VENERATION AND IMAGERY OF ST THOMAS DE CANTILUPE IN HEREFORD CATHEDRAL

At Hereford Cathedral there is compelling evidence that the Cantilupe cult was deliberately shaped by his successors to the see as that of a ‘second Becket’.Footnote ² This can be seen in a series of texts comparing Cantilupe’s cause to the martyrdoms of Thomas the Apostle and Thomas Becket. Preeminent among these is the late thirteenth-century Hereford Breviary, a liturgical manuscript which was added to throughout the Middle Ages, and which received a new liturgy on the establishment of Cantilupe’s feast day of 2 October. The responsory for the feast established Cantilupe’s status as a bloodless martyr among the pantheon of martyred saintly Thomases:

Likewise, in the letter of Bishop Adam de Orleton of Hereford (1317–27) regarding Cantilupe’s first feast day in 1320, the new saint was presented as being a successor to St Thomas the Apostle in his martyrdom:

Both texts, therefore, stress that Cantilupe should be understood to be as much a martyr as the other two preceding saintly Thomases, despite not suffering the same fate. An apocryphal tale by the seventeenth-century Jesuit, Richard Strange, written from the accounts in the Acta Sanctorum, further emphasised this with a story of how Cantilupe, as a child, had spoken to his uncle, Bishop Walter de Cantilupe of Worcester (1237–66). The young Thomas expressed his wish to fight as a soldier and the bishop replied that the boy would grow up to fight ‘vnder the colours of his glorious Martyr S. Thomas’.Footnote ⁵ Indeed, the bishop of Hereford and the witnesses who gave testimony in the 1307 canonisation inquiry, held in London and Hereford between July and November that year, focused on Cantilupe’s defence of the church of Hereford’s rights against the encroachment of other forces and thus painted him as Becket’s successor at Hereford.

The research undertaken to compile the catalogue in this paper shows that these associations between Becket and Cantilupe were made more explicit through the use of imagery around Hereford Cathedral and the wider diocese. Becket’s cult was already active in Hereford at the time Cantilupe was canonised. At some time during the episcopate of William de Vere (1186–98), Hereford Cathedral had come into possession of a Limoges reliquary chasse depicting Becket’s martyrdom and containing a relic of the saint. As noted by Virginia Raguin and Naomi Reed Kline, ‘the Limoges reliquary chasse of Thomas Becket of Canterbury suggests the synoptic relationship between Becket and Cantilupe. Becket was revered at Hereford as a precursor to Bishop Cantilupe’.Footnote ⁶ The Becket reliquary chasse likely formed part of the pilgrimage experience at Hereford Cathedral, especially at the height of the surge in pilgrim numbers that marked the early Cantilupe cult. Indeed, it was in this regard that visual associations between the two saints may first have been made. Although no traces of them now remain, the seventeenth-century antiquaries Thomas Dingley and William Stukeley both sketched images of wall paintings depicting the two prelates, Becket and Cantilupe, in proximity above Cantilupe’s tomb-shrine in the north transept of Hereford Cathedral. In these lost murals, Becket is displayed with a cross-staff and wearing vestments emblazoned with Lombardic initial ‘T’s, while Cantilupe (fig 1) holds a crosier with a foliate head and wears vestments adorned with the Cantilupe coat of arms: gules three lions’ faces each jessant a fleur de lis or.Footnote ⁷ The dates of these specific images are, unfortunately, unknown, but it is likely that these were medieval depictions of the two prelates found as they were in the original setting of the Cantilupe cult, in a part of the cathedral that escaped the Reformation with relatively minor damage.

Fig 1.

Sketch of the image of St Thomas de Cantilupe on the wall near his shrine in the north transept of Hereford Cathedral by the seventeenth-century antiquary William Stukeley. Cantilupe is displayed here holding a crosier with a foliate head and wearing vestments adorned with leopards’ heads jessant de lys. Photograph: The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, ms Top. Gen. d. 13, fol 11v.

