# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Winchelsea, Robert de

​WINCHELSEA, ROBERT de (d. 1313), archbishop of Canterbury, derived his name from Old Winchelsea in Kent, where he was probably born. He studied arts at Paris, where he took his master's degree, becoming rector of the university before 7 July 1267 (Denifle and Chatelain, Cartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, i. 468). He afterwards studied theology at Oxford, where he proceeded D.D., and was ​chancellor in 1288 (Wood, Fasti Oxon. p. 15, ed. Gutch). A confusion of him with a namesake, John Winchelsea, has led to the improbable assertion that he was a fellow of Merton College (Brodrick, Memorials of Merton Coll. pp. 197–8, Oxford Hist. Soc.). He enjoyed a great reputation as scholar and administrator both at Paris and Oxford (Birchington in Anglia Sacra, i. 12). He was appointed prebendary of Leighton Manor in Lincoln Cathedral, but his rights there were contested by the litigious Almeric of Montfort [q. v.] (Peckham's Letters, i. 90). Winchelsea gained the suit, and held the prebend until he became archbishop (Le Neve, Fasti Eccl. Angl. ii. 176, ed. Hardy). About 1283 Winchelsea was appointed archdeacon of Essex and prebendary of Oxgate in St. Paul's (ib. ii. 333–4, 420; Newcourt, Repertorium Ecclesiasticum Londin. i. 71, 190). He resided constantly and diligently visited his archdeaconry. He preached frequently and resumed the delivery of theological lectures in St. Paul's (Birchington, p. 12).
Peckham died on 8 Dec. 1292. The papacy was vacant, and for once there was a chance of a canonical election to Canterbury. On 22 Dec. Henry (d. 1331) [q. v.] of Eastry, prior of Christ Church, sought license to elect, and two of his monks visited Edward at Newcastle, whence they were sent back on 6 Jan. 1293 with the necessary permission. The election took place on 13 Feb., and was ‘per viam compromissi,’ a committee of seven being entrusted with making the appointment on behalf of the whole chapter (Wilkins, Concilia, ii. 189–90). Through Eastry's influence, and probably with Edward I's goodwill, Winchelsea was unanimously elected. The king gave his consent after three days (Birchington, p. 12), whereupon Winchelsea at once prepared to start off for Rome (cf. Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1292–1301, p. 7). He reached Rome on Whit-Sunday, 17 May. The papacy being still vacant, he was delayed at the curia more than a year before he could obtain confirmation and consecration. He made so good an impression on the cardinals that it was believed in England that he was thought of as a possible pope (Birchington, p. 12). At last the election of Celestine V terminated the long vacancy on 5 July 1294. The new pope thought so well of Winchelsea that he offered him a cardinalate, which Winchelsea refused. Despite the opposition of the Franciscans (Worcester Ann. p. 518), Celestine confirmed Winchelsea's election. On 12 Sept. he was consecrated bishop at Aquila, where the papal court then was (Wilkins, Concilia, ii. 198). He left Rome on 5 Oct., and travelled home by way of Germany, Brabant, and Holland, to avoid the territories of Philip the Fair, with whom Edward I was then at war. He reached Yarmouth on 1 Jan. 1295 (Worcester Ann. p. 518). Besides the sum of 142l. 19s. expended in England, his outlay at Rome had amounted to the huge sum of 2,500 marks (Somner, Antiq. of Cant. Appendix to Supplement, pp. 18–19). The proctors of the chapter had spent more than half as much besides.
Edward I was in North Wales suppressing the revolt of Madog ab Llywelyn [see Madog]. Winchelsea at once repaired to the royal camp at Conway, where on 4 Feb. the order for the restoration of his temporalities was issued (Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1292–1301, p. 129). On 6 Feb. Winchelsea excommunicated Madog (Concilia, ii. 203), and on 18 March he made his solemn entry into Canterbury, where he received the pallium. He was enthroned on Sunday, 2 Oct., in the presence of the king, Edward's brother and son, and a great gathering of clerks and magnates. The details of the ceremony were carefully recorded (‘Forma inthronizationis archiepiscopi VI Non. Oct. ab Henrico priore,’ &c., in Somner, i. 57–8).
