cclesiastical estate.

A more distinct challenge to the Church was provoked by a further
aggression of Peckham in 1281. In that year the primate summoned a
council at Lambeth, wherein he sought to withdraw from the cognisance of
the civil courts all suits concerning patronage and the disposition of
the personal effects of ecclesiastics. To extend the jurisdiction of the
_forum ecclesiasticum_ was the surest way of exciting the hostility of
the common lawyers and the king. Once more Edward annulled the
proceedings of a council, and once more the submission of Peckham saved
the land from a conflict which might have assumed the proportions of
Becket's struggle against Henry II. Four years later Edward pressed his
advantage still further by the royal ordinance of 1285, called
_Circumspecte agatis_, which, though accepting the supremacy of the
Church courts within their own sphere, narrowly defined the limits of
their power in matters involving a temporal element. Again Peckham was
fain to acquiesce. His policy had not only irritated the king, but
alienated his fellow bishops. He visited his province with pertinacity
and minuteness, and he was the less able to stand up against the king as
he was engaged in violent quarrels with all his own suffragans. The
leader of the bishops in resisting his claims was Thomas of Cantilupe.
Restored to England by the liberal policy of Edward, Montfort's
chancellor after Lewes had been raised to the see of Hereford, where his
sanctity and devotion won him the universal love of his flock. Involved
in costly lawsuits with the litigious primate, Thomas was forced to
leave his diocese to plead his cause before the papal _curia_. He died
in Italy in 1282, and his relics, carried back by his followers to his
own cathedral, won the reputation of working miracles. A demand arose
for his canonisation, and Edward before his death had secured the
appointment of the papal commission, which, a few years later, added St.
Thomas of Hereford to the list of saints.[1] Thus the chancellor of
Montfort obtained the honour of sanctity through the action of the
victor of Evesham.

[1] The _processus canonisationis_ of Cantilupe, printed in the
Bollandist _Acta Sanctorum_, Oct. 1, 539-705, illustrates many
aspects of this period.

The second Welsh war interrupted both the conflict between Edward and
the archbishop, and the course of domestic legislation. Yet even in the
midst of his campaigns Edward