As a bishop, he dedicated considerable efforts to securing the canonisation of Thomas de Cantilupe, his predecessor, for whom he had worked during his lifetime.

[6] When Cantilupe was ex-communicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Peckham, Swinefield travelled to Rome on 26 January 1282 to plead his mentor's case to the Pope.

[8] The election was confirmed by John Peckham, the Archbishop of Canterbury on 31 December 1282, and he entered into possession of the spiritualities and temporalities, or the ecclesiastical and lay income-producing properties, of the see by 8 January 1293.

He worked to ensure that churches within his diocese were not misappropriated through the granting of custody to unworthy candidates, and was vigilant over monastic houses.

We have learned from sundry reports that on Wednesday after the feast of St. Bartholomew they (Aaron's family) have made preparations for a marriage feast … to which they have invited - not secretly but quite openly - some of our Christians in order to disparage the Christian faith of which they are the enemies and preach heresies to the simple people thus generating scandal by their intercourse.

We therefore bid and enjoin on you … to make it known in all churches of the diocese that no Christian is to take part in festivities of this kind, under pain of canonical discipline.

It has been suggested that Swinefield's close correspondence with Rome over these events led to Honorius IV's Bull of November, which called on the Archbishop of Canterbury to ensure that anti-Jewish measures were properly enforced, especially those forbidding fraternisation between Jews and Christians.

[12] Swinefield's main efforts, though, went toward securing the canonisation of his predecessor Thomas de Cantilupe[2] beginning almost immediately after the latter's death in 1282.

[16] The Synagogue figure shows a blindfolded Jew, whose two tablets are being dropped, in order to convey ignorance and a failure to uphold God's law.

[2] Richard Swinefield died on 15 March 1317,[8] and was buried in Hereford Cathedral, where a memorial in the transept's north wall depicts him in bishop's robes and holding a building.