The Prelate in England and Europe, 1300-1560 [Illustrated] 1903153581, 9781903153581

Citation preview

The Prelate in England and Europe 1300–1560

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YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS York Medieval Press is published by the University of York’s Centre for Medieval Studies in association with Boydell & Brewer Limited. Our objective is the promotion of innovative scholarship and fresh criticism on medieval culture. We have a special commitment to interdisciplinary study, in line with the Centre’s belief that the future of Medieval Studies lies in those areas in which its major constituent disciplines at once inform and challenge each other.

Editorial Board (2014) Professor Peter Biller (Dept of History): General Editor Dr T. Ayers (Dept of History of Art) Dr Henry Bainton (Dept of English and Related Literature) Dr J. W. Binns (Dept of English and Related Literature) Professor Helen Fulton (Dept of English and Related Literature) Dr K. F. Giles (Dept of Archaeology) Professor W. M. Ormrod (Dept of History) Dr Lucy Sackville (Dept of History) Dr Hanna Vorholt (Dept of History of Art) Professor J. G. Wogan-Browne (English Faculty, Fordham University) Consultant on Manuscript Publications Professor Linne Mooney (Dept of English and Related Literature)

All enquiries of an editorial kind, including suggestions for monographs and essay collections, should be addressed to: The Academic Editor, York Medieval Press, University of York, Centre for Medieval Studies, The King’s Manor, York, YO1 7EP (E-mail: [email protected]).

Publications of York Medieval Press are listed at the back of this volume.

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The Prelate in England and Europe 1300–1560

Edited by

Martin Heale

YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS

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© Contributors 2014 All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2014

A York Medieval Press publication in association with The Boydell Press an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com and with the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York ISBN 978-1-903153-58-1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

This publication is printed on acid-free paper

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

vii

List of Contributors

x

Preface and Acknowledgements

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List of Abbreviations

xii

Introduction1 Part I: Prelates and Power The Clerical Chancellors of Late Medieval England Gwilym Dodd

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Prelates and the Alien Priories Benjamin Thompson

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Cardinals at the Court of Francis I Cédric Michon

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Part II: Patronage and Learning  n Abbot and His Books in Late Medieval and Pre-Reformation A England101 James G. Clark  relates and the Provision of Books: Bishop John Carpenter’s P Carnary Library127 Wendy Scase The Bishops and the Printers: Henry VII to Elizabeth Felicity Heal

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Contents Part III: Identity and Display  reasure, Material Possessions and the Bishops of Late Medieval T England173 Christopher Woolgar  piscopal Embodiment: the Tombs and Seals of Bishops in E Medieval England and Wales Elizabeth A. New

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 istercian Abbots as Patrons of Art and Architecture: Northern C England in the Late Middle Ages Michael Carter

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Cistercian Abbots in Late Medieval Central Europe: Between the Cloister and the World Emilia Jamroziak

240

Part IV: Attitudes towards Prelacy Monastic Attitudes to Abbatial Magnificence in Late Medieval England261 Martin Heale Lollard Views on Prelates Anne Hudson

277

Index of People and Places

295

Index of Subjects

314

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures [Dodd] Fig. 1 Grant of a licence to Sir John Grey of Rotherfield by William Wykeham in 1368: TNA, C 66/277 m. 29. Reproduced by permission of the National Archives. 

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[Clark] Fig. 1 Book of hours belonging to Abbot John Islip of Westminster, now Manchester, John Ryland Library, MS Lat. 165, showing his striking ‘eye’ and ‘slip’ (i.e. reed) rebus. Reproduced by permission of the John Ryland’s Library, University of Manchester (Copyright of the University of Manchester).  Fig. 2 Marginal notation apparently in the hand of Abbot Richard Kidderminster of Winchcombe: Cambridge, Clare College, G. i. 9. Reproduced by permission of the President and Fellows of Clare College, Cambridge.

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[Heal] Fig. 1 Frontispiece of Parker’s De antiquitate (1572). Oxford, Bodleian Library, A.19.9.Th. Reproduced by ­permission of the Bodleian Libraries, the University of Oxford.  Fig. 2 John Alcock preaching to his clergy. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. 1. Q. 5. 33 (frontispiece). Reproduced by ­permission of the Bodleian Libraries, the University of Oxford.  Fig. 3 Bishop Fisher preaching at the burial of Henry VII. Oxford, Bodleian Library, 4o T 16 Th. BS (title page). Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Libraries, the University of Oxford.

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List of Illustrations Fig. 4 Cardinal Pole’s Articles of Enquiry for Canterbury Diocese, 1556. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce PP 247 (title page). Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Libraries, the University of Oxford.

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[New] Fig. 1 Cast of the seal of Jocelin of Wells, bishop of Bath. Reproduced by permission of the Society of Antiquaries of London.  194 Fig. 2a Drawing of the seal used to identify the monument to Jocelin be Bohun as illustrated in W. Dodsworth, An Historical Account of the Episcopal See, and Cathedral Church, of Sarum, or Salisbury (London, 1814), plate between pp. 190–1. 201 Fig. 2b The monument to Jocelin be Bohun as illustrated in W. Dodsworth, An Historical Account of the Episcopal See, and Cathedral Church, of Sarum, or Salisbury (London, 1814), plate between pp. 190–1. 201 Fig. 3a Cast of the seal of Henry of Gower, bishop of St David’s. Reproduced by permission of the Society of Antiquaries of London.  204 Fig. 3b Entrance porch of the Great Hall, St David’s Palace. Photo: Rhun Emlyn. 204 Fig. 3c Tomb of Henry of Gower in St David’s Cathedral. Photo: Lowri Emlyn. 205 Fig. 4a Cast of the seal of Edmund Stafford, bishop of Exeter. Reproduced by permission of the Society of Antiquaries of London. 206 Fig. 4b Tomb of Edmund Stafford in Exeter Cathedral. Photo: author. 207 Fig. 5a Impressions of the seal of John Trillek, bishop of Hereford. Hereford Cathedral Archives, HCA 3158 and HCA 2851. Reproduced by permission of the Dean and Chapter of Hereford Cathedral.  209 Fig. 5b Memorial brass of John Trillek in Hereford. Reproduced by permission of the Dean and Chapter of Hereford Cathedral.  209 [Carter] Fig. 1 Map showing the location of Cistercian abbeys in ­northern England. Drawn by Steve Edwards.  Fig. 2 Holm Cultram Abbey, porch built by Abbot Robert Chamber in 1507. Photo: author. 

217 224

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List of Illustrations Fig. 3 St Andrew’s, Aysgarth, bench-end carved with the ­monogram of an unidentified abbot of Jervaulx. Photo: author.225 Fig. 4 Breviary of Abbot Marmaduke Huby, the first page of the Psalter with Huby’s monogram and motto ­illuminated in the base. Reproduced with the kind ­permission of the Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford.227 Fig. 5 Holm Cultram Abbey, monument of Abbot Chamber. Photo: Pat Bull. 230 [Jamroziak] Fig. 1a The abbatial throne of Bukowo Morskie Abbey (Pomerania). Photo taken from A. Stubenrauch, ‘Der Abtsuhl von See-Buckow’, Monatsblätter der Gesellschaft für Pommersche Geschichte und Altertumskunde 16 (1902), 165–71 (p. 168). 246 Fig. 1b Rear view of the abbatial throne of Bukowo Morskie Abbey (Pomerania). Provenance as for Fig. 1a. 247 Fig. 2 Fifteenth-century missal of Altenberg (Rhineland): Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf, Altenberger Missale, D 5, fol. 1r. Reproduced by permission of Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf.255 Fig. 3 The stalls in Zinna Abbey (Brandenburg) depicting Bernard as abbot. Photo taken from P. Knüvener, ‘Zur Kunst des Klosters Zinna und Anderer Märkischer Zisterzienserklöster im Spätmittelalter’, in Sachkultur und Religiöse Praxis, ed. D. Schumann (Lukas Verlag, 2007), p. 274; reproduced by permission of Lukas Verlag für Kunst- und Geistesgeschichte. 256

Table [Woolgar] Table 1 The material possessions of two archbishops

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Gwilym Dodd Benjamin Thompson Cédric Michon James G. Clark Wendy Scase Felicity Heal Christopher Woolgar Elizabeth A. New Michael Carter Emilia Jamroziak Martin Heale Anne Hudson

University of Nottingham University of Oxford Université du Maine University of Exeter University of Birmingham University of Oxford University of Southampton Aberystwyth University Courtauld Institute of Art, London University of Leeds University of Liverpool University of Oxford

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PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This volume has grown out of a conference on ‘The Prelate in Late Medieval and Reformation England’, held at the University of Liverpool in September 2011. All the papers delivered at that conference are published below, apart from those given by Natalia Nowakowska and Brigitte Resl. The volume also includes a chapter by Cédric Michon, offered subsequent to the Liverpool conference. I would like to thank the contributors to both the conference and to the volume, all of whom have been stimulating and good-humoured collaborators throughout this project. I would also like to acknowledge gratefully the work and expert guidance of all those at Boydell & Brewer and York Medieval Press who have been involved with this volume and especially Caroline Palmer, Rohais Haughton and Professor Peter Biller. The Liverpool conference was funded partly by a British Academy Research Development Award, and partly by financial contributions from the department of History of the University of Liverpool and the Liverpool Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, without all of whose generous support the event could not have taken place. This publication has also been made possible by a grant from the Scouloudi Foundation in association with the Institute of Historical Research, acknowledged here with gratitude.

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

BL British Library, London CCR  Calendar of Close Rolls, AD 1227–1509, ed. H. C. Maxwell Lyte et al., 61 vols. (London, 1902–63) CFR Calendar of Fine Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office, 22 vols. (London, 1911–62) CPL Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters, 1198–1521, ed. W. H. Bliss et al., 20 vols. (London and Dublin, 1893–2005) CPR Calendar of Patent Rolls, AD 1216–1582, ed. H. C. Maxwell-Lyte et al., 74 vols. (London, 1901–  ) EETS Early English Text Society   os original series EHR English Historical Review Emden, BRUO  A Biographical Register of University of Oxford to AD 1500, ed. A. B. Emden, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1957–9) HRH  Heads of Religious Houses, 940–1540, ed. D. Knowles, C. N. L. Brooke, V. C. M. London and D. M. Smith, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 2001–8) JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History Knowles, RO D. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1948–59) LP  Calendar of the Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J. Brewer, J. Gairdner and R. Brodie, 22 vols. (London, 1864–1932) MED  Middle English Dictionary, ed. H. Kurath, S. Kuhn et al. (Ann Arbor, 1952–99) ODNB  Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition (Oxford, 2004–  ) OED  Oxford English Dictionary, online edition (Oxford, 2013) PL  Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1878–90) STC  A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, & Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad: xii

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List of Abbreviations 1475–1640, ed. A. W. Pollard, G. W. Redgrave et al., 3 vols., 2nd edn (London, 1976–91) TNA The National Archives, London VCH  Victoria History of the Counties of England, ed. W. H. Page et al. (Oxford and London, 1900–  )

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Introduction

The years between the early fourteenth and the mid sixteenth century are of considerable interest in the history of the prelate. In some respects, this era might be regarded as a golden age of prelacy, culminating in the appearance of great ecclesiastical dignitaries across much of Europe, such as Wolsey, d’Amboise, Cisneros, Lang and Jagiellon.1 In terms of their political weight, their grandeur and their wide-ranging cultural patronage, these early sixteenth-century ‘cardinal-ministers’ arguably represented a high point in prelatical influence. Nor should they be regarded as wholly distinct from their clerical contemporaries: recent studies of Renaissance cardinals and the early Tudor episcopate indicate that the next rank of senior churchmen were no less concerned to express the importance and dignity of their office.2 However, the period c.  1300–c.  1560 also witnessed a developing critique of prelacy – not unconnected with these eye-catching assertions of ecclesiastical status and power – with complaints about senior members of the Church hierarchy a commonplace in the literature and preaching of the day. To these criticisms were added attacks on the very concept of the prelate, which was rejected as unscriptural by John Wyclif and his followers: a critique which would be taken up enthusiastically by sixteenth-century ­reformers in England and Europe.  1

S. Gunn and P. Lindley, ‘Introduction’, in Cardinal Wolsey. Church, State and Art, ed. Gunn and Lindley (Cambridge, 1991), pp.  1–53; N. Nowakowska, Church, State and Dynasty in Renaissance Poland: the Career of Cardinal Fryderyk Jagiellon (1468–1503) (Aldershot, 2007).  2 D. Chambers, ‘The Renaissance Cardinalate: from Paolo Cortesi’s De Cardinalatu to the Present’, in The Possessions of a Cardinal. Politics, Piety, and Art 1450–1700, ed. M. Hollingsworth and C. Richardson (University Park PA, 2010), pp. 17–24; S. Thurley, ‘The Domestic Building Works of Cardinal Wolsey’, in Cardinal Wolsey, ed. Gunn and Lindley, pp. 76–102 (esp. pp. 96–7); G. Bernard, The Late Medieval English Church. Vitality and Vulnerability before the Break with Rome (New Haven, 2012), p. 55.

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Introduction The notion of prelacy was therefore increasingly contested during the period covered by this book. The word ‘prelate’ derives from the past participle of the Latin verb praeferre, meaning ‘one advanced or brought forward’. Both the Latin pr(a)elatus and vernacular equivalents were widely used in the later Middle Ages.3 In its broadest sense, the term could be applied to anyone in a position of authority, such as a highranking official, the head of a household, or a confessor;4 but prelatus and ‘prelate’ were generally used to denote a churchman of high rank. This might potentially include an archdeacon or the head of a secular college,5 and the terms ‘lower’ or ‘inferior prelates’ were sometimes applied to middle-ranking ecclesiastics.6 Abbesses and prioresses were also occasionally described as prelates.7 However, the word ‘prelate’ was most frequently deployed in the later Middle Ages and sixteenth century to refer to cardinals, archbishops, bishops and male monastic superiors, and it is this common usage that has been adopted in the present collection of essays. Even within these parameters, ‘prelate’ remained a versatile term. It was often used as a synonym either for an archbishop or bishop, or for an abbot or prior. For example, the Council of Oxford (1222) made a number of statutes for ‘prelates’ which were clearly aimed at the episcopate, but also used the term to refer to monastic superiors, who are on one occasion described as ‘prelates of religious houses’.8 One reason for the popularity of the word seems to have been its convenience as a generic term for either of these two groups, avoiding the need to specify particular ranks and titles. Therefore, prelatus was the favoured word of monastic legislators of orders like the Benedictines and Augustinians which included both abbeys and priories, obviating the need to refer continually to ‘abbots and priors’.9 It was also used in the statutes of  3

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources. Fascicule XII, ed. D. Howlett et al. (Oxford, 2009), pp. 2402, 2408; MED.  4 E.g., PL 207, 668(D); The Babees Book: Early English Meals and Manners, ed. F.  Furnivall, EETS OS 32 (London, 1868), p.  328; Speculum Sacerdotale, ed. E. Weatherly, EETS OS 200 (London, 1936), p. 120.  5 E.g., Sermons by Hugh Latimer, ed. G. Corrie, Parker Society 30 (Cambridge, 1844), p. 44; Jacob’s Well, ed. A. Brandeis, EETS OS 115 (London, 1900), p. 127; CPL, II, 126, V, 385–6.  6 E.g., Þe Pater Noster of Richard Ermyte: A Late Middle English Exposition of the Lord’s Prayer, ed. F. Aarts (The Hague, 1967), p. 31.  7 ‘Caxton’s Ausgabe de Leg. Von S. Wenefreda’, ed. C. Horstmann, Anglia 3 (1880), 295–313 (p.  303); Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, ed. T. Bestul, TEAMS Middle English Texts Series (Kalamazoo, 2000), p. 39.  8 Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, II, AD 1205–1313, ed. F. M. Powicke and C. Cheney, 2 parts (Oxford, 1964), I, 106–25.  9 Documents Illustrating the Activities of the General and Provincial Chapters of the

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Introduction Benedict XII for the Augustinian, Benedictine and Cistercian orders, alongside abbas and prior.10 Perhaps encouraged by its widespread use in ecclesiastical legislation, the term ‘prelate’ was regularly adopted in later medieval monastic chronicles and customaries to denote heads of individual houses, even though it does not appear in foundational texts like the Rules of Benedict or Augustine.11 When applied to monastic superiors, ‘prelate’ seems sometimes to have had a subtly different connotation from ‘abbot’, particularly emphasising the dignity of the office. Convents might be commanded to obey a newly-elected superior as ‘their abbot and prelate’, and John Wheathampstead was described as ‘pastor et praelatus’ at the time of his re-election as abbot of St Albans in 1452.12 To be designated a ‘prelate’ could also be attractive to heads of religious houses since the title implied a connection, and some degree of equivalence, with the episcopate (see below). The spread of the term ‘prelate’ as an alternative to ‘bishop’ seems to have acquired further impetus in the later fourteenth century with the coinage of the English term prelacie – roughly equivalent to the Latin praelatia or praelatura – to denote the office, functions or authority of a prelate.13 This usage was in part the product of a lively debate about the role and power of prelates in late medieval England, which included a strong strain of criticism of those holding and seeking high office in the Church.14 The terms ‘prelate’ and ‘prelacy’ were generally used English Black Monks 1215–1540, ed. W. A. Pantin, 3 vols., Camden 3rd s. 45, 47 and 54 (1931–7); Chapters of the Augustinian Canons, ed. H. Salter, Canterbury and York Society 29 (London, 1922). 10 Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, AD 446–1716, ed. D. Wilkins, 4 vols. (London, 1737), II, 585–613; Chapters of the Augustinian Canons, pp.  214–67; Magnam Bullarium Romanum, a Beato Leone Magno usque ad S.D.N. Benedictum XIII. Tome primus, ad A. B. Leone Magno ad Paulum IV, ed. L and A. Cherubini, A. Auda and J. Paulus (Luxemburg, 1727), pp. 209–17. 11 For a few out of many possible examples, see Chronicon Abbatiae de Evesham ad annum 1418, ed. W. D. Macray, Rolls Series 29 (London, 1863), pp.  303, 306; The Observances in Use at the Augustinian Priory of S. Giles and S. Andrew at Barnwell, Cambridgeshire, ed. J. Clark (Cambridge, 1897), passim; The Customary of the Benedictine Abbey of Eynsham in Oxfordshire, ed. A. Gransden, Corpus Consuetudinum Monasticarum 2 (Siegburg, 1963), pp. 131, 140–8. 12 E.g., Registrum Thome de Charlton, Episcopi Herefordensis, AD 1327–1344, ed. W.  Capes, Canterbury and York Society 9 (London, 1913), p.  21; Registrum Abbathiae Johannis Whethamstede, Abbatis Monasterii Sancti Albani, ed. H. T. Riley, 2 vols., Rolls Series 28.6 (London, 1872–3), I, 20. 13 MED; OED. ‘Prelacy’ was also used as a collective noun for prelates from around the same date. 14 See, for example, G. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1961), pp. 241–85; John Gower, Mirour de l’Omme, trans. W. Wilson and N. Van Baak (East Lansing, 1992), pp.  253–68; John Gower, ‘Vox Clamantis’, in

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Introduction neutrally in these contexts, but their alliterative possibilities – allowing associations to be made with ‘pride’ and ‘princes’ – no doubt increased their popularity as an alternative to ‘bishop’. For John Wyclif and his followers, there was an even more compelling reason for using ‘prelate’: as Anne Hudson notes in her chapter below, prelatus (unlike episcopus) did not feature in the Vulgate.15 Therefore, the adoption of the term ‘prelate’ helped to make the case that contemporary episcopal practices were unscriptural. Wycliffite writings thus gave further impetus to the use of ‘prelate’ and ‘prelacy’ for those drawn into debates about the role and activities of senior churchmen. Finally, contemporaries also found helpful a generic term for all high-ranking ecclesiastics. This widespread usage of ‘prelate’ reflects the fact that cardinals, bishops and monastic superiors had a good deal in common with one another. They all discharged an important public role, in ecclesiastical16 and secular government17 alike. Prelates of all kinds were required to fulfil pastoral and educational functions, teaching and guiding the flocks under their charge.18 All high-ranking churchmen, both secular and regular, shared the responsibility of maintaining the endowments, privileges and traditions of perpetual institutions, and in discharging this duty faced similar issues and concerns (for example over vacancies).19 Moreover, all senior ecclesiastics were agents and emblems of the proprietorial Church, as major landowners with large revenues at their disposal: an attribute which brought power and status, but also criticism for perceived ambition and worldliness.20 The Major Latin Works of John Gower, ed. E. Stockton (Seattle, 1962), Book 3 (esp. pp. 113–45). 15 See below, pp. 277–8. 16 The papal curia regularly issued mandates ‘to all prelates, secular and regular’ to carry out papal commissions and to collect and pay taxation due to the Apostolic See: e.g., CPL, II, 105–8, 118, 126–8, 223. 17 The writs summoning churchmen to Parliament and Convocation routinely called on ‘prelates’ to attend: F. Palgrave, The Parliamentary Writs and Writs of Military Summons, 2 vols. in 4 (London, 1827–34), passim; Records of Convocation, ed. G. Bray, 20 vols. (Woodbridge, 2005–6), passim. 18 ‘For nowe prelatis and grete religious possessioners ben so occupied aboute worldly lordischipis and plea and bysinesse in herte, that thei may not be in devocion of preiynge, and thought of hevenely thingis and of here owene synnys and othere mennys, and studie and prechynge of the gospel, and visitynge and confortynge of pore men in here diocisis and lordischipis’: John Wycliffe, Select English Works, ed. T. Arnold, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1869–71), III, 215. 19 ‘Þe vifte [fifth] was þhat bissopriches & abbeies al so þat vacauns were of prelas in þe kinges hond were ido’: The Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, ed. W. Wright, Rolls Series 86 (London, 1887), II, 681. 20 E.g., The English Works of John Wyclif Hitherto Unprinted, ed. F. Matthew, EETS OS 74 (London, 1880), pp. 160–1; Wycliffe, Select English Works, II, 62, III, 157–8.