Two windows in the cathedral also contained images of Becket and Cantilupe in proximity. The large south-east window in the north-east transept holds restored fourteenth-century glass depicting four saints: St Katherine, St Michael, St Gregory and Becket. Unfortunately, after the intervention of William Warrington in 1864, the figures in the window, as well as its placement, are entirely modern restorations.Footnote ⁸ A window now located at the east end of the south choir aisle contains other fragments of fourteenth-century glass, originally elsewhere in the cathedral, including the contemporary medieval figures of St Mary Magdalene, St Ethelbert, St Augustine and St George. It seems that the figure of St Ethelbert, another Hereford saint, came from a window originally above the monument to Bishop John Trefnant (1389–1404) in the south transept of the cathedral. According to Dingley’s notes describing the original medieval window above Trefnant’s tomb, ‘in the glass are the remains of the figures of St Thomas de Cantilupo, The Blessed Virgin, King Ethelbert in his Royal Robes, St Dennis the Patron of France with his head in his hand, and that of the holy Apostle St Paul’.Footnote ⁹ It is possible that Warrington may have been overzealous in restoring the Cantilupe image and mistook him for Becket, but it is also just as likely that when the stained-glass windows were in their original placement in the medieval cathedral both Becket and Cantilupe were commemorated, just as in the paintings over Cantilupe’s tomb-shrine.

Further iconographical associations of Becket and Cantilupe appear in funerary monuments in Hereford Cathedral. The first is on the high tomb attributed to Peter, Lord Grandison (d. 1358), on the north side of the Lady Chapel (fig 2). Peter was Thomas’s great-grandnephew through marriage: Peter’s father, William de Grandison, married Sybil, daughter of Cantilupe’s nephew, John de Tregoz. Peter’s monument displays restored statues of Cantilupe holding a crosier, St Ethelbert, the Virgin Mary and Christ, St John the Baptist, and Becket holding a primatial cross-staff: the choice of saints directly indicating the main pantheon at Hereford. The presence of St John refers to the dedication of the parish church that was established within the cathedral in the thirteenth century.Footnote ¹⁰ Peter’s monument is placed near to the location where a second shrine was built for Cantilupe following his canonisation in 1320, and where his remains were translated in 1349, nine years before Peter’s death.Footnote ¹¹

Fig 2.

The funerary monument of Peter, Lord Grandison (d. 1358) on the north wall of Hereford Cathedral’s Lady Chapel. Above the monument (left to right) are statues of Cantilupe, St Ethelbert, the Virgin Mary, Christ, St John the Baptist and Becket. Photograph: Tim Sutton.

Another funerary monument to consider is the mutilated brass of Archdeacon Richard Rudhale (d. 1476). It has been removed from its original setting and is now murally reset on a wooden board mounted near to the door of the eastern cloister, colloquially known as St John’s Walk, in the south-east transept. On this, by his head, Richard is flanked by small figures of Cantilupe in episcopal vestments, right hand in benediction, with his crosier across his body, and St Ethelbert in armour holding an orb and sword. Below, in the second register of saints, is an image of St Katherine with her wheel and Becket wearing archiepiscopal vestments, with his primatial cross across his body. Finally, one other brass does survive depicting Cantilupe, however without Becket. This brass of Precentor William Porter (d. 1524) is murally reset on a wooden board now placed in the cathedral crypt.

It is clear, therefore, that throughout Hereford Cathedral the bishop and dean and chapter were keen to emphasise and capitalise on the associations between England’s two Thomases from the inception of the Cantilupe cult in the thirteenth century until the end of the Middle Ages. In text, liturgy and iconography, Cantilupe was clearly venerated as a second Becket, lending credence to the claims of Cantilupe’s sanctity that were investigated during the 1307 canonisation inquiry.

REPRESENTATIONS OF ST THOMAS DE CANTILUPE IN THE DIOCESE OF HEREFORD

The Cantilupe cult had a wider impact on the fabric of churches in the diocese of Hereford and further afield, and there is evidence that Cantilupe was associated with Becket in this context too. The most famous instance is the small stained-glass window in St Mary’s Church, Credenhill (Herefordshire) (fig 3). Here Becket and Cantilupe stand side-by-side with the inscription along the top of the window forming a play on their shared name by placing it in the centre: ‘CĀTVAR : THOMAS : DECĀTVLVPO’.Footnote ¹² Becket is depicted in green vestments with a pallium, right hand in benediction and his left holding a crosier topped with a cross. Cantilupe is shown in blue vestments, right hand in benediction and a crosier with a foliate head in his left. The window can be dated to around 1300–10 and, according to the notes on Herefordshire churches by the seventeenth-century antiquary, Silas Taylor, was part of a glazing scheme throughout the church and chantry chapel, now lost, started by the rector Philip Talbot in c 1306.Footnote ¹³ Talbot was a canon of Hereford Cathedral and archdeacon of Shropshire from 27 January 1300, explaining his association with the Cantilupe cult and its promotion in the diocese.Footnote ¹⁴

Fig 3.

