Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Ralph of Maidstone

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649910Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 47 — Ralph of Maidstone1896Charles Lethbridge Kingsford

RALPH of Maidstone (d. 1246), bishop of Hereford, is mentioned as archdeacon of Shropshire in 1215 and 1221, and as treasurer of Lichfield in 1215 and 1229. He was afterwards archdeacon of Chester, and appears to have taught in the schools at Oxford. Later on he migrated to Paris, and Matthew Paris mentions that he was one of the scholars who left that university in consequence of the riots of 1229 (iii. 168). After his return to England he was made dean of Hereford on 22 Sept. 1231. Three years later he was elected bishop of Hereford, the royal assent being given and the temporalities restored on 30 Sept. 1234. He was consecrated by Archbishop Edmund at Canterbury on 12 Nov. following. He baptised Henry, son of Richard of Cornwall, in 1235, and in the same year was sent to Provence to escort Eleanor, the intended queen of Henry III, to England. He was a witness to the confirmation of the charters in 1236, and in 1237 was employed to mediate with Llywelyn ab Iorwerth [q. v.] Ralph was injured by a fall from a rock in 1238, and the ‘Dunstable Annals’ seem to imply that this was the reason of his resignation of his bishopric in the following year (Ann. Mon. iii. 148, 156). The ordinary accounts, however, state that Ralph entered the Franciscan order in pursuance of a vow that he had made as the result of a vision when archdeacon of Chester. He resigned his bishopric and was received into the Franciscan order by Haymo of Feversham, the English provincial at Oxford, on 17 Dec. 1239 (Monumenta Franciscana, i. 58). Bartholomew of Pisa (Liber Conformitatum, f. 79b) says that Ralph worked with his own hands on the building of the Franciscan church at Oxford. Afterwards he retired to the house of his order at Gloucester, and, dying there on 8 Jan. 1246, was buried ‘in choro fratrum in presbyterario.’ Ralph is described by several writers as a man of great learning and repute as a theologian. While still archdeacon of Chester he wrote ‘Super Sententias’ (cf. Gray's Inn MS. 14, ff. 28–32). Royal MS. 3 C. xi. anciently belonged to the Franciscan house at Canterbury ‘Ex dono fratris Radulphi de Maydenstane quondam episcopi Herefordensis.’ Matthew Paris (Chronica Majora, iv. 163, Hist. Anglorum, ii. 374) erroneously states that Ralph became a Dominican.

[Matthew Paris, Annales Monastici, Flores Historiarum, Monumenta Franciscana (all these in Rolls Ser.); Le Neve's Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ, i. 458–9, 475, 565, 573, 581; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib. pp. 638–9; Godwin, De Præsulibus, p. 536; Little's Greyfriars at Oxford, pp. 3, 182 (Oxf. Hist. Soc.); there are also some unimportant references in the Cartularium S. Petri Gloucestriæ (Rolls Ser.).]

C. L. K.