A secular priest, canonically elected by an English chapter, Winchelsea was anxious from the beginning not to fall short of his two mendicant predecessors (Kilwardby and Peckham), whom the papacy had forced upon the English king and church. In personal holiness he was in no wise inferior to them, and he was probably their superior in ability. He continued to be assiduous in preaching. He attended the canonical hours as regularly as a monk. He frequently shut himself up for prayer and meditation, and, as his intimates suspected, for severe corporal discipline. His charity and almsgiving were magnificent. Many poor scholars partook of his bounty, and he was careful to reserve many of his best benefices for needy masters and bachelors of divinity. He was bountiful to the mendicant friars, though he sought to restrain them from exercising pastoral functions without the consent of the local clergy (Worcester Ann. p. 546; cf. however Concilia, ii. 257–64). He constantly distributed his rich garments to the poor, and never kept more than two robes for himself. He partook sparingly or not at all of the costly meats set before him, and habitually gave them away to the poor and sick, much to the disgust of his servants, who thought that coarser food would have sufficed for pauper needs. Yet he seldom gave way to the excesses of asceticism. He was cheerful in temperament, corpulent in body, a hard worker, and a good man of ​business. He was tenacious of his precedence and personal dignity on public occasions, but associated on terms of friendly equality with his clergy. He was affable, kind, and jocular. He hated flatterers, traitors, and prodigals. He rarely spoke to women save in confession ({sc|Birchington}}, pp. 12–14 collects, perhaps with too much desire for edification, his personal characteristics; cf. also Flores Hist. iii. 155, Chron. de Melsa, ii. 328; Monk of Malmesbury in Chron. Edw. I and Edw. II, ii. 192–3).
Winchelsea was an uncompromising churchman and a zealous upholder of the papal authority. Yet his love of power and influence was so great that it brought him into conflict with his clergy, his suffragans, many of the nobles, the king, and sometimes even with the pope. With longer English experience than Peckham, and the wider outlook of a secular priest, Winchelsea did not limit his interests so strictly to the ecclesiastical side of things as his predecessor. He thought it his business to protect nation and church alike. The growing difficulties in which Edward I's too ambitious policy had involved him enabled Winchelsea to combine with the purely ecclesiastical antagonism inherited by him from Peckham a strong political opposition to the king's policy.
Even before his enthronement Winchelsea had taken up his line. He summoned a council of his suffragans to meet on 15 July 1295 at the New Temple (Cotton, pp. 293–4; Concilia, ii. 215), and the proceedings of this body seemed to be a menace to the king. At the autumn parliament in London Edward on 28 Nov. personally pleaded with the clergy for a large war subsidy. Winchelsea offered him a tenth, which Edward rejected as inadequate. Strong pressure was brought to bear, but the archbishop made a merit of offering the tenth for a second year if the war still continued (Worcester Ann. p. 524). Next year Edward's embarrassments grew worse, while Winchelsea's position was strengthened by Boniface VIII issuing the bull clericis laicos, on 24 Feb. 1296, by which the clergy were forbidden to pay taxes to the secular authority. In November parliament met at Bury St. Edmund's, and the laity granted a liberal subsidy. Next day Winchelsea harangued the clerical estate in the chapter-house of the abbey. Admitting the reality of the danger from France, he urged the papal prohibition and the impoverishment of the clergy through former exactions, and denied that the clergy had promised any fresh tax (Cotton, pp. 314–15). At last he persuaded Edward to wait until January 1297 for the final answer. Meanwhile parliament broke up, and Winchelsea summoned a provincial convocation for 13 Jan. at St. Paul's, which took up the business that the clerical estate had evaded. Before this met on 5 Jan. Winchelsea by papal order published the bull clericis laicos in every deanery in England (Concilia, ii. 222; Cotton, p. 316).
Winchelsea opened convocation by a sermon. ‘We have two lords over us,’ he said, ‘the king and the pope, and, though we owe obedience to both, we owe greater obedience to the spiritual than to the temporal lord’ (Hemingburgh, ii. 116). The clergy therefore must find, if possible, a way intermediate between the subversion of the realm and disobedience to the pope. The clergy, though much divided, refused a general subsidy, and Edward threatened them with outlawry. Though individual clerks made personal gifts to the king, who announced his willingness to accept a fifth, Winchelsea remained firm, and kept the clergy as a body on his side. On 30 Jan. the sentence of outlawry was formally promulgated against the clergy by John of Metingham, the chief justice, in Westminster Hall. On 10 Feb. Winchelsea, who had gone to Canterbury for the consecration of John of Monmouth as bishop of Llandaff, preached to the people in the cathedral after the consecration, and then solemnly pronounced excommunicate all who in any wise trangressed the papal bull (Cotton, p. 320). On 12 Feb. Edward answered by ordering the sheriffs to take possession of the lay fees of all the clergy of the province of Canterbury. But within a fortnight the resistance of the baronage under Norfolk and Hereford at Salisbury further strengthened Winchelsea's position.