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Introduction The present collection of essays seeks to explore these various areas of common ground between high-ranking secular and regular ecclesiastics between the fourteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries, focusing mainly on England but including some continental case studies for context. Prelates continued to play a highly significant public role throughout this period. Bishops occupied a range of important government offices in late medieval England, none more prominent than royal chancellor. There were, of course, good practical reasons why senior ecclesiastics took on prominent roles in the royal administration, including their high level of education and the potential for them to be paid in benefices. However, as Gwilym Dodd shows, the clerical hold on the office of chancellor actually strengthened as the later Middle Ages progressed, after experimentation with lay chancellors in the fourteenth century. Dodd argues that the appointment of senior ecclesiastics to high government office could be a source of political stability, while the role of the chancellor in preaching the opening sermon at Parliament and the growth of chancery as a court of equity also seem to have contributed to the clerical monopoly of that office in the fifteenth century.21 It was not only bishops who exercised a notable public function in the period covered by this volume. Abbots of major religious houses contributed to secular government, both in Parliament and by serving on royal commissions. Indeed, there is every sign that monastic superiors were becoming more heavily involved in public life in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, serving as Justices of the Peace and taking their responsibilities in Parliament increasingly seriously.22 Cardinals might play an even more prominent role in secular government, especially in a realm like early sixteenth century France where they formed a notable collective presence. Cédric Michon’s analysis of the role of French cardinals during the reign of Francis I (1515–47) indicates the breadth of their public activity, including service at court, in regional government and as diplomats, while also fulfilling important ritual and cultural functions. Their political influence was less clear-cut, however, and Michon argues that those cardinals who hailed from the most See also the plea of John Sharpe in Annales Monasterii Sancti Albani, a Johanne Amundesham, Monacho (1421–40), ed. H. T. Riley, 2 vols., Rolls Series 28.5 (London, 1870–1), I, 453–6, who complained that ‘the temporaltes of Bysshoppes, Abbotes, and Priours, that have the name of “Prelates”, rechen to the summe of three hundred and thirty-two thousand marke by ȝere’. 21 See below, pp. 17–49. 22 M. Heale, ‘The Abbot and Public Life in Late Medieval England’, in Churchmen and Urban Government in Late Medieval Italy, c.1200–c.1450, ed. F. Andrews with M. A. Pincelli (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 331–47.

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Introduction important aristocratic families of the realm were in practice accorded the least power by the French Crown.23 The prominence of late medieval prelates in public life did not go unchallenged. Both the 1340s and the 1370s to ’80s saw deliberate moves to exclude clerics from the office of royal chancellor. In the 1340s, there were concerns that leading churchmen would place ecclesiastical interests ahead of their loyalty to the Crown, following the acrimonious dispute between Edward III and Archbishop Stratford.24 This accusation retained its currency and, in time, became one of the prime Lollard charges against prelates. In her discussion of a little-known Wycliffite tract of the later fourteenth century, Anne Hudson shows how the oath to the pope, sworn by incoming archbishops, was used to argue that prelates owed their primary loyalty to the papacy and were therefore unfit servants of the Crown. This charge was part of a wider Wycliffite critique of clerics holding secular office, on the grounds that no one can serve two masters.25 A rather more common late-medieval criticism of prelates in government and politics, however, was that they were too subservient to the Crown. Preachers such as Thomas Brinton and John Bromyard vociferously attacked high-ranking churchmen for failing to defend the rights of the Church, a response Brinton attributed to a fear of displeasing the powerful, and to self-interest: ‘because they covet great offices, or aspire to be translated to richer bishoprics’.26 The essays in this collection provide some support for the conclusion that fifteenth- and ­sixteenth-century prelates were more likely to uphold than to challenge the interests of the Crown. Michon finds little indication that Francis I’s cardinals acted in concert to advance the interests of the Church or to oppose royal intervention in ecclesiastical affairs. Benjamin Thompson, meanwhile, argues that English bishops largely accepted the royal and lay patronal viewpoint towards the confiscation and re-allocation of alien priory property in late medieval England – i.e., ‘that, as kings and nobles had founded churches, they could reorganize them and reassign their property if they were not fulfilling their founders’ purposes’ – and in a number of cases sought to profit from this windfall themselves.27 23

See below, pp. 76–97. See below, pp. 26–8; R. M. Haines, Archbishop John Stratford: Political Revolutionary and Champion of the Liberties of the English Church ca.1275/80–1348 (Toronto, 1986), pp. 278–327. 25 See below, pp. 277–93; cf. A. Hudson, ‘Hermofodrita or Ambidexter: Wycliffite Views on Clerks in Secular Office’, in Lollardy and the Gentry in the Later Middle Ages, ed. M. Aston and C. Richmond (Stroud, 1997), pp. 41–51. 26 Owst, Literature and Pulpit, pp. 246, 581–2. 27 See below, pp. 76–97, 50–75. 24

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Introduction This is not to say that high-ranking churchmen were unmindful of ecclesiastical rights and prerogatives. As Thompson shows, English bishops consistently and staunchly defended the continued ­ecclesiastical possession of alien priory property. This endeavour may even have extended to Lancastrian bishops taking the initiative in the foundation of Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, in order to ensure that remaining alien priory endowments were not lost to the king’s lay supporters.28 Late medieval bishops might also respond collectively to perceived attacks on episcopal endowments, such as the royal attempts to confiscate the temporalities of Bishop Lisle of Ely in the mid-1350s and those of Bishop Wykeham of Winchester in the late 1370s.29 Yet this concern to preserve ecclesiastical property did not necessarily generate a unified response, as more narrow institutional interests could readily intervene. The confiscation of alien priory possessions was one such instance, with English and French prelates sometimes finding themselves in fierce and prolonged competition with one another over these properties. This determination to preserve and extend the endowments under their charge was another common attribute of prelates of all kinds. Abbots and bishops faced powerful institutional expectations that they should defend the property and rights of their monastery or see at all costs. Late-medieval monastic chronicles and Gesta Abbatum recorded at length the benefactions and legal battles of individual superiors as an example to future superiors, and strongly criticized those who were perceived to have failed in this duty.30 Accordingly, it proved difficult for many fifteenth-century French abbots to surrender their claims to their English dependencies and properties in return for compensation, despite the obvious weakness of their position.31 Wholehearted defence of institutional interests, however, might not endear prelates to their neighbours and rivals. It was a not-uncommon complaint in late medieval literature that monastic superiors placed the defence and augmentation of their endowments before justice and care for the poor; and according to the anonymous author of the early-fourteenth-century poem The Simonie, prelates were ‘ablent [blinded] wid coveytise, and mihte noht se þe treuþe / For mist. / Þheih dradden more here lond to lese [lose], þan love of Jhesu Crist.’32 28

See below, pp. 69–72. See below, pp. 30–2, 17–21. 30 E.g., Chronica Monasterii Sancti Albani: Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani, ed. H. T. Riley, 3 vols., Rolls Series 28.4 (London, 1867–9). 31 See below, pp. 50–75. 32 E.g., Rymes of Robyn Hode, ed. R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor (London, 1976), pp.  71–112; Mum and the Sothsegger. Edited from the Manuscripts Camb. Univ. Ll. iv. 14 and Brit. Mus. Add. 41666, ed. M. Day and R. Steele, EETS OS 199 (London, 29

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Introduction As James G. Clark’s chapter indicates, a notable proportion of the reading of late medieval and sixteenth-century English abbots – including archival, legal and historical texts – was geared towards the preservation and careful management of their house’s endowment.33 Late-medieval superiors might also pick up the pen themselves for similar ends: the prime goal of Abbot Wolfgang Marius’s ­sixteenth-century chronicle of his abbey of Aldersbach, in Bavaria, was the defence of the house’s properties and rights.34 But, as Clark shows, the intellectual activities of late-medieval superiors were considerably broader than this. Some acquired sizeable personal collections of books, and there is evidence that heads of houses remained actively committed to claustral instruction, for example through the presentation of books to the convent and the direction of the monastery’s liturgy.35 The academically-trained prelate was an increasingly familiar figure in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England and Europe, and highranking ecclesiastics were heavily engaged in the promotion of learning throughout this period.36 One of the most interesting educational initiatives of the fifteenth-century episcopate was the foundation of two public libraries by Bishop John Carpenter of Worcester, re-examined here by Wendy Scase.37 Her study of the Carnary Library at Worcester challenges some recent assessments of Carpenter’s foundations. In particular, she questions the reliability of the surviving sixteenth-century ordinances for the library, and provides evidence for rejecting the suggestion that some of the extant books in the Worcester Cathedral collection were once part of the Carnary Library’s holdings. Scase, moreover, suggests new lines of enquiry by raising the possibility of scribal activity at the Carnary Library. Carpenter’s use of his library foundations to promote preaching and education was part of a wider endeavour among fifteenth-century English bishops to place learning at the heart of their pastoral activities.

33



34

35



36



37



1936), p. 43; The Simonie: A Parallel Text Edition, ed. D. Embree and E. Urquhart, Middle English Texts 24 (Heidelberg, 1991), p. 106. See below, pp. 101–26. See below, pp.  252–3; cf. the intellectual activities of Prior John Wessington of Durham, as outlined in R. B. Dobson, Durham Priory 1400–1450 (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 378–86. See below, pp. 101–26; and cf. the example of Abbot Arnold von Monnikendam of Altenberg in the Rhineland, pp. 251–2. E.g., H. Jewell, ‘English Bishops as Educational Benefactors in the Later Fifteenth Century’, in The Church, Politics and Patronage, ed. R. B. Dobson (Gloucester, 1984), pp.  146–67; J. Rosenthal, ‘Lancastrian Bishops and Educational Reform’ in The Church in Pre-Reformation Society, ed. C. M. Barron and C. Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, 1985), pp. 199–211. See below, pp. 127–41.

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Introduction Although there were frequent criticisms of late-medieval bishops for failing in their duty to preach – a charge advanced by Wycliffites and senior churchmen alike38 – a number of prelates rose to this challenge. Felicity Heal’s study of the use of printing by Tudor bishops highlights the endeavours of some prelates – beginning with John Alcock of Ely in the late fifteenth century – to reach a wider audience for their preaching through this new technology. As Heal shows, print also proved an increasingly popular tool of episcopal government over the sixteenth century, with the publication of proclamations, visitation articles and injunctions used to bring instruction and conformity to dioceses.39 Another central element of prelacy which united abbots and bishops was the wealth which they controlled. The relatively large size of the country’s dioceses meant that the bishops of England were considerably better endowed than many of their continental counterparts. According to the Valor Ecclesiasticus, eleven English bishops drew net revenues of more than £1,000 per year, a level of income also enjoyed by twenty-three English monasteries, and a handful of the richest sees and abbeys had annual receipts in excess of £3,000.40 No dimension of prelates’ activities was more prone to criticism and a greater cause of unease than their spending of the large resources at their disposal. The theme of prelatical avarice and luxurious living was a commonplace in late medieval preaching and literature. John Bromyard bemoaned how high-ranking churchmen chased after worldly wealth; Thomas Brinton inveighed against prelates for seeking promotions and desiring to live ‘in ease and delicacies’; and Thomas Wimbledon criticized the sumptuously adorned palaces, fat palfreys and hunting dogs which prelates provided for themselves out of the revenues of their offices.41 Lollard critiques of ecclesiastical wealth – following Wyclif’s conclusion that ‘all the priests of Christ: the pope, cardinals, bishops, abbots, priors or their subjects are held to follow Christ in evangelical poverty’ – went one stage further and advocated the confiscation of prelates’ property.42 These calls for 38

See, for example, Owst, Literature and Pulpit, pp. 246–7. See below pp. 142–69. 40 F. Heal, Of Prelates and Princes: A Study of the Economic and Social Position of the Tudor Episcopate (Cambridge, 1980), p. 54; Knowles, RO, III, 473. 41 Owst, Literature and Pulpit, pp.  246–50, 279. Cf. John Gower’s repeated attacks on the alleged preoccupation of fourteenth-century cardinals and bishops with wealth, honour and luxury: Gower, Mirour de l’Omme, pp.  253–68; Gower, ‘Vox Clamantis’, pp. 113–45; The Complete Works of John Gower, ed. G. Macaulay, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1899–1902), II, 455. 42 John Wyclif, Opera Minora, ed. F. Matthew and J. Loserth (London, 1913), p. 20; cf. A. Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History. (Oxford and New York, 1988), pp. 334–46. 39

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Introduction disendowment were widely aired in the years around 1400,43 and would be re-asserted more forcefully – and with greater effect – in the sixteenth century. The resources at the disposal of individual English bishops are well illustrated by their wills and inventories. However, as Christopher Woolgar shows in his chapter on bishops’ treasure, these possessions cannot be understood simply in terms of ‘ownership’. Many episcopal treasures were held in trust, and – like those of abbots – were to be passed on to their successors after death. Episcopal possessions, moreover, fulfilled various functions: they were used for liturgical, commemorative or devotional purposes, and they signalled connections with others.44 The possession and display of episcopal treasures was an important means of expressing identity and authority, a function also served by bishops’ seals and tombs. As Elizabeth A. New argues below, bishops used these latter media to project publicly the dignity of their office and ‘to foster the idea of episcopal lineage and authority across the ages’. The stylistic and iconographical similarities between bishops’ seals and tombs, demonstrated here by New, shed light on the ways in which episcopal identity was created and expressed in a range of media.45 These contemporary perceptions of ecclesiastical possessions and display suggest that late-medieval and sixteenth-century attitudes towards Church property were more nuanced than the anticlerical writings of the period – and some modern historical writing on the subject – would imply. It is apparent that a range of views about ecclesiastical wealth and display were current in late-medieval England and Europe. Reginald Pecock, citing Augustine of Hippo, argued that wealth could be used for both good and evil, and that what mattered was that ‘oonli good men and weel proued men in vertues be takun in to preesthode and into prelacie, wherynne ben riche possessious’.46 Aristotelian ideas about the moral value of wealth and the need for expenditure to reflect the status and dignity of the spender were also widely accepted in late medieval and Renaissance Europe.47 Indeed, the view that buildings, households, trains of attendants, dress and other forms of display should be proportionate to the particular rank of 43

M. Aston, ‘‘Caim’s Castles’: Poverty, Politics and Disendowment’, in The Church, Politics and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 45–81. 44 See below, pp. 173–90. 45 See below, pp. 191–214. 46 Reginald Pecock, The Repressor of Over Much Blaming of the Clergy, ed. C. Babington, 2 vols., Rolls Series 19 (London, 1860), II, 327–31. 47 See below, pp. 272–6; cf. S. Rigby, Wisdom and Chivalry. Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale and Medieval Political Theory (Leiden, 2009).

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Introduction the dignitary was a commonplace in this period in secular and ecclesiastical spheres alike.48 Monastic historians have often written disapprovingly about ecclesiastical display as a sign of worldliness, contrasting late-medieval spending on abbatial dignity and lifestyle with an earlier age of monastic austerity. Such conclusions have been particularly prevalent in the historiography of the Cistercian order. However, as Michael Carter shows, abbatial spending on the dignity of the office did not contravene the late-medieval statutes of the white monks and was embraced most vigorously by those, like Marmaduke Huby, who were considered by contemporaries to be monastic reformers. Emilia Jamroziak’s chapter indicates that closely parallel trends can be found in the Cistercian monasteries of central Europe.49 Moreover, as Martin Heale contends, these arguments for abbatial spending and display were largely accepted by late-medieval monastic communities. As long as their expenditure on buildings, households, vestments and plate was proportionate to their available income and directed to the longer-term welfare and repute of the monastery, it was generally supported by convents.50 Indeed, latemedieval superiors who carried out works of this kind were considered benefactors to their monastery and were enthusiastically commemorated by their communities.51 Moreover, there are signs that abbots were increasingly modelling themselves on bishops in late-medieval and early-sixteenth-century England and Europe. This emulation took a number of forms. Perhaps most obviously, an increasing number of monastic superiors sought to acquire a papal indult to wear the insignia of a bishop, the pontificalia, a privilege to which was generally added the right to give solemn benediction after mass, vespers and matins.52 Since the standard representation of the bishop was a figure with mitre and crosier shown in an attitude of benediction,53 the acquisition of these privileges – and the ability of mitred abbots to depict themselves in a similar manner – was 48

See, for example, Annales Monastici, ed. H. Luard, 5 vols., Rolls Series 36 (London, 1864–9), III, 186; L. Hodges, Chaucer and Clothing. Clerical and Academic Costume in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 15–16. 49 See below, pp. 215–39, 240–57. 50 See below, pp. 261–76. 51 See the chapters by Michael Carter and Emilia Jamroziak below for examples. 52 For a fuller discussion of this theme, see M. Heale, ‘Mitres and Arms. Aspects of the Self-Representation of the Monastic Superior in Late Medieval England’, in Self-Representation of Medieval Religious Communities. The British Isles in Context, ed. A. Müller and K. Stöber, Vita Regularis Abhandlungen 40 (Berlin, 2009), pp. 99–122. 53 See Elizabeth A. New’s discussion of this point below, pp. 192–3, 200.

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Introduction an ideal way for monastic superiors to associate themselves with the episcopate. By the early 1500s, papal grants of the pontificalia to monastic superiors commonly included an alluring package of episcopal privileges, including promoting clerks to minor orders, blessing vestments, ornaments and altars, reconciling churches and cemeteries within their jurisdiction, and granting indulgences.54 The provision by many superiors of sizeable residences akin to bishops’ palaces and their acquisition of personal coats of arms also indicate their desire to equate themselves to the episcopate. The growing number of English abbots and priors who sought and attained promotion as either a suffragan or a diocesan bishop in later fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century England is another indication of the allure of the figure of the bishop to monastic superiors.55 In this respect, abbots and priors can be said to have become more prelatical over the period covered by this book. This could potentially bring advantages to religious houses. As Heale argues, abbatial spending and display were always expected to be fruitful to the monastery in attracting patronage and the friendship of the powerful. On the other hand, it left monastic superiors increasingly open to criticism by those who opposed contemporary expressions of prelacy. It is significant that, whereas most late-medieval attacks on prelates from both Lollard and ‘orthodox’ critics primarily targeted bishops and cardinals, William Tyndale’s early-sixteenth-century The Practyse of Prelates devoted considerable space to an attack on monastic superiors alongside his critique of the episcopate. For Tyndale, abbots, priors, archbishops, bishops, cardinals and legates alike were ‘monstres . . . disgised with miters croses and hattes with crosses pillers & pollaxes’, all animated by greed, power and status.56 There is good reason to conclude, therefore, that cardinals, bishops and abbots were becoming increasingly alike over the period covered by this book. The considerable common ground between high-ranking churchmen of all kinds – both in terms of their activities (public, educational, cultural) and in terms of how they viewed and presented themselves as prelates and were perceived by others – suggests that there is 54

E.g., CPL, XIX, 344–5, XX, 343–51, 492–3. Handbook of British Chronology, ed. E. Fryde et al., 3rd edn (London, 1986), pp. 284–8; R. B. Dobson, ‘English and Welsh Monastic Bishops: the Final Century, 1433– 1533’, in Monasteries and Society in Medieval Britain, ed. B. Thompson (Stamford, 1999), pp.  348–67. These efforts of monastic heads to identify themselves with secular prelates were noted, not always favourably, by the episcopate: e.g., CPL, IX, 57. 56 William Tyndale, The Practyse of Prelates (Antwerp, 1530); William Tyndale, The Obedie[n]ce of a Christen Man (Antwerp, 1528), fol. 84r. 55

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Introduction value in studying them in juxtaposition. Despite continuing scholarly interest in the higher clergy in medieval and early modern Europe, as evinced by a number of recent publications and conferences,57 this common ground has rarely been explored. It is hoped that the present volume, with its focus on prelates and prelacy in England and beyond between c.  1300 and c.  1560, does something to fill this gap and to suggest avenues for future research.

57

Most notably, Abbatiat et abbés dans l’ordre de Prémontré, ed. D.-M. Dauzet and M. Plouvier (Turnhout, 2005); The Bishop Reformed. Studies of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages, ed. J. Ott and A. T. Jones (Aldershot, 2007); and recent conferences in Lille in 2011 (‘Évêques et cardinaux princiers et curiaux (XIVe–début XVIe siècle). Des acteurs du pouvoir’) and London in 2013 (‘Power Manifest: Structures and Concepts of Ecclesiastical Authority, c. 1100–c. 1500’).

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Part I Prelates and Power

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The Clerical Chancellors of Late Medieval England Gwilym Dodd

Introduction In September 1376, just two months after Edward III’s unpopular courtiers had been humiliated in the Good Parliament, the great and good of the realm were summoned to attend a meeting of the royal council to participate in what must have seemed to be a distinctly peculiar affair.1 The meeting had been called to allow the ‘victims’ of the Good Parliament, foremost among whom was John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, to exact their revenge on William Wykeham, bishop of Winchester. As Thomas Walsingham put it, in his own inimitable style, the duke disgorged the devilish venom pent up within him, and discharged the stings of his malice against the bishop . . . he was looking for a knot in a bulrush, and an opportunity to harm him in any way or by whatever means he could.2

The peculiar quality of these proceedings lay in the fact that the accusations levelled against Wykeham did not concern his more recent participation in the tumultuous events of the Good Parliament, where he had taken an active role in the trial of the disgraced courtiers and had also been appointed as a member of the reform council. Instead, they related to misconduct which he had committed over five years previously when he had been serving as chancellor.3 ‘At last’, Walsingham continued, ‘among the many charges that [Gaunt] laid, falsely it is said, he successfully pinned one upon [the bishop], of being disloyal to the king during the time he had held the office of chancellor.’ This was the claim that  1

CCR, 1377–81, p. 36. The St Albans Chronicle: The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, ed. J. Taylor, W. R. Childs and L. Watkiss, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2002–11), I, 61. For a general account of this episode, see V. Davis, William Wykeham: A Life (London, 2007), pp. 64–7.  3 The charges were recorded in The Anonimalle Chronicle 1333–81, ed. V. H. Galbraith (Manchester, 1927), pp. 96–8.  2

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Gwilym Dodd

Fig. 1  TNA, C 66/277 m. 29: grant of a licence to Sir John Grey of Rotherfield by William Wykeham in 1368. This document shows, where the entry is crossed out, the substitution of the sum of £80 for £40 in the grant of a licence to Sir John Grey of Rotherfield by William Wykeham in 1368. A ‘neat’ record of this grant was written up on the next membrane.

Wykeham, at numerous times, but in particular on one notable occasion in February 1368, had ‘reduced and erased’ (‘minuer et araser’) the records of chancery (i.e., the chancery rolls) in favour of his friend, John Grey of Rotherfield, so that the latter had only to pay £40 instead of £80 to obtain a licence for an enfeoffment. When Wykeham came to rebut this accusation, he did not deny that the rolls had been altered (for they most certainly had – as figure 1 shows), but maintained instead that the change had in no way advantaged him, but had been done for charity (‘pur almoigne’), for the original entry, he asserted, had been incorrectly recorded on the rolls and was therefore ‘against conscience’.4 But this was not all, for he then went on to say, . . . and on this matter I am not required to respond by law, for at this time I was chancellor, the second person in England after the king,

 4

Ibid., p. 99. For the licence issued by Wykeham to Grey, see CPR, 1367–70, pp. 81 and 82.

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The Clerical Chancellors of Late Medieval England the which office is of such authority that whoever is chancellor is not bound to account for his acts, for they are fully permissible.

