"An unfortunate delay in replying to the telegram occurred through a misapprehension; but after the reply had been sent, together with the notice that the corpse was about to be translated to Sydney, a second telegram from Dr. Sheridan was received, saying that another resolution had been come to, and that it would not be convenient to receive the corpse of the late Archbishop in Sydney. The other incidents of my communication with your Eminence, when you were in Salford, are before you. It is, of course, obvious that the remains of the late Archbishop cannot be allowed to lie much longer unburied in the place where they were laid for a time in order to carry out with less expense the desire which had been expressed from Sydney, and which had suspended their actual interment in England. "The expenses incurred up to that time, including a sum for Masses, were recognised and paid through a communication made by Father Gillett out of the late Archbishop's personalty. There is now the duty of giving interment to the remains, and consequently the duty of paying the charges which will be made by the undertaker for their decent removal and burial in Herefordshire; for we may presume that the Archbishop's desire would have been to be buried in Herefordshire had he known that he would die and be buried in England. Your Eminence will not fail to observe that had not the desire been expressed that the burial should take place in Sydney, the remains would have been buried at once in England, and that the additional cost would have been paid like the rest out of the personalty. The subsequent resolution passed in Sydney did not relieve the personalty from the charges for the burial, still less could it throw the charge for interment upon any of his brothers, or upon the Religious Order with which he was connected. I will only add, that there is no question now of the cost going for the religious ceremonial, still less of the cost of a monument, which would naturally be borne by those who might wish to erect one. The claim is simply for undertaker's and workmen's expenses in effecting the decent and proper burial of the corpse of the second Archbishop of Sydney, which still remains uninterred, and I submit that those ordinary and proper expenses should come out of the personalty. "Believe me, my dear Lord, to be your faithful and devoted servant, "HERBERT, Bishop of Salford. "To His Eminence, the Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney." "17, MOUNTJOY SQUARE, DUBLIN, "MY DEAR LORD,-In reply to your Lordship's letters I really have but little to add to what I have already written. The public papers announced the fact, which every one knew to be correct, that Dr. Vaughan's remains were interred with due solemnity in the family vault. If there had been any mistake in the matter the blame must rest upon somebody's shoulders. It certainly does not rest on mine. It appears to me that there can be no more appropriate place for the late Archbishop's repose than the family vault at the mansion where he died. If the family desire to transfer his remains elsewhere, I have no objection to their doing so, but it certainly will not be done at my expense. Believe me to remain yours faithfully, "PATRICK F. CARD. MORAN, Archbishop of Sydney." " The lesson of that correspondence bit deep. Herbert Vaughan thought it was a warning which ought to cure any one of a wish for popularity. There is little doubt that the whole painful incident helped to strengthen that singular independence of temper and indifference to public opinion which so marked the later years of his life. It was a heavy cross, and hard to bear at the time, but he turned it to account. A strange form of prayer which the Cardinal favoured was that of a petition to God to send him some public It was humiliation if such were good for his soul. the Cross in the guise which perhaps of all others seemed the most painful to him. At one moment in his career as Archbishop he may have thought that that prayer had been heard. It is of interest to see how he bore himself when for a moment he seemed betrayed into a false position and even held up to public ridicule. It was in the days when he was still busy with his plans for the building of Westminster Cathedral. His attention had been called to the fact that in the great Basilica of St. Sernin in Toulouse there were treasured relics for centuries reverenced as those of St. Edmund, the royal martyr of England. In 1893, the Rev. J. B. MacKinlay had published a volume entitled St. Edmund, King and Martyr. The book had run the gauntlet of the criticism of the Press, and none had challenged the statement, which seemed to rest on the tradition of ages, that the body of the Saint had been taken from its shrine at St. Edmundsbury by the French Prince who afterwards became Louis VIII when he came to help the Barons in their quarrel with King John. The story ran that the French Prince, being called to the South of France to crush the Albigensian Rebellion, had taken the body of the English Saint with him to Toulouse, and there deposited it in the famous Basilica of St. Sernin. According to the compilers of the Mémoires de la Société Archéologique du Midi de la France, an inventory of the treasures of the Basilica taken in 1489 recorded the fact that the "corpus Sancti Aymundi regis Angliae quondam" was at that time in a marble coffin (vasa) in the crypt of St. Sernin. It is beyond dispute that in 1630-1631, when Toulouse was being ravaged by the Plague, the townsmen vowed a shrine to the relics of St. Edmund the King. In fulfilment of the vow, in July, 1644, the Archbishop of Toulouse opened a tomb inscribed "Ici repose le vénérable corps de St. Edmond Roy d'Angleterre," and with great pomp and ceremony transferred the bones to a shrine of silver given to the town. One of those who took part in this act of thanksgiving was one of the Canons of the Basilica, Pierre de Caseneuve. In his Vie de St. Edmond Caseneuve accepts without question the authenticity of the relics, and notes the tradition that they had been brought to Toulouse by Louis VIII. "On croit que ce fut le Roy Louys huitième qui en fit présent à cette vénérable Église.” When Cardinal Vaughan heard of these things, that far away in the South of France there had been erected a glorious shrine to an English Saint, and that the relics it contained had been an object of veneration to the people of Toulouse for centuries, his heart was at once filled with a great desire. In his impulsive way he resolved to do what a man might to recover the bones of the Martyr for England and to bring them to Westminster Cathedral. The difficulties in the way might well have daunted him, but he laid his plans boldly and skilfully. His mind was so preoccupied with the problem how to get the Basilica of Toulouse to surrender its treasure, that it may be doubted whether any question as to the authenticity of the relics ever presented itself to his mind. The very fact that the memory of the Saxon King had been held in special honour for so long in this out-of-the-way corner of Europe in itself seemed to raise a strong presumption in favour of the truth of a tradition attested by so many witnesses for so many years. From the outset the Cardinal was shut off from advice which might have helped him, by the necessity of acting with the greatest secrecy. He took counsel with Cardinal Mathieu, who had formerly been Archbishop of Toulouse, and other distinguished French ecclesiastics, but only as to the possibility of securing the relics for England. Their replies were not encouraging. It is true that in the time of another Archbishop of Toulouse, the late Cardinal Desprez, a small fragment of the bones believed to be those of the English Martyr had been given to St. Edmund's English Benedictine House at Douai. But to ask that the whole body should be transferred to London was a very different thing. Even if the ecclesiastical authorities in Toulouse could be persuaded to part with the relics, it was thought very unlikely that the French Government would allow them to go to England. Cardinal Vaughan paid very little heed to the views of the French Government, but to facilitate the negotiations in Toulouse suggested that the gift of the relics should not be directly to him or the country he represented, but to the Sovereign Pontiff. This, largely through the kind offices of Cardinal Mathieu, was eventually arranged. The authorities in Toulouse presented the remains to the Pope, well knowing that he in turn would sooner or later give them to England. Early in July, 1901, the relics were taken to Rome and deposited in a chapel in the Vatican. Some weeks later Mgr. Merry del Val was commissioned to take them to England and deliver them into the care of Cardinal Vaughan. While these arrangements were being made |