Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford Part 11

In a quarrel arising out of a matrimonial case, in which the defendant appealed to Canterbury against a sentence of the sub-dean of Hereford, he was at last excommunicated by the Archbishop for refusing to go to discuss the affair with him at Lambeth. At Rome he obtained a favourable decree, but died in Tuscany on the homeward journey.

As already described, his remains were finally laid with great pomp in the Lady Chapel.

Five years later the bones of Bishop Cantilupe were moved to the Chapel of St. Katherine, in the north-west transept. Twice more were they moved, finally resting in the same Chapel of St. Katherine.

*Richard Swinfield*, A.D. 1283-1316, the next Bishop, had been Bishop Cantilupe's devoted chaplain. He kept wisely aloof from politics, but offered a keen resistance to any infringement on the rights of his diocese. Several boundary questions were settled by Bishop Swinfield, and in 1289-90 he made a tour through his diocese, of which has come down to us a journal of daily expenses.

Bishop Swinfield was the probable builder of the nave-aisles and two easternmost transepts. In his time the "_Mappa Mundi_" came into possession of the Chapter.

He worked hard to obtain the Canonisation of his ill.u.s.trious predecessor, but it was not till four years after his death that Pope John XXII.

granted an act for the purpose. He was buried in the cathedral.

*Adam Orleton*, A.D. 1316-1327, was a friend of Roger Mortimer, and consequently was opposed to Edward II. Throughout the struggle of those many miserable years the affairs of the diocese were dragged in the mire of civil war. It was the Bishop of Hereford who, at Neath Abbey, took the King, carried him to Kenilworth, and deprived him of the Great Seal. The Queen was staying at Hereford, and thither many of the King's adherents were taken with the Chancellor and Hugh Despenser. The last-named was hanged in the town, decapitated, and quartered.

Bishop Adam showed much ability in managing the affairs of the cathedral.

He obtained a grant of revenues of two churches from Pope John XXII. for monies necessary for the dedication of the Cantilupe shrine, and also for repairs in the cathedral. He was followed on his translation to Worcester by

*Thomas Charleton*, A.D. 1328-1343, who was made treasurer of England in 1329. In 1337 he went to Ireland as chancellor. He died in 1343.

*John Trilleck*, A.D. 1344-1360. The Black Death reached Herefordshire in 1349, and Bishop Trilleck is said to have kept it at bay in the city by a procession of the shrine of the recently canonised St. Thomas of Hereford.

Bishop Trilleck was buried in the cathedral, and a fine bra.s.s effigy was placed on his grave. "Gratus, prudens, pius" are among the words which may be still read from the mutilated inscription, and they appear to have had more justification than the rhetoric of the average epitaph.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOMB OF BISHOP THOS. CHARLETON.]

TOMB OF BISHOP THOS. CHARLETON.

*Lewis Charleton*, A.D. 1361-1369, was appointed by papal provision. The Black Death made a second visitation in the first year of his episcopate, and it was then that the market was removed to some distance from the town on the west. The "White Cross" there placed, which bears the arms of Bishop Charleton, may mark the spot. He bequeathed money and some books to the cathedral.

*William Courtenay*, A.D. 1370-1375, was also appointed by papal provision, which was necessary in consequence of his youth. Although he had already held a canonry of York and prebends in Exeter and Wells in addition to the Chancellorship of Oxford University, he was but twenty-eight years of age. At Oxford he had, with Wicliff, opposed the friars, though he afterwards turned against his former ally.

*John Gilbert*, A.D. 1375-1389, with partial success, went to make terms of peace with Charles VI., the French King. He became treasurer of England in 1386, an office of which he was deprived by Richard II. not long before his translation to St. David's. Bishop Gilbert founded the Cathedral Grammar School.

*Thomas Trevenant*, A.D. 1389-1404. An active politician, this Bishop a.s.sisted in the deposition of King Richard II., and was one of the commissioners to the Pope to announce the accession of Henry IV.

*Robert Mascall*, A.D. 1404-1416, was employed as a foreign amba.s.sador by Henry IV., who also made him his confessor. He attended the council of Constance in 1414.

*Edmund Lacy*, A.D. 1417-1420. This Bishop began to build the cloister connecting the cathedral with the Episcopal palace.

*Thomas Polton*, A.D. 1420-1421, was consecrated at Florence, and the next year was translated to Chichester.

*Thomas Spofford*, A.D. 1421-1448, Abbot of St. Mary's at York, to which post he returned on resigning his see in 1448. According to a papal bull he laid out 2,800 marks on the buildings of the cathedral,-probably completing the cloisters begun by Bishop Lacy. His pension on retiring was 100 per annum. The great west window of the cathedral was put up in his time by William Lochard.

