While he was absent in Ireland collecting tithes, attended by a guard of soldiers, Prince Edward, coming to Hereford to resist the encroachments of Llewellyn, King of Wales, found there neither bishop, dean, nor canons resident. For this they earned the severe reprimand of the King, and the Bishop returned to Hereford. Shortly after, he was seized within the cathedral precincts by the insurgent barons of Leicester’s party, together with all the foreign canons (who were his own relations). They were carried to Eardisley Castle, where the spoil they had just brought from Ireland was divided among the insurgents. Bishop Aquablanca died soon after these events, in 1268. He was endowed with a character full of contradictions, extreme aggressiveness, mingled with remarkable tact. When he got the better of the Hereford citizens, after their attempt to encroach upon his episcopal rights, he remitted one full half of their fine and devoted the other to the cathedral building. While he was showing in his life a disgraceful example to the clergy of the country, at the same time he gave liberally to the cathedral foundation in books, ornaments, money, and land, left a rich legacy to the poor, and a lasting monument in the rebuilding of the north transept of the cathedral itself. With the exception of the arches, leading into the aisles of the nave and choir, the Norman work of the transept was altogether demolished, and replaced by another consisting of two bays with an eastern aisle. Over the latter was built a story now used as the cathedral library, which is approached from the north aisle of the presbytery by a staircase turret. His tomb is one of the finest in the cathedral. Under it, together with those of his nephew, a Dean of Hereford, are his own remains, except the heart, which, as he had wished, was carried to his own country of Savoy. In 1275 the Chapter of Hereford elected to the bishopric Thomas de Cantilupe, one of the greatest men who has ever held that office, a man whose life was in almost every way a remarkable contrast to that of his predecessor, Bishop Aquablanca. It is said that the Bishop of Worcester, his great-uncle, asked him as a child as to his choice of a profession, and that he answered he would like to be a soldier. "Then, sweetheart," his uncle is said to have exclaimed, "thou shalt be a soldier to serve the King of Kings, and fight under the banner of the glorious martyr, St. Thomas." Regular attendance at mass was his custom from earliest years. Both at Oxford and Paris he distinguished himself, gaining his degree of M.A. at the Sorbonne, and on his return accepted, at the request of the university of Oxford and with the consent of the King, the office of chancellor. In this capacity he showed singular courage and determination in repressing a brawl between the southern scholars and those of the north, in which we are told he escaped with a whole skin, but not with a whole coat.