After holding some minor appointments he was consecrated
Bishop of Worcester on 15 May 1434. In the same year of 1434 he was
Chancellor of the
University of Oxford, and in 1443 was appointed
Bishop of Ely. In April 1454 he was made
Archbishop of Canterbury, and became Lord Chancellor of England in March 1455. Bourchier's short term of office as chancellor coincided with the start of the
Wars of the Roses, and at first he was not a strong
partisan, although he lost his position as chancellor when
Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, was deprived of power in October 1456. In 1458 he helped to reconcile the contending parties as part of
The Love Day, but when the war was renewed in 1459 he had become a decided
Yorkist. He crowned Duke Richard's son
Edward Plantagenet, 4th Duke of York as King
Edward IV in June 1461, and four years later he crowned Edward's queen,
Elizabeth Woodville. In 1457 Bourchier took the chief part in the trial for heresy of
Reginald Pecock,
Bishop of Chichester. In 1473 he was created a cardinal, not after some delay as this honour had been sought for him by King Edward IV in 1465. In 1475 he was one of the four arbitrators appointed to arrange the details of the
Treaty of Picquigny between England and France. After the death of King Edward IV in 1483 Bourchier persuaded the queen to allow her younger son,
Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York, to join his elder brother King
Edward V in (supposedly protective) residence in the
Tower of London. Although Bourchier had sworn, before his father's death, to be faithful to King
Edward V, he nevertheless crowned King
Richard III in July 1483. The third English king crowned by Bourchier was King
Henry VII (1485–1509), whom he also married to
Elizabeth of York in January 1486. ==Death and burial==