The bishop, however, was given short shrift by Sir William Skipworth, a justice of the common bench, who retorted: ‘Lord Bishop, the law is such that every officer of the king in whatever office he holds, who has the goods of the king in his hands, is held to account for his acts, whether he is the chancellor, treasurer or anyone else.’ In November 1376, the bishop was duly found guilty, fined the improbable sum of 940,000 marks (a fine that was no doubt a reflection of the bishop’s considerable wealth), had his temporalities confiscated and was banished from political life.5 The reason this episode has been cited at length is because it introduces a number of themes that are central to an exploration of the chancellor’s office in the late Middle Ages and the way it was shaped by the clergy who dominated appointments to the office. There is, in the first place, the quite startling assertion by Wykeham that as chancellor he considered himself to be the most important individual in the kingdom apart from the king himself, and that the authority which the office wielded was such as to place him virtually above the law.6 Wykeham’s statement took the view of the chancellor as the king’s ‘right hand man’ to the most extreme of positions; that is to say, that as the main representative of the royal will, and specifically as custodian of the Great Seal and head of royal chancery, the principal writing office of the Crown, the chancellor enjoyed the same immunity as the king in relation to questions of accountability and the law. One suspects that what really lay behind this statement was the assertion that only the king could hold a chancellor accountable for his actions, because the authority invested in his office emanated wholly and exclusively from the sovereign. In response, Skipworth articulated an alternative viewpoint: namely, that all royal ministers, including chancellors, could be held to account and brought to  5

He was pardoned a year later, when Richard II came to the throne: Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. C. Given-Wilson et al. (Woodbridge, 2005; hereafter PROME), parliament of October 1377, item 99. For the pardon, see CPR, 1377–81, pp.  10, 87, printed in full in Rotuli Parliamentorum, 6 vols. (London, 1787), III, 387–9.  6 Interestingly, Thomas Arundel made a similar assertion to Henry IV in 1405, though in this instance he did so solely on the basis of his position as archbishop of Canterbury (the chancellor at this time was Thomas Langley, Dean of York): ‘Sire, I am your spiritual father and the second person of your realm, and you should accept no man’s counsel sooner than mine, if it be good’: English Historical Documents, Volume IV, 1327–1485, ed. A. R. Myers (London, 1969), no. 92. See also An English Chronicle 1377–1461: A New Edition, ed. W. Marx (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 36–7.

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Gwilym Dodd justice if it could be shown that by their actions damage had been caused to the king’s wellbeing. In this case, the principle of wider accountability was being asserted, for it would not have been lost on anyone attending this council meeting, least of all on Wykeham himself, that it was not the king but those who ruled in his name who had brought the bishop into such dire straits. Implicit in these proceedings was the notion that those who were appointed as chancellor held a public office which was subject to the scrutiny of the wider political community. I think it more than likely that most of the men, and certainly the other prelates, attending this council meeting would have considered its proceedings to have been a farce. It must have been obvious that whatever the cause of Gaunt’s anger with the bishop, it almost certainly did not relate to what Wykeham had done as chancellor five years previously. Indeed, if this was the very worst abuse that Wykeham’s opponents could come up with – and even here it is questionable how much in the wrong Wykeham had been – it suggests that the bishop had actually discharged his office with considerable probity. Walsingham saw the trial for what it was, noting that it was Wykeham’s propagation of the belief that Gaunt was a changeling, swapped at birth for a baby girl, that had roused such fury in the duke’s mind – a story to which presumably Gaunt felt he could not afford to give publicity, hence the rather lame set of ‘official misconduct’ charges.7 The whole episode underlined the great irony of Wykeham’s statement that he thought he was untouchable because he had discharged the highest office in the land and was the king’s foremost representative. In fact, it was his time in high office and the special responsibilities he had to the king which proved his undoing, for they gave Gaunt the opportunity to pin dubious charges of misconduct on him and to secure an easy conviction. Far from offering him protection, high office and great power made a chancellor acutely vulnerable because his remit – of upholding the rights of the Crown and ‘loyally advising the king’ – was subject to various and often competing interpretations. Walsingham’s remark that Wykeham was accused, in general terms, of ‘being disloyal to the king’ is especially worth noting in this respect. In one sense, though, Wykeham’s misplaced trust in his own invincibility was not too wide of the mark. The confiscation of his temporalities was a severe punishment, but it was relatively short-lived. Within seven months his estates had been restored, no doubt in part because of the widespread opposition to his trial that had been generated amongst his fellow prelates. In the parliament of January 1377 the clergy had collec-

 7

St Albans Chronicle, I, 61.

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The Clerical Chancellors of Late Medieval England tively petitioned to have the bishop’s temporalities restored (claiming incidentally, that the confiscation had been illegal)8 and in a meeting of the southern convocation the following month they had refused to make a grant of taxation until Wykeham was allowed to take his place in the assembly.9 The mobilization of support for Wykeham from within the Church usefully underlines a factor which made the relationship between chancellors and the Crown immensely complicated and at times hugely problematic. Where the chancellor was a clergyman, he acted as both a servant of the State as well as of the Church. While, as we have seen, this could give him a measure of protection that might frustrate the designs of secular authority for retribution – in the form of  8

PROME, parliament of January 1377, item 85. The question of the legality of the king’s actions is a complex one. The clergy’s case rested on their belief that Wykeham should have been accorded the privilege of a fair and proper trial by his fellow peers: in their complaint they stated that ‘the temporalities of his church were taken into the king’s hands, without sufficient consent and assent from those [i.e. the peers of the land] to whom it belongs in this matter and to whom the assent pertains’. This appears to have acknowledged that a trial of sorts had taken place, but suggested that those in attendance had not been free to offer their opinion on the case. Interestingly, Thomas Walsingham was of the opinion that ‘the duke [i.e. John of Gaunt] had him [Wykeham] found guilty without trial’ (St Albans Chronicle, I, 61), which suggests that Gaunt had simply railroaded the process, presumably in the face of opposition from Wykeham’s fellow prelates. Be that as it may, the question of the right of the crown to confiscate a bishop’s temporalities was not straightforward. In April 1341, the spiritual and temporal Lords in parliament famously forced Edward III to concede the principle that in future they were to be tried only by their fellow peers in cases of prosecution by the crown; but the king revoked this statute in October the same year and subsequent claims for right of trial by peers rested more on the authority of precedent and on political pressure than a firm legal footing (PROME, parliament of April 1341, item 51; Statutes of the Realm, 11 vols. (London, 1810–28; hereafter SR), I, 295 c.ii, 297). Indeed, whatever the prelates claimed in respect of their right to trial by their fellow peers, they were still bound by the terms of the legislation made in the parliament of March 1340 which upheld the right of the crown to confiscate temporalities providing this was done for a ‘true and just cause, according to the law of the land’: SR, I, 294(iii). In 1352, the king notably dodged the issue when the clergy asked for confirmation of the principle that their temporalities would not be confiscated ‘without any deliberation being taken with the king’s great council or the peers of the land’: PROME, parliament of 1352, item 66. For this note I am indebted to the excellent recent appraisal of these issues by Matt Phillips in his ‘Church, Crown and Complaint: Petitions from Bishops to the English Crown in the Fourteenth Century’ (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of Nottingham, 2013), pp.  231–47. See also G. L. Harriss, King, Parliament and Public Finance in Medieval England to 1369 (Oxford, 1975), pp. 298–304, 306.  9 Davis, William Wykeham, pp. 67–8; P. Partner, ‘Wykeham, William (c. 1324–1404)’, ODNB.

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Gwilym Dodd clerical privilege and broader ecclesiastical solidarity – it might also, at times, blur the lines of loyalty, as contemporaries, including the chancellor himself, struggled to reconcile the conflict of interests which the combination of lay office and spiritual vocation often generated. When it worked well, the clerical chancellor demonstrated the confluence of interests between the Church and State, and the inseparability of royal power from spiritual sanction; when it did not work well, a clerical chancellor exposed underlying tensions and discord. In what follows, I would like to explore these issues by extending the scope of the discussion to the much broader canvass of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In essence, I explore what difference it made to have the chancellor’s office filled by a clergyman. In the fourteenth century, at least, this is an especially pertinent line of enquiry, for a glance down a list of those who held the office suggests that contemporaries were grappling with this very same question (see Appendix). In contrast to the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, when virtually all appointments were clerical, in the reigns of Edward III and Richard II (i.e., 1327–99) there were no fewer than eight separate appointments of laymen to the chancellor’s office. Although this was still less than half the number of clergy appointed in the same period (seventeen), the willingness of the Crown at times to fill the chancellor’s office with ‘non-clerics’ suggests that contemporaries were not sure themselves about whether a cleric or a layman was best suited for the position. At the very least, it indicated that the chancellorship was not considered to be ipso facto a clerical office. And certainly, there is no doubt that the chancellor’s functions could be – and in this period often were – just as effectively discharged by laymen as they were by bishops. I am not the first to consider the rather tortured nature of the chancellorship in the fourteenth century, but whereas in the past this has tended only to be undertaken by considering particular chancellors in isolation, I take a rather more long-term approach. The aim is to understand the underlying reasons for such an unstable period in the history of this office, and also (and perhaps more importantly) why, in the end, the idea of the clerical chancellor won through and became the widely accepted norm in the fifteenth century.

The Burden of Office: Duties and Expectations In spite of the Crown’s flirtation with the appointment of lay chancellors in the course of the fourteenth century it must be admitted that there were very good practical reasons why senior clergy tended to be selected for this position. In origin, the key factor which linked the clergy with secular office was, as Pantin has observed, education, and specifi22

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The Clerical Chancellors of Late Medieval England cally mastery of Latin, the official language of record, and the unrivalled language of both the chancery and the exchequer (where the treasurers were also usually clergymen) throughout the late medieval period.10 In this regard, it was more by default than by design that churchmen were employed in the royal bureaucracy; and what was true of the heads of the administrative departments was also true of the dozens of clerks who laboured under them. It made sense to appoint clerical chancellors for the simple reason that until the end of the fourteenth century chancery itself was staffed almost exclusively by members of the clergy, that is to say, clerks in major orders. By this time, however, the chancellor had acquired a whole panoply of responsibilities which made it especially fitting that he should be a clergyman. Perhaps the most pertinent, for the purposes of this discussion, was his role as overseer and approver of abbatial elections. The National Archives series C 84 (‘Ecclesiastical Petitions’) contains many hundreds of petitions addressed to the chancellor – as the king’s representative – seeking his approval for the investiture of new candidates. The chancellor also had the duty of visiting all royal hospitals and free chapels, and he had the right to present to all benefices valued at twenty marks or less that were in the king’s gift.11 The jurisdictional power exercised by chancellors has tended to be regarded by historians as a phenomenon of a later period, when chancery ‘equity’ is supposed to have emerged in the course of the fifteenth century, but in fact chancellors had always been called upon to exercise judgement on the basis of what was considered ‘fair’ and ‘reasonable’, and this was another role for which members of clergy were especially suited, as the spiritual leaders of the Church and upholders of all things moral and just.12 I will return to this in due course, but it is worth ­remarking on the fact that in his defence Bishop Wykeham argued that he had approved the alteration of the records of chancery in favour of John Grey because the original entry had been against conscience – conscience, of course, has very clear theological and religious overtones. The other facet of the chancellor’s jurisdiction was his power to grant pardons to those who had been found guilty of a felony in the royal courts. Petitions for pardon were usually addressed to the king, but in reality it was the chancellor who issued the greatest number.13 Again,

10

W. A. Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, 1955), pp. 11–14. 11 B. Wilkinson, The Chancery Under Edward III (Manchester, 1929), pp. 30–3. 12 See most recently, G. Dodd, ‘Reason, Conscience and Equity: Bishops as the King’s Judges in Later Medieval England’, History 99 (2014), 213–40 (pp. 226–31). 13 H. Lacey, The Royal Pardon: Access to Mercy in Fourteenth-Century England (York, 2009), pp. 21–2.

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Gwilym Dodd clear parallels can be drawn between the secular and spiritual worlds, for the pardons which clerical chancellors issued by royal authority in their many thousands were very much akin to clerical indulgences for the dispensation of sin which bishop-chancellors will have granted in comparable numbers by episcopal authority. Like indulgences, royal pardons acquired legitimacy by drawing on familiar canonical principles of mercy, penitence and forgiveness. On the other hand, the fact that laymen were considered capable of fulfilling all these duties underlines the point that clerical status was not in itself a vital qualification for the chancellorship. In fact, the interchangeability of secular and clerical appointments highlights the crucial point that everything a chancellor did, he did on behalf of the king, so if any religious or theological elements are detected in his duties this was not indicative of his own clerical standing, but rather a reflection of the theocratic nature of late medieval kingship. This explains, to a degree, why laymen could be appointed to the office, but it also underlines still further why clergymen were the more natural choice for the role. Kingship was not itself, strictly speaking, a secular office. It was a mainstay of contemporary political and theological writing that the king received his mandate to rule directly from God, and therefore that all authority wielded by the king ultimately had a divine provenance.14 Who better, then, to act as the king’s first minister in transmitting by proxy the divine grace of the king than a member of the senior clergy? The chancellor did not have to be a cleric, but perhaps it helped if he was, to underline the universality of the king’s authority, the spiritual nature of his rule and the dominion he exercised over both the secular and clerical worlds. Many contemporaries, however, did not quite see it this way: many doubted whether royal governance really did – or could – reflect the harmonious, symbiotic relationship between the spiritual and secular worlds which the political theorists articulated. One of the key reasons for the instability of the chancellor’s office in the fourteenth century was the emergence of the belief that clerical incumbents were not in fact suited to, or appropriate for, an office that was considered to be 14

E. H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, 1957, repr. 1997), pp.  143–64; W. Ullmann, Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages (London, 1961), chap. 1; M. Bloch, The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France (London, 1973), esp. pp. 38–43; M. Prestwich, ‘The Piety of Edward I’, in England in the Thirteenth Century, ed. W. M.  Ormrod (Woodbridge, 1985), pp.  120–8 (pp.  125–6); W. M. Ormrod, ‘The Personal Religion of Edward III’, Speculum 64 (1989), 849–77 (pp.  862–5); and N.  Saul, ‘The Kingship of Richard II’, in Richard II: the Art of Kingship, ed. A. Goodman and J. L. Gillespie (Oxford, 1999), pp. 37–57 (p. 49).

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The Clerical Chancellors of Late Medieval England essentially secular in nature. Wykeham, of course, had been sacked as chancellor in 1371 precisely because he was a clergyman.15 As the petition presented in parliament at the time put it: . . . the earls, barons and commons of England declared to our lord the king that the governance of the realm has been controlled for a long time by people of holy Church, who are not liable to the king’s justice in all cases, whereby great misfortunes and damages have occurred. . .16

There was a clear perception of a fundamental division between Church and State. The fear was that clerical chancellors, as well as the other clergy in the key offices of State, were entrusted to run a system of government which did not in itself possess the means to bring them to account if they did a bad job or abused their position – though Wykeham’s trial in 1376 rather proved the fallacy of this belief. Such feelings were no doubt sharpened in the early 1370s by the view that the secular enterprise of waging war – conflict with France had resumed in 1369 – was more effectively prosecuted in the hands of laymen than churchmen. The execution of Archbishop Sudbury in 1381 exposed even deeper fault-lines in attitudes to clerical office-holding. A strong case has been made recently that this notorious act of violence was at least in part informed by the ideas of John Wyclif, whose pronouncements on the absolute necessity of separating the Church from secular office are well known, not least in the rhetorical question he posed in his De blasphemia: ‘What on earth is an archbishop doing as the king’s chancellor, an office which is the most secular in the kingdom?’17 Even in the midst of these sentiments, however, as Anne Hudson has pointed out, there was still ambiguity in the perspective of the rebels of 1381, for Walsingham reported that on concluding his sermon John Ball was acclaimed by his enthusiastic audience as both their future archbishop and their chancellor of the realm, as though the two positions naturally and mutually coexisted.18 If, in these later years, the move to exclude clergy from the chancellorship was predominantly grass roots in origin, earlier in the century 15

W. M. Ormrod, ‘An Experiment in Taxation: The English Parish Subsidy of 1371’, Speculum 63 (1988), 59–64 (p. 60); Davis, William Wykeham, pp. 54–7; W. M. Ormrod, Edward III (New Haven, 2011), pp. 527–8. 16 PROME, parliament of 1371, item 15. 17 S. Justice, Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381 (Berkeley, 1994), pp.  75–101; A.  Hudson, ‘Hermofodrita or Ambidexter: Wycliffite Views on Clerks in Secular Office’, in Lollardy and the Gentry in the Later Middle Ages, ed. M. Aston and C. Richmond (Stroud, 1997), pp. 41–51. 18 St Albans Chronicle, I, 546; cf. Hudson, ‘Hermofodrita or Ambidexter’, p. 41.

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Gwilym Dodd these sentiments were driven by the Crown. The political crisis of 1341 is too well known to require anything more than a cursory summary: suffice it to say that this was, at heart, a dispute between John Stratford, archbishop of Canterbury, and King Edward III, over the basic principle of the accountability of clerical ministers, following the failure of the ‘home’ council to raise sufficient funds to support the king’s overseas campaigning. To his great discomfort, Edward had discovered the limitations of secular power in the face of an independentminded clergyman, determined to stand his ground against what he felt to be the serious encroachments of the Crown on the rights of the Church. In this trial of strength Edward is generally considered to have emerged the victor, but his concession of the principle that peers could be tried only for misconduct by their fellow peers in parliament, and his attempts to reconfigure the role of the chancellor’s office after 1341, indicate that this crisis equally exposed the weakness of the Crown. Edward is reported to have resolved that he would ‘not again have a cleric as chancellor or treasurer, or in any other high office, but only such men who, if they played him false, he could draw, hang or execute’.19 True to his word, he ensured that the next three chancellors were laymen before, in 1345, John Offord, dean of Lincoln, filled the office. Offord’s appointment nevertheless was far more in line with the appointments of his immediate (lay) predecessors, for what governed Edward’s attitude to the choice of chancellors throughout the 1340s was not just a general reluctance to entrust senior clergymen with this top administrative position, but a more specific desire to set the chancellor’s office up as a counterpoise to the still considerable influence of John Stratford.20 This was especially important in view of the king’s plans to return to the continent and devolve the running of his ‘home’ administration once again to a group of ministers and councillors. In 1345 (for reasons which I will discuss shortly) Edward abandoned his experimentation with lay chancellors and turned once again to a clergyman, but he conspicuously looked beyond the episcopal bench to fill the position. In fact, Offord was an eminently safe bet from Edward’s point of view, for he had stuck by the king during the months of Stratford’s opposition and had no previous connections to either chancery or Stratford himself.21 A good 19

French Chronicle: Chroniques de London, ed. G. J. Luard, Rolls Series 95 (London, 1890), p. 86. 20 R. M. Haines, Archbishop John Stratford: Political Revolutionary and Champion of the Liberties of the English Church ca.1275/80–1348 (Toronto, 1986), pp. 328–62. 21 Wilkinson, Chancery Under Edward III, p.  117. Edward III had designs on the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury for Offord, who would almost certainly have resigned from the chancellorshop on taking up the see, but he died (probably of the plague) in May 1349 before being consecrated: R. M. Haines, ‘Offord, John

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The Clerical Chancellors of Late Medieval England indication of how Edward used his new chancellor is given by a letter he sent him on 28 September 1347, shortly before the opening of the southern convocation at St Paul’s on 1 October: Because we have understood that the archbishop of Canterbury [i.e., John Stratford] will hold a council of the clergy of his province in London starting this next Monday at which he intends to make some ordinances that will be prejudicial to us and to our crown in time to come, you are instructed to bring together our dear and loyal William Thorp and others of our justices and wise men of our council who have our estate and the estate of our crown tenderly to heart, and by means of their advice you will make appropriate prohibitions and commandments with the intention that no ordinance or provision shall be made at the said council that expresses anything in prejudice of us, our crown or our rights in whatever manner. And to this end we send you our dear clerk master Thomas Bradwardyn who is more fully informed of our intention and what is damaging to him [the king]. Given under our privy seal at Calais the 28th day of September.22

We do not know what damaging ordinance Stratford is supposed to have had in mind, but we may speculate that Edward feared a revival of agitation over ecclesiastical liberties, brought to the fore as a result of renewed financial pressure faced by the Church.23 It was not until 1349 – a year after Stratford’s death – that a spiritual peer of the realm, John Thoresby, bishop of St David’s, once again became chancellor. If this long interval suggested that Edward viewed the appointment of senior clerics to the office with some wariness, the impression is reinforced by the fact that it was not until 1363 that clerical chancellors were entrusted (c. 1290–1349)’, ODNB. Simon Langham resigned from the chancellorship in 1367, shortly after becoming archbishop of Canterbury. 22 TNA, SC 1/39/198. “De par le Roi. Porce qe nous avons entenduz qe l’ercevesque de Canterbire avera un council de la clergie de sa province a Loundres commenceant y ce proschein lundy a qil an en pourpos de faire illoeques aucunes ordinances qe purront estre preiudicieles a nous ou a nostre corone en temps avenir, vous mandons qe vous facez assembler nostre cher et foial William de Thorp et aucuns autres noz Justices et sages de nostre conseil qi ont nostre estat et l’estat de nostre corone tendrement a cuer et parmy lour avis facez faire prohibicions et mandementz tieux come y appertienent a fin qe nulle ordenance ne establissement se face au dit council qe porra sonner en prejudace de nous de nostre corone ou de nos droitures en qecunque manere, et a ce vous envoions nostre cher clerc Maistre Thomas Bradewardyn plus pleinement enforme de nostre entention, lui quel est envenantz. Don souz nostre prive seal a Caleys le XXVIII iour de septembre.” Dorse “Fait mem’ qe cestre letter fut livre au chaunceller en son houstel le Xieme iour d’octobre . . . le Tresorer estait mesme le temps, par Piere de Brugges.” Cf. Wilkinson, Chancery Under Edward III, p. 118, n. 1. 23 Haines, Archbishop John Stratford, pp. 356–7.

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Gwilym Dodd with the duty of opening – and one assumes presiding over – meetings of parliament. This no doubt reflected broader changes in the nature of the institution, and a shift of emphasis away from judicial business; but it may also have indicated the length of time that it took Edward to find the confidence to allow clerics to assume such a high-profile political role. Edward’s misgivings about clerical appointments are well known. Those of his adversary, John Stratford, have received less attention. Aware of the onslaught about to be unleashed on him by the king and his henchmen, on 29 December 1340 – the feast of St Thomas Becket – Archbishop Stratford delivered a sermon in which, with great sorrow, he admitted that from the time of his elevation to the archiepiscopate he had been immersed in the secular affairs of the king and kingdom, affairs which had involved the oppression of the clergy and of the c­ ommunity of the realm.24 He humbly acknowledged his error and lamented the consequent neglect of his spiritual functions. With tears in his eyes – so it was reported – Stratford entreated his listeners for their forgiveness, and pledged his resolve to devote all his energies, henceforth, to protecting the rights and liberties of the Church as well as his pastoral duties. Stratford’s words illustrate well the conflict of interests which the clerical incumbents of secular office had to grapple with. The rather startling inference of his address was that a cleric could not discharge the functions of secular office whilst at the same time adequately fulfilling his responsibilities as prelate – a view which presaged by many years the teachings of John Wyclif. Certainly, on a practical level there can be no doubt that service to the Crown as chancellor could drastically impinge on a bishop’s time. The chancellor, along with the treasurer and keeper of the privy seal, constituted, in effect, the core of the royal executive, and for lengthy periods they served more or less on a full-time basis overseeing their respective departments, as well as attending meetings of the king’s council.25 Margaret Aston has shown how little time Thomas Arundel spent attending to the business of the archdiocese of York during the time he was chancellor in the 1390s.26 Likewise, in his study of Henry Burghersh, Nicholas Bennett estimated that the bishop spent only eight months out 24

Vitae Arch. Cant.: Stephani Birchingtoni Monachi Cantuariensis Historia de Archiepiscopis . . ., ed. H. Wharton, Anglia Sacra 1 (London, 1691), p. 21; cf. Haines, Archbishop John Stratford, p. 284. 25 See G. Dodd, ‘Henry IV’s Council, 1399–1405’, in Henry IV: the Establishment of the Regime, 1399–1406, ed. G. Dodd and D. Biggs (York, 2003), pp.  95–115 (esp. pp. 102–3). 26 M. Aston, Thomas Arundel: a Study of Church Life in the Reign of Richard II (Oxford, 1967), pp. 294–8.