*Richard Beauchamp*, A.D. 1448-1450. Son of Sir Walter, and grandson of Lord Beauchamp of Powick, he was a great architect in his day, although his chief work was done after his translation to Salisbury, when he was appointed by Edward IV. to superintend the works at Windsor which included the rebuilding of St. George's Chapel where he was buried. It is said he was the first Chancellor of the Order of the Garter.

*Reginald Buller*, A.D. 1450-1453, Abbot of St. Peter's, Gloucester, was translated to Lichfield. He was buried in Hereford Cathedral.

*John Stanberry*, A.D. 1453-1474, was a Carmelite friar at Oxford, and was chosen by King Henry VI. to be his confessor, and also first Provost of Eton. In 1448 he was made Bishop of Bangor, and five years later was translated to Hereford. After the battle of Northampton (July, 1460), he was taken prisoner and was incarcerated for some time in Warwick Castle.

On his release he retired to the convent of his order at Ludlow, where he died in May, 1474. He was buried at Hereford, near his own Chantry Chapel, which still bears his name. He gave land from the garden of the bishop's palace for building a dwelling-house for the vicars choral, which was completed in 1475.

*Thomas Mylling*, A.D. 1474-1492, the next Bishop, was Abbot of St.

Peter's, Westminster, where he had been a monk. King Edward IV. made him a Privy Councillor and gave him the see of Hereford in remembrance of his services to Elizabeth Woodville, whom he received into sanctuary when her husband had to fly to Holland. After his death his body was carried to Westminster, and the stone coffin is still there which is said to have enclosed his remains.

*Edmund Audley*, A.D. 1492-1502, a prebendary of Lichfield, of Lincoln, and of Wells, was Bishop of Rochester in 1480, translated to Hereford in 1492, and to Salisbury in 1502. The beautiful chantry chapel on the south side of the Lady Chapel, near the shrine of St. Thomas of Cantilupe, was founded by him. He also presented a silver shrine to the cathedral, and a pulpit at St. Mary's, Oxford, is said to be his gift.

*Adrian de Castello*, A.D. 1503-1504. He conducted the negotiations between Henry VII. and the Pope; and he was translated from Hereford to Bath and Wells, but never visited either see.

*Richard Mayhew*, A.D. 1504-1516, was made in 1480 the first regular president of Bishop Waynflete's new College of St. Mary Magdalene at Oxford. He was also Chancellor of the University, and almoner to King Henry VII., by whom he had been sent in 1501 to bring the Infanta Katharine of Aragon from Spain as the bride of Prince Arthur.

He was buried near the effigy of St. Ethelbert on the south side of the choir, where his tomb is still to be seen.

*Charles Booth*, A.D. 1516-1535, Archdeacon of Buckingham, and Chancellor of the Welsh Marches, left a lasting memorial in the north porch of the cathedral, which bears upon it the date of his death. He seems to have been much in the King's favour, and was summoned in 1520 to make one of the ill.u.s.trious company on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. He was attached to the company of Henry's "dearest wife, the queen," and was accompanied by thirty "tall personages."

On his death he left some books to the library, as well as a tapestry for the high altar; also to his successor a gold ring and other articles which have disappeared.

*Edward Foxe*, A.D. 1535-1538. This "princ.i.p.al pillar of the Reformation,"

as Fuller calls him, is said by Strype to have been "an excellent instrument" in its general progress.

A Gloucestershire worthy, having been born at Dursley in that county, he was sent first to Eton and then to Cambridge, becoming, in 1528, Provost of King's College. In 1531 he succeeded Stephen Gardiner as Archdeacon of Leicester. For many years almoner to the King, he was employed in emba.s.sies to France, Italy, and Germany, the most important of these diplomatic missions being in February, 1527, when he was sent to Rome with Gardiner to negotiate in the matter of Henry's separation from his "dearest wife."

Foxe first introduced Cranmer to the King; and he, again, wrote the book called _The Difference between the Kingly and the Ecclesiastical Power_, which Henry wished people to think he had partly written himself, intended, as it was, to make easier his a.s.sumption of ecclesiastical supremacy.

In August, 1536, Bishop Foxe began, by deputy, a visitation of the diocese for the valuation of all church property therein, in accordance with the order referred to above. Dr. Coren, his vicar-general, actually carried out the valuation, and its results are to be found in the pages of _Valor Ecclesiasticus_, printed by the Record Commissioners in 1802.

In March, 1535-6, an Act was pa.s.sed by Parliament granting to the King all religious houses possessing a revenue under 200 per annum. There were about eighteen houses in the diocese, excluding the cathedral, and of these only the priories of Wenlock, Wigmore, and Leominster possessed revenues exempting them from appropriation. Bishop Foxe died in London in May, 1538, and was buried in the Church of St. Mary Monthalt.

