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 Channel on some business for the king, of which we have no further knowledge.

The spring of 1177 took him to Spain. On 13 March the king had held a great council in London, at which the rival claims of the kings of Castile and Navarre were submitted to his arbitration. The award having been given, Henry dismissed the Spanish ambassadors and retired to Marlborough. Thence he sent into Spain a mission of three envoys, of whom John Cumin was the chief. Their instructions were, first, to receive the formal replies of the two kings, and then to visit Ferdinand king of Leon, in whose territory lay the great church of St James of Compostella: they were to inform K. Ferdinand that the king of England had long meditated a pilgrimage to the famous shrine, and to solicit from him letters of safe-conduct for this purpose.

At Easter 1179 a council was held at Windsor, when the kingdom was divided into four circuits for the administration of justice; and John Cumin was one of the judges appointed for the northern division. In this and the following year he several times occurs in the Pipe Rolls as charged with conveying the royal treasure from place to place in England, and once he is spoken of as one of the king's chamberlains. In 1180-1 he accounts for the revenues of the vacant abbey of Glastonbury; he is described as 'custos' of the abbey, and in that capacity he made certain administrative changes, which are afterwards referred to in the Inquisition taken in 1189 by the new abbot, Henry de Sully. At Michaelmas 1182 his account as warden of Glastonbury is rendered by three clerks in his name, and covers only the half-year ending at Easter. The reason of this is to be found in the great promotion which had in the meantime rewarded his long and faithful service of the king.

He must by now have wellnigh reached his fiftieth year. He was only in deacon's orders, but this was not uncommon with archdeacons at that time. Thomas Becket was only a deacon when he held the archdeaconry of Canterbury, and Peter of Blois, John Cumin's successor in the archdeaconry of Bath, wrote an angry letter of expostulation and self-justification when he was urged to go on to the priesthood. The name of John Cumin appears in Le Neve's list of the prebendaries of Hoxton in St Paul's, but this is the only other preferment which he is known to have held. He had proved himself a vigorous and capable official, and Henry, who was a good judge of men, now selected him for a post of exceptional difficulty and responsibility. To the see of Dublin he was elected, as we have already said, at the abbey of Evesham in September 1181. Early in the next year he proceeded as archbishop-elect to the papal court, which he had last visited at the unhappy close of the Becket tragedy. The great pope, Alexander III, was gone: he had died but a few days before John Cumin was elected to Dublin. His pitifully weak successor, Lucius III, received the archbishop-elect at Velletri with high honour. He made him a cardinal, we are told, 'in order that with the more satisfaction the supreme pontiff might ordain and consecrate him'. On 13 March 1182