The strain was too great to last. Winchelsea, who had all through admitted the necessity of the war and the legitimacy of the king's demands for help, found it judicious not to press matters to extremity. On 7 March he persuaded Edward to suspend the execution of the edict confiscating their lay fees. He summoned another convocation for 24 March, but on its assembling the king sent to it six commissioners, who warned it not to attempt anything against his authority. Two Dominicans upheld the king's rights to raise war taxes (Flores Hist. iii. 100), and Winchelsea himself abandoned his heroic attitude. He kept the council from coming to any formal decision, but before it separated said, ‘I leave each and all of you to your own consciences. But my conscience does not allow me to offer money for the king's protection or on any other pretext’ (Worcester Ann. p. 351; cf. Flores Hist. iii. 101, ‘Unusquisque ani​mam suam salvet’). It was substantially a recommendation to each clerk to make his own terms of submission.
Winchelsea's estates remained in the king's hands for more than five months (Anglia Sacra, i. 51), during which he depended on charity for subsistence. Royal agents seized his horses at Maidstone and compelled him to travel on foot (Flores Hist. iii. 293). On 27 Feb. the king seized Christ Church and sealed up its storehouses to prevent the monks giving him any help (Birchington, i. 14–15; Hist. MSS. Comm. 5th Rep. i. 433). But even the clerical partisans who hailed Winchelsea as a second St. Thomas admitted that his worst sufferings resulted not from Edward's direct orders but from the officious zeal of the royal underlings. The king's self-restraint made a reconciliation the more easy, and Edward's wrath was over when most individual clerks had made their voluntary offering, and the baronage had agreed to fight for him beyond sea. On 14 July the reconciliation of church and state was publicly brought home to Londoners in the affecting scene of farewell enacted outside Westminster Hall. Winchelsea burst into tears at the king's appeal to the emotions of his subjects, and promised that he would be faithful to him in future (Flores Hist. iii. 295). Two days (14 July) afterwards Winchelsea summoned another convocation to deliberate as to the means of obtaining the pope's permission to pay the king a grant. On 19 July his lands and goods were restored.
Winchelsea now exerted himself to persuade the earls of Norfolk and Hereford to make terms with the king. On 27 July he had personal colloquy with the earls' agents at Waltham, and next day took them with him to see the king at St. Albans. It was no fault of his if the two earls held aloof. On 31 July Edward received the clergy back to his protection, and before his embarkation wrote to the archbishop begging his prayers for the success of the army.
On 10 Aug. Winchelsea opened convocation at London by informing it that the king had promised to confirm the charters if the clergy would make an adequate grant for the French war. The assembly agreed, however, that no grant could be made without obtaining the pope's leave, but promised the king to apply to Boniface at once. Curiously enough the bull of 28 Feb. 1297, by which the pope excepted from his prohibition all voluntary gifts and sums raised for national defence, was referred to by neither party in the discussion. But on 20 Aug. Edward, without waiting for a grant, ordered the immediate collection of a third of the clerical temporalities. On 23 Aug. he sailed for Flanders. The reconciliation, after all, was not very deep.
Despite Edward's prohibition, Winchelsea excommunicated the infringers of the liberties of the church. Meanwhile the baronial opposition was obtaining from the regency the long-promised confirmation of the charters. Winchelsea, who was present at the tumultuous parliament which preceded the baronial triumph, was in full sympathy with their action, though not taking a leading part in it himself. A devastating Scottish foray now made odious the unpatriotic attitude of the clergy. On 28 Nov. a new convocation granted a tenth, raised by each diocesan through clerical machinery. As Edward had not asked for a tax, and as the money was for occasions recognised by the bull of explanation, Winchelsea felt himself secure both from the king and the pope. On the same day the charters, which Edward had confirmed in London, were recited publicly and handed over to the custody of Winchelsea. Thus peace was at last restored.