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The Clerical Chancellors of Late Medieval England of a total of forty-four resident in his Lincoln diocese during the period when he was chancellor between March 1327 and November 1330.27 The resignation of some bishop-chancellors after only a relatively short period in office, and in apparently uncontroversial circumstances, suggests that some simply found the double burden of attending to both their secular and ecclesiastical affairs to be intolerable: Robert Braybrooke, bishop of London, and chancellor for just six months between September 1382 and March 1383, may fit this scenario,28 as may his predecessor in the London diocese, William Courtenay, who stayed in office for barely two months in 1381. In Courtenay’s case, it may have been his promotion to the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury at this same time which proved the decisive consideration.29 Certainly, whilst Thomas Arundel appears to have taken 27

N. Bennett, ‘Beneficed Clergy of the Diocese of Lincoln’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of York, 1989), p.  92. Bennett does demonstrate, however, that Burghersh still managed to attend to the business of his diocese alongside the duties of his office (pp. 93–4). 28 See A. Tuck, Richard II and the English Nobility (London, 1973), p.  69; and R. G. Davies, ‘Braybrooke, Robert (1336/7–1404)’, ODNB. That Braybrooke was not up to the job is hinted at by the Commons in the parliament of February 1383, where, in reference to the great officers of State, they asserted that ‘it commonly happens that many virtuous and wise men who are skilled in certain requisite matters of business are not skilled in others’. They then declared their wish that ‘those endowed with the greatest loyalty and knowledge of the governance of his [the king’s] people’ should henceforth be elected to such positions. Braybrooke resigned on the last day of this parliament: 10 March 1383. See PROME, parliament of February 1383, item 16. 29 Courtenay became chancellor on 10 August 1381, replacing Hugh Segrave, steward of the household, who had temporarily been given custody of the Great Seal after the murder of Simon Sudbury, archbishop of Canterbury and chancellor, on 14 June. Courtenay was elected as archbishop by the cathedral chapter by the end of July 1381, he was provided to the see by papal bull dated 9 September, and was finally enthroned on 5 January 1382. He resigned from the chancellorship on 4 December 1381, six days before the papal bull arrived in Croydon on 10 December. While Courtenay’s appointment as chancellor appears only to have been a (further) stop-gap, before his assumption of archiepiscopal duties, it is possible that the hostility felt towards him by John of Gaunt may also have persuaded him of the desirability of leaving office. There is a hint too that he was not popular more widely within the political community. In the parliament of November 1381, before Courtenay had left office, the Commons pointedly spoke of ‘the present need of the king our said lord and his kingdom that the said office be occupied by the most wise and the most enterprising, both for business outside the kingdom and within it’ (confirming that Courtenay’s position was only temporary), but they then went on to make a complaint that was aimed as much at the present incumbent as his predecessors, when they stated that ‘there was and is a great murmuring throughout the realm that they [i.e. chancellors] are for the most part too fat in body and in purse, and too well provided, and their benefices ill managed, through the grievous oppressions done and practised

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Gwilym Dodd up his position as chancellor quite willingly as archbishop of York, when he became archbishop of Canterbury in September 1396, he resigned from the office almost immediately. Holding the chancellor’s office may not have been considered incompatible with a bishop’s obligations to his diocese, but a line appears to have been drawn when it came to the obligations of the first primate in all the kingdom.

Layman or Clergyman? The Fourteenth-Century Debate If there were important practical considerations to take into account when a senior clergyman attempted to combine a career in the Church with service to the Crown, there were perhaps even greater ‘ideological’ dilemmas to be faced. That axiom from Matthew’s Gospel (6. 24), famously quoted in the Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards, that ‘no one can serve two masters’ resonates very clearly in the words of Stratford’s address. Dual allegiance to Church and State was a relatively straightforward matter when their interests coincided, but when they did not this placed bishop-chancellors in the invidious position of having to choose between their obligations to the king and their duties and responsibilities as senior clergymen. Stratford chose the latter and the price he paid was a broken political career; Archbishop Sudbury chose the former (at least in the eyes of the rebels of 1381) and paid for it with his life. On the other hand, standing firmly behind the Church did not necessarily end in political disaster for a clerical chancellor, as the case of John Thoresby demonstrates in Edward III’s reign. The cause of the crisis in relations between the king and his chancellor lay in a bitter dispute between the king’s cousin Blanche, Lady Wake, on the one hand, and Thomas Lisle, bishop of Ely, on the other. Almost certainly there was much truth in Lady Wake’s accusations that the bishop had been a prime mover in a concerted campaign of local harassment and intimidation which led, in August 1355, to the murder of Lady Wake’s valet, William Holm, by some of the bishop’s henchmen.30 This, however, was by them against the people, by colour of their office: and yet they are a great and unnecessary expense to our said lord, a cause of great displeasure and offence to God, and dishonour to holy church, as can be fully explained if need be’: PROME, parliament of November 1381, item 20. For background, see J. Dahmus, William Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury 1381–1396 (University Park PA, 1966), pp. 73–7, 162–3; J. S. Roskell, The Impeachment of Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk in 1386 (Manchester, 1984), pp. 27–8; and W. M. Ormrod, ‘The Peasants’ Revolt and the Government of England’, Journal of British Studies 29 (1990), 1–30 (pp. 23–4). 30 J. Aberth, Criminal Churchmen in the Age of Edward III: the Case of Bishop Thomas de Lisle (University Park PA, 1996), pp.  130–42. For Lady Wake’s accusations

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The Clerical Chancellors of Late Medieval England not in itself the issue which vexed Chancellor Thoresby. It was, rather, the king’s ill-­considered decision to take the case into his own hands and, in a move that was reminiscent of Edward’s arbitrary treatment of Stratford in 1340–1, punish the bishop directly by ordering the confiscation of his temporalities. Writing from Newcastle on 30 December 1355 the king demanded to know why his chancellor and treasurer, William Edington, bishop of Winchester, had not acted on his instructions, pointedly stating that, ‘if the matter had touched a great peer of the realm other than the bishop you would have made an altogether different execution’.31 His letter instructed the ministers to convene a meeting of the judges and other learned members of the council to find a solution that was, as he put it, ‘least offensive to the law’; but the king’s designs continued to be frustrated, for the advice of the committee was that his plans were illegal, for they were forbidden by the terms of the statute of 1340 which expressly ordained that the king could not seize temporalities ‘without a true and just cause, according to the law of the land, and judgement thereupon given’.32 What, exactly, constituted a ‘just cause’ was, in a sense, the key point of contention. Undoubtedly the most significant aspect of the episode was the way Edward’s clerical ministers, that is to say his chancellor and treasurer, had refused outright to carry out orders which they considered were an infringement on the liberties of the Church. The clash between Thoresby and Edington, on the one hand, and the king on the other, illustrated very clearly the tension to which the employment of clergy in State office could give rise, but it also illustrated how higher clergy who had the strength of their convictions could stand up to the king and force him to backtrack. The set-back that Edward suffered at the end of 1355 was, nevertheless, to prove temporary, for the case came before king’s bench justices later the following year and a judgement of felony was passed against Lisle: his estates were confiscated in November 1356.33 Shortly afterwards, on 27 November, and almost certainly in response to against the bishop, see her parliamentary petition in PROME, parliament of 1355, item 30. 31 B. Wilkinson, ‘A Letter of Edward III to His Chancellor and Treasurer’, EHR 42 (1927), 248–51: ‘si la chose eust touché un grant piere de la terre autre Evesque, vous ent eussiez fait autre execucion’. 32 H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles,  The English Parliament in the Middle Ages  (London, 1981), chap. xxv, pp.  31–2 (and n. 73), citing SR, I, 294, c.iii. It is interesting to note that the council’s verdict rested not on the principle that Lisle ought to have been tried by his fellow peers in council or parliament (for which, see above n. 8), but on the rather more equivocal grounds that his crimes did not warrant such confiscation. 33 Ormrod, Edward III, pp. 382–3.

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Gwilym Dodd the humiliation suffered by the bishop, Thorseby resigned his chancellorship, and in fact never served the Crown in a public capacity again.34 This suggests that from the outset what had vexed the chancellor was not so much his concern to see that due and proper process was followed by the Crown against Lisle, but his unhappiness at the severity of the measures which Edward seemed so determined to visit upon the bishop, and the implications these posed for the general interests and well-being of the Church. If so, few other senior clergy appear to have shared Thoresby’s concerns, for the striking thing about the Lisle affair is how, in contrast to the crisis of 1340–1, the clash between the king and his clerical ministers did not escalate into an all-out confrontation. In spite of his ill-tempered censure of Thoresby and Edington, the king nevertheless revealed his qualities as a statesman by overcoming the initial misgivings of his clerical and legal advisors and seeking alternative ways of achieving the downfall of Lisle. Only Thoresby remained unhappy at the outcome. His fellow minister and early sympathiser, William Edington, evidently had no qualms over the fate of Lisle, for he promptly transferred from the exchequer into chancery as Thoresby’s replacement. The contrasting fortunes of the two bishops neatly highlight the range of opinion that existed within the episcopate on the degree to which the liberties of the Church should be defended. One might have expected the anti-papal legislation of the second half of the fourteenth century to have made the job of bishop-chancellors especially complicated since they were confronted with royal policies which appeared to encroach directly on the interests of the Church, but in reality the Church’s position in these matters was ambivalent and relations between the king and his clergy in this period were never seriously strained. Simon Langham, bishop of Ely, loyally represented the Crown’s perspective in the opening speech to the parliament of 1365 when he alluded to ‘the outrages, damages and grievances recently done and attempted against [the king], the rights of his crown and various people of his realm’ as the papacy tried to curtail the practice of pluralism.35 The second Statute of Praemunire was duly enacted, but it was noted in the parliament roll that only the assent of the laymen (i.e., the ‘dukes, earls, barons, nobles and commons’) present in the assembly had been secured for it and that ‘the prelates continued to protest that they could agree to or do nothing that might be or turn in 34

J. Hughes, ‘Thoresby, John (d. 1373)’, ODNB. PROME, parliament of 1365, items 2 and see grant of subsidy. For a general overview, see W. M. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III (London, 1990), pp. 126–7 and also Ormrod’s introductions in PROME, to the parliaments of 1351, 1353 and 1365.

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The Clerical Chancellors of Late Medieval England prejudice of their estate or dignity’. Somewhat ironically, a year later Langham himself, as archbishop of Canterbury, co-ordinated the collation of the names of all those pluralists who resided in the province of Canterbury, in fulfilment of instructions issued by Pope Urban V in May 1366.36 On the other hand, one suspects that opposition amongst the clergy to the new statute was far from universally felt, for pluralism benefited precisely those clergymen who had chosen careers in the service of the Crown, and who enjoyed the fruits of the king’s ecclesiastical patronage.37 Later, however, when the Statute of Provisors was re-enacted and substantially reinforced in January 1390, the interests of the clergy were more directly threatened and their opposition far more coherent.38 But in this instance, it was not the Crown but an emboldened political community which forced the legislation through and, as events were subsequently to prove, having a senior clergyman occupy the chancellor’s office, where he could influence royal policy and more effectively coordinate the defence of the clergy’s interests, was a significant advantage for the Church. In 1391, Thomas Arundel, archbishop of York, was the chancellor. In this capacity, he opened parliament with a plea to have the legislation of the previous year moderated, stating that one of the assembly’s purposes ‘was to ordain and see how our holy father might have that which pertains to him, and the king that which pertains to him and his crown, according to the words “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”’ (Mark 12. 17).39 Having failed to make any long-lasting changes in 1391, Arundel persisted in 1393, this time more directly positioning himself 36

Printed in Registrum Simonis de Langham, ed. A. C. Wood, Canterbury and York Society 53, 3 vols. (London, 1947–54), II, 1–109. 37 For the support given by the clergy to Edward III’s campaign to nullify the pope’s programme against pluralism (by limiting papal provision to vacant benefices) see J. J. N. Palmer and A. P. Wells, ‘Ecclesiastical Reform and the Politics of the Hundred Years War during the Pontificate of Urban V (1362–70)’, in War, Literature, and Politics in the Late Middle Ages, ed. C. T. Allmand (Liverpool, 1976), pp.  169–89 (esp. pp.  184–8). On pluralism, see also A. Hamilton Thompson, ‘Pluralism in the Medieval Church: with Notes on Pluralists in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1366’, Associated Architectural Societies’ Reports and Papers 33 (1915), 35–73; 34 (1917), 1–26; 35 (1919), 87–108, 199–244; and 36 (1921), 1–41; and C. J. Godfrey, ‘Pluralists in the Province of Canterbury in 1366’, JEH 11 (1960), 23–40. For an overview of the situation in the 1340s, see R. C. Palmer, English Law in the Age of the Black Death, 1348–1381: A Transformation of Governance and Law (Chapel Hill and London, 1993), chapter 4. 38 PROME, parliament of January 1390, items 24 and 32; SR, II, 69 c.ii; P. Heath, Church and Realm, 1272–1461 (London, 1988), pp. 214–15. 39 PROME, parliament of 1391, item 2; Heath, Church and Realm, pp. 214–15.

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Gwilym Dodd as a ­mediator wishing to achieve a settlement ‘to avoid disputes which could easily arise between our holy father and our said lord the king and his kingdom’.40 The result was a tangible victory both for the Church and for the king, who had never had any great enthusiasm for a statute which had largely come about as a result of the Appellant control of government in 1388–9.41 All the difficulties and complications arising from the appointment of clerics to the chancellorship should not lead us into thinking that laymen were any better a proposition. One of the reasons why Edward III’s experiment of appointing lawyers in the early 1340s ultimately failed was that lay chancellors required far larger sums of ready cash from the king (for their salaries and for maintaining a suitable household) than clergymen who could usually draw on the various church livings and other sources of income which derived from their dioceses. Bertie Wilkinson has estimated that Sir Robert Bourchier, the first of Edward III’s lay chancellors appointed in December 1340, required an extra £400 to sustain him in office, over and above what a clerical chancellor would normally have received.42 Concern over this drain on the royal coffers may have been one reason why the Commons petitioned the king in 1343 to cease appointing ‘commoners’, or more specifically lawyers, to the office, though there were also evidently other considerations. In their request they asked, . . . that the chancellor and treasurer should always be peers of the land or other wise and sufficient men, as has always been the custom . . . And that neither the chancellor nor the treasurer should be justices or occupied in other offices, but should be attentive to their office for the deliverance and advancement of the people.43

The inference that men of law could not sufficiently discharge their duties because of the distractions of their legal activities rings rather hollow when one considers the demands faced by bishop-chancellors to attend to their diocesan business, but what probably lay behind this assertion was the suspicion that chancellors lacking sufficient personal funding would be more susceptible to bribery and corruption. The principle was quite straightforward: a royal officer who lacked independent means was considered also to lack the capacity to exercise independent will. The petition was therefore directed not so much against the 40

PROME, parliament of 1393, item 1. On Arundel’s central role in reducing the severity of the Statute of Provisors, see Aston, Thomas Arundel, p. 355. 41 Heath, Church and Realm, pp. 214–15. 42 Wilkinson, Chancery Under Edward III, p. 114. 43 PROME, parliament of 1343, item 32.

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The Clerical Chancellors of Late Medieval England appointment of laymen per se as it was against the appointment of lowstatus lawyers but, since no lay peer had ever been made chancellor, the Commons’ demand to return to what had ‘always been custom’ was in effect a demand for the return of the appointment of bishop-chancellors. In the eyes of MPs the chancellor’s office, as well as that of the treasurer, needed to be filled by individuals whose status in the polity was commensurate with the dignity and gravitas attached to such an important ministerial position. They had only to look back to Edward II’s reign and the abysmal failures of Robert Baldok’s chancellorship to appreciate the dangers of the appointment of low-status individuals to the office. Baldok was a clergyman rather than a layman, but he was a clergyman of very little standing.44 He was, in essence, a man on the make, and evidently had few scruples about abusing his office to achieve these ends.45 He met an ignoble end in Newgate gaol in May 1327. By appointing not only laymen, but obscure laymen, to the position of chancellor, Edward III was attempting to bring the office comprehensively under his control. He was, in effect, seeking to turn the chancellor’s office into that of merely custodian of the great seal, in other words, to make it purely administrative in nature. It was a policy reminiscent of the middle years of the thirteenth century when Henry III effectively terminated the chancellorship by appointing a series of minor officials simply to administer the great seal on his behalf.46 But Edward III failed to recognize that it was not the chancellorship per se which gave the incumbents of this office their status and standing; these were prerequisites for eligibility to the office itself. Part of the problem for Edward was that whoever exercised control over the great seal could never be cast as merely an administrator or functionary of the Crown. Apart from the considerable scope for independent action attached to the office, by the mid-fourteenth century the chancellor was one of the king’s foremost counsellors and was therefore expected – as were all his other counsellors – to hold an appropriate status for this role. Such a view was informed by the belief that it was only men with status who could provide the king with true and impartial advice. Unfortunately, 44

R. M. Haines, ‘Baldok, Robert (d.1327)’, ODNB. TNA, SC 8/17/837; 30/1475; 31/1539; 44/2181; 47/2308; 48/2396; 60/2968; 66/3288; 71/3515; 71/3536; 84/4152; 111/5536; 143/7113; 158/7861; 162/8084; 167/8306; 203/10119; 257/12836; 293/14641; 294/14692. 46 Wilkinson, Chancery Under Edward III, p.  7 and Appendix 1 and 2. See also D.  Carpenter, ‘Chancellor Ralph de Neville and Plans of Political Reform, 1215–58’, in Thirteenth Century England II. Proceedings of the Newcastle upon Tyne Conference 1987, ed. P. R. Coss and S. D. Lloyd (Woodbridge, 1988), pp.  69–80, (pp. 70–1); and L. B. Dibben, ‘Chancellor and Keeper of the Seal under Henry III’, EHR 28 (1911), 39–51. 45

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Gwilym Dodd there were very few laymen of noble status who were attracted to a ministerial position that would make such great demands on their time and energy. Evidently, a nobleman’s draw to the localities, to see to his estates and to maintain his local power base, was rather stronger than a bishop’s ties to his diocese and his responsibility there for the cure of souls and instilling orthodox faith. Richard Lord Scrope is an obvious exception to this rule, but when he was appointed as chancellor in 1378, and for a second time in 1381, the office had become a primary focus of political power as a result of the minority years of Richard II and the institutionalized nature of royal authority. The chancellorship thus had rather more appeal to a man of Scrope’s stature than was usually the case.47 Later on in his reign, Richard II tried to solve the problem by appointing a commoner, Michael de la Pole, as chancellor and then making him a nobleman, but the political community was not fooled and de la Pole’s position ultimately became untenable. His impeachment in 1386 again highlighted the common prejudice that existed against men of low status who held high office. De la Pole was convicted on the flimsy, if not wholly disingenuous, grounds that by accepting the king’s grants of estates to support his new status as earl of Suffolk during his chancellorship he had violated the oath he had sworn upon taking up office, that he would ‘neither countenance nor allow injury to, nor disinheritance of, the king’.48 Like the trial of Wykeham in 1377, the charges against de la Pole disguised the real purpose of the attack, which was to limit the king’s extravagance and wilfulness. De la Pole was regarded as an unflinching servant of these misdirected royal actions, a not wholly unwarranted charge – it was during his period in office that chancery began to accept signet letters as direct authorizations of the royal will instead of having them authorized, as was usual practice, by privy seal writs.49 It would be wrong, of course, to suggest that bishop-chancellors could not also toady up to kings and act as the instruments of misguided royal policy, or that secular chancellors were not able to stand up to wrongdoing, but lay chancellors, and especially low-status lay chancellors, were arguably far more susceptible to accusations of sycophancy – of acting as ‘courtiers’ rather than impartial officers of the Crown – than their clerical counterparts, who often had sufficient standing in their 47

On the other hand, he had been treasurer between 1371 and 1375. PROME, parliament of 1386, items 8 and 13. For discussion, see M. V. Clarke, ‘The Lancastrian Faction and the Wonderful Parliament’, in Clarke, Fourteenth Century Studies, ed. L. S. Sutherland and M. McKisack (Oxford, 1937), pp.  36–52 (esp. pp. 49–52). 49 N. Saul, Richard II (New Haven, 1997), p. 126. 48

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The Clerical Chancellors of Late Medieval England own right, as peers of the realm and senior members of the Church, to discharge their office in a more balanced and even-handed way. A successful late medieval chancellor, then, was an individual who managed to retain the confidence of both the king and the political community. This meant, in practice, recognising that his obligations to the king needed to be counter-balanced, and to a great extent informed, by his wider responsibilities to the State, that is to say, he had to act impartially, without showing favour; he had to ensure the wellbeing of the king’s ‘estate’ (e.g., by limiting the alienation of Crown lands); and, more broadly, he had to make sure that common interests were served by government policy. In periods of domestic political harmony these obligations rarely presented problems for chancellors, but at times of political crisis, often caught between ‘royalist’ and ‘popular’ views on what the office entailed, the chancellor’s job could be made untenable. The difficulty was that at times of political turmoil, the chancellor’s office invariably became the focal point of political struggle as the king and the wider political community fought to assert their superior claim to exercise control over the office. On the other hand, caught between these opposing ideological standpoints the chancellor’s office, if in the right hands, could be used to restore peace and consensus to politics. Viewed in these terms, one of the most successful chancellorships was that of Thomas Arundel between 1391 and 1396. From the king’s point of view, Arundel’s was a strange appointment, for the archbishop had presided over the Merciless Parliament in 1388 as chancellor on behalf of the Appellants and was deeply implicated in their opposition to the king and his court.50 Moreover, by 1391, Richard had recaptured the political initiative, not least by explicitly asserting his right (in January 1390) to choose for himself the senior ministers who would serve him.51 But his acquiescence to the choice of Arundel was a canny one. By having a key figure associated with the Appellants at the heart of government the king’s opponents could be reasonably sure that royal authority would be discharged in an even-handed manner. Arundel gave the king’s restoration of authority credibility. This allowed them to pull back from direct interference in Richard’s rule, which in turn restored to the king his sovereign powers and ability to exercise authority unimpeded. Arundel appears to have discharged his office on behalf of the king dutifully. Indeed, as chancellor, he played a leading role in 50

Aston, Thomas Arundel, pp. 336–52; R. G. Davies, ‘The Episcopate and the Political Crisis in England of 1386–1388’, Speculum 51 (1976), 659–93 (esp. pp. 682–3); and M. Wilks, ‘Thomas Arundel of York: the Appellant Archbishop’, in Wilks, Wyclif: Political Ideas and Practice (Oxford, 2000), pp. 223–52. 51 PROME, parliament of January 1390, item 7.

