[A.D. 1216-1219.] Hugh de Mapenore, Dean of Hereford.
[A.D. 1219-1234.] Hugh Foliot, Archdeacon of Salop; founded and endowed a hospital at Ledbury.
[A.D. 1234-1239.] Ralph of Maidstone, “vir magnæ literaturæ, et in theologia nominatissimus,” according to Wyke the chronicler. He bought for the see a house in London, together with the advowson of the adjoining church, St. Mary Monthalt. In 1239 Bishop Ralph resigned his see, and became a Franciscan at Oxford, whence he afterwards passed to the house of the Franciscans at Gloucester, where he died.
[A.D. 1240-1268.] Peter d’Acquablanca, whose fine tomb remains in the cathedral, (Pt. I. § XIII.,) was one of the intruding “foreigners” by whom England was oppressed during the long reign of Henry III., and whose exactions and tyranny were among the chief causes of the rising of the barons under Simon de Montfort. Like the contemporary Archbishop of Canterbury, Boniface, Bishop Peter was a native of Savoy, and had come to England in the train of William of Valence. He obtained the see of Hereford in opposition to a canon of Lichfield,—“vir per omnia commendabilis,” says Matthew Paris,—who had been elected by the canons; but the King affected none but strangers. In 1250 Bishop Peter took the cross, and went, under the banner of the King of France, to the Holy Land. He returned in 1258, bringing letters, which are said to have been forged, but which professed to be those of the Pope, Innocent IV., commanding all religious houses to grant a tenth of their property toward the crusade. During his absence (in 1257) he spent large sums in endeavouring to procure for himself the see of Bordeaux, when the death of the Archbishop had been reported. But after the money had been spent, the Archbishop of Bordeaux proved to be still alive, and the unfortunate Bishop Peter became, says Paris, the subject of infinite jests. In 1263, with other “foreigners,” he was expelled from England; but he returned to the country, though not to his diocese, in the following year, when Henry III. reprimands him by letter, saying, that “coming to Hereford to take order for the disposing the garrisons in the marches of Wales, he found in the church of Hereford neither bishop, dean, vicar, or other officer to discharge the spiritual functions, and that the church and ecclesiastical establishment was in a state of ruin and decay[49].” The Bishop was soon afterwards in Hereford, where he was taken by Simon de Montfort, who seized all his wealth, and imprisoned Bishop Peter in “Ordelay” [Urdley] Castle. He died in 1268, leaving behind him no good reputation, although he had bought the manor of Holme Lacy for the cathedral, and left money for the annual distribution of much corn to the clergy of his church and to the poor. He founded a monastery at his birthplace, Aquabella, or Aquablanca, in Savoy, where his heart was conveyed for entombment, and where a monument with an inscription still remains. His body was interred in his own cathedral, under the canopied tomb already noticed.
[A.D. 1269-1275.] John Breton; has usually been considered the author of a treatise De Juribus Anglicanis, and is described by Sir Edward Coke as “a man of great and profound judgment in the common laws, an excellent ornament to his profession, and a satisfaction and solace to himself.” Selden, however, proved that the treatise contains references to statutes passed long after the death of Bishop Breton; and Bishop Nicholson suggests, with much probability, that the true writer of the abstract was a “John Breton,” one of the king’s justices (together with Ralph and Roger de Hengham) in the first year of Edward II.