Winchelsea's vigorous and successful resistance to Edward gave him a great reputation among all lovers of high clerical authority. Boniface VIII called him ‘solus ecclesiæ Anglicanæ pugil invincibilis, inflexibilisque columna’ (Birchington, i. 16). Despite his preoccupation in politics, Winchelsea had found time for plenty of other work. He had numerous quarrels on his hands. A dispute with Gilbert de Clare, ninth earl of Gloucester [q. v.], which broke out before the archbishop's enthronement, could not be settled by arbitration, and was ultimately referred to the bishop of Durham (Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1297–1301, p. 152). He had a fierce controversy with the abbot and convent of St. Augustine's, Canterbury. In the course of it he was cited to Rome in 1299, and in 1300 Boniface VIII issued a bull exempting the abbey from all episcopal jurisdiction (Cal. Papal Letters, i. 585–6). But Winchelsea's strenuous remonstrances led the pope to issue in 1303 a further bull that minimised the privileges that he had previously granted (Literæ Cantuar. i. lxi–lxiii; Thorn in Twysden, Decem Scriptores, c. 2004–5, who is bitterly hostile to Winchelsea). The pope played Winchelsea even a worse trick when in 1297 he exempted the bishop of Winchester for life from all his archiepiscopal jurisdiction (Cal. Papal Letters, i. 569). Winchelsea strove to increase the number of monks and improve the discipline even in the faithful convent of Christ Church (Hist. MSS. Comm. 5th Rep. i. 446). ​He frequently objected to episcopal elections, but his objections were not always sustained on appeal to Rome. He was a strenuous upholder of the metropolitan's rights of visitation. He began in 1299 with a visitation of the diocese of Chichester, and in 1300 passed on to that of Worcester. In 1300 he had an unseemly dispute with St. Albans Abbey (Gesta Abbatum S. Albani, ii. 47–8, Rolls Ser.). In the same year he extracted a tax of 4d. in the mark from all his clergy to assist the execution of his numerous plans of reformation (Worcester Ann. p. 547). On 8 Sept. 1299 Winchelsea officiated in his own cathedral at the king's second marriage (ib. p. 542). He was in 1300 entrusted by Boniface VIII with the delivery of the apostolic mandate to withdraw from attacking the Scots, whom the pope had taken under his protection. A letter of Winchelsea to Boniface (Ann. Londin. pp. 104–8) relates in detail his long journey to Carlisle, his difficulty in reaching the king, his perils from the sea and the Scots, and his final interview with Edward at Sweetheart Abbey on 27 Aug. The king refused the pope any final answer until he had consulted the magnates. But it seemed to be in obedience to the mandate that he now withdrew from Scotland. Winchelsea returned southward. He traversed slowly the province of York, ostentatiously bearing his cross erect before him even when close by the city of York. In September he was in Lincolnshire. In October he was back at Otford in his own house.
At the parliament of Lincoln of January 1301 the troubles between Winchelsea and Edward were renewed in a more violent form. On Winchelsea's advice the barons presented through Henry of Keighley, knight of the shire for Lancashire, a bill of twelve articles, demanding an immediate settlement of the forests question and certain other outstanding grievances. The influence of the primate is almost certainly to be traced in the bishops' fresh declaration, with the assent of the barons, that they could not agree to any clerical tax contrary to the pope's prohibition, and in the demand for the removal of Winchelsea's enemy, Walter Langton [q. v.], bishop of Lichfield, from the treasury. Edward yielded to the pressure, but never forgave Winchelsea, whom he looked upon as the real instigator of the movement. Even in this parliament he managed to isolate the archbishop from his baronial allies. The barons' famous letter of protest addressed to Boniface was a repudiation of Winchelsea as well as of the pope. Edward made the split more emphatic by rejecting Winchelsea's addition to the articles of the barons limiting clerical taxation without papal consent. Another cause of quarrel soon arose between Winchelsea and Edward. During the vacancy at Canterbury the king had presented Theobald, brother of Edward's own son-in-law, the count of Bar, to the living of Pagham in Sussex, of which the archbishop was patron. In 1298 Winchelsea deprived Theobald on the ground of an informality, and conferred Pagham on Ralph of Malling. Before this, in 1297, Edward had induced Boniface to reappoint Theobald by papal provision (Cal. Papal Letters, i. 572). Winchelsea paid no heed to the papal action, whereupon Boniface on 15 Jan. 1300 renewed the grant of Pagham (Cal. Papal Letters, p. 591). The abbot of St. Michael's, in the diocese of Verdun, was sent to England to secure for Theobald the execution of the papal provision. As Winchelsea still resisted the appointment of a non-resident pluralist in subdeacon's orders, he was on 15 Oct. solemnly excommunicated by the abbot. Only after Winchelsea's submission was the sentence removed, in 1302.