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Gwilym Dodd the king’s infamous attack on London’s liberties in 1392.52 The force of Arundel’s character as well as the support he enjoyed from the political community had the effect of moderating Richard’s rule, with the result that these were the most stable years of the reign.

Reaching a Consensus: the Fifteenth Century With the benefit of hindsight we can see that by the end of the fourteenth century the period of ‘experimentation’ in lay chancellors had come to an end. It was not until 1529, with the appointment of Sir Thomas More, that a new phase of lay chancellors came about, in circumstances and for reasons that were not entirely dissimilar to those which had prompted Edward III to turn away from clerical appointments in the 1340s.53 In the intervening period, just two laymen occupied the office, but their appointments were made in exceptional circumstances and were, to a great extent, brought about because the office was being used as the tool of political faction. Their appointment highlighted the very narrow basis of support enjoyed by the regimes they served, and in particular the absence of any strong backing from the episcopal bench. Interestingly, on both occasions, senior noblemen were selected for the position. Thus in 1410 Thomas Beaufort was appointed by the Prince of Wales to be his chancellor, when Henry IV had retired from public duties on health grounds, and when the Prince’s own position enjoyed rather less than universal support (his authority was especially opposed by Thomas Arundel, now archbishop of Canterbury).54 And in 1454, Richard, duke of York appointed one of his closest allies Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury as chancellor during the period of his Protectorate, when the duke headed an administration that stood in opposition to the king and his allies, including an episcopal bench whose members generally owed their advancement to the favour of Henry VI or the duke of Suffolk.55 52

The Westminster Chronicle 1381–1394, ed. L. C. Hector and B. F. Harvey (Oxford, 1982), p. 498. For background, see C. M. Barron, ‘The Quarrel of Richard II with London, 1392–7’, in The Reign of Richard II: Essays in Honour of May McKisack, ed. F. R. H. Du Boulay and C. M. Barron (London, 1971), pp. 173–201. 53 J. A. Guy, The Public Career of Sir Thomas More (Brighton, 1980), pp. 30–2, 93, 97–8; R. Marius, Thomas More (London, 1993), pp. 360–1. 54 G. L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort: A Study of Lancastrian Ascendency and Decline (Oxford, 1988), pp. 50–1; C. Allmand, Henry V, new edn (London, 1997), pp. 42–3. 55 L. Betcherman, ‘The Making of Bishops in the Lancastrian Period’, Speculum 41 (1966), 397–419 (esp. pp.  413–19); Heath, Church and Realm, pp.  335–6; R. G. Davies, ‘The Church and the Wars of the Roses’, in The Wars of the Roses, ed.

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The Clerical Chancellors of Late Medieval England For the rest of the period, the pattern of appointments assumed a more regular, if not predictable, character. Over time, a subtle change occurred in the status of the chancellors as it became the norm for kings to make their selection exclusively from amongst top-ranking clergymen. John Scarle was the last clergymen to be made chancellor in the medieval period who did not occupy a position on the episcopal bench.56 He was, in fact, an ecclesiastical nonentity, holding no benefice higher than a canonry. His appointment in 1399 was symptomatic of the fraught circumstances of Henry IV’s early months in power, and the desire of this usurper king to have a man whose Lancastrian credentials were absolutely indubitable (Scarle was very much the creature of Thomas Arundel). It may also, concomitantly, have reflected Henry’s doubts about who on the episcopal bench he could rely on, given the dubious act of usurpation which had brought him to power.57 As the fifteenth century progressed, the increased emphasis on highstanding chancellors soon resulted in the more frequent appointment of archbishops to the office, thus reversing the trend which had been evident in the fourteenth century. John Kemp was archbishop of York throughout the period when he was chancellor early in Henry VI’s reign (1426–32) and he was archbishop of Canterbury for the last two years of his second term in office between 1450 and 1454. John Stafford was archbishop of Canterbury for half of the considerable period during which he occupied the chancellorship between 1432 and 1450. Thomas Bourchier was appointed chancellor just a year after he became archbishop of Canterbury in 1454; and George Neville remained chancellor

A. J. Pollard (Basingstoke, 1995), pp. 134–61 (pp. 137–8); R. A. Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI (Stroud, 1998), pp. 346–52. 56 Strictly speaking Thomas Langley (chancellor between March 1405 and January 1407) was the last non-prelate to occupy the chancellorship, but this was not through lack of trying on the part of the king: in October 1404 he had been elected to the bishopric of London, but this was overridden by the pope. Henry IV then wished for Langley to succeed the executed Richard Scrope and become archbishop of York, but this was similarly rejected. Finally, in May 1406 Langley was made bishop of Durham by papal provision. See C. M. Fraser, ‘Langley, Thomas (c. 1360–1437)’, ODNB. For the career of John Scarle, see A. K. McHardy, ‘John Scarle: Ambition and Politics in the Late Medieval Church’, in Image, Text and Church, 1380–1600: Essays for Margaret Aston, ed. L. Clark, M. Jurkowski and C. Richmond (Toronto, 2009), pp. 68–93. 57 Heath, Church and Realm, p. 229, suggests that in fact Henry Bolingbroke inherited an episcopal bench filled, for the most part, with individuals who were relatively unconcerned about the usurpation. The one exception was Thomas Merks, bishop of Carlisle, who famously spoke up against the deposition in September 1399: Chronicles of the Revolution, 1397–1400: the Reign of Richard II, ed. C. GivenWilson (Manchester, 1993), pp. 190–1.

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Gwilym Dodd for two years after becoming archbishop of York in 1465. In only two out of the twenty-four years of Henry VII’s reign was the chancellor not also archbishop of Canterbury. Longevity in office also became increasingly common in the fifteenth century. In the combined forty-seven year period of the reigns of Henry V and Henry VI, a total of just eight individuals served as chancellor, whereas in the comparable fifty-year period of Edward III’s reign, no fewer than eighteen individuals filled the office. What, then, had changed? What factors brought to an end a period which had seen not only appointments to the chancellor’s office flip between clerical and secular candidates, but which had also witnessed great controversy surrounding the role and performance of chancellors themselves? Why, in the fifteenth century, did the office become more and more the preserve of senior prelates? There are a number of fairly obvious considerations which could readily be put forward, though I am not proposing to explore these in any detail. They include a reduction in levels of anti-clerical sentiment with a concomitant increased acceptance of the compatibility of secular office with clerical appointment; a closer relationship between the Church and Crown, as appointments to the episcopate became more closely subject to the king’s approval and as the State aligned itself with the Church in a common struggle against Lollardy;58 and a shift of attention away from the chancellor’s office as a focal point for political opposition and dissent. There is, however, another possibility, which relates closely to the first of these explanations and may even, in part, explain the shift in opinion. This is the suggestion that clerical appointments to the chancellorship became more and more axiomatic as the chancellor’s office itself acquired, more overtly and publicly, religious and sanctifying overtones. What I am suggesting is that a chancellor’s ecclesiastical background was no longer seen as merely incidental to his ability to discharge satisfactorily the responsibilities of the office, but was increasingly coming to be seen as a highly desirable, if not key, qualification for this position. Crucially, this acceptance was broad-based and inclusive. One way of demonstrating this is to contrast developments in chancery with the exchequer. As with the chancellorship, members of the clergy had dominated appointments to the treasurer’s office throughout the fourteenth century, but at the beginning of the fifteenth century 58

A good summary of the partnership that was forged between the Church and Crown on the issue of Lollardy is provided by C. Given-Wilson, ‘The Problem of Labour in the Context of English Government, c. 1350–1450’, in The Problem of Labour in Fourteenth-Century England, ed. J. Bothwell, P. J. P. Goldberg and W. M. Ormrod (York, 2000), pp. 85–100 (pp. 90–4).

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The Clerical Chancellors of Late Medieval England there was a noticeable shift towards the appointment of lay personnel. Whereas before Henry IV’s reign lay treasurers had been very much in the minority, after his reign they were the norm: four out of five of Henry V’s treasurers were laymen. Under Henry VI clergy held the office for only six years and three months out of a thirty-seven year reign. Just how much this contrasted with developments in the chancellor’s office is indicated by the fact that clerical treasurers accounted for just 16% of the time in office under Henry VI, compared to 97% of the time in office accounted for by clerical chancellors. In terms of the profile of their heads of department, the exchequer and chancery were thus moving in opposite directions: whilst the exchequer seemingly embraced the move to the appointment of lay personnel, the clerical standing of the heads of chancery appeared to become more and more entrenched. What made this especially noteworthy is that it bucked a more general trend which saw the laicization of the personnel of royal bureaucracy at all levels, including chancery.59 The first signs that laymen rather than ordained clergy were being appointed as chancery and exchequer clerks appeared in the last quarter of the fourteenth century. This may, in part, have been linked to the appointment of laymen as the heads of these departments in the same period.60 By Henry V’s reign, the increasing presence of secular clerks in the administration is more easily discerned, and by the mid-fifteenth century they were very clearly in the majority. At this point, then, chancellors were presiding over an administrative department which was staffed predominantly by lay or ‘gentlemen’ clerks. Significantly, of all the departments of State, it was only chancery that made any attempt to arrest this development. In 1388–9, ordinances were enacted, apparently at the behest of the chancellor Thomas Arundel, requiring that all clerks working in chancery be not married.61 The intention was to keep chancery staffed entirely by beneficed clergy living communally in the households of their superiors.62 The ordinances also confirmed the custom 59

For what follows, see R. L. Storey, ‘Gentleman-Bureaucrats’, in Profession, Vocation and Culture in Later Medieval England, ed. C. H. Clough (Liverpool, 1982), pp.  90–128; C. W. Smith, ‘Some Trends in the English Royal Chancery: 1377– 1483’, Medieval Prosopography 6 (1985), 69–94; J. Gordon-Kelter, ‘The Lay Presence: Chancery and Privy Seal Personnel in the Bureaucracy of Henry VI’, Medieval Prosopography 10(1) (1989), 53–74. 60 The chancellors were: John Knyvet (1372–7); Richard Scrope (1378–80, 1381–2); and Michael de la Pole (1383–6). The treasurers were: Richard Scrope (1371–5); Robert Ashton (1375–7); Robert Hales (1381); and Hugh Segrave (1381–6). 61 Wilkinson, Chancery Under Edward III, pp. 65, 94, 217–22. 62 See W. M. Ormrod, ‘Accountability and Collegiality: the English Royal Secretariat in the Mid-Fourteenth Century’, in Écrit et pouvoir dans les chancelleries médiévales: espace Français, espace Anglais, ed. K. Fianu and D. J. Guth (Turnhout, 1997), pp. 55–85.

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Gwilym Dodd which allowed chancellors to present all benefices in Crown patronage up to the annual value of twenty marks. One suspects the two clauses were closely linked, for together they provided a means for the Church – through its representative in the chancellor’s office – to exert strong influence over the system of clerical service to the Crown as well as over the ecclesiastical patronage which flowed from the king as a result of this service. Under Henry V, the ordinances were re-enacted, but the broader social and economic forces which encouraged clerks to forego ecclesiastical careers were irresistible and the measures introduced by Arundel ultimately failed to make any difference. In another respect, the religious qualification of the chancellor’s office came increasingly to the fore at the end of the fourteenth century as the chancellor’s opening speeches to sessions of parliament began to acquire a more distinct religious hue.63 In effect, in both tone and content, they shifted from rather bland, business-like accounts of the reasons for the summons of the assembly, to quasi-political sermons in which the circumstances facing the kingdom or king were given biblical comparisons (often with direct quotations from scripture) and the king’s needs were frequently couched in terms of the moral and religious responsibilities of the political community. The first recorded ‘sermon’ opening parliament was noted on the parliament roll of 1365, and was delivered by chancellor Simon Langham, bishop of Ely, in which he quoted a passage from the Psalms – ‘true justice and lawful judgment honour the king’s throne’ – to provide the pretext for the Crown’s campaign against lawlessness and papal intrusions.64 In January 1377 Adam Houghton, bishop of St David’s, delivered what was nothing less than a tour de force in political sermonising, citing scripture on no fewer than ten separate occasions in order to depict England as a reflection of heaven on earth, with the king, Edward III, as the vessel of God, Richard of Bordeaux (now heir to the throne) as the son of God, and the king’s subjects as the children of God.65 The offences which the king’s subjects had committed against the king were described as ‘vices and sins’, and the anticipated parliamentary subsidy and accompanying goodwill of the people were likened to the gold and myrrh offered to the Christ child by the 63

Published work on medieval parliamentary sermons tends to focus on the most complete set preserved from the medieval period, delivered by John Russell, bishop of Lincoln (1480–94): A. Hanham, ‘Text and Subtext: Bishop John Russell’s Parliamentary Sermons, 1483–1484’, Traditio 54 (1999), 301–22; J. Watts, ‘The Policie in Christen Remes: Bishop Russell’s parliamentary sermons of 1483–84’, in Authority and Consent in Tudor England: Essays Presented to C. S. L. Davies, ed. G. W. Bernard and S. J. Gunn (Aldershot, 2002), pp. 33–60. 64 PROME, parliament of 1365, item 2. 65 Ibid., parliament of January 1377, items 6–12.

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The Clerical Chancellors of Late Medieval England three kings. In the following parliament the clerk noted that the same bishop divided his opening speech into three parts ‘as though it were a sermon’.66 In 1381 William Courtenay was noted as having ‘delivered a sound sermon in English’ to the assembled Lords and Commons. Scriptural references became more and more common through Richard II’s reign until, by the early fifteenth century it was standard practice for bishop-chancellors to begin their opening remarks with one or more biblical quotations. At the same time, the political community itself was being redefined in a religious mould.67 Bishop Houghton used the word ‘congregation’ to describe the gathering of the political community in St Peter’s Abbey, Gloucester, for the parliament of 1378;68 and in January 1401 the Speaker of the Commons asserted that the assembled estates in parliament were analogous to the Holy Trinity, ‘. . . namely, the person of the king, the lords spiritual and temporal, and the commons’.69 We cannot be sure that such sentiments had not been voiced before, nor that parliament itself had not long been opened by a sermon delivered by a clergyman,70 but the fact that these expressions of religious identity were now being explicitly recorded in the official record of parliament suggests a growing appreciation of the symbiosis of religion and ­politics, and the crucial role of the chancellor in forging this link. For the Crown, there were good reasons to have not just a clergyman, but a senior-ranking clergyman, occupy the chancellor’s office, providing he was a loyal and competent individual. The more senior the cleric in office, the more this could be made to reflect positively on the comprehensive and all-embracing nature of royal authority in the kingdom. If the first primate in all England served the king in office, this was suggestive of the greater subservience to the king of the English Church as a whole. Arguably, in the fifteenth century, such considerations became increasingly important as royal authority experienced a long period of crisis and instability. That archbishops now more regularly served as chancellor was, from the perspective of the Crown, a symptom of the need to invest royal authority with the most powerful mandate possible, in order to prop up the king and add legitimacy and a sense of divine sanction to his rule. As the Lancastrian hold on the 66

Ibid., parliament of October 1377, item 3. For general discussion of the emergence of the concept of the corpus mysticum, see Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies, pp. 223–31. 68 PROME, parliament of 1378, item 5. 69 Ibid., parliament of 1401, item 32. 70 The famous constitutional tract the Modus Tenendi Parliamentum, which has been dated to the 1320s, describes how parliament ought to be opened by a sermon delivered by an archbishop, bishop or clerk: Parliamentary Texts of the Later Middle Ages, ed. N. Pronay and J. Taylor (Oxford, 1980), p. 84. 67

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Gwilym Dodd Crown became increasingly precarious across the middle decades of the fifteenth century, so too emphasis on the divine nature of the king’s authority became more and more important.71 In a rather less politicized context, there was another very good reason to have the chancellor’s office filled by a senior cleric. Although, as previously noted, chancellors had long played a central role in the provision of discretionary justice to the king’s subjects, from the late fourteenth century the office acquired a much more clearly defined judicial role as supplicants began to present their grievances directly to the chancellor to gain redress. Chancery acquired the status of a court of conscience, in which cases were dispatched on their individual merits according to what was right and reasonable. ‘Conscience’ was a concept heavily loaded with theological meaning.72 It thus made absolute sense for a senior cleric to fill the office, since it could be assumed that only a man in his position, besides the king, had the necessary virtue and moral grounding to be able to apply the principle of good conscience to the difficult legal cases brought to his attention.73 Evidently, this was becoming an increasingly important aspect of the office. Amongst the qualities identified in John Stafford by Henry VI in 1443, when he was recommended for the archiepiscopacy of Canterbury, was his record of ‘administering justice fairly to the people without favour’ as chancellor.74 It was not just their moral fibre that made senior clerics eminently suitable for the office, it was also the intellectual vigour which they could bring to the role. Of the eighteen clergymen to have been appointed chancellors between 1396 and 1532, thirteen were graduates: four had studied theology; five, the civil law; and another four, civil law and canon law.75 In general, in the fifteenth century the chancellor’s responsibilities – both political and judicial – had magnified many times. It was therefore quite natural for the king to want the best qualified and most senior peer of realm to ­discharge the duties of this office.

71

See discussion by R. McGerr, A Lancastrian Mirror for Princes: The Yale Law School, New Statutes of England (Bloomington IN, 2011), pp. 56–74. 72 N. Doe, Fundamental Authority in Late Medieval English Law (Cambridge, 1990), p. 133. 73 There is a strong historiographical tradition which links the development of chancery equity in the fifteenth century to the ecclesiastical backgrounds of the chancellors of this time, and especially the grounding which many of these men had in canon law. See, in particular, T. S. Haskett, ‘The Medieval English Court of Chancery’, Law and History Review 14(2) (1996), 245–313 (esp. pp. 256–6, 311–13). 74 Cf. B. Thompson, ‘Prelates and Politics from Winchelsey to Warham’, in The Fifteenth Century IV: Political Culture in Late Medieval Britain, ed. L. Clark and C. Carpenter (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 69–95 (p. 77). 75 Haskett, ‘Medieval English Court of Chancery’, p. 260.

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The Clerical Chancellors of Late Medieval England Finally, for the Church too, there were benefits to strengthening the clerical monopoly over the office. Towards the end of the fourteenth century the clergy had to contend with a rising tide of anti-clerical sentiment. In an extreme form, this was articulated in the teachings of John Wyclif who wrote at length on the incompatibility of secular office and earthly possessions with the spiritual vocation, but much of this sentiment also entered more mainstream political thought and informed wider criticism in parliament and elsewhere about the role of the clergy in society.76 It was imperative for the Church to maintain its presence in royal government: just as the king might use his clerical ministers as a way of symbolising how both the laity and the clergy were subject to his kingship, it also served the interests of the Church to have senior clerics in positions of influence in order to underline its claim to exercise control over secular affairs.77 It helped convey the idea that all secular power ultimately derived from divine sanction, and that by necessity secular government in a Christian kingdom had to be a joint-stock enterprise involving both the king and his senior clerics. In particular, having bishops or archbishops occupy key positions in royal government perpetuated the principle underlying the performance of royal unction during the coronation ceremony: that secular power was held and transmitted by the king though the mediation of his priests.78 That archbishops began to fill the chancellor’s office may have indicated a new-found confidence on the part of the fifteenth-century Church in all of these respects. Recent work has argued for a more assertive, more self-assured Church emerging under the leadership of Archbishop Henry Chichele (1414–43), after the spiritual and moral uncertainties of the late fourteenth century.79 This would tie in nicely with the idea 76

On Wycliffe’s views, see M. Wilks, ‘Predestination, Property, and Power: Wyclif’s Theory of Dominion and Grace’, in Wilks, Wyclif: Political Ideas, pp. 220–32, and Hudson, ‘Hermofodrita or Ambidexter’. On anti-clericalism, see V. H. Galbraith, ‘Articles Laid Before the Parliament of 1371’, EHR 34 (1919), 579–82; M. Aston, ‘Lollardy and Sedition, 1381–1431’, in Aston, Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion (London, 1984), pp. 1–47 (esp. pp. 10–13, 20–25); Aston, ‘“Caim’s Castles”: Poverty, Politics, and Disendowment’, in The Church, Politics and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century, ed. R. B. Dobson (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 45–81; Heath, Church and Realm, pp. 142–3, 212–13, 256–60; and W. Scase, Piers Plowman and the New Anticlericialism (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 1–15. 77 M. Wilks, The Problem of Sovereignty in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 333–8. 78 John of Salisbury, Policraticus, ed. C. J. Nederman (Cambridge, 1990), IV.3 (pp. 32–5), and see Ullmann, Principles of Government, p. 140. 79 V. Gillespie, ‘Chichele’s Church: Vernacular Theology in England after Thomas Arundel’, in After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. V. Gillespie and K. Ghosh (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 3–42 (esp. pp. 12–15, 19–20).

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Gwilym Dodd that secular office holding was something that the Church no longer felt uncomfortable or defensive about, but was increasingly regarded by the clergy and society at large as part of its legitimate purpose and a means of furthering its reach and influence amongst the people.

Conclusion Across the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries important changes took place in the way contemporaries viewed the chancellorship, and especially the clergymen who dominated appointments to the office in this period. In the fourteenth century there was uncertainty, and at times great unease, at the prospect of having a cleric appointed as the king’s principal officer. Edward III discovered how difficult life could be for a king when confronted with hostile and independent-minded clerical ministers, and for five years following his dispute with John Stratford (and his dismissal of Stratford’s brother, Robert, bishop of Chichester, as chancellor and Roger Northburgh, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, as treasurer, in December 1340) he turned to secular lawyers to fill the chancellorship. Nor did the prospect of clerical chancellors generate much enthusiasm within the political community. Particularly in the last quarter of the fourteenth century there was a growing tide of opinion which regarded the appointment of clerics to high office as an undesirable and even dangerous state of affairs, above all because clerical status was seen as an obstacle to accountability, and thus an invitation to commit malpractice. And yet, the alternative to clerical chancellors, that of appointing laymen to the office, was no panacea. The chancellorship required a full-time commitment to administrative duties, which no high-ranking noblemen was (usually) prepared to take on. The alternative was to appoint men of lower status, but this sat uneasily with a contemporary perception that positions of power and responsibility could only really be satisfactorily discharged by men of rank. The last lay chancellor of the fourteenth century, Michael de la Pole, was totally discredited as a corrupt and incompetent cipher of Richard II’s court. In the fifteenth century a much greater level of consensus was attached to the clerical standing of chancellors. It is noticeable that archbishops of Canterbury no longer considered their leadership of the English Church to be incompatible with their assumption of all the onerous duties and responsibilities of the chancellorship. In part, this probably reflected the blossoming of the chancellor’s office into a role which now carried such enormous political and legal responsibility as to bring it more fittingly within the remit of the foremost cleric of the land. The growth of equitable jurisdiction and its focus on the person of the chancellor formed 46

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The Clerical Chancellors of Late Medieval England part of this process, but arguably a greater factor was the absence of political stability for long periods in the fifteenth century. Edward III was wary of strong clerics who could use the combination of their clerical status and lay office to undermine his kingship. But in the fifteenth century, in the absence of strong political leadership from the king and in a polity divided by faction and dissent, filling the chancellor’s office with a senior cleric offered a number of benefits. It could generate a measure of confidence in the impartiality and competency of royal government, where these might otherwise be lacking. It could reinforce the legitimacy of a regime, where this was in doubt or challenged. And it could ensure a greater degree of symbiosis between the Church and State, since an archbishop who was fully implicated in the actions of secular government, by virtue of his position as chancellor, could surely be counted upon to lead the Church and its senior clerics in a similar direction. As we have seen, there were also important practical advantages for the Church in having its most senior members placed at the very heart of secular government: with the burgeoning of anti-clerical sentiment and Lollardy from the late fourteenth century these incentives arguably became more pronounced in the fifteenth century. The fifteenth century is not known as period of great revival for the Church in its power over the English State but, in the office of the chancellor, Church leaders could at least console themselves with the thought that they had not only retained a measure of influence over secular affairs, but had actually significantly increased this influence.

