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 of E. I and E. II, i. 85, Rolls Ser.) The only other bishops present were London and Rochester, and the archbishop was very indignant that the rest, and especially the neighbouring Welsh prelates, did not assemble to do honour to his pupil (Polistoire MSS. in and  Councils, i. 506).

Thomas now became an active and trusted adviser of Edward I, and a regular attendant at his councils and parliaments. The bishop of a border diocese, he watched with special interest Edward's contest with Llewelyn of Wales, was present at the council in which the prince was condemned (Parl. Writs, i. 5), signed the monitory letter which the bishops addressed to the recusant chieftain (, Record edition, vol. i. pt. ii. p. 536), and twice sent his vassals into the field against him (in 1277 and 1282, Parl. Writs, i. 197, and i. 224). He was present on 29 Sept. 1278 when Alexander, king of Scots, performed homage in the Westminster Parliament (ib. i. 7), and again at Gloucester in the same year had the satisfaction of hearing the court declare against his enemy the Earl of Gloucester's claims to the castle and borough of Bristol (ib. i. 6). In the same year he and the Bishop of London seem to have specially supported Edward I's claim for a tenth from the clergy on condition of going on crusade (, vol. i. pt. ii. p. 563). On 27 April 1279 he was appointed with others as royal locum tenens during Edward's absence in France (ib. 568). Though on several occasions he put himself into decided opposition to Edward, he never lost his favour. When Edward desired to give a converted Jew the right of bearing witness against christian falsifiers of the coinage, Thomas with tears in his eyes implored the king to release him from the council rather than give a Jew power over christian men. His arguments induced Edward to waive the point and beg the bishop to continue his services. Thomas was always an inveterate enemy of the Jews. He obtained special permission from the king to preach to them, and rejected the large presents by which they vainly sought to propitiate him.

But Thomas's best energies were devoted to the active administration of his disordered see. He constantly traversed the diocese, preached frequently and fervently, heard the confessions of the poorest, displayed great zeal in confirmations, and celebrated mass with an ecstatic fervour that frequently found a relief in tears. Himself the pattern of sanctity, morality, and devotion, he was inexorable against offenders. He abhorred all simony and nepotism. Loose monks he expelled from his diocese. Powerful barons were compelled to perform open penance for sins they had long thought forgotten. All holders of pluralities without dispensations were deprived, including the precentor of Hereford, who had been a serious rival of Thomas for the bishopric. He rigorously excluded all women, however old and ugly, from his household, and mortally offended his sister Lady Tregoz by the severity which rejected even her affection (Acta SS.; cf. Household Expenses of Bishop Swinfield, ii. xxxviii).

Bishop Thomas's greatest exertions were directed to asserting and vindicating the rights of his church. Despite his real sanctity, he had no small share of the martial spirit of the fourteenth-century baron, while his legal training plunged him into legal warfare with the encroachers on his prerogatives. Earl Gilbert of Gloucester had usurped the right of hunting on the Herefordshire side of the Malvern hills. His powerful connections and haughty temper made the king himself afraid of the earl. But Thomas brought an action against Gloucester, and the tedious litigation was ended in March 1278 (Ann. Wigorn. in Ann. Mon. iv. 476), when a jury of the two shires was empanelled at an assize held at Malvern. The earl threatened violence, and defied all ‘clergiasters’ to rob him of his inheritance. But the judicial decision gave Cantelupe the victory. The deep trench which still marks the summit of the Malvern hills was dug by the defeated earl to separate his possessions from those of the triumphant bishop (, History of Malvern Priory, pp. 52, 53).

Cantelupe also obtained from Peter, baron Corbet, the restitution of four hundred acres of land stolen from the bishopric near Lydbury (, Shropshire, xi. 199, from Register). His solemn excommunication of the enemies of the see frightened into retreat the two thousand Welshmen whom Llewelyn had assembled to protect from the bishop's men the three rich manors near Montgomery that he had usurped from the bishops of Hereford, and the inhabitants of the manors themselves restored Thomas to the possession of them. A tedious suit in the papal court with Anian II of St. Asaph about the rights of the two sees over Gordwr was decided after Cantelupe's death in favour of Hereford. Despite the armed opposition of his nephew Baron Tregoz, Thomas insisted on consecrating the new church of the Cistercian abbey of Dore, jurisdiction over which had been claimed by Bishop Bek of St. David's.

In 1279 Kilwardby was succeeded at Canterbury by the Franciscan John Peckham,