[A.D. 1275-1282.] Thomas Cantilupe, who succeeded, was the last Englishman canonized before the Reformation. He was the son of William Lord Cantilupe, and his wife Millicent, Countess of Evreux. The future bishop and saint was educated at Oxford and at Paris, and after being made Chancellor of the former University, became Chancellor of England under Henry III. in 1265. He was, moreover, a clerical pluralist of the first order, being at once canon and chantor of York, archdeacon and canon of Lichfield and Coventry, canon of London, canon of Hereford, and archdeacon of Stafford. It is possible, however, that as in the case of Bishop Walter de Merton, who held the great seal immediately before Cantilupe, the King may have found no more ready means of paying his great officer than by such preferments. In 1275 he became bishop of Hereford. His episcopate was not a tranquil one. He vigorously maintained the rights of his see against both Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, and John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, the latter of whom insisted on the visitation of Bishop Cantilupe’s diocese, as his metropolitan; a claim which the archbishops were then vigorously prosecuting. After a long dispute, Peckham solemnly excommunicated the refractory Bishop of Hereford, who at once proceeded to Rome, to lay his case before the Pope, Martin IV. There is reason to believe, however, that as an excommunicated person he could obtain from the Pope nothing more than “the promise of a quick despatch and removal of delays;” and that he only received absolution in the hour of his death, which occurred near Orvieto, August 23, 1282. Richard Swinfield, his successor in the see of Hereford, who had accompanied Bishop Cantilupe to Italy, proceeded, probably at his own request, to separate the flesh of his body from the bones by boiling. The flesh was interred in the church of Santo Severo, near Orvieto; the heart was conveyed to the monastic church of Ashridge in Buckinghamshire, founded by Edmund, Earl of Cornwall; and the bones were brought to his own cathedral at Hereford. As they were being conveyed into the church, says the compiler of the Bishop’s “Life and Gests,” Gilbert Earl of Gloucester approached and touched the casket which contained them, whereupon they “bled afresh.” The Earl was struck with compunction, and made full restitution to the Church of all the lands which Bishop Cantilupe had rightly claimed from him.
Swinfield, who had been the constant companion of Cantilupe, and many of the contemporary chroniclers, bear witness to the purity and excellence of the Bishop’s life, and his tomb soon became distinguished by miracles. The first of these, according to the annalist of Worcester, occurred in April, 1287; at the time, apparently, of the removal of his remains from the tomb in the Lady-chapel to the shrine which had been provided for them in the north transept. The number of marvels increased daily; for, “superstition,” in Fuller’s words, “is always fondest of the youngest saint;” and in 1289, Bishop Swinfield, who had brought Cantilupe’s bones from Italy, wrote to the Pope requesting his canonization. Many difficulties, however, were interposed; and in spite of numerous letters from Edward I. and his son Edward II., it was not until May, 1320, that the bull of canonization was issued by Pope John XXII.[50] It is possible that the excommunication of Cantilupe, and his connection with the Knights Templars, of which Order he was Provincial Grand Master in England, were among the causes of the delay. The Templars were arrested throughout England in 1307; condemned in 1310; and in 1312 the Order was finally dissolved in the Council of Vienne.
A book entitled “The Life and Gests of Saint Thomas Cantilupe,” said to be compiled from evidences at Rome, collected before his canonization, was published at Ghent in 1674. “No fewer than four hundred and twenty-five miracles,” says Fuller, “are registered, reported to be wrought at his tomb.... Yea, it is recorded in his legend, that by his prayers were raised from death to life three-score several persons, one-and-twenty lepers healed, and three-and-twenty blind and dumb men to have received their sight and speech[51].”
The arms of Cantilupe—Gules, three leopards’ heads jessant, with a fleur-de-lis issuing from the mouth, or—have since his canonization been assumed as those of the see of Hereford.
[A.D. 1283-1317.] Richard Swinfield, a native of Swinfield in Kent, from which place he is said to have transported a small colony of Kentish men to Herefordshire, laboured throughout his episcopate to procure the canonization of his predecessor, which was not effected until 1320. Bishop Swinfield, however, translated the remains of St. Thomas Cantilupe to the new transept in 1287; and besides this transept, the clerestory and upper portion of the choir, the central tower above the roof, and the eastern transept as it now exists, were either completed, or were in progress during his episcopate. A curious roll of the household expenses of this Bishop for the years 1289-1290 has been edited for the Camden Society, with some very interesting annotations, by the Rev. John Webb.