ts to collect alms
throughout 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 appeared, ordering the
arrest and punishment of unauthorised persons collecting money under
this pretence, and taking it for their own use.

In 1330, the same clerical personages were sent again to the Pope,
to advance the affair of the canonization of the Earl, and were
bearers 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.

It 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 referendary of the Papal court, and to three nephews of his
Holiness, entreating them not to give ear to the invectives of
malignant men ("commenta fictitia maliloquorum"), who here asserted
that the Earl of Lancaster consented to, or connived 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, protected them
from enemies who had designs on their lives, and placed them in
security at his own great peril. The main point of the canonization
is again urged, and allusion made to former repeated supplications,
and the sacred promise, "Knock, and it shall 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 ancient public reverence in
England. The chapel was constructed and officiated in till the
dissolution of the monasteries; the image in St. Paul's was always
regarded with special affection; and the cognomen of _Saint_ Thomas
of Lancaster was generally accepted and understood.

Five hundred years after the execution of the Earl of Lancaster, a
large stone coffin,