Fourteenth-century window from St Mary’s Church, Credenhill (Herefordshire). On the left is Becket (in green) on the right Cantilupe (in blue), with the legend above reading ‘CĀTVAR : THOMAS : DECĀTVLVPO’ drawing attention to the prelates’ shared Christian name. Photograph: Gordon Taylor.

At the time the Credenhill window was commissioned, a surprisingly low number of miracle cures were recorded at the shrine in Hereford Cathedral; however, this is not to say that pilgrims were not still arriving.Footnote ¹⁵ This peculiar circumstance may be explained with the theory that the cathedral authorities were too preoccupied with the impending canonisation inquiry that was ordered by Pope Clement v (1305–14) on 23 August 1306 and took place between July and November 1307 in London and Hereford.Footnote ¹⁶ Moreover, 1306 was a year that marked a redoubling of the efforts of Bishop Richard de Swinfield of Hereford (1283–1317) to gain traction at the papal curia for a successful canonisation process.Footnote ¹⁷ Thus, the window and the comparison it draws between Becket and Cantilupe, essentially marking Hereford’s Thomas as an equal to Canterbury’s, demonstrates the concerted effort to continue the promotion of the Cantilupe cult within the diocese. The fact that the window and glazing scheme was likely commissioned in a year that saw a renewal of efforts by the bishop to achieve a canonisation inquiry and was possibly installed at the time when the inquiry had been ordered by the pope demonstrates that, in the diocese of Hereford at least, Cantilupe was already considered a saint.

Also relevant are two windows that clearly depict Cantilupe independently of Becket, as well as one further one that may also contain an image of him. One is a window of fifteenth- or sixteenth-century glass in St Michael’s Church, Munslow (Shropshire), in which Cantilupe is depicted alongside St Kenelm and St Anthony. He is shown wearing a red cope with a blue chasuble and gold mitre (fig 4), with his right hand raised in benediction and holding a crosier in his left. The other stained-glass image survives in St Mary’s Church, Ross-on-Wye (Herefordshire) (fig 5). Alongside Cantilupe are shown the images of St Ethelbert, St Anne with the Virgin and Joachim. The glass dates from c 1430 and was recovered from the episcopal palace of Stretton Sugwas (Herefordshire) when its contents were sold prior to its demolition in the eighteenth century. The glass displayed here was originally commissioned around 1430 by Bishop Thomas Spofford of Hereford (1421–8), who is shown kneeling in prayer at the feet of St Anne and the Virgin.Footnote ¹⁸ Cantilupe himself is depicted in white vestments adorned with a flower-type design and jessant de lys, with his right hand in benediction and holding a crosier with a foliate head. Other windows originally in the episcopal palace at Stretton Sugwas were noted by Hereford antiquarians, including an image of Becket, which had gone by 1718.Footnote ¹⁹

Fig 4.

Fifteenth- or sixteenth-century glass depicting Cantilupe at St Michael’s Church, Munslow (Shropshire). Photograph: Gordon Taylor.

Fig 5.

Fifteenth-century east window in St Mary’s Church, Ross-on-Wye (Herefordshire) – glass formerly in the episcopal palace at Stretton Sugwas in Herefordshire. The main lights depict (left to right) St Ethelbert, St Anne and the Virgin with Bishop Thomas Spofford in prayer at their feet, St Joachim and St Thomas de Cantilupe, dating to c 1430: (a) the full window; (b) detail of the figure of Cantilupe. Photographs: Gordon Taylor.

