As soon, however, as the King's party was subdued, and the unhappy sovereign, whose acts and habits had excited so much animosity, cruelly put to death, we find not only the political character of the Earl of Lancaster vindicated, his attainder reversed, his estates restored to his family, and his adherents re-established in all their rights and liberties, but within five weeks of the accession of Edward the Third, a special mission was sent to the Pope from the King, imploring the appointment of a commission to institute the proper canonical investigation for his admission into the family of saints. His character and his cause are described, in florid language, as having been those of a Christian hero; and the numberless miracles wrought in his name, and the confluence of pilgrims to his tomb, are presumed to justify his invocation. In June of the same year (1327), a "king's letter" is given to Robert de Weryngton, authorising him and his agents to collect alms throughout the kingdom for the purpose of building a chapel on the hill where the Earl was beheaded, and praying all prelates and authorities to give him aid and heed. This sanction gave rise to imposture; and in December a proclamation appeared, ordering the arrest and punishment of unauthorised persons collecting money under this pretence, and taking it for their own use. In 1330, the same clerical personages were sent again to the Pope, to advance the affair of the canonization of the Earl, and were bearers of letters on the same subject from the King to five of the cardinals, all urging the attention of the Papal court to a subject that so much interested the Church and people of England. It would seem, however, that some powerful opposition to this request was at work at the Roman see. For in the April of the following year another commission, composed of a professor of theology, a military personage, and a magistrate of the name of John de Newton, was sent with letters to the Pope, to nine cardinals, to the referendary of the Papal court, and to three nephews of his Holiness, entreating them not to give ear to the invectives of malignant men ("commenta fictitia maliloquorum"), who here asserted that the Earl of Lancaster consented to, or connived at, some injury or insult offered to certain cardinals at Durham in the late king's reign. So far from this being true, the letters assert that the earl defended these prelates to the utmost of his power, protected them from enemies who had designs on their lives, and placed them in security at his own great peril. The main point of the canonization is again urged, and allusion made to former repeated supplications, and the sacred promise, "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you," appealed to. The vindication of the Earl from the malicious charge against him is omitted in the letters to two of the cardinals and the lay personages. Were these the two cardinals who fancied themselves injured?