Appendix: English Chancellors, 1327-1460* Shaded entries indicate lay chancellors. Edward III 1327, 28 Jan

John Hotham, bishop of Ely

1328, 2 July

Henry Burghersh, bishop of Lincoln

1330, 28 Nov

John Stratford, bishop of Winchester

1334, 28 Sept

Richard Bury, bishop of Durham

1335, 6 June

John Stratford, archbishop of Canterbury

1337, 24 Mar

Robert Stratford, bishop of Chichester

1338, 6 July

Richard Bintworth, bishop of London

1340, 28 Apr

John Stratford, archbishop of Canterbury

1340, 12 July

Robert Stratford, bishop of Chichester

80

1340, 14 Dec

Robert Bourchier, knt

80

William Kilsby, keeper of the privy seal, appointed temporarily 1–14 Dec 1340

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Gwilym Dodd 1341, 28 Oct

Robert Parning, knt

1343, 29 Sept

Robert Sadington, knt

1345, 26 Oct

John Offord, dean of Lincoln

1349, 16 June

John Thoresby, bishop of St David’s

1356, 27 Nov

William Edington, bishop of Winchester

1363, 21 Feb

Simon Langham, bishop of Ely

1367, 10–17 Sept

William Wykeham, bishop of Winchester

1371, 26 Mar

Robert Thorp, knt

1372, 5 July

John Knyvet, knt

1377, 11 Jan

Adam Houghton, bishop of St David’s

Richard II 1378, 29 Oct

Richard Scrope, lord Scrope of Bolton

1380, 30 Jan

Simon Sudbury, archbishop of Canterbury

1381, 10 Aug81

William Courtenay, bishop of London

1381, 4 Dec

Richard Scrope, Lord Scrope of Bolton

1382, 20 Sept

Robert Braybrooke, bishop of London

1383, 13 Mar

Michael de la Pole, knt

1386, 24 Oct

Thomas Arundel, bishop of Ely

1389, 4 May

William Wykeham, bishop of Winchester

1391, 27 Sept

Thomas Arundel, archbishop of York

1396, 15 Nov

Edmund Stafford, bishop of Exeter

1399, 23 Aug

Thomas Arundel (bishop of St Andrews)82

1399, 5 Sept

John Scarle, archdeacon of Lincoln

Henry IV 1401, 9 March

Edmund Stafford, bishop of Exeter

1403, 28 February Henry Beaufort, bishop of Lincoln, then bishop of Winchester 1405, 2 March

Thomas Langley, dean of York, then bishop of Durham

1407, 30 January

Thomas Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury

1410, 31 January

Thomas Beaufort, knight

1412, 5 January

Thomas Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury

81

Hugh Segrave, steward of the household, temporary keeper of the Great Seal, 16 June – 9 Aug 1381. 82 Temporary appointment by Henry IV. The pope had translated Arundel to the see of St Andrews following his banishment by Richard II in 1397. He was restored as archbishop of Canterbury in October 1399.

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The Clerical Chancellors of Late Medieval England Henry V 1413, 21 March 1417, 23 July

Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester Thomas Langley, bishop of Durham

Henry VI 1424, 16 July Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester 1426, 16 March John Kemp, archbishop of York 1432, 26 February John Stafford, bishop of Bath and Wells, then archbishop of Canterbury from 1443 1450, 31 January John Kemp, archbishop of York, then archbishop of Canterbury from 1452 1454, 2 April Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury 1455, 7 March Thomas Bourchier, archbishop of Canterbury 1456, 11 October William Waynflete, bishop of Winchester 1460, 25 July George Neville, bishop of Exeter * Source: Handbook of British Chronology, ed. F. M. Powicke and E. B. Fryde (London, 1961), pp. 84–5.

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Prelates and the Alien Priories Benjamin Thompson

The transformation of the alien priories in England in the decades around 1400 was largely driven by laymen.1 Kings, nobles and gentry, as well as aspiring middling sorts, responded to the permanent state of war with France by confiscating the properties of more than 125 cells and bailiwicks belonging to overseas abbeys, as well as naturalizing around thirty of the latter’s larger dependencies.2 Broadly speaking, houses which were large enough to function as monasteries, ‘conventual’ houses, even if small ones, survived in Anglicized form, their French ‘alien’ monks replaced by English denizens, and their links with their mother-houses cut. Those small cells which could not support discernible monastic life, and the properties whose function was to export income to foreign abbeys, were confiscated and redistributed to old and new English ecclesiastical foundations. The episode is not the least important for what it reveals about lay attitudes to the Church about a century before the Reformation. But how did the clergy respond to this largely lay action to reform ecclesiastical institutions and redistribute the Church’s property? Prelates were rarely able to take the initiative in this episode, but their actions and pronouncements are equally revealing, of   1

I am currently completing a full study of the subject; the standard accounts are: D. Matthew, The Norman Monasteries and their English Possessions (Oxford, 1962); M. Morgan, The English Lands of the Abbey of Bec (Oxford, 1946); Morgan, ‘The Suppression of the Alien Priories’, History 26 (1941), 204–12; and see B. Thompson, ‘The Laity, the Alien Priories and the Redistribution of Ecclesiastical Property’, in England in the Fifteenth Century, ed. N. Rogers, Harlaxton Medieval Studies V (Stamford, 1994), pp. 19–41. C. W. New, History of the Alien Priories in England to the Confiscation of Henry V (Chicago, 1916) still contains useful information, although caution is required. I will not repeat references to general features of the story which can be found in these works.   2 These headlines naturally conceal a great deal of complexity, and the numbers are notoriously unstable; the number of ‘conventual’ houses that continued rises to nearly fifty if one includes Cluniac daughters of English houses, which were inconsistently treated as alien.

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Prelates and the Alien Priories perspectives within the Church itself and of the control exerted over it by the lay power. This survey will focus first on the French abbots who owned English dependencies and properties, and then more fully on the English bishops who both exercised jurisdiction over many priories locally and performed some of the essential functions of royal government. As the Church sought to grapple with circumstances largely not of its own making, the reactions of any particular group were far from monolithic. Nevertheless, the natural competition amongst the wide range of ecclesiastical authorities, orders and institutions is a striking feature of the story, as well as their variously-configured alliances with the laity. The alien priories thus reveal the tension between the ideal of a united clerical order and the reality of great diversity that was such an ­ever-present conundrum for the later medieval Church.

Abbots The existence of the alien priories was largely a consequence of the Norman Conquest and the establishment of an almost entirely new foreign aristocracy in possession of the wealth of England. The conquerors gave English lands and churches to Norman and other French abbeys, both to swell their endowments and to encourage the establishment of daughter-priories in England to be filled with the motherhouse’s monks. This process continued intensively to the end of Henry I’s reign, with a significant coda under the Angevins.3 But while accessions were all but halted by the separation of the northern French fiefs from the English Crown under John, this event did not cause the process to be reversed. In the thirteenth century some overseas possessions were rationalized, through various transactions, including sales – often of churches – to bishops, such as those Peter des Roches bought from Mont St Michel for his foundation at Selborne, and from some Norman cathedrals and abbeys for Netley Abbey.4 A number of abbeys   3

About three-quarters of foundations (of priories) and gifts (of properties) had been made by 1135, possibly more measured in wealth. Tables may be found in D. Knowles and R. N. Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales, 2nd edn (London, 1971), pp. 83–109, 181–2, as well as at the back of New, Alien Priories, pp. 86–90; but these exclude many properties which did not support a ‘priory’.   4 C. A. F. Meekings, ‘The Early Years of Netley Abbey’, JEH 30 (1979), 1–37; Calendar of Charter Rolls, 6 vols. (London, 1903–27; hereafter CChR), I, 182–3; Calendar of Charters and Documents relating to Selborne and its Priory, ed. W. Dunn Macray, 2 vols., Hampshire Record Society (1891–4), I, 8–19, II, 2–5; in general, see Matthew, Norman Monasteries, pp. 97–105; N. Vincent, ‘The English Monasteries and their

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Benjamin Thompson farmed p ­ ossessions, especially sole or isolated ones, to English houses, as Clairvaux did with its half of Rotherham church to Rufford Abbey in 1278 for £20 p.a.5 Of the exchanges with English houses for French property the most significant was Troarn’s with Bruton involving Horsley Priory (Gloucs) in 1260.6 Nevertheless, this was not the normal response of the French abbeys, whose property was, after a brief initial seizure by John, not in jeopardy. The fundamental respect for ecclesiastical tenure survived the political separation, which the Angevins in any case did not perceive as final until 1259. The fact that there were a few sales and exchanges before 1204, in fact almost from the time of the earliest gifts, suggests that the later transactions were less a response to new conditions than part of the normal process of rationalizing tenure for greater convenience, a factor cited as the chief reason for the Horsley exchange.7 The wartime royal seizures of 1294–1303 and 1324–7, the first of which coined the phrase ‘alien priories’ and inaugurated the real start of their history as a discrete category, did not prompt a flood of offloads either.8 It is tempting, however, to see a group of mid-1330s transactions as far-sighted, above all Rouen Cathedral’s sales of Ottery St Mary to Bishop Grandisson for a new college, and of other manors to Archbishop Melton.9 Once the war had (re-)started in 1337, royal control prevented further movement without royal permission. Grestain’s sale of eight manors in 1348 is the kind of exception which proves the rule, in that the Black Prince licensed the de la Poles’ acquisition in order to enable the abbey’s patron, the lord of Tancarville, who had been captured at Crécy, French Possessions’, in Cathedrals, Communities and Conflict in the Anglo-Norman World, ed. P. Dalton, C. Insley and L. J. Wilkinson (Woodbridge, 2011), pp. 221–39 (pp. 225–7).   5 C. H. Lawrence, ‘An English Endowment for the Collège Saint-Bernard’, Historical Research 36 (1963), 181–9.   6 Matthew, Norman Monasteries, pp.  99–101; Two Cartularies of the Augustinian Priory of Bruton and the Cluniac Priory of Montacute, ed. Members of the Council, Somerset Record Society 8 (London, 1894), nos 310–47, 437–8.   7 E.g., Matthew, Norman Monasteries, p.  99 (Cormeilles-Richard of IlchesterKnoyle church, 1172–3); Calendar of Documents Preserved in France, 918–1206, ed. J. H. Round (London, 1899), nos 923, 927 (cf. also 932), W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. J. Caley, H. Ellis and B. Bandinel, 6 vols. (London, 1817–30), VI, 916 (Lessay-Barlings, also Blancheland and Cammeringham); Bruton Cartulary, ed. Council, Somerset Record Society, no. 313.   8 This is when the documentation at TNA, E 106 began to be generated, especially the fragmentary 2/1–6, the systematic lists at 3/10–11, 19, and the bi-annual receipts accounted for in 4/2, 8, 9, 10, 14–16, 18. The term ‘religiosi alienigeni de potestate regis Francie’ and its variants came into regular use at this point.   9 Matthew, Norman Monasteries, pp.  103–4 (also Coutances Cathedral’s sale of Winterbourne Strickland to Milton Abbey); Dugdale, Monasticon, VI, 1347, blaming distance and wars.

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Prelates and the Alien Priories to pay his ransom.10 Some abbeys did take advantage of peace and the release of their properties from royal farming in the 1360s to negotiate long leases with English laymen or churches, involving high immediate entry fines, which the abbeys could actually receive at this point, and low continuing rents, which would be seized by the king on the renewal of war.11 In its next phase from 1369, the licences to acquire priories from alien abbeys which accompanied the foundation of Carthusian houses were presumably the initiative of the founders, Richard II and his circle;12 even so, it seems likely that such transactions took place against an increasing willingness to sell, as with Wykeham’s successful purchases from seven overseas churches around 1391, notably the priory of Harmondsworth from St Katherine’s, Rouen, to endow Winchester and New College.13 Against the abbot of Cluny’s repeated refusal, in the early fifteenth century, to release his manors for longer than life lease, the prior of Lewes pointed out that more sales were taking place, citing Wykeham’s purchases.14 The ideal of clinging to long-cherished rights, enshrined in canon law, was beginning to be undermined by the opportunity to realize some benefit from possessions in difficult ­circumstances when their future return was entirely unpredictable.15 Abbots held onto their possessions tangibly by continuing to send monks to their English properties even while they were in royal hands;  10

Matthew, Norman Monasteries, p. 142, n. B; C. Bréard, L’abbaye de Notre-Dame de Grestain (Rouen, 1904), pp. 235–46 (nos. XXVI–XXIX).  11 E.g., Cluny: CPR, 1361–4, p.  3, CFR, VIII, 15, Charters and Records among the Archives of the Ancient Abbey of Cluny, ed. G. F. Duckett, 2 vols. (London, 1888), I, 126–34 (£750 down and 20 florins p.a.); Newington Longeville Charters, ed. H. E. Salter, Oxfordshire Record Society 3 (Oxford, 1921), nos 15, 137–9, CFR, VIII, 50 (rent reported to Crown appears to be lower than actually agreed); Takeley (for payment of arrears of farm): CPR, 1370–4, p. 265; Caen: CPR, 1361–4, p. 260; Sele: CPR, 1370–4, p. 415 (for 20s. p.a. but 20m down).  12 CPR, 1385–9, p. 290 (Coventry), 1391–6, p. 608, 1396–9, p. 7 (Axholm), pp. 348, 497 (Mountgrace); see also CPL, IV, 391, a general licence for Richard II to found a ‘college’ by purchasing alien priories, at his petition.  13 ‘Charters of Harmondsworth, Isleworth, Heston, Twickenham, and Hamptonon-Thames’, ed. T. F. Kirby, Archaeologia 58 pt ii (1903), 341–58; CPR, 1388–92, pp. 265*, 378, 386, 390, 417–19, 433–4; T. F. Kirby, Annals of Winchester College, from 1382 to the Present Time (London, 1892), pp. 450–2, which shows this* 1389 licence to have been specifically for the acquisition of alien priories.  14 Cluny Charters, ed. Duckett, I, 230–1; for the abbot’s refusal, which was the key point at issue in these negotiations, I, 219–62 passim, e.g., specifically 183, 243, 256.  15 Abbeys received at least some of the money nominated: e.g., ‘Charters of Harmondsworth’, pp.  344–5; Oxford, New College Archives, 10802, 12913–14, 13020; Kirby, Annals of Winchester, pp. 23–5; Cluny Charters, ed. Duckett, I, 182. Matthew, Norman Monasteries, pp. 118, 130, is more sceptical.

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Benjamin Thompson the default mechanism of royal exploitation, farming the priories back to their priors who had an allowance on their farm for maintenance, seemed not to threaten the abbeys’ possession. The dwindling of the normal contingent in non-conventual priories from two or three in the thirteenth century to one or two in the fourteenth may have been a result of factors other than the willingness or otherwise of abbots to populate their priories. In 1378, however, the alien monks were formally expelled, and although licensed exceptions allowed a single prior to remain at many non-conventual priories, these were rarely replaced at the next vacancy.16 At precisely this point the schism exacerbated crosschannel hostilities, and the orders of Bec and Cluny soon had to put in place delegatory measures for governing their English conventual priories.17 Nevertheless, abbots’ continued determination to keep hold of their rights is demonstrated by their response to Henry IV’s 1399 restoration of around forty alien priories, when they sent another wave of priors, as they did occasionally thereafter when given licence to do so.18 The long tenures of priors of Wootton Wawen from Conches (until 1447) and Modbury from St Pierre-sur-Dives (until the late 1460s and possibly beyond) create an impression of spectacular tenacity.19 The fact that most priories had been denuded of their foreign monks in the first part of the century, if not before, was probably the result of impotence rather than lack of will on the part of abbots, and it is therefore hard to know at what point they accepted their fate. Certainly abbots and their priors were vocal in complaining about the occupation of their priories, when they had the chance. Two p ­ etitions in

 16

The presence of priors and monks may be tracked in HRH, II, pp. 138–257 and HRH, III, 160–260; and also the farming commissions in CFR.  17 CPL, IV, 412; CPR, 1388–92, p. 333–4, 509; R. Graham, ‘The Papal Schism of 1378 and the English Province of the Order of Cluny’, in her English Ecclesiastical Studies (London, 1929), pp. 46–61 (pp. 49–51); E. Perroy, L’Angleterre et le grand schisme d’Occident (Paris, 1933), p. 402; Petitions to the Crown from English Religious Houses, c.1272-c.1485, ed. G. Dodd and A. K. McHardy, Canterbury and York Society 100 (Woodbridge, 2010), no. 92 (TNA, SC 8/143/7133).  18 CPR, 1399–1401, pp.  70–2, 80–1, 364, 368, 1401–5, pp.  87–8; there is a group of licences for the entry of alien monks in 1409–10: CPR, 1405–8, p. 347 (Deerhurst– St Denis), 1408–13, pp.  157 (Ware–St Evroul), 159–60 (Tywardreath–SS Serge & Bacchus, Angers), 193, 364 (Cowick and Goldcliff–Bec), 306 (Abergavenny–St Victor, Le Mans). At this point Lire attempted to secure the support of a royal official in its attempts to re-fill its priories: Matthew, Norman Monasteries, pp. 124–5.  19 Matthew, Norman Monasteries, pp.  138–9; the last appearance of the prior of Wootton Wawen is CCR, 1447–54, p. 64; J. M. James, ‘The Norman Benedictine Alien Priory of St George, Modbury, AD c.  1135–1480’, Devonshire Association Report and Transactions 131 (1999), 81–103 (pp.  87, 97); Eton College Records (Catalogue) [ECR], 1/81.

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Prelates and the Alien Priories parliament in 1390 and 1393 were said to have emanated from the complaints of alien priors against the occupation of their priories by seculars, who ousted them from their farms and ruined their churches and houses, as a result of which divine service was greatly diminished; this undermined the aims of the original founders to establish masses and alms for the souls of kings, founders and other benefactors.20 This was a familiar argument about ecclesiastical goods, although it was equally deployed against the alleged neglect of the alien religious. The abbot of Cluny used it in correspondence with Henry IV, whose esquire William Porter was negotiating to buy the abbey’s four English manors when the abbot was only willing to offer a lease. The abbot made constant reference to the daily prayers for the kings of England who had originally given the manors, as well as to the more fervent prayers his monks would sing for the king who restored these goods; his subordinate the prior of St Martin-des-Champs, in depicting those in purgatory continually crying to God against those who unjustly impede their due suffrages, unfortunately identified William the Conqueror as son of Edward the Confessor.21 The abbot held out against selling until it was too late, and Henry V granted the manors in fee to Porter after the passage of the statute of 1414 which gave to the Crown title to the alien priories when the war should end.22 Despite this measure, the Norman abbots took Henry’s conquest of their province as a cue for renewed representations, again foregrounding earlier kings’ foundations of their abbeys and the prayers which these endowments supported: the carrot was a new round of fervent prayers for the king which would follow from restoration, the stick was the risk that the suffrages for founders and donors were being subverted.23 St Evroul, addressing the Carthusians of Sheen who had been given their bailiwick of Ware by Henry V, asserted that its loss had cut their numbers in half, to twenty, thus diminishing suffrages proportionately.24 If Henry mentioned compensation, as he was later said to have done,25 then the Norman abbots replicated Cluny’s mistake by holding out for their full rights until it was too late (although Henry’s early death probably intervened before anything could have been done). Their admirable devotion to the ­absolute requirements of  20

Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. C. Given-Wilson et al. (Woodbridge, 2005; hereafter PROME), parliament of 1390, items 19, 23, parliament of 1393, item 7.  21 Cluny Charters, ed. Duckett, I, 149–50, 177–9, 190–2, 238–43, 250–2.  22 Cluny Charters, ed. Duckett, II, 9–15; CPR, 1413–16, pp. 161, 235, 354.  23 Matthew, Norman Monasteries, pp.  130, 132–4, 172–3 (petition of the abbot of Caen).  24 E. Martène and U. Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, 5 vols. (Paris, 1717), I, 1747.  25 See next note.

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Benjamin Thompson canon law to cling onto their rights without compromise prevented them from recognizing the reality of their situation and thus acting in a more pragmatic manner. After Henry V’s death the rapidly worsening financial situation made compensation unthinkable, even though it may have been mentioned at the Council of Basle in 1434.26 This was in response to the renewed attempts by a few abbots to recover their properties, notably St Evroul and Ghent; the latter contested its priory at Lewisham and Greenwich with Sheen in the run-up to the Council and secured a favourable judgement in 1438.27 There are continuing signs of efforts at recovery through the rest of the century, which included Cluny sending a delegation in 1458,28 Jumièges appealing to Margaret of Anjou in 1459,29 Grandmont actually sending monks to Alberbury in 1473–4 following a revolt by parishioners against All Souls’ tenure,30 and abbots formally presenting priors who had no chance of being accepted,31 down to Cîteaux’s last letter of a long series appealing for the restoration of the church of Scarborough in 1502.32 Clearly the memory of former rights and properties might never be put aside, and opportunities for recovery, however slim, were seized. Nevertheless, one might also wonder why  26

Memorials of the Reign of King Henry VI. Official Correspondence of Thomas Bekynton, Secretary to Henry VI and Bishop of Bath and Wells, ed. G. Williams, 2 vols., Rolls Series 56 (London 1872), II, 265: or rather, Henry V’s alleged offer of compensation was one of the arguments which the embassy could use.  27 Matthew, Norman Monasteries, pp. 134–5; W. N. M. Beckett, ‘Sheen Charterhouse from its Foundation to its Dissolution’ (unpublished D.Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 1992), pp. 118–28; texts in Chartes et documents de l’Abbaye de St Pierre au Mont Blandin à Gand, ed. A. van Lokeren, 2 vols. (Ghent, 1868–71), II, nos. 1640, 1656, 1662, 1664–73, 1689.  28 Registrum Abbatiae Johannis Whethamstede, Abbatis Monasteriie Sancti Albani, ed. H. T. Riley, 2 vols., Rolls Series 28.6 (London, 1872–3), I, 317–22.  29 J. Loth, Histoire de l’abbaye royale de Saint-Pierre de Jumièges par un religieux benedictin de la congrégation de St. Maur, 3 vols. (Rouen, 1882–5), II, 215–17.  30 R. Graham and A. W. Clapham, ‘Alberbury Priory’, Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Natural History Society 44 (1928), 257–303 (pp. 280–2).  31 Loth, Jumièges, II, 166, 217; J. Eastwood, A History of the Parish of Ecclesfield in the County of York (London, 1862), p.  513 (the original fifteenth-century dates are clearly correct, according to the names of the abbots). Marmoutier may have been exercising some residual jurisdiction in England, albeit mainly through its vicar-general, the prior of Holy Trinity, York; but one claimant to Tickford did appeal to the abbot: HRH, III, 212–13 and n.; F. W. Bull, A History of Newport Pagnell (Kettering, 1900), p. 98.  32 Letters from the English Abbots to the Chapter at Cîteaux, 1442–1521, ed. C. H. Talbot, Camden Society, 4th s. 4 (1967), nos 22, 27, 30, 42, 57, 59, 101, 103, 111. St Florent, Saumur, made an attempt to recover Sele in 1488: P. Marchegay, ‘Les prieurés anglais de Saint-Florent près Saumur, notice et documents inédits’, Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes 40 (1879), 154–94 (pp. 160–2).