One further surviving window that may be considered is that at Eaton Bishop, Herefordshire (fig 6). The window is dated to c 1320–40 and may have been commissioned by Adam de Murimuth, the fourteenth-century ecclesiastic and chronicler, who was a canon of Hereford Cathedral from 1 April 1320 and is shown in one of the donor panels at the foot of the window.Footnote ²⁰ Although he resigned his prebend by 12 February 1321, he was a member of the cathedral clergy at the time Cantilupe was canonised. Adam is depicted in the central panel, just below the image of a bishop. The bishop is depicted in green vestments with a mitre; in his right hand is a crosier with a foliate head and in his left hand is a book (fig 6b). In his examination of the window, George Marshall was dismissive of previous conclusions regarding the bishop’s identity, asserting that ‘[t]his figure represents one of the Fathers of the Church, no doubt St Barnabus, and not St. Thomas of Hereford, or any other bishop of the diocese, as has been suggested’.Footnote ²¹ This conclusion is because St Barnabas is typically depicted with a book and staff.Footnote ²²

Fig 6.

East window in St Michael and All Angels’ Church, Eaton Bishop (Herefordshire), depicting the crucifixion of Christ, above a tier of saints, with kneeling figures of donors in the lowest tier, dating to c 1320–40: (a) the full window; (b) detail of the unidentified bishop, believed to be Cantilupe. Photographs: Tim Sutton.

Marshall was probably too hasty in dismissing the tradition that identified the image of the bishop as a bishop of Hereford. If the window is regarded in context, it is plausible to suppose that the bishop could well be Cantilupe. Adam de Murimuth, the main donor of the window and placed prominently in the centre, was a canon of the cathedral and at Hereford at the time of Cantilupe’s canonisation on 17 April 1320. The unidentified bishop is similar in design in some ways to the contemporary named image at Credenhill with green vestments and a crosier with a foliate head. The main departure, however, is that he is holding the generic clerical attribute of a book. It may well be the case, as might be inferred from Philip Talbot’s scheme at Credenhill, that, given the close ties of this parish church to the cathedral clergy and chapter, they wished to commemorate their newly canonised saint in glass.

There was possibly one further stained-glass figure of the saint located in a window in the diocese. Sarah Brown suggested the presence of Cantilupe as an element of the fourteenth-century glazing scheme at Madley church (Herefordshire).Footnote ²³ As Brown noted, the new phase of glazing in Madley church can be dated between c 1325 and c 1400. The parish church at Madley was, like Credenhill and Eaton Bishop, administered by the cathedral authorities and it is likely that the scheme was conceived in part because of the chapter’s desire to enrich one of their sites to ‘benefit from the anticipated renewal of interest in Cantilupe attendant on his canonisation’.Footnote ²⁴ The original window also intended to bring further attention to the image of the Virgin in the church. According to Brown’s proposed reconstruction:

Brown’s conjecture is strengthened not just by the cathedral associations but local familial ties too. The manor of Madley belonged to the Dunre (or Dinedor) family, and in the mid-fourteenth century the church was enriched with the addition of the Chilstone aisle at the time when this glazing scheme was underway. This expression of piety was most likely funded by the lord of Chilstone, Richard de Dunre. Importantly, this is the same Richard de Dunre who established a chantry chapel in the north-east transept of Hereford Cathedral in 1346 in an area reserved for burials of the Swinfield family, near to the location at which Cantilupe’s remains were translated in 1349.Footnote ²⁶ The Dunres were related to the Swinfield family through the marriage of Bishop Richard de Swinfield’s niece, Margery, to William ii de Dunre.Footnote ²⁷ What we have at Madley, then, is the compelling combination of a cathedral dependency and local patrons who had a strong link to the Cantilupe cult through familial ties. All this increases the likelihood of an image commemorating Cantilupe being included in new building and glazing schemes. The ties of local lords and those distant family members is also identified by Nigel Saul in his examination of Decorated Gothic architecture in Herefordshire, in which he notes that devotion to Cantilupe ran deep among the ranks of the Marcher lords of the county and that consequently ‘Cantilupe’s saintly image was to feature in the stained glass windows with which these people adorned their churches and chapels’.Footnote ²⁸ If we accept Brown and Saul’s interpretations and apply them more generally, it is likely that there was originally a much larger corpus of Cantilupe iconography throughout the diocese of Hereford.Footnote ²⁹