During this time Winchelsea revengefully continued his attack on Langton. His agents at Rome supported the monstrous charges brought by John de Lovetot against the treasurer. However, in February 1302 Boniface put Winchelsea in a difficult position by associating him with the provincials of the Franciscans and Dominicans on a commission appointed to investigate the accusations. Winchelsea was forced to report to Rome that Langton was innocent, and in June 1303 Boniface formally acquitted the archbishop's great enemy (Cal. Papal Letters, i. 610). The collapse of the papacy after the fall of Boniface VIII removed Winchelsea's best support against his sovereign, for Boniface, if sometimes hostile, might be relied upon to uphold all who maintained the clerical against the civil power. Meanwhile Winchelsea was busy visiting his province and constantly giving fresh causes of irritation. He offended Edward once more by exercising through an unworthy stratagem the right of visiting the king's free chapel within Hastings Castle, and by visiting almost by force the king's hospital of St. Giles-without-London (Cal. Patent Rolls, 1301–7, pp. 189, 397). He had incurred widespread unpopularity through his constant claims of jurisdiction. In 1303 the Canterbury mob broke open his palace while he was residing there, and brutally maltreated the dean of Ospringe at Selling for no other offence than serving the archbishop's ​citations (ib. p. 197). He was quarrelling with the archbishop of York on the ancient question of the right of the northern primate to have his cross borne erect before him in the southern province, and it is significant that Edward wrote to the curia upholding the archbishop of York's claim. But Winchelsea still controlled the clerical estate, and won his last triumph when he induced the clergy to reject the law proposed by Edward in the parliament of April 1305 forbidding the export of specie from alien priories.
In November 1305 the election of Edward's vassal and dependent, Bertrand de Goth, as Clement V, gave the signal for Edward's long-deferred attack on Winchelsea. Among the special ambassadors sent to the new pope's coronation on 14 Nov. 1305 were Bishop Langton and the Earl of Lincoln, who very effectively poisoned the pope's mind against Winchelsea. By absolving Edward from his oath to the forest charters Clement destroyed the result of Winchelsea's most hard-won victory, while by decreeing that Edward should not be excommunicated or censured without papal permission he deprived Winchelsea of his most effective weapon. In January 1306 Winchelsea sent Walter Thorp, dean of arches, to Lyons to counteract Langton's machinations (Ann. Londin. p. 144). But on 12 Feb. Clement suspended Winchelsea from his spiritual and temporal functions, and cited him to the curia within two months. On 24 Feb. the envoys came back to London. Next day Winchelsea also arrived, having terminated a visitation of the diocese of Winchester that he had eagerly undertaken on the death of the exempt bishop. He was now unable to resist Archbishop Greenfield bearing his cross erect through London streets (Ann. Londin. p. 144; cf. Lit. Cantuar. i. 30–31).
Winchelsea received intelligence of his deprivation on 25 March, and at once visited the king to beg for his intercession. A stormy scene ensued. Winchelsea showed some confusion and craved the king's benediction, just as if his sovereign were his ecclesiastical superior. Edward overwhelmed him with reproaches, accusing him of pride, treason, and pitilessness, and declaring that either he or the archbishop must leave the realm. On 5 April Edward declared to the pope that Winchelsea's presence threatened the peace of the land. Winchelsea went down to Dover priory, where on 18 May the citation to the curia was delivered to him (Ann. Londin. pp. 144–5). Early next day he took ship for the continent. He remained in exile for the rest of Edward's life.
Winchelsea found the papal court established at Bordeaux, so that even in his banishment he did not quit Edward's dominions. The worry and fatigues in which he had been involved culminated in a stroke of paralysis, from which he never wholly recovered. He scornfully rejected the proposal to resign his archbishopric or to accept translation to another see. He felt that he was but treading more completely in the footsteps of St. Thomas (Birchington, i. 16). His reputation for sanctity became greater, and it was believed that the death of his enemy, Edward I, was revealed to him at Bordeaux in a vision (Flores Hist. iii. 328).
