Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/157

 21 March. The principal count in his indictment was his late rebellion, but it also raked up his attack on the king and Gaveston at Newcastle, and accused him of intimidating the parliaments of the reign by appearing at them with armed men, and of being in league with the Scots. Refused even a hearing, he was condemned to a traitor's death, the usual revolting details being commuted to beheading in consideration of his near relationship to the king. Seven earls are mentioned as present at his trial, presumably as members of the court (22 March). He was taken the next day on a sorry nag to a slight hill just outside the town and there beheaded (, pp. 112–24; Chron. Edw. I and Edw. II, i. 303, ii. 77, 270; Flor. Hist. iii. 206, 347).

Despite his tragic end, it is difficult to say anything favourable of Thomas of Lancaster. Marked out by birth and by his position as holder of five earldoms for the rôle of leader of the barons in their revolt against the favouritism, extravagance, and misgovernment of Edward II, he signally failed to show either patriotism, farsightedness, or even the more common virtues of a good party leader. His only policy was a sort of passive resistance to the crown, which generally took the form of refusing to do anything whatever to aid his cousin so long as his personal enemies remained unbanished. In the invention of pretexts for this refusal he displayed an ingenuity in legal chicanery far surpassing that of his uncle, Edward I. Though it was obviously personal aims and personal grievances that influenced his action throughout, some of these pretexts are interesting illustrations of the growth of the idea of a full parliament. In 1317 he refused to violate his oath to the ordinances by attending a council of magnates summoned by the king, because the matters there to be discussed ought to be debated in a full parliament (, pp. 271–4). Yet if Lancaster had any political ideal at all, it was the revival of Simon de Montfort's abortive scheme for government by a council of magnates with himself, in the place of Simon, as the chief and most powerful member. The only thing in which he was consistent was the unrelenting hatred with which he pursued those who offended him. Popular idealism, however, made him into a saint and a martyr. All the misfortunes which befell the country were laid at Edward's door, though Thomas's futile policy was quite as much to blame for them. While Edward personified misgovernment, disorder, misfortune abroad, Thomas was converted, though probably not till after his death, into a second Simon de Montfort. Miraculous cures were effected at his tomb at Pontefract, as also at an effigy of him in St. Paul's, to which crowds of worshippers came with offerings. Guards had to be placed to prevent people approaching the places of his execution and burial, and the king wrote an indignant letter to the bishop of London and the dean and chapter of St. Paul's, forbidding them to countenance such proceedings (Flor. Hist. iii. 213; French Chronicle of London, Camden Soc., p. 54;, ii. 528). Time brought further revenges. On 28 Feb. 1327 Edward III wrote to Pope John XXI, requesting him to canonise Thomas (, ii. 695). The request was repeated in 1330 and 1331 (ib. pp. 782, 814). Edward III also on 8 June 1327 authorised Robert de Werynton, clerk, to collect alms for building a chapel on the hill where Thomas of Lancaster was beheaded (ib. p. 707). This chapel, which was never finished, still existed in Leland's time.

Thomas built and endowed in his castle of Kenilworth the chapel of St. Mary, to be served by thirteen regular canons (, Papal Registers, ii. 184).

He married Alice, daughter and heiress of Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln and Salisbury, but had no children. His relations with his wife were sufficiently strained to give rise to more than a suspicion of connivance when the Earl of Warenne carried her off in 1317. She was accused of adultery with a lame squire of the name of Ebulo Le Strange, who married her after Lancaster's death.

[The chief narrative sources for Thomas's life are the Annales Londonienses; Annales Paulini; Gesta Edwardi auctore canonico Bridlingtoniensi; and the Monachi cuiusdam Malmesberiensis Vita Edwardi II, all edited by Bishop Stubbs in Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II (Rolls Ser.); the Chron. of Robert of Reading in vol. iii. of the Flores Historiarum, ed. Luard; the Annals of John de Trokelowe; the Chronicles of Adam de Murimuth (Rolls Ser.); Walter de Hemingburgh (English Historical Soc.); Lanercost (Maitland Club); and Scalachronica and Walsingham; the continuator of Trivet (ed. Hall, 1722); and the Chronicon Henrici de Knighton (Rolls Ser.). The Rolls of Parliament, the Parliamentary Writs, and Rymer's Fœdera (all published by the Record Comm.); and the Calendars of the Close Rolls (1307–1323, 3 vols.), and Patent Rolls 1292–1301, 1307–13 (2 vols.) (Rolls Ser.) form an invaluable supplement and corrective to these sometimes partial narratives. Dugdale's Baronage of England, though prolix, supplies many facts; Stubbs's Constitutional Hist. vol. ii. and Pauli's Geschichte von England give the best modern accounts of Thomas and his times.] 