Around the same time the Chilstone aisle was being built at Madley, work was nearing completion on the rebuilding of St Bartholomew’s Church, Vowchurch (Herefordshire). This scheme was probably commissioned by a member of the de Havering family. John de Havering was a first-hand witness to Cantilupe’s miraculous healing powers at the inception of the cult in 1287, when he sent a deaf boy from his household to receive a cure while enroute to Wales to fight Rhys ap Maredudd’s rebellion.Footnote ³⁰ John later witnessed another miracle in 1303 at Conwy, when a young boy who suffered a fatal fall from the bridge onto the rocks below revived after being dedicated to Cantilupe.Footnote ³¹ While there is now no indication of any Cantilupe iconography at Vowchurch, it is known that Bishop John Trillek (1344–61) visited the church in 1348 and on 21 November that year he granted an indulgence marking the occasion of his consecration of altars at Vowchurch. Among the altars he dedicated was one on the north side of the church to ‘the same glorious Virgin Mary and of saints Blaise, martyr and bishop, and Martin, Gregory and Thomas, confessors and bishops’.Footnote ³² The reference of a St Thomas who, like Martin and Gregory, was a confessor makes it clear that this was an altar dedicated to Cantilupe. This case emphasises again the importance of local ties in the inclusion of devotion to Cantilupe in the rebuilding and dedication of churches and their holy spaces.

It is in relation to this vein of popular belief and familial commemoration that the potential imagery of Cantilupe at St Mary’s Church, Foy (Herefordshire), should be considered. On the exterior arch of the fourteenth-century north-west window are the carved heads of a bishop, reputed to be Thomas, and a woman, generally considered to be Juliana de Tregoz, Thomas’s sister (fig 7).Footnote ³³ Both headstops are now heavily eroded, with only some detail that can be made out with any certainty. This traditional local association of the headstop with Cantilupe is one that is unsubstantiated by other evidence and so impossible to prove with any certainty. It is interesting to note, however, that Foy was a parish that would have held some personal significance to Cantilupe. Thomas was known to be very close to his sister, Juliana, who had married into the Tregoz family of Ewyas and Eaton Tregoz – the latter of which centred on the parish of Foy. After the death of Juliana’s husband, Robert ii de Tregoz, fighting on the baronial side at the Battle of Evesham in 1265, she faced local difficulties in attempting to claim her husband’s manors and extend her holdings. It was Thomas’s intervention in 1274 and representations seeking ‘suitable remedy’ to Walter de Merton, who was chancellor of England, that resolved Juliana’s issues.Footnote ³⁴

Fig 7.

(a) Fourteenth-century headstops depicting a bishop and woman, generally regarded as representing St Thomas de Cantilupe and Juliana de Tregoz, Foy (Herefordshire). (b) Detail of the right headstop showing feminine features, though heavily eroded. (c) Detail of the left headstop, displaying a head with a peak, possibly indicating a mitre, though heavily eroded. Photographs: author.

Also significant is the fact that four pilgrims are recorded as coming to Cantilupe’s shrine in Hereford from the parish: William Gydehorn and his unnamed daughter, Quenith de Foy, and Quenelda Tidihorn.Footnote ³⁵ Quenelda had been crippled for many years, and the canonisation inquiry records that she was taken to Thomas’s shrine by his sister, Juliana, who measured Quenelda to her dead brother – the rope used to measure them intended for use as the wick of a votive candle of the same length in return for a miracle – at which point Quenelda was subsequently cured.Footnote ³⁶ Moreover, Thomas is known to have performed two miracles for his nephew, John de Tregoz, who at this time was lord of Eaton Tregoz and Ewyas. The first miracle, performed in December 1287, cured John of an old wound that had ailed him for the past fourteen years and the second occurred in December 1288, when he was cured of a very serious illness that had robbed him of speech for six months as a consequence of possibly being poisoned.Footnote ³⁷ While we cannot assert with any degree of certainty that the headstops represent Cantilupe and his sister, there is enough evidence to make it plausible to imagine some form of local commemoration likely instigated by the Tregoz family as principal landholders. This possibility is strengthened if we consider Brown and Saul’s conjectures cited above to be true.