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Prelates and the Alien Priories these efforts were so sporadic. Although arguments from silence are dangerous,33 it is striking that we do not hear after 1421 from many of the prestigious abbeys with large English possessions, such as Bec, Fécamp and Lire.34 If the efforts we do perceive were opportunistic, then the majority perhaps did not get the opportunity. Or, which may amount to the same thing, there was an acceptance of reality which deterred most abbots from wasting effort on a lost cause. This was partly a realistic acceptance of the arrangements imposed by secular power; as the abbot of Cluny said in 1412, only God had a remedy if Henry IV chose to exercise his power.35 In answering the Carthusian General Chapter in 1433, the prior of Sheen pleaded his inability to answer for his royal foundation without royal licence, still less denude his house of the original endowments that Henry V had given at foundation; this was a matter pertaining to the rights of the Crown and realm in parliament, where Sheen’s foundation had been ratified, and anyone attempting to litigate elsewhere, and especially overseas, about such matters would suffer judicial penalties.36 And in fact abbots discovered that appealing to papal jurisdiction was useless, because the English both ignored contrary judgements, as that of 1438 in favour of Ghent, and could eventually get them overturned, as in 1451 when Nicholas V reversed it.37 The General Chapter implicitly accepted that it could do nothing without English royal acquiescence, thus conceding the increasing nationalization of the Church.38 But this was more than a grudging acceptance of the realities of power. The Church undermined its arguments that gifts once given could not be resumed through its repeated emphasis on their origin in the donations of former kings and nobles. By insistently appealing to modern kings to respect the wishes  33

Not least because, for French documents, I am reliant on printed material, and the researches of Matthew for Norman houses; moreover much has disappeared, such as the archives of Bec at the revolution: Morgan, Bec, p. 4.  34 Of course they often retained the documentation of their English possessions (see the account of the Norman archives in Matthew, Norman Monasteries, pp. 1–13), and occasionally renewed them: Cambridge, King’s College Archives [hereafter KCAR] WOW/217–18 (Conches–Wootton Wawen, 1433, not 1438 as Matthew, p. 139); Matthew, p. 141 (Valmont, 1475). For occasional attempts of Cluny to exert jurisdiction over its conventual houses, see R. Graham, ‘The English Province of the Order of Cluny in the Fifteenth Century’, in her English Ecclesiastical Studies (London, 1929). On the other hand, St Denis might have had an opportunity to present a prior to Deerhurst in 1466, when Eton had been deprived of it; the bishop instead collated, citing the failure of the abbot to present: HRH, III, 173.  35 Cluny Charters, ed. Duckett, I, 240.  36 Chartes de Gand, ed. van Lokeren, II, no. 1670.  37 Above, n. 26; CPL, X, 237–8.  38 Beckett, ‘Sheen Charterhouse’, pp. 125–8.

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Benjamin Thompson of their ancestors and the suffrages for those ancestors’ souls, they conceded to kings and patrons the authority to decide how much respect to give. St Evroul implicitly acknowledged this in dialogue with Sheen when it argued that sons should not take away what fathers had given, because the sons’ successors might also change their minds and resume their gifts.39 By emphasizing the origin of gifts in lay donation, they conceded to the laity, unwillingly and perhaps unconsciously, the jurisdiction over their continuing use. Whereas, therefore, in holding out for restoration and against compensation the abbots had shown themselves too hard-line, in the arguments they used they accepted too much of the lay account of ecclesiastical donation, and thus left themselves conceptually disarmed in the face of lay determination to exercise judgement over the right use of the Church’s goods.

Bishops Bishops played a much larger role than a typical classification of the alien priories into conventual houses of largely exempt orders (mostly Cluniac) and cells whose ‘dative’ priors were appointed and recalled at will by their abbots would suggest. For one thing, exemption meant nothing if bishops felt that parochial jurisdiction trumped it, as Grandisson claimed in the case of a chapel belong to St James, Exeter (a dependency of St Martin-des-Champs); indeed the Cluniac priors of Barnstaple and Exeter had earlier been accused of attempting to slip out of the order and into episcopal jurisdiction.40 Of the 125 or so smaller dependencies, only a dozen constituted substantial bailiwicks which were farmed to the king for more than £100, and whose heads were bailiffs or proctors-general for their abbots, such as Bec’s prior of Ogbourne and Fécamp’s prior of Wilmington. A significant majority of priories were small cells based on largely local property, much of it spiritualities, and many priors were based in parish churches which were appropriated to them. Thus bishops exercised their normal jurisdiction over the range of parochial issues, not least the vicarages which they had created since the late twelfth century, and the division of tithes between prior

 39

Martène, Thesaurus, I, 1748: ‘Quod si sola voluntate ex nostris reditibus modernus princeps vos instituit, videte si hoc revocare poterunt forsan melius consulti successores.’  40 In fact the priors of Exeter were instituted by the bishop too: R. Graham, ‘The Cluniac Priory of Saint-Martin des Champs, Paris, and its Dependent Priories in England and Wales’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 3rd s. 11 (1949 for 1948), 35–59 (pp. 40, 42, 45); HRH, II, 228.

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Prelates and the Alien Priories and vicar, which sometimes required adjustment.41 This extended to relations between priors as rectors and parishioners: who was to repair the bells, or bear the costs of renewing the straw on the church floor?42 They ensured that priors either served parochial cures themselves, or instituted suitable vicars; in 1310 the archbishop of York found that a vicar had never been instituted at St Wandrille’s priory of Ecclesfield, so he created one, although he promptly instituted the prior.43 During the war the king presented to benefices in the gift of alien religious, and defended his rights with typical vigour in the courts.44 This increased the number of royal appointees over whom bishops needed to exercise supervision, and occasionally saw them defending priors against the king, as Thoresby did at Ecclesfield in the 1370s against a secular vicar wrongly presented.45 Bishops were certainly not opposed in principle to alien priories: from this perspective, what mattered was that they fulfilled the requirements of patronage and ministry. Indeed, in 1402 the bishop of Bath and Wells made the prior of Stogursey (Lonlay) vicar because of the serving incumbent’s age and infirmity.46 Bishops exercised visitation and correction over the large majority of alien priories which were not exempt. Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, set the bar high in writing to the Abbot of Fleury in 1238, objecting to the priors being sent to the Lincolnshire priory of Minting and asking for one ‘who knew the way of truth, and would walk in it fearlessly and lead his brethren to salvation’. Their English cell was a disgrace to Fleury, with its monks living luxuriously with harlots, enriching themselves with private property, eating and drinking

 41

As at Cowick, 1347, where the vicarage was too small: CCR, 1346–9, p.  191. Bishops sometimes retained the patronage of the vicarages they created, as the bishop of Ely did at Bon Repos Abbey’s Fulbourn church (Cambs.): VCH, Cambridgeshire, X, 150. A Coventry episcopal statute of 1224x37 instituted an inquiry into the churches and tithes of ‘monachi transmarini’: Councils and Synods with Other Documents relating to the English Church, II, 1205–1313, ed. F. M. Powicke and C. R. Cheney, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1964), I, 213.  42 Hamble, 1331: VCH, Hampshire, II, 222; Modbury, 1337: Eton College Records (Catalogue), 1/41.  43 VCH, Yorkshire, III, 388.  44 For presentations, see CPR, passim; also for litigation, e.g., Bon Repos Abbey’s Fen Drayton, 1343: CPR, 1343–5, p. 178; Year Books of the Reign of King Edward III, X, ed. O. Pike (London, 1903), pp. 266–79.  45 CPR, 1367–70, pp.  304, 438, 441; TNA, SC 8/239/11927; CCR, 1369–74, p.  594. The fact that it was Chancellor William of Wykeham who had presented for the Crown meant that bishops were on both sides of this dispute.  46 The Registers of Walter Giffard, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1265–6, and of Henry Bowett, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1401–7, ed. T. S. Holmes, Somerset Record Society 13 (1899), p. 30, no. 68.

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Benjamin Thompson without regard to the rule (with meat even on Wednesdays), wandering abroad, frequenting houses of ill-repute, and taking part in sports not merely idle and worldly, but actually sinful.47 In other words, bishops deposed priors for the usual spectrum of personal vices, and also had to intervene to contain abusiveness, fighting (in front of the servants and tenants at Wootton Wawen in 1281), and indeed homicide.48 Bishops also ensured that priories were well-run in temporal terms: they encouraged repairs and discouraged disadvantageous leases;49 they sequestrated priories if priors were neglectful or absent, or they wasted their priories’ goods and allowed them to dilapidate; and they appointed co-adjutors to such wasteful priors.50 They acted to restore disordered priories at the urging of patrons, as at Stogursey in 1326, and, via papal instruction, at Abergavenny in 1320, where Bishop Orleton of Hereford restored a full priory of thirteen to replace the dissolute five who exhibited all the vices of Grosseteste’s Minting as well as mocking the crucifixion.51 Orleton blamed this state on the lack of abbatial visitation for forty years, and other bishops addressed abbots to instruct them not to over-burden priories with monks (they sent back those who could not be supported),52 and to urge the advantages of longer tenure by priors to avoid inexperience.53 Sometimes they mediated between abbots and  47

VCH, Lincolnshire, II, 239–40. Episcopal Registers, Diocese of Worcester: Register of Bishop Godfrey Giffard, ed. J. Willis Bund, 2 vols., Worcestershire Historical Society (Oxford, 1902), II, 129–33. Tickford, 1291: prior deposed by bishop for incompetence, dilapidations, and homicide: HRH, II, 200. Monk Sherborne, 1370: prior rebuked by Wykeham for abusiveness: Wykeham’s Register, ed. T. F. Kirby, 2 vols. (London, 1896–9), II, 111.  49 In 1332 the bishop of Worcester secured a licence for Stratfield Saye (Valmont) to sell timber so as to repair a hermitage: CPR, 1330–34, p. 262; Goldcliff (Bec) was found in 1317 to have farmed three churches illegally: Calendar of the Register of John de Drokensford, Bishop of Bath and Wells (A.D. 1309–1329), ed. E. Hobhouse, Somerset Record Society 1 (London, 1887), p. 130.  50 Exeter St James was sequestrated by Grandisson in 1338: Graham, ‘St-Martin des Champs’, pp. 45, 49; a co-adjutor was appointed at Monks Kirby 1356: HRH, II, 181.  51 Register of Drokensford, p. 261; CPL, II, 186, 211; R. Graham, ‘Four Alien Priories in Monmouthshire’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association n.s. 35 (1929), 102–21 (pp. 109–10).  52 Stogursey, 1270: see below, n. 55; Modbury, 1329: Eton College Records (Catalogue), 1/32/22; The Register of John de Grandisson, Bishop of Exeter (A.D. 1327–1369), ed. F. C. Hingeston-Randolph, 3 vols. (London, 1894–99), I, 444; Monk Sherborne, 1350: M. Grant, ‘The Alien Benedictine Priory of Monk Sherborne, Hampshire, from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Centuries’, Hampshire Studies: Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club & Archaeological Society 55 (2000), 46–67 (p. 63).  53 Frampton, 1343: Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland. Petitions to the Pope, vol. I, A.D. 1342–1419, ed. W. H. Bliss (London, 1896; hereafter Calendar of Papal Petitions), p. 26.  48

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Prelates and the Alien Priories priors,54 and in one case condemned both: in 1270 the bishop of Bath and Wells ­remonstrated with the abbot of Lonlay who had just been prior of Stogursey and had overburdened the latter with corrodies and payments abroad.55 Clearly, conscientious bishops did not regard alien priories as beyond their jurisdiction, but took responsibility for their temporal and spiritual welfare. In a surprisingly large number of cases, priors were formally presented to the bishop for institution to an ecclesiastical benefice;56 at Deerhurst (St Denis) in 1264 this was explicitly said to be because the priory involved a parochial cure.57 In principle the bishop could reject unsuitable candidates, and we have seen one asking an abbot to recall a prior. Bishops collated if no prior was appointed in a vacancy, or after deposing an inadequate head; a learned monk of Worcester was instituted to Abergavenny in 1320 and, with the arrival of war, English religious were increasingly likely to be so collated, even before, but especially after, the expulsion of 1378.58 Bishops also accepted the many English religious presented to them by kings and patrons at this point, and thus played some part in the Anglicization of the alien cells as well as the convents, which at this period were undergoing denization by replacing the French monks with English.59 They do not seem to have taken a very active part in this process, however. They did not always fill gaps in alien cells where the post did not have an evident function such as head of, or monk in, a fully conventual monastery, or active rector of a parish church. Priors whose function was to manage property were becoming superfluous when their lands and churches were farmed out to others; but even rectory cells might be left without a prior,  54

In 1331 the bishop of Norwich took jurisdiction over the long-running dispute between the abbey of Nobiliac and its daughter at Bricett: KCAR, GBR/282, 284, 288.  55 Stogursey Charters: Charters and Other Documents relating to the Property of the Alien Priory of Stogursey, Somerset: now belonging to Eton College, ed. T. D. Tremlett and N. Blankiston, Somerset Record Society 61 (Frome, 1949), p. xvi, no. 49.  56 As can be seen in the references provided in HRH II and III.  57 Register of Godfrey Giffard, ed. Willis Bund, I, 37.  58 For example, monks of Thorney and Westminster to Cambridgeshire priories: Linton (1355): VCH, Cambridgeshire, II, 314–15; CCR, 1354–60, p. 153; Calendar of Papal Petitions, p.  294; Cambridge, Pembroke College Archives, Linton A1-A6, track the resultant dispute with the abbot’s belated nominee (I am grateful to the Master and Fellows for access to this material). Swavesey (1362): HRH, II, 197; Calendar of Papal Petitions, p. 422.  59 Monks of Castleacre (made denizen formally in 1373) with local names were presented to Sporle Priory (St Florent, Saumur), in 1379 and 1385: CPR, 1377– 80, p.  332, 1381–85, p.  525; Norwich, Norfolk Record Office, DN/Reg/3/6 (Despenser), fols. 62, 108.

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Benjamin Thompson as long as there was a vicar or parochial chaplain to continue the work, as at Sporle in Norfolk in the 1390s.60 At Chepstow in 1393 the bishop made provision for a vicar, but he did nothing about the disappearance of all the monks in around 1394.61 Bishops thus acquiesced in the process by which the smaller alien priories became completely denuded of religious. While, therefore, there is little evidence of bishops showing the hostility to aliens which the laity exhibited so freely in parliament, equally they had no brief to maintain them, or even to sustain their institutions if those institutions had no essential ecclesiastical function. When, in 1437, the lay occupier presented a secular clerk to Wootton Wawen, which was a rectory-priory, then the king presented a monk of Westminster, and finally the abbot of Conches presented one of his monks, Bishop Bourchier admitted them successively under orders from the king.62 Such admirable neutrality suggests that the peripherals of nationality or religious affiliation may have mattered less to bishops than ensuring that the essentials of parochial ministry were performed and that priories with an evident function were maintained. The alien priories were not always farmed back to their priors, especially if they defaulted on payments or pleaded poverty, and particularly after 1378 when the farms were in principle awarded by competitive tender. We thus find bishops taking up farms, especially in the 1390s.63 These may have been intended beneficially, to protect priories from the damage done by lay farmers, as was envisaged by one version of the petitions which led to the expulsion of 1378.64 Support for priories was sometimes explicit in farming commissions, and it is also the natural interpretation of the occasional instance of bishops acting as mainpernors for priors as farmers, as Archbishop Stratford did for Wootton Wawen in 1340.65 Bishop Braybrooke of London’s association with the farm of Ogbourne – the largest bailiwick of them all – in 1386 is put in  60

The last mention of a prior at Sporle was 1386, and the last mention of a monk was 1390: CFR, X, 131, 318. Thereafter layman and vicars had the farm of the priory: CFR, X, 48, XI, 185, XIII, 298, but vicars continued to be presented: CPR, 1388–92, p. 84, 1401–5, pp. 250, 306, 1405–8, p. 241, whom the prior or farmer was bound to maintain: TNA, E 106/11/14.  61 CPL, V, 258; Chepstow Parish Records, ed. I. Waters (Chepstow, 1955), p. 125, for the vicars.  62 KCAR, WOW/28, 29, 31, 162 m. 4; CPR, 1436–41, p. 62, 170; HRH, III, 225–6.  63 See the farming commissions in CFR, XI (1391–9).  64 TNA, SC 8/102/5052; the enrolled version is PROME, parliament of October 1377, item 91.  65 CFR, V, 176; the priory bound itself to the archbishop for £80 two days later: CCR, 1339–41, p.  465. In 1349 the bishop of Carlisle took the farm of Burwell Priory specifically so that its goods would not be consumed for lack of governance: CFR, VI, 147–8.

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Prelates and the Alien Priories context by his 1391 appointment as one of the proctors in England for the order of Bec during the schism (alongside the priors of Ogbourne and Cowick).66 Courtenay, similarly, acted for Cluny during the schism, and Hallum of Salisbury later for Fontevrault.67 Nevertheless, Braybrooke was given royal protection against being outbid as farmer because of the king’s affection for him, his kinsman; and for his pains he also received a sixty-year lease of a Bec manor worth twenty four pounds per annum, Dunton Waylet, for a rose rent in 1396.68 Other examples seem more opportunist, and the fact that most of the episcopal farmers of Richard II’s reign were royal cronies suggests exploitation more than support, especially as this practice all but ceased in 1399.69 Even so, this might be portrayed less as bishops getting their noses in the trough as joining in where others were feeding anyway: if alien priories were being farmed out or sold, then it would be as well for bishops and their churches to benefit from the bonanza as anyone else, and perhaps they may have farmed more responsibly. The few examples after 1399 are largely political. The Lancastrian Langley of Durham was associated with Henry IV’s son John (later duke of Bedford) as life-farmer of Ogbourne in 1404 at no rent,70 and Henry Beaufort was added to the farm of the Conches procuracy in 1411 specifically to protect the lay farmer and Lancastrian servant from the litigious prior of Wootton Wawen.71 Although in many individual instances it is difficult to interpret episcopal action without fuller evidence, the general impression is that bishops swam with the tide and did not attempt to change the course of lay exploitation of the alien priories at this level. If we ask whether we can discern a collective episcopal opinion on the alien priories, we are hampered by gaps in the evidence, both the frequent absence of detail about meetings of convocation, and the lack of specific information about the role that bishops played in parliament. Nevertheless, it is striking that amongst the various gravamina presented to the Crown by convocation, including comprehensive sets  66

 68  69

CFR, X, 153; CPL, IV, 412; CPR, 1388–92, p. 509. CPL, VI, 373 (1413). CPR, 1385–89, p. 378; CPR, 1391–96, p. 401; KCAR, DUN/28. Bishops Fordham, Waldby, Mitford, Waltham, Trillow, Winchcombe and Burghill: CFR, X, 30, 245, 255, 301, 310, 322, XI, 5, 134, 143, 161, 224–5, 255, 299, 300, 302; CPR, 1381–5, p. 396, 1385–89, p. 527, 1388–92, pp. 239, 277, 1391–96, pp. 384–5, 556, 1396–99, pp. 350–1, 403. These bishops’ political sympathies may be traced in ODNB.  70 The prior was associated with the farm, but the benefit was clearly intended for Bedford: CPR, 1401–5, p. 466.  71 CFR, XIII, 208–9; Beaufort also succeeded Wykeham to the life-farm of Mortain’s possessions: CFR, XII, 250, XIII, 24–5.  67

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Benjamin Thompson in 1376 and 1377, the alien priories are entirely absent between a protest against the first seizure of the alien priories in 1300 and another in the convocation of 1399. The former, amongst a typically robust set of articles under Winchelsey’s aegis, objected to the king’s occupation of the priories through his ministers, and the inadequate portion allowed for the monks’ maintenance; these goods ‘in no way pertain’ to the king, and not only was divine service diminished but – raising the issue to the ultimate level of abstraction – the liberty of the Church was harmed.72 Thereafter the English Church appears to keep silence, even in the face of strong lay representations in the 1370s, leading to the expulsion ordinance and lay farming in 1377–8, unless bishops had a hand in the petition which suggested farming the alien priories to them.73 Indeed, in the ordinance which resulted from the latter, the bishops were assigned a role in refilling the priories with English religious or chaplains, at the presentation of patrons. It would appear that the hardy perennials of clerical petitions such as tithes of cut wood and conditional modifications were more important to them than the fate of their brother aliens. We finally hear from convocation at the start of Henry IV’s reign; amongst their sixty-three gravamina of October 1399 was a complaint directed at lay occupation of the alien priories, their consequent ruin and the failure of divine worship; it suggested (rather than requested – ‘quare videtur expediens’) that bishops should fill the priories up to their accustomed number with English religious or secular clerks to be presented by king or patrons, reserving to the king only the apport anciently paid overseas (as opposed to the much higher farm).74 It is tempting to suggest that this petition led directly to the royal restorations of nearly forty alien priories which followed in November, which reserved only the apport to the king, and which provided for the filling of the priories with English clergy.75 If so, bishops had a material influence at this point in mollifying royal exploitation of the alien priories. Certainly, in 1404, Arundel argued robustly with the Commons when they were attempting to get their hands on alien (amongst other ecclesiastical) property, asserting that they were only interested for themselves, not for the realm.76 On closer inspection, however, the 1399–1400  72

Councils and Synods, II, 1205–1313, ed. Powicke and Cheney, II, 1218. Above, n. 64.  74 Records of Convocation, ed. G. Bray, 20 vols. (Woodbridge, 2006), IV, 206, c. 54; also Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, a Synodo Verolamiensi A.D. CCCC XLVI. ad Londinensem A.D. M DCCXVII, ed. D. Wilkins, 4 vols. (London, 1737), III, 244.  75 CPR, 1399–1401, pp. 70–2, 364, 442, 1401–5, pp. 87–8.  76 Historia Anglicana, ed. H. T. Riley, 2 vols., Rolls Series (1872–3), II, 266; for a different version, to the same end: The St Albans Chronicle: the Chronica Maiora  73

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Prelates and the Alien Priories restorations contain two features not in the convocation petition; first, the text of the royal patent emphasized the patronal narrative of ecclesiastical foundation, which convocation did not;77 and secondly, they restored the priories to many foreign priors (although a minority were English). Moreover Henry IV simultaneously restored to fourteen French abbeys the advowsons of their English priories.78 Whatever the bishops were recommending to him, therefore, Henry IV took strikingly radical action in comparison with government policy over the previous sixty years; indeed he went beyond the 1390 ordinance in removing the farm from the restored priories, and thus negated the 1377 ordinance with its provision for competitive tender. One can only assume that this was a thank-offering from Henry IV for his French exile. But he also emphasized the lay view of ecclesiastical endowment, that these restorations were to protect the suffrages intended by the founders and donors, along the lines of the alien priors’ petitions of 1390 and 1393, which convocation had not reiterated. Thus the king demonstrated his control over policy and its ideological underpinning. Whatever role bishops played in this change of heart, their priority was the general defence of ecclesiastical property and the divine services it supported; they did not carry a brief for the protection of the tenure of individual churches, including foreign ones. Indeed, in 1399 they also complained about bishops being prevented from acting against neglectful aliens, or to ensure sufficient vicarages for alien churches in the hands of royal farmers.79 Moreover, bishops were themselves ultimately happy to hide behind the same fundamental lay arguments which justified the expropriation of the alien priories. The instruction which Beaufort took with him to the Council of Basle in 1434, for fending off pressure to return the priories to their mothers (the Ghent case looming large), was uncompromising in its statement of the patronal narrative that, as kings and nobles had founded churches, they could reorganize them and reassign their property if they were not fulfilling their founders’ purposes. As the priories’ purposes were not kept up during the war, they were resumed with the consent of the king and the three estates of the realm (sic). Henry V could rightfully have kept them for himself, but he did not wish abuse, rather to put them to sacred and pious uses, for which he of Thomas Walsingham, ed. J. Taylor, W. Childs & L. Watkiss, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2003–11), II, 418–23.  77 The full text is in Foedera, Conventiones, Litteræ . . ., ed. T. Rymer, 20 vols. (London, 1704–35), VIII, 101–6.  78 CPR, 1399–1401, pp. 80–1, 368.  79 As n. 74, cc. 51–2.

