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 the pope ordained him to the priesthood, and ten days later, on Palm Sunday, which was also the feast of St Benet the Abbot, he gave him episcopal consecration. The statement as to the cardinalate, which comes to us with so much circumstantiality, is confirmed by Giraldus Cambrensis, who speaks of him as 'presbyter cardinalis'. But there is no ground for supposing that he retained his position as a cardinal: it is hardly conceivable that he could have done so at that time without actual residence at the papal court. The explanation may be that it would have been infra dignitatem for the pope himself to ordain a priest save to the title of one of the Roman churches, and that his subsequent consecration to the see of Dublin was held to vacate the dignity which had been conferred for a special purpose.

It would be beyond the scope of the present study to follow John Cumin through the thirty years of his further career as archbishop and statesman in Ireland. One point only in his ecclesiastical policy claims our attention. His enduring monument is the cathedral church of St Patrick. Whether any part of the existing building can be assigned to him is doubted by those who have the best right to an opinion: yet we are tempted to think that he was the first to bring over the Somerset stone of which it is built. Be this as it may, the foundation of a second cathedral in one diocese is almost unique, and that this was due to John Cumin is rendered certain by the concurrence of the two chapters in the election of his successor. St Laurence O'Toole had introduced into his cathedral church of Holy Trinity, afterwards known as Christ Church, regular canons of the Augustinian order under the reformed rule of St Nicholas of Aroasia. He had himself shared their quasi-monastic life. The new archbishop was no monk, but a man of the world. He soon gave up the site of the archiepiscopal lodgings to the canons for the enlargement of their domestic buildings, and erected a new palace for himself outside the city walls, near the ancient church of St Patrick, which he began to rebuild and endow for a college of secular canons. There was precedent in England for the co-existence of a secular and a monastic chapter with equal privileges in the same diocese. In the time of William Rufus the bishop of Wells had removed his seat to the abbey of Bath, of which he became abbot, having the prior and monks as his cathedral chapter. He took the style of bishop of Bath. But the canons of Wells recovered from their humiliation under Bishop Robert in the reign of Stephen. They were re-founded after the pattern of Sarum with a dean and other dignitaries; and they successfully asserted their claim as a cathedral chapter, and co-operated with the monks of Bath in the election of Bishop Reginald in 1173. Seventy years later they succeeded in getting the name of their church added to the style of the bishop, who has ever since borne the double title of Bath and Wells. When, therefore, John Cumin founded a second cathedral in his diocese of Dublin, he was reproducing a situation with which he was familiar as archdeacon of Bath.