Nor were his friends less faithful, for when Becket’s chancellor Benedict (afterwards his biographer) was transferred from Canterbury to Peterborough, he completed a foundation in his honour. Probably Benedict was also concerned in the choice of name at Stamford, especially as that dependent house adopted St. John Baptist and St. Thomas as joint patrons; for the fact that the new martyr’s body was laid near the altar of the Baptist called forth from several chroniclers (as Stanley points out) the remark that St. John Baptist was the bold opponent of a wicked king. In a document relating to the Stamford house, St. Thomas is referred to as “the proto-martyr,” but the claim is hard to justify. He was [p267] commemorated with St. Stephen at Romney, a dedication which would have given him abundant satisfaction; for previous to his flight in 1164 he celebrated, as having a special portent, the mass “in honour of the blessed proto-martyr Stephen.”
It is a far cry from Kent to Northumberland, but there existed at Bolton a hospital of St. Thomas. Within a few miles had been fought the Battle of Alnwick, a victory won, it was believed, as the result of the king’s public penance the same day (1174). The date of foundation is not recorded, but it was begun before 1225. About the same time a hospital of St. Thomas was being built at Hereford, by one of the Warennes, whose father had bitterly opposed the then unpopular Chancellor. The new devotion to St. Thomas was fanned into flame by the magnificent ceremony of 1220 on the removal of his body to its wonderful shrine. Soon after this, a hospital was founded at Bec, and the patronage annexed to the See of Norwich; it was consecrated by Bishop Pandulph, who had taken a leading part in the “Translation,” an event which was henceforth celebrated on July 7. For centuries the shrine was held in high honour. The Letter Books of Christ Church, Canterbury, record miracles in 1394 and 1445.[163] So notable was the first of these that Richard II wrote to congratulate the archbishop, acknowledging his thankfulness to “the High Sovereign Worker of miracles who has deigned to work this miracle in our days, and upon a foreigner, as though for the purpose of spreading . . . the glorious fame of His very martyr,” adding a pious wish that it might result in the conversion of those in error at a time when “our faith and belief [p268] have many more enemies than they ever had time out of mind.” Such signs were, in fact, an antidote to Lollardy, as is implied by the public testimony of the Chapter to the cure of a cripple from Aberdeen in 1445.