REPRESENTATIONS OF ST THOMAS DE CANTILUPE OUTSIDE THE DIOCESE OF HEREFORD

While Cantilupe’s cult has predominantly been seen as a local one, it cannot be denied that at its height it had a broad national appeal across England, Wales and Ireland. Indeed, it is this wider appeal that is evidenced in Cantilupe’s inclusion in iconographical schemes outside the diocese of Hereford. It is, however, worth noting that several of these are also in places that exhibit a familial connection of some form with the bishop, or an association with Cantilupe’s own ecclesiastical appointments.

The visual association of Becket and Cantilupe in imagery can be found outside the confines of the diocese of Hereford at Cothelstone church (Somerset). The twelfth-century parish church is now dedicated to St Thomas of Canterbury. In the tracery lights of one of the fifteenth-century windows in the south aisle is the figure of a bishop in white vestments with the inscription ‘ THOMAS DE HERFO[RD]’ (fig 8). Nearby, in another tracery light is an image of Becket. The scheme depicts other English ecclesiastical saints, St Aldhelm, St Cuthbert, St Dunstan and St Richard of Chichester.

Fig 8.

Fifteenth-century tracery light in a south aisle window in St Thomas of Canterbury’s Church, Cothelstone (Somerset) displaying Cantilupe in white vestments (left) and St Aldhelm (right). Photograph: David Ross.

Images of single figures of Cantilupe appear independently in other stained-glass windows.Footnote ³⁸ These include three images now lost but known to us from contemporary and antiquarian sources: a fifteenth-century window at Lichfield Cathedral, which once showed the bishop identified by a Lombardic inscription and his coat of arms on his chasuble; a medieval figure in a window from Snitterfield (Warwickshire), which showed a bishop with a crosier, wearing a chasuble emblazoned with the Cantilupe arms; and a late fifteenth-century window commissioned between 1489 and 1503 by King Henry vii (1485–1509) at the royal chapel of the Observant Friars in Greenwich, which was founded in 1482.

The window at Lichfield Cathedral was located in the Lady Chapel and lost during the bombardment of the cathedral in the English Civil War (1642–52). However, the scheme of decoration, which dated from the fifteenth century, is known from antiquarian sources.Footnote ³⁹ In the window, Cantilupe was depicted with a crosier, his hand in benediction and with his coat of arms above. Following the destruction, later glass was placed in the chapter house that initially displayed Cantilupe’s coat of arms, but by the late nineteenth century this had been exchanged for a new window depicting Cantilupe alongside Archbishop Higbert of Lichfield (779–87).Footnote ⁴⁰ Cantilupe’s placement in both the medieval and modern glazing schemes at Lichfield seems primarily to be celebrating a saint with whom they claim a connection, since Cantilupe was a prebendary of the cathedral and archdeacon of Stafford from 1265.Footnote ⁴¹

Snitterfield also had a connection with the Cantilupe family, the probable reason for Thomas’s depiction in the parish church. In 1228 Cantilupe’s father, William ii de Cantilupe, secured the wardship of Margery Cumin, the daughter of William Cumin, who held the manor, and in 1236 Thomas’s brother, John, was married to Margery, so gaining the manor.Footnote ⁴² John and Margery had two sons: Walter, who went into the church, and John ii, who inherited the manor. The advowson of Snitterfield was part of the manorial possessions of the Cantilupes until 1324.Footnote ⁴³ Thomas also had some personal local influence. In 1270 he became rector of the nearby church of Hampton Lucy (Warwickshire) and also held the rectory of Doddershill (Worcestershire), in the same area.Footnote ⁴⁴ Moreover, Snitterfield and Hampton Lucy appear to have been places in which Cantilupe made a distinct impression on the parishioners. On the evidence of the canonisation proceedings, his abstemiousness at dinner was still remembered in both villages.Footnote ⁴⁵

The royal window at Greenwich is altogether more unique for including Cantilupe in the scheme. Two rolls preserved at the British Library record the detailed instructions provided to the glaziers responsible for the design of the church’s east window.Footnote ⁴⁶ A comprehensive overview of the window’s composition and a transcription of the rolls has been published recently by Nicholas Rogers.Footnote ⁴⁷ The upper tracery lights contained imagery of the king and queen holding hands, surrounded by a varied assortment of holy royalty. Below this were five lights, each of which displayed a member of royalty at the bottom, with three saints above –the central light likely occupied by a crucifixion scene. The first light featured Elizabeth of York, and above her was St Etheldreda, St Edmund and St Edward the Confessor; the second showed King Henry vii, with St Helen, St Louis of Toulouse and St Constantine; the fourth, Margaret Beaufort, with St Margaret of Scotland, St Thomas of Hereford and St Charlemagne; and the fifth displayed Margaret, the king’s daughter, with St Edith of Wilton, St Ethelbert and St Louis ix of France.

