264 



Edi n g do n Mo n aster?/. 



for the cape, one hundred and forty. 1 On the 19th February, 1357, 

 he was made Chancellor of England, on Archbishop Thoresby's 

 resignation. His signature stands first to the Treaty of Britanny, 

 by which the King resigned his pretensions to the throne of France. 

 In 1362 Edingdon carried through Parliament the statute by which 

 the English language was appointed to be used instead of French 

 in courts of law, and of Norman French in schools. On the death 

 of Simon Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, he was elected to the 

 Metropolitan See, 10th May, 1366, but refused to accept the dignity, 

 giving (so runs the tale) as the reason of his refusal, that " Canter- 

 bury was the higher rack, but Winchester the better manger. 33 In 

 the Bishop's antecedent history, however, there is nothing to justify 

 the idea that any motive of that kind would have deterred him from 

 taking the one remaining step to the summit of ecclesiastical rank. 

 It is more consistent with his character to suppose that either in- 

 firmity or years had warned him against undertaking any novel 

 burden; and that this was the cause becomes more probable from 

 the fact that his death took place a few months after the offer had 

 been made. 



Towards the latter part of his life he had commenced the re- 

 building of Winchester Cathedral. Milner, in his account of that 

 building, says, " It is incontestable, from his will, made and signed 

 in t}ie year of his decease, that he had actually begun and undertaken 

 to finish the re-building of the great nave of the Church, though, 

 he only lived to execute a small part of it. This consisted of the 

 two first windows from the great west window with the corresponding 

 buttresses and one pinnacle on the north side ; as likewise the first 

 window towards the west with the buttress and pinnacle on the 

 south side. The stalls of the choir are also said to be his work, and 

 his also was the mortuary chapel which bears his name. Within 

 the tenth arch, at the west end, adjoining to the steps leading to- 

 wards the choir [on the south side], is an ancient chantry, by no 



1 See Anstis, Order of the Garter. In 1363 (37 Ed. III.) against the Feast of 

 St. George he was allowed for a dress, a cloth of scarlet, a mantel of four hundred 

 and fifty-four ermine skins, a "furrura," or pelisse, of two hundred and forty- 

 four do., another of two hundred and seventy do., and a " cajpucium" requiring 

 one hundred and fifty-four do. (Wardrobe Rolls). 



