182 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
[No. 12. 
place of execution; a curious record of which is 
preserved in the library of Corpus Christi College, 
at Cambridge, and introduced by Brady inte his 
history of the period. About the same time, a 
icture or image of him seems to have been ex- 
hibited in St. Paul’s Church, in London, and to 
have been the object of many offerings. A spe- 
eial proclamation was issued, denouncing this 
veneration of the memory of a traitor, and threaten- 
ing punishment on those who encouraged it; and 
a statement is given by Brady of the opinions of 
an ecclesiastic, who thought it very doubtful how 
far this devotion should be encouraged by the 
Church, the Earl of Lancaster, besides his poli- 
tical offences, having been a notorious evil-liver. 
As soon, however, as the King’s party was sub- 
dued, and the unhappy sovereign, whose acts and 
habits had excited so much animosity, cruelly put 
to death, we find not only the political character 
of the Earl of Lancaster vindicated, his attainder 
reversed, his estates restored to his family, and his 
adherents re-established in all their rights and 
liberties, but within five weeks of the accession of 
Edward the Third, a special mission was sent to 
the Pope from the King, imploring the appoint- 
ment of a commission to institute the proper 
canonical investigation for his admission into the 
family of saints. His character and his eause are 
described, in florid language, as having been those 
of a Christian hero; and the numberless miracles 
wrought in his name, and the confluence of pil- 
grims to his tomb, are presumed to justify his 
invocation. 
In June of the same year (1327), a “king’s 
letter” is given to Robert de Weryngton, autho- 
rising him and his agents to collect alms through- 
out the kingdom for the purpose of building a 
chapel on the hill where the Earl was beheaded, 
and praying all prelates and authorities to give 
him aid and heed. This sanction gave rise to 
imposture; and in December a proclamation ap- 
peared, ordering the arrest and punishment of 
unauthorised persons collecting money under this 
pretence, and taking it for their own use. 
Tn 1336, the same clerical personages were sent 
again to the Pope, to advance the affair of the 
eanonization of the Earl, and were beurers of 
letters on the same subject from the King to five 
of the cardinals, all urging the attention of the 
Papal court to a subject that so much interested 
the Church and people of England, 
Tt would seem, however, that some powerful 
opposition to this request was at work at the 
Roman see. For in the April of the following 
year another commission, composed of a professor 
of theology, a military personage, and a magistrate 
of the name of John de Newton, was sent with 
letters to the Pope, to nine cardinals, to the 
refendary of the Papal court, and to three ne- 
phews of his Holiness, entreating them not to give 
ear to the invectives of malignant men (“com-~ 
menta fictitia maliloquorum”), who here asserted 
that the Earl of Lancaster consented to, or con- 
nived at, some injury or insult offered to certain 
cardinals at Durham in the late king’s reign. So 
far from this being true, the letters assert that 
the Earl defended these prelates to the utmost of 
his power, pretected them from enemies who had 
designs on their lives, and placed them im security 
at his own great peril. The main point of the 
Canonization 3s again urged, and allusion made to 
former repeated supplications, and the sacred 
promise, ‘Knock, and it shail be opened unto 
you,” appealed to. The vindication of the Earl 
from the malicious charge against him is omitted 
in the letters to two of the cardinals and the lay 
personages. Were these the two cardinals who 
fancied themselves injured ? 
This, then, is all I can discover in the ordinary 
historical channels respecting this object of an- 
cient public reverence in England. ‘The chapel 
was constructed and officiated in till the dissolu- 
tion of the monasteries; the image in St. Paul’s 
was always regarded with especial affection; and 
the cognomen of Saint Thomas of Lancaster was 
generally accepted and understood. 
Five hundred years after the execution of the 
Karl of Lancaster, a large stone coffin, massive 
and roughly hewn, was found in a field that be- 
longed of old to the Priory of Pomfret, but at 
least a quarter of a mile distant from the hill 
where the chapel stood. Within was the skeleton 
of a full-grown man, partially preserved ; the skull 
lay between the thighs. There is no record of 
the decapitation of any person at Pomfret of 
sufficient dignity to have been interred in a man- 
ner showing so much eare for the preservation of 
the body, except the Earl of Lancaster. The 
coffin may have been removed here at the time the 
opposite party forbade its veneration, from motives 
of precaution for its safety. 
Now, I shall be much obliged for information 
on the following points : — 
Ts any thing known, beyond what I have stated, 
as to the communications with Rome on the sub- 
ject of his canonization, or as to the means by 
which he was permitted by the English Church to 
become a fit object for invocation and venera- 
tion ? 
What are the chief historical grounds that en- 
deared his memory to the Church or the people ? 
The compassion for his signal fall can hardly 
account for this, although a similar motive was 
sufficient to bring to the tomb of Edward IL, in 
Gloucester Cathedral, an amount of offerings that 
added considerably to the splendonr of the 
edifice. ; 
Are any anecdotes or circumstances recorded, 
respecting the worship of this saint in later times, 
than I have referred to ? 
