81 
giving his long-trusted friend the Earl strict instructions 
regarding him. When Edward II. was crowned, it was the 
Earl of Lincoln who bore the Sword of State ; and in 1310 
it was the Earl who was Justiciar of the kingdom during the 
king’s absence in Scotland. 
But de Lad’s own life was drawing to a close. He spent 
his last Christmas at Kingston Lacey in Dorset, returned 
to London to his house by Holborn soon afterwards, and 
died “at cock- crowing ” on the 5th February, 1311, aged 
60 years. He was buried at St. Paul’s, in the crypt, with 
great pomp and ceremony, as one of the greatest men of his 
time, as a pious benefactor to the church, and as a munificent 
contributor to the extension of the cathedral in which he 
was laid to rest. Though the St. Paul’s of that time was 
afterwards wholly destroyed by the great fire of 1666, an 
engraving of the tomb and inscription existed, a photographic 
slide of which the Lecturer had been favoured to secure 
and to exhibit for the first time. 
The public life of such a man as this, in the greatest century 
of the Middle Ages, could not be traced without admiration, 
and a sense of pride that he was for so long intimately associated 
with Burnley and the district around. 
