Tales of English Minsters: Hereford

by Elizabeth W. Grierson

It was not only with the English Barons that the Bishop had differences, he had them with the Pope himself, when he thought that the rights of the Church of England were being tampered with; and it was when he was returning from Rome after having been to the Pope about one of those differences, that he died in Italy, on August 25, 1282.

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HEREFORD CATHEDRAL: TOMB OF BISHOP CANTILUPE.

His desire was that his bones should be laid to rest in his own Cathedral Church in far-away England, so, as it was an almost impossible task to convey a dead body across Europe in those days, do you know what his followers did? They boiled his body, until the flesh separated from the bones; then they buried the flesh in the Church of St. Severus near Florence, and the bones, which were now quite easy to carry, they brought to Hereford, and buried them in the Lady-chapel. They were afterwards removed to a little chapel known as the Chapel of St. Catherine, and at last this beautiful shrine was prepared for them, and they were placed inside.

Not very far from the shrine of Thomas de Cantilupe, on the east wall of the transept, there are two tablets, one above the other, which I think you would like to look at, for they tell a very curious and pathetic story.

As you see, they have both been placed there in memory of the same man, Captain Arkwright, but not at the same time. For if you read the inscriptions you will see that one of them is thirty-one years older than the other.

Captain Arkwright was a young soldier who was very fond of Alpine-climbing; and on October 13, 1866, he set out to try to ascend Mont Blanc. He never returned, for he was caught in an avalanche, and swept away out of sight. Although careful search was made, his body could not be found, and after a time all hope of ever finding it was given up, and this topmost tablet was erected to his memory.

Thirty-one years passed by, and those of his friends who were alive had become elderly men and women, and I suppose his memory had grown a little dim to them, when strange news came from the little village of Chamonix, which lies at the foot of the great White Mountain.

You all know what a glacier is? A river of ice which moves very very slowly down the side of a snow mountain, but which comes at last to the region where the air is so warm that it melts, and runs away down into the valley in a torrent of muddy water.