It would seem, however, that some powerful opposition to this
request was at work at the Roman see. For in the April of the
following year another commission, composed of a professor of
theology, a military personage, and a magistrate of the name of John
de Newton, was sent with letters to the Pope, to nine cardinals, to
the referendary of the Papal court, and to three nephews of his
Holiness, entreating them not to give ear to the invectives of
malignant men ("commenta fictitia maliloquorum"), who here asserted
that the Earl of Lancaster consented to, or connived at, some injury
or insult offered to certain cardinals at Durham in the late king's
reign. So far from this being true, the letters assert that the earl
defended these prelates to the utmost of his power, protected them
from enemies who had designs on their lives, and placed them in
security at his own great peril. The main point of the canonization
is again urged, and allusion made to former repeated supplications,
and the sacred promise, "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you,"
appealed to. The vindication of the Earl from the malicious charge
against him is omitted in the letters to two of the cardinals and
the lay personages. Were these the two cardinals who fancied
themselves injured?
This, then, is all I can discover in the ordinary historical
channels respecting this object of ancient public reverence in
England.
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