Cantilupe’s placement in a panoply of saints associated with royal power is an intriguing one and the instructions are worth quoting in full:

Although the Cantilupe family were prominent thirteenth- and fourteenth-century English magnates, the claim that Thomas was descended from the royal families of England, France and Spain is curious and not one that finds any merit in the contemporary accounts we have available. Additionally, as suggested by Rogers, it may seem that Cantilupe’s placement above Margaret Beaufort demonstrates a particular interest in the saint. Further significance to this suggestion is given by the fact that Lady Margaret funded the Rouen printer, Ingelbert de la Haghe, to produce an edition of the Hereford Breviary.Footnote ⁴⁹

Finally, Cantilupe was depicted in two further wall paintings, one of which is now lost but described in the proceedings of the saint’s canonisation. The testimonies of both Hugh le Barber, Cantilupe’s servant, and William de Cantilupe, his nephew through his brother Nicholas at Greasley (Nottinghamshire), both bear witness to a chantry chapel that had been built at Hambleden (Buckinghamshire), where Cantilupe was baptised. According to William de Cantilupe, the chantry chapel was built by Edmund, earl of Cornwall.Footnote ⁵⁰ Hugh le Barber added that the chapel ‘had an image of the aforementioned Lord Thomas painted in it’ as well as containing ‘a certain little knife with which the aforementioned Lord Thomas cut while he was eating at the table’.Footnote ⁵¹ Unfortunately, this painting is now lost; however, it is possible that it was similar in date and composition to the image sketched by Stukeley that was above Cantilupe’s tomb-shrine in Hereford Cathedral. The association of the image with the knife relic held further significance. In William de Cantilupe’s testimony he reported that ‘God worked miracles in this chapel on account of Lord Thomas’. This chapel’s promotion of Cantilupe was significant in his early cult. On 5 April 1296, Bishop Oliver Sutton of Lincoln (1280–99) ordered the archdeacon of Buckingham to close the chapel and conduct an inquiry because Cantilupe was not yet recognised as a bona fide saint by the papacy.Footnote ⁵² On 20 August 1296 the chapel was reopened ‘having been constructed on account of devotion, at which many ill people had come together to regain, miraculously, their health there’.Footnote ⁵³

In contrast, there remain surviving traces and records of a wall painting in St Peter’s Church, Barton (Cambridgeshire), dated to c 1350, which were discovered by Ernest Tristram in 1929.Footnote ⁵⁴ Tristram’s account of the painting describes:

This identification was accepted by the RCHME and the Buildings of England series.Footnote ⁵⁶ Why Cantilupe is depicted at Barton is unclear. Online sources that reference the painting put forward the idea that Cantilupe was born in Barton, and was therefore a local saint; however, from the contemporary accounts we know that his birthplace was Hambleden (Buckinghamshire).Footnote ⁵⁷ Similarly, they note only that this image is extremely fragmentary. Closer inspection of the wall painting and an earlier sketch by Tristram shows clearly that the ‘wolves’ heads’ are actually leopards’ heads jessant de lys, following the traditional heraldry of the Cantilupe arms (fig 9), but the fragmentary nature of the remaining painting means there is still the need for caution in attribution.Footnote ⁵⁸

Fig 9.

Fourteenth-century wall painting from St Peter’s Church, Barton (Cambridgeshire), depicting St Thomas de Cantilupe. The bishop is wearing vestments displaying the Cantilupe arms of leopards’ heads jessant de lys, holding a crosier in his left hand and raising his right in benediction. At his feet is a small figure in prayer: (a) the full painting, Photograph: Chris Green; (b) detail of the jessant de lys, Photograph: Tobit Curteis Associates LLP.