England. But once established, the Archbishops soon began what was to be a fatal partnership with the Crown. William Warham lost the battle to keep the English Church out of Henry VIII’s greedy, destructive fingers, Thomas Cranmer was burned at the stake, and William Laud beheaded. The Archbishops of Canturbury is not so much a history of the Church of England as a personal survey of the men who have led it for 1400 years—the decisive, the weak, the admirable, and the odd.