*John Skypp*, A.D. 1539-1552. The Archdeacon of Leicester, Edmund Bonner, was appointed to the see on Foxe's death, but was removed to London before his consecration, and John Skypp, Abbat of Wigmore, Archdeacon of Dorset, and chaplain and almoner to Ann Boleyn, became the next Bishop.

He was a.s.sociated with Cranmer, though, after Cromwell's execution for high treason in 1540, the Archbishop became distant towards him. He was the part compiler with Foxe of the _Inst.i.tution of a Christian Man_, published in 1537, of the _Erudition_ or _King's Book_, published in 1543, and was probably one of the committee employed to draw up the first Common Prayer-Book of Edward VI., in 1548, although, on its completion, he protested against its publication. He died in 1552 at the episcopal residence in London.

*John Harley*, A.D. 1553-1554, was appointed by Edward VI. to hold the see "during good behaviour." He was consecrated on May 26, 1553, but only to be deposed in March, 1554. Soon after Mary came to the throne, she appointed a commission of bishops to deprive the bishops appointed during the reign of her brother. On various charges, and especially on that of "inordinate life" (meaning marriage), the bishopric of Harley was declared void. He is said to have spent the remainder of his life wandering about in woods "instructing his flock, and administering the sacrament according to the order of the English book, until he died, shortly after his deposition, a wretched exile in his own land."

*Robert Parfew*, A.D. 1554-1557, also known as Wharton, was inst.i.tuted to the Hereford See at St. Mary's Church, Southwark, by Lord Chancellor Gardiner. He had been Abbat of St. Saviour's, Bermondsey, as well as Bishop of St. Asaph, attended the baptism of Prince Edward, and was one of those concerned in the production of the _Bishop's Book_. On his death, September 22, 1537, he bequeathed his mitre and other ornaments to Hereford Cathedral, though whether he was buried there or in Mold Church seems doubtful. The Dean of Exeter, Dr. Thomas Reynolds, was appointed to succeed him, but was imprisoned in the Marshalsea, on the accession of Elizabeth, before he had been consecrated, and died there in 1559. Fuller, in his _Church History of Britain_, remarks: "I take the Marshalsea to be, in those times, the best for the usage of prisoners, but O the misery of G.o.d's poor saints in Newgate, under Alexander the gaoler! More cruel than his namesake the coppersmith was to St. Paul; in Lollard's Tower, the Clink, and Bonner's Coal-house, a place which minded them of the manner of their death, first kept amongst coals before they were burnt to ashes."(10)

*John Scory*, A.D. 1559-1585, was translated from Chichester. On the accession of Mary, 1553, he is said to have done penance for his marriage, and generally reconciled himself with Rome, then to have withdrawn to Friesland and retracted his recantation, becoming superintendent to the English congregation there. When Elizabeth came to the throne he returned, preached before her by appointment in Lent, 1558, was restored to Chichester, and later on was elected to Hereford.

During his episcopate the persuasive Queen induced Bishop Scory to surrender to the Crown nine or ten of the best manors belonging to the see, and to receive in exchange advowsons and other less valuable possessions. In these transactions it is possible he thought more of his own interest than that of his successors; in any case, serious charges were brought against him in other ways. His steward b.u.t.terfield drops into verse on the subject. One of his stanzas runs:-

Then home he came unto our queene, the fyrst year of her raigne, And byshop was of Hereford, where he doth now remaine; And where hee hath by enemyes oft, and by false slanderous tongues, Had troubles great, without desert, to hys continuall wronges.

Bishop Scory was succeeded by *Harberd (or Herbert) Westphaling*, A.D.

1585-1601, Prebendary of Christ Church, Oxford: a man remarkable for the immoderate length of his speeches, his great integrity, and a profound and unsmiling gravity. He married a sister of the wife of Archbishop Parker, and before his election to Hereford was treasurer of St. Paul's and Dean of Windsor.

According to Sir John Harrington, Bishop Westphaling was once preaching in his cathedral when a ma.s.s of frozen snow fell upon the roof from the tower, creating a panic among the frightened congregration[**typo: congregation]. But the Bishop, remaining in his pulpit, exhorted them to keep their places and fear not. He spent all that he had in revenues from the see in charity and good works, leaving, says Fuller, "no great, but a well-gotten estate, out of which he bequeathed twenty pounds per annum to Jesus College in Oxford." He lies in the north transept of the cathedral, where his effigy can still be seen.

*Robert Bennett*, A.D. 1602-1617, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, was a famous tennis player.