Buckinghamshire, and to become a soldier was the common lot of most boys in his position.

He had an uncle, or great-uncle, however, who was Bishop of Worcester, and this Prelate had other hopes for his nephew’s career.

One day, when little Thomas was staying with him, he asked the child what he would like to be.

‘A soldier,’ said the boy promptly, looking up in the Bishop’s face.

The old man patted him gently on the head.

‘Then, sweetheart, thou shalt be a soldier, but a soldier of the King of kings,’ he replied, ‘and thou shalt fight under the banner of thy namesake, St. Thomas of Canterbury, and thy harness shall be the cassock of a priest.’

So the little fellow put the idea of earthly warfare out of his head, and set himself to study Greek and Latin instead, and when he was older he went to Oxford, and then to Paris with his brother Hugh, and soon became a very distinguished student.

When he returned to England he became Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and a very good Chancellor he was, for he knew how to rule the students who were often very high-spirited and turbulent, just as students are nowadays.

But their high spirits took rougher and more dangerous forms, just as the times were rougher and more dangerous, for they used to fight with one another with swords, and bows and arrows, and the Chancellor used to get hold of these weapons and confiscate them, until such time as their owners came to beg them back on condition that they kept the peace.

Afterwards King Henry III. gave him a more important position, that of Chancellor of England, for you must remember that in those days the clergy were politicans as well as priests, and often held the highest offices of State. Then, in 1275, when he was quite an elderly man, he became Bishop of Hereford.

And a true ‘Father in God’ he proved himself to be, to the poor people, at least, for he had one or two very serious and rather funny quarrels with the rich and powerful nobles who lived in his Diocese. These quarrels arose not because he was jealous of his own dignity, but because he was jealous of the dignity of the Church, and he imagined that any slight or insult paid to him as Bishop, was really a slight and insult paid to the Church of God.

In fact, he must have been rather a puzzle to the rich people over whom he was set to rule in spiritual matters, for some of his views were so different from theirs.

They saw that he was haughty and imperious to anyone, no matter how great he might be, who disobeyed him, or encroached on his dignity, and they saw also that he was always splendidly dressed, like a King indeed, for he wore a tunic trimmed with Royal miniver, and had a miniver covering to his bed.

But they did not understand that under his haughtiness and imperiousness, which certainly were faults, and under the apparent luxuriousness of his dress, lay a very real desire, not for his own honour and glory, but for the honour and glory of the King of kings, whose ambassador he felt himself to be.

Sometimes they caught a glimpse of his real self and were more puzzled still, for when they were dining with him they would see him deliberately pass dish after dish which they knew he was very fond of, and content himself with the plainest and poorest fare, in order that he might learn to say ‘No’ to his own wishes.

Then, when the meal was ended he would rise, and select some dainty from the table, and carry it out of the hall with his own hands; and if he had been followed, he would have been found beside the bed of some poor sick servant, coaxing him to eat what he had brought to him.

They knew also that he ordered bales and bales of woollen stuff to give to the poor in winter, with which to make stout cloaks and petticoats, and that he examined the goods most carefully when they arrived, to see that the colours were nice and bright, and just what he wanted them to be.

Once, as was his wont, he was going to visit a poor sick person in a miserable hovel in the town, when a high-born Baron met him, and remonstrated with him, telling him that such work was beneath his dignity, and that he should leave it to the common clergy.

‘Sire,’ replied Bishop Thomas gravely, ‘I have to give an account to God for the souls of the poor as well as of the rich;’ and the Baron had no answer to make.

There is just one other story which I will tell you about him, and this shows his haughty and imperious side.

The Castle at Ledbury belonged to him as Bishop, so did the right of hunting over the Malvern Hills, which were Church lands.

It is quite possible that he did not care in the least for hunting himself, and that he would have granted the privilege to anyone who had come and asked him for it. But when, one day, he was riding with his attendants on these same Malvern Hills, and heard the sound of a hunting-horn, and, on asking what it meant, was told that Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, who was at that time the most powerful noble in England, also claimed the right of hunting there, and was out that day with his hounds, his anger rose, and he rode forward alone to meet the Earl and order him off the ground.

The Earl looked at him contemptuously, and, answering with a sneer that ‘he was not going to be driven off his ancestral land by a “clergiaster,”’ and that ‘he had a good mind to chastise him for his impertinence,’ rode on.

Not a word spoke the Bishop; he simply turned his horse’s head and galloped back to his attendants.

A few hours later the Earl and his followers, tired out with the chase, had dismounted, and were resting under the shade of a wide-spreading oak, when the trampling of hoofs was heard.

Looking up, they saw an extraordinary procession, a procession which was generally only to be seen in a church.

There was the Bishop in the foreground, vested in mitre, cope, and stole, and there, behind him, rode his attendant priests and acolytes, carrying lighted candles, and a great bell, and a book!

And while the Earl stared at them, half in anger, half in fear, the book was opened, the candles extinguished, the bell tolled, the most solemn curses of the Church levelled at his head, and a form of excommunication read, whereby he was denied all the rites of his religion, even Christian burial itself.

And all this because he had hunted the wild deer on the Malvern Hills in defiance of Bishop de Cantilupe, which in Bishop de Cantilupe’s eyes meant in defiance of Almighty God.

It was not only with the English Barons that the Bishop had differences, he had them with the Pope himself, when he thought that the rights of the Church of England were being tampered with; and it was when he was returning from Rome after having been to the Pope about one of those differences, that he died in Italy, on August 25, 1282.

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HEREFORD CATHEDRAL: TOMB OF BISHOP CANTILUPE.

His desire was that his bones should be laid to rest in his own Cathedral Church in far-away England, so, as it was an almost impossible task to convey a dead body across Europe in those days, do you know what his followers did? They boiled his body, until the flesh separated from the bones; then they buried the flesh in the Church of St. Severus near Florence, and the bones, which were now quite easy to carry, they brought to Hereford, and buried them in the Lady-chapel. They were afterwards removed to a little chapel known as the Chapel of St. Catherine, and at last this beautiful shrine was prepared for them, and they were placed inside.

Not very far from the shrine of Thomas de Cantilupe, on the east wall of the transept, there are two tablets, one above the other, which I think you would like