Otford Palace Otford Palace Otford Palace, also known as the Archbishop's Palace, is in Otford, an English village and civil parish in the Sevenoaks District of Kent. The village is located on the River Darent, flowing north down its valley from its source on the North Downs. The King of Mercia, "Offa", fought the Kentish Saxons in 776 at the Battle of Otford. From those times until 1537, the palace was one of the chain of houses belonging to the archbishops of Canterbury. It was rebuilt around 1515 by Archbishop Warham to rival that of Cardinal Wolsey at Hampton Court. Henry VIII
Thomas Wolsey in London; thereby, Wolsey was asserting his independence of Rome. An alternative hypothesis is that Campeggio was kept waiting until Wolsey received his legacy, thus asserting Wolsey's attachment to Rome. Though the English gain from the wars of 1522–23 was minimal, their contribution certainly aided Charles in his defeat of the French, particularly in 1525 at the Battle of Pavia, where Charles' army captured the French king, Francis I. Henry then felt there was a realistic opportunity for him to seize the French crown, to which the kings of England had long laid claim. Parliament, however, refused to raise taxes.