Note (return) — Replies to Minor Queries.

"Thomas Plantagenet. Before I proceed, I must confess myself formerly at a great loss to understand a passage in an honourable author, speaking of the counterfeit reliques detected and destroyed at the Reformation: 'The Bell of Saint Guthlac, and the Felt of Saint Thomas of Lancaster, both remedies for the headache.' (Vice Lord Herbert's Life of Henry VIII., p. 431.) But I could recover no Saint Thomas (saving him of Canterbury) in any English Martyrology, till since, on enquiry, I find him to be this Thomas Plantagenet. He was Earl of Derby, Lancaster, Leicester, and (in the right of Alice his wife) of Lincoln. A popular person, and great enemy to the two Spencers, minions to King Edward II, who being hated as devils for their pride, no wonder if this Thomas was honored as a Saint and Martyr by the common sort.[6] Indeed he must be a very good chymist who can extract martyr out of malefactor; and our chronicles generally behold him put to death for treason against King Edward II. But let him pass for a saint in this shire, though never solemnly canonised, it being true of such local saints, what Servius Honoratus observeth of topical gods, 'ad alias regiones nunquam transibant,' they travelled not so far as to be honored in other countries. His beheading, alias his martyrdom, happened at Pomfret A.D. 1322."