50 Katharine Swynford 



Neville (1458). Courtenay was born about 1342, and his defect 

 in age was made up by a papal bull of Aug. 17, 1369, so that he 

 was consecrated Bishop of Hereford in the following July.^" 

 Arundel, who eventually became Archbishop of Canterbury 

 (1396), was born in 1353, being own cousin to Blanche. John of 

 Gaunt's fir^t wife. Gregory XI conferred upon him the bishopric 

 of Ely on Aug. 13, 1373, when he was 20 years old, though he 

 was not consecrated till 1374. The Pope wrote him" on Aug. 

 29, 1373^^ : 'No one so young has been appointed to a see. The 

 Pope has done this at the request of your father, Richard, Earl 

 of Arundel, whose example in defending ecclesiastical liberties 

 the Pope exhorts you to follow.' Robert Neville (1404-1457), 

 a nephew of Arundel, was made Bishop of Salisbury by papal 

 provision in 1427,^^ and received a special dispensation 'super 

 defectum setatis.'** George Neville, nephew of Robert, was born 

 before Dec. 21 (probably before Dec. 3), 1432, since Nicholas V 

 had required him to complete his twenty-second year before he 

 should be ordained priest,*^ and this occurred on Dec. 21, 1454. 

 He was consecrated Bishop of Exeter on Dec. 3, 1458, Calixtus 

 HI having insisted, three years before, that he should first reach 

 his twenty-seventh year.'*^ 



We have, then, these four instances in which the Pope makes 

 an exception, once confessedly at the intercession of a relative; 

 in the second he notes the exception in a letter to the bishop 

 designate, and in the others there is a formal dispensation. In 

 still another case, the Pope declines to accede to the request, 

 though the candidate is apparently related to the Earl of War- 

 wick, and Edward III, his sponsor, is at the summit of his power. 

 With respect to Henry Beaufort, there is no hint of a dispensa- 

 tion, though, as Walsingham and the author of the Annales 



*°Dict. Nat. Biog. 12. 342-3. 



" Papal Letters 4. 129. 



^^ Ten years before (Nov. 28, 1363), Urban V had written to Edward 

 III, declining to appoint Philip Beauchamp to the see of Bath and Wells, 

 as being under age — presumably the canonical age — and therefore unfit 

 for the episcopate (Papal Letters 4. 5). 



" Cf. Papal Letters 8. 209. 



**Dict. Nat. Biog. 40. 300. 



*^ Papal Letters lO. 717-8. 



*^ Diet. Nat. Biog. 40. 253. 