Winchelsea's suspension was so much a political measure that the accession of Edward II and the disgrace of his arch enemy Langton removed the only obstacles to his reinstatement. On 16 Dec. 1307 the new king urged Clement to restore Winchelsea, and on 22 Jan. 1308 the pope issued from Poitiers letters removing his suspension (Lit. Cantuar. iii. 385–6; Cal. Papal Letters, ii. 33). On the same day Clement, at Winchelsea's request, revoked a former nomination of a commission of English bishops to crown Edward, on the ground that the right of coronation belonged exclusively to Canterbury. On 28 Jan. Winchelsea appointed the bishop of Winchester to act on his behalf, as he was unable through ill-health to be back in time to officiate in person. This punctiliousness necessitated the postponement of the coronation from 18 Feb. to 25 Feb. The archbishop returned to England in March or April (Canon of Bridlington, p. 33; Ann. Paul. p. 263). On 14 April he made a long-deferred composition with the Count of Boulogne, who had been irritated by not obtaining his usual dues from a new archbishop, through Winchelsea not having passed through his territories on his earlier journeys to the continent (Lit. Cantuar. iii. 388).
Within a few weeks of Winchelsea's return Piers Gaveston [q. v.] was banished. The archbishop headed his suffragans in threatening excommunication to the favourite if he disobeyed the baronial edict (Ann. Londin. p. 155). He thus renewed from the first his relations with the opposition, and was soon more hostile to Edward II than to his father. His goods were not restored until November, but during his absence William Testa, the papal administrator, had taken such care of his estates that he was now ‘a richer man than ever he had been before’ (Murimuth, p. 13; cf. Anglia Sacra, i. 51). At the parliament of ​April 1309 he refused to attend until the archbishop of York, disgusted at not being allowed to bear his cross, went back to the north. In his zeal for clerical privilege Winchelsea had even taken up the cause of his old enemy Langton, who was still imprisoned by royal authority alone. He refused to have any dealings with the king as long as Langton was unlawfully detained (Murimuth, p. 14). In March 1310 Winchelsea was one of the lords ordainers, though in April Edward was still urging him to persuade convocation to make fresh grants from its spiritualities. After the first draft of the ordinances was issued in August 1310, Winchelsea on 1 Nov. published in St. Paul's a solemn excommunication of all who should impede their execution or publish to the world the secrets of the ordainers. When Edward broke the ordinances by recalling Gaveston in January 1312, Winchelsea at once excommunicated Piers and his abettors. Langton was released and restored to the treasury in March, despite Winchelsea's strenuous opposition. But in April the ordainers turned him out of his post, and Winchelsea excommunicated him for taking office against the provisions of the ordinances. On Langton going to the papal court to remonstrate against the sentence, Winchelsea despatched thither his clerk, Adam Murimuth, the chronicler, to represent his interests against the bishop (Murimuth, p. 18).
Winchelsea's weak health makes his political activity the more remarkable. He did not, however, neglect the more spiritual side of his office during these years. He was much involved in the proceedings for the suppression of the templars (Cal. Papal Letters, ii. 48, 49), though he took no personal part in the council that he summoned for 25 Nov. 1308 to St. Paul's. He was associated with the papal commissioners sent to investigate the charges against them, but again he did not act. However, on 29 Dec. 1309 he opened another synod at St. Paul's by preaching a sermon. Ill-health prevented him from attending its later proceedings. He showed himself anxious to check the excessive zeal of the enemies of the order, and absolved by commission all the templars who professed penitence and accepted the declaration maintaining their orthodoxy (Flores Hist. iii. 145). He died at Otford on 11 May 1313, and was buried on 16 May at Canterbury, in the south part of the choir, near the altar of St. Gregory, against the south wall. The tomb has now disappeared.
In his will Winchelsea left his books and many rich vestments to the monks of his cathedral and some legacies to all his servants (Hist. MSS. Comm. 5th Rep. i. 460). There was, however, much delay in carrying out his testament, and in 1325 Prior Eastry urgently entreated Archbishop Reynolds to suffer the administration to be completed on account of the scandal caused by the delay (Lit. Cantuar. i. 44, 54, 134). This scandal was all the greater since popular veneration had already made Winchelsea an object of worship. The wounds discovered on his body had been attributed to self-maceration (Birchington, p. 13). Many miracles had been worked at his tomb, and his associates, the ordainers, pressed strongly for his canonisation. In 1319 Thomas of Lancaster sent a report of his miracles to Avignon, and Reynolds ordered the bishops of London and Chichester to investigate their authenticity. John XXII answered Lancaster by explaining the deliberate nature of the procedure of the curia in such matters, and nothing more seems to have been done in Thomas's lifetime. After the fall of Edward II the agitation was renewed, and in March 1327 Reynolds sent the pope a long schedule of miracles worked by him (Lit. Cantuar. iii. 398–402, gives the correspondence; cf. Somner, App. i. 56; Cal. Papal Letters, 1305–42, p. 422). Nothing, however, came of the effort to make him a saint.
T. F. T.