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Benjamin Thompson got an indult from Martin V (which has never been found, although there are references to it elsewhere); and he had also offered compensation.80 These instructions were signed by Chichele, Kemp, Morgan, Stafford and Gray of Lincoln;81 if these and other bishops had not had a hand in framing them, they were surely acquiescing in their contents, and they are therefore a good guide to episcopal acceptance of the lay argument.82 After the restorations of 1399, the history of the alien priories continued the gradual processes, begun two decades earlier, of denization of houses which could portray themselves as conventual, and of expropriation and redistribution of the small cells and the bailiwicks. It was punctuated by the reversal of a majority of the restorations in 1402–3, and the statute of 1414 awarding title to the Crown at the end of the war (convents excepted); in 1437 by the death of Queen Johanna of Navarre, who had had many priories for life, and the concurrent acquisition of grant-making powers by Henry VI; and ultimately by Edward IV’s usurpation in 1461 and the reversal of the readeption in 1471, which all saw further rounds of redistribution, often between the new foundations which had been granted the priories. The bishops played various formal roles in these processes, which at least required their consent, for instance licensing the reassignment of spiritualities and ­re-appropriating churches, as well as the creation of new institutions.83 Sometimes they acted under papal instruction, as when Arundel and Stoke-by-Clare priories were converted into colleges.84 Nevertheless, in these cases as in most others, they were ultimately processing arrangements made at the behest of kings and patrons. Braybrooke helped Richard II bring his Carthusian plans to fruition,85 and Langley and Courtenay of Norwich were instructed when negotiating peace in Paris to investigate the Celestine house with Henry V’s projected founda 80

Correspondence of Thomas Bekynton, ed. Williams, II, 264. Ibid., II, 269; the edition is at fault in suggesting that ‘W. Lincolniae’ was an earl rather than a bishop, as was A. N. E. D. Schofield, ‘The Second English Delegation to the Council of Basle’, JEH 17 (1966), 29–64 (p. 36).  82 The bishops of London and Rochester, and various heads of religious houses, were ambassadors: Schofield, ‘Second Delegation’, p.  35. The attitude of the Council to Eugenius had been the subject of consultation in convocation in December 1433: Records of Convocation, ed. Bray, V, 325–31.  83 E.g., the appropriation of Ecclesfield church to the Coventry Charterhouse in 1386: HRH, III, 174.  84 CPL, IV, 239–40; M. A. Tierney, The History and Antiquities of the Castle and Town of Arundel, 2 vols. (London, 1834), II, 752–72; CPL, VI, 456, VII, 156; Dugdale, Monasticon, VI, 1416–23: for some reason the bishop of Lincoln (Fleming) rather than Norwich implemented the foundation.  85 CPL, IV, 391; Dugdale, Monasticon, VI, 17.  81

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Prelates and the Alien Priories tion in London in mind;86 Langley and Lacy of Exeter were key figures alongside Thomas Beaufort entrusted with the foundation of Syon after Henry’s death.87 Moreover, bishops are also found as feoffees for lay possessors of priories, including Langley alongside Bedford for Ogbourne (already mentioned), and Alnwick for William Porter’s possession of the Cluny manors;88 and, as preservers of Henry V’s will, they acquiesced in long lay possession of priories into Henry VI’s reign by Queen Johanna for her dower, and for Lancastrian servants like Thomas Erpingham and Ralph Rochford.89 Many of the episcopal dealings with the alien priories were carrying out the will of those fundamentally driving the process. That said, we can observe the development of a preference for ecclesiastical possession, in line with the public-policy statements cited above, not least some hints that they supported Henry V’s apparent policy of compensation.90 Some properties which had been granted in fee to laymen were rescued when the opportunity arose; the Ricardian bishops Walden and Waltham were Richard II’s feoffees for acquiring Hugh Calveley’s Bec priory of Steventon so that it could support his obit at Westminster Abbey.91 Henry V’s chantry established there by his feoffees (led by his bishops, Beaufort and Kemp, as well as Stafford and Bekynton) recovered two of the Cluny manors which had been granted to William Porter, after his death.92 Later, Bourchier’s chantry at Canterbury used the Caen priory of Panfield and Well Hall, which he had acquired from a female servant of Edward IV, who had had it in

 86

Beckett, ‘Sheen Charterhouse’, pp. 36–9. CPR, 1422–29, pp. 205–7, probably 1423 rather than 1424; from PROME, parliament of 1423, item 33; R. L. Storey, Thomas Langley and the Bishopric of Durham, 1406–1437 (London, 1961), p. 45. Various other prelates presided over ceremonies of foundation and refoundation: VCH, Middlesex, I, 182, 184.  88 CPR, 1477–85, p. 107.  89 CPR, 1413–16, pp. 356–7, 1422–29, pp. 112–14 (Henry V declared to a group of bishops his will for Erpingham to have alien priories); P. Strong and F. Strong, ‘The Last Will and Codicils of Henry V’, EHR 96 (1981), 79–102 (esp. pp. 80–3, 86–7, 96–7).  90 See the commission sent by Langley in 1409 to treat with alien abbots for the purchase of their possessions for English churches: The Register of Thomas Langley, Bishop of Durham, 1406–1437, ed. R. L. Storey, 6 vols., Surtees Society, 164, 166, 169–70, 177, 182 (Durham, 1956–70), I, 103–5. In 1421 Kemp, as bishop of Chichester, valued Fécamp’s Sussex possessions with a view to compensation: Matthew, Norman Monasteries, p. 132. Note also the highlighting of compensation in the Basle instructions, above.  91 CPR, 1391–6, p. 417, 1399–1401, pp. 319–20.  92 CPR, 1441–6, p. 350; Dugdale, Monasticon, I, 313–15, witnessed by a fine crowd of bishops.  87

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Benjamin Thompson fee.93 Bishops also contributed to ensuring continued clerical presence in priories which, as Martin Heale has shown, became cells to other monasteries.94 In 1440 Bishop Lacy of Exeter certified that Cowick was conventual, and his successor insisted that Tavistock, to which Edward IV granted Cowick following an earlier grant to Eton, should maintain monks there.95 Lacy may also have provided for a secular establishment at St Michael’s Mount after it was granted to Syon.96 Bishop Carpenter of Worcester first collated to the vacant Deerhurst, then confirmed Edward IV’s grant of it as a cell to Tewkesbury.97 Less fortunately, bishops were on both sides of the unseemly struggle between Bec’s prior of Goldcliff – defended by Stafford (as chancellor), Beaufort and Brouns of Norwich – and Tewkesbury Abbey, which was given the priory as a cell by the alien priory commissioners headed by Chichele, Lowe, and Ayscough – but also including Stafford.98 The most telling intervention which bishops could make was to acquire alien property for their own new foundations. Grandisson’s college at Ottery, based on the manor bought from Rouen Cathedral in 1337, may have provided the model which inspired Wykeham.99  93

CPR, 1461–7, p. 64, 1467–77, pp. 375–6, 1477–85, pp. 334–5; Literae Cantuarienses: the Letter-Books of the Monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury, ed. J. B. Sheppard, 3 vols., Rolls Series 85 (London, 1887–9), III, 263–7. Note the role of Lacy, Henry V’s executor, in securing Fécamp’s possessions to Syon after the long occupation of John Cornewaile, 1440s: CPR, 1441–46, p. 221.  94 M. Heale, ‘Dependent Priories and the Closure of Monasteries in Late Medieval England, 1400–1535’, EHR 119 (2004), 1–26.  95 CPR, 1436–41, p. 381; Heale, ‘Dependent Priories’, pp. 14–15.  96 Thus T. Taylor, St Michael’s Mount (Cambridge, 1932), p.  65, J. R. Fletcher and J. Stéphan, Short History of St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall (Marazion, 1951), p. 41, both with detail suggesting an underlying document, but neither providing a reference. We know that Lacy was at the Mount in April 1425, and later that year gave an indulgence for those contributing to the breakwater, which two years later we know the archpriest was building: The Register of Edmund Lacy, Bishop of Exeter, 1420–1455: Registrum commune, ed. G. R. Dunstan, 5 vols., Canterbury and York Society 60–3, 66 (1963–71), I, 54, 100, 116, 126–7; CPR, 1422–9, pp. 447–8; see also VCH, Cornwall, II, 233–5.  97 Heale, ‘Dependent Priories’, p. 15; HRH, III, 173; CPR, 1467–77, pp. 66–7; CPL, XIII, 367–8.  98 Heale, ‘Dependent Priories’, pp. 13–16; CPR, 1441–6, p. 29, 271; CPL, VIII, 241–4, 473–5. Not unnaturally, Bourchier defended All Souls College’s possession of Alberbury Priory against an attempt in 1473 by Grandmont to reoccupy it, with parochial support; the bishop of Hereford, mediating, instructed the college to maintain a chapel there: Graham and Clapham, ‘Alberbury Priory’, pp.  281–2; Oxford, All Souls College Archives, Alberbury, 132–3.  99 Register of Grandisson, ed. Hingeston-Randolph, I, 121–2, 272–3; Dugdale, Monasticon, VI, 1347–8; CPR, 1334–7, pp.  20, 22; CPL, III, 67; for another alien church purchased for the college from St Stephen’s, Caen: CPR, 1350–4, pp. 62;

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Prelates and the Alien Priories Although he was not able to secure alien property until he was chancellor in 1389–91, when he purchased seven priories for Winchester and New College, he had petitioned the pope as early as 1371 for permission to convert them to support his scholars.100 With the Treaty of Troyes of 1420 it was thought that the 1414 statute giving title to the king had been activated, and Chichele moved quickly to secure St Ouen’s property at Mersey (Essex) for his college at Higham Ferrers; nevertheless at perhaps twelve years’ purchase-price, he paid reasonably well, although we cannot be sure that he actually transferred the cash.101 Subsequently he endowed All Souls College, Oxford, with six alien priories from such a diverse range of orders – Cluniac, Cistercian, Premonstratensian and Grandmontine to add to two Benedictine – that it almost looks deliberate.102 Amongst other smaller acquisitions by bishops for their colleges and chantries,103 Waynflete’s securing of Sele Priory (St Florent, Saumur) for Magdalen College, Oxford is perhaps ambiguous: the house was made denizen in 1396, but failed in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, not without a helping hand from Waynflete himself.104 The crucial contribution which the bishops made, however, came in the late 1430s, the point at which Henry’s official majority might have reduced their influence.105 Indeed, in 1437, with the death of Queen Johanna and the release of all her dower alien properties, it looked as if these would become part of Henry’s patronage-bonanza as he farmed them out to courtiers on longish leases, or to Humphrey duke

Register of Grandisson, III, 1226–8. Archbishop Melton bought the other Rouen manors, possibly for a projected foundation, but in fact his relatives kept some of the property: CCR, 1330–33, pp. 321–2; CFR, IV, 391, 432, 451–2; CPR, 1334–38, p. 326; VCH, Hampshire, IV, 68–71, 249–67. 100 Oxford, New College Archives, 9837; Kirby, Annals of Winchester, pp.  450–2: general licence to purchase alien priories, 16 June 1389 (the calendared versions of which date it to 1390, and omit the word ‘alien’: CPR, 1388–92, p. 265). For an indication of the purchases, ibid., pp. 378, 386, 390, 417–19, 427, 433–4, 1391–6, p. 51; CPL, IV, 439–41. 101 Matthew, Norman Monasteries, pp.  129–30; CPR, 1416–22, p.  441, 1422–29, pp. 472–4; CPL, VIII, 298. 102 CPR, 1436–41, pp. 172–3, 231, 261, 341, 386, 394, 437, 447, 531–2, 563. 103 See above, n. 93, for Bourchier’s chantry at Canterbury based on Panfield and Well Hall. Kemp secured a Guines rectory for his Wye college: CPR, 1436–41, pp. 248, 312; Dugdale, Monasticon, VI, 1430–2. 104 CPR, 1396–99, p.  721; V. Davis, William Waynflete: Bishop and Educationalist (Woodbridge, 1993), pp. 129–30, 140–9; HRH, III, 204–5; CPL, XIII, 1; E. Cartwright, The Parochial Topography of the Rape of Bramber in the Western Division of the County of Sussex (London, 1830), pp. 226–34. 105 For the problem of how far, if at all, Henry reached his majority, see J. L. Watts, Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (Cambridge, 1996), esp. ch. 5.

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Benjamin Thompson of Gloucester.106 This is the context for the formation of a commission in 1440 that assigned all remaining alien property, including the reversions of land already re-farmed, to a group headed by Chichele, including the fellow-Wykhamists Bekynton and Andrewe, as well as Stafford (the chancellor), Lowe, Ayscough, and Moleyns.107 Their project turned out to be the foundation of Eton, which received the lion’s share of alien priories in early 1441, apart from that which was assigned to King’s College, Cambridge and a few other institutions.108 Quite apart from general arguments about the unlikelihood of Henry himself taking an initiative on this scale, his earlier preparedness to allow the alien priories to be secularized makes a strong case for suggesting episcopal initiative in the foundation of Eton and King’s. Bishops and future bishops were prominent in the endowing, building and shaping, via statute, of both foundations, including Waynflete, who became bishop of Winchester for his work at Eton.109 Stafford, Beaufort and Kemp are recognizable in the illuminated Eton foundation charter.110 The documentation for these foundations has a quite different cast from those of Henry V, especially Sheen from whose records bishops are curiously absent. All the major bishops were entrusted with Henry VI’s ‘will’ of 1448 determining the shape of King’s; even on a maximal view of Henry VI’s capacity, this means that they probably wrote it.111 The fact that bishops and clergy were prominent in directing such alien property as did not go to Eton and King’s at this point reinforces the argument for their initiative. They seem to have been able to channel some priories towards their own pet projects, apart from the fulfilment of Henry V’s will noted above: indeed, the foundation of King’s may have derived ultimately from Henry V’s intention to found an Oxford college, mediated through Chichele who had moved quickly from 1438

106

CFR, XVII, 18ff; CPR, 1436–41, pp. 188–9, 303–4. CPR, 1436–41, pp. 454, 471; CCR, 1435–41, pp. 493–6. The other members were John Somerset the physician and friend of Bekynton, the earl of Suffolk, and two household esquires, James Fiennes and John Hampton; nine days later, Richard Andrewe, another Wykhamist like Chichele and Bekynton, Adam Moleyns soon to be bishop of Chichester, and William Tresham were added. 108 Dugdale, Monasticon, VI, 1435–7 (also PROME, parliament of 1442, item 17); CPR, 1436–41, pp. 521–3, 557, 565–6, 1441–6, pp. 111–12, 160, 181, 269, 279 (also PROME, parliament of 1445, item 22); other institutions are below. 109 Davis, Waynflete, pp. 14–22, 35–46. 110 H. Maxwell-Lyte, A History of Eton College, 1440–1910, 4th edn (London, 1911), pp. 52–3. 111 A Collection of all the Wills, now known to be extant, of the kings and queens of England . . ., ed. J. Nichols (London, 1780), pp. 291–2; Davis, Waynflete, pp. 46–9. 107

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Prelates and the Alien Priories to secure some alien priories for All Souls.112 At the same time as Eton was being endowed the alien priory commissioners, explicitly on the initiative of Bekynton, granted the wealthy bailiwick of Longueville Priory in Normandy, Newton Longville Priory, to New College, which was struggling financially.113 He also secured two manors from the bailiwick of Ogbourne for the hospital of St Katherine-by-the-Tower, of which he was Master.114 Similarly, John Carpenter (like Bekynton, soon to be a bishop) secured another Ogbourne manor, Povington, for his St Anthony’s hospital, to maintain five Eton scholars at Oxford to their BA, perhaps the last vestige of Henry V’s plan.115 Much later, in 1469, Carpenter secured Astley Priory (St Taurin, Evreux), which had been in lay (Beauchamp) hands for nearly a century, for his college at Westburyon-Trym.116 Once ensconced at Bath and Wells, Bekynton’s quick footwork directed Stogursey (Somerset) to Eton despite there still being an incumbent prior.117 Waynflete was the arbitrator who awarded another priory contested with a resident prior, Wootton Wawen, to King’s in 1447.118 The significance of all this is that, negatively, the bishops seem to have stepped in to prevent the alien priories being frittered away in the king’s profligate grants of the late 1430s.119 They thus prevented the secularization, at least for another generation, of ecclesiastical property and made a bold move to keep it in the hands of the Church. More positively, they took the opportunity of the availability of these resources to found two new colleges, to match or surpass Winchester and New

112

VCH, Buckinghamshire, II, 150; Loci e Libro Veritatum: Passages selected from Gascoigne’s Theological Dictionary illustrating the Condition of Church and State, 1403–1458, ed. J. E. Thorold Rogers (Oxford, 1881), pp.  218–19; see also below, n. 115. For All Souls, see n. 102. 113 CPR, 1441–46, pp, 516, 558, 571; New College Archives, 11980, 11982; VCH, Oxfordshire, III, 155. 114 CPR, 1436–41, p. 529. 115 CPR, 1441–6, p. 43. 116 CChR, V, 237–8, a grant also said to be at the special grace of Bourchier; Carpenter had refounded Westbury: VCH, Gloucestershire, II, 106–8. 117 See n. 108; The Register of Thomas Bekynton, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1443–1465, ed. H. C. Maxwell-Lyte and M. C. B. Dawes, Somerset Record Society 49–50 (London, 1934–5), I, nos 41, 54, 115, 123, 184. Bekynton left bequests to New College and Winchester, and St Katherine-by-the-Tower, but not Eton and King’s: Somerset Medieval Wills, ed. F. W. Weaver, 3 vols., Somerset Record Society 16, 19, 21 (Taunton, 1901–5), I, 202–7. 118 Catalogue of Ancient Deeds, 6 vols. (London, 1890–1915), II, 552 (C. 2746). Alnwick and Waynflete were also feoffees for the transfer of the other two Cluny manors to Ralph Cromwell’s college at Tattershall: CPR, 1477–85, p. 107. 119 For which see Watts, Henry VI, pp. 129–40, 154–5.

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Benjamin Thompson College.120 It is hard to see that Eton, in particular, could have been contemplated without the alien endowments which entirely supported it. This episcopal coup therefore achieved a double benefit, preventing Church resources from falling into lay hands while furthering their vision of an educated clergy running a stable, peaceful state. Edward IV’s usurpation provided another challenge, however. The endowments of Eton and King’s were not exempt from the initial resumption, and Edward even secured a papal bull to suppress Eton and incorporate it with St George’s, Windsor.121 He redistributed alien property to foundations favoured by Yorkists, with prayers for the new ruling family and its deceased forebears prominent in the reassignments.122 Now that there was an authoritative king taking executive decisions, the bishops were again reduced to responding by working within the system to secure benefits to their favoured churches, whether defending earlier recipients,123 or securing prayers for themselves on the basis of reassigned manors.124 It is not possible to see who persuaded Edward to allow Eton to continue, in that there is no direct evidence that Waynflete was involved.125 Bishops had lost some of their influence in the new regime, and saw some of their work of the 1430s–40s undone. But Edward did not reassign much property to the laity, and bishops did recover some that had been in lay hands.126 It looks as if they had entrenched – or persuaded the political community to maintain – the notion that ecclesiastical property should not be completely secularized, even if they were less concerned about the boundary between regular and secular churches. 120

I will argue elsewhere that Eton and King’s were more Wykehamist in inspiration than it is currently fashionable to suggest (e.g., Davis, Waynflete, pp. 35–9); it is in any case surely the most obvious explanation of the facts, and it is possible that the original Cambridge initiative in inviting the king to establish a royal college suggested the scheme to the clergy, led by the Wykehamist Chichele. 121 CPL, XI, 655–7; C. D. Ross, Edward IV (London, 1974), p. 269. 122 CPR, 1461–67, pp.  73, 76, 108, 116, 150–1, 196–7, 216, 431, 1467–77, pp.  66–7, 461; Dugdale, Monasticon, VI, 1358; ECR, 49/296; VCH, Cambridgeshire, III, 380–1; VCH, Buckinghamshire, II, 167–8. 123 Chancellor George Neville, preserving St Albans’ tenure of Pembroke: Registra quorundam Abbatum Monasterii S. Albani, qui seculo XVmo floruere, ed. H. T. Riley, 2 vols., Rolls Series 28.6 (London, 1872–3), I, 416–18. 124 Neville was second after the king as spiritual beneficiary for the reassignment of three Bec manors from Eton and King’s to Ashford College: Dugdale, Monasticon, VI, 1454; CPR, 1461–67, p.  76. Lawrence Booth secured an ex-Eton manor for himself: CPR, 1461–67, p. 113. 125 Davis, Waynflete, pp. 51–3, cf. Maxwell-Lyte, Eton, pp. 62–5; Waynflete resumed contact with the college only after Edward IV had decided to save it (for which, CPR, 1467–77, pp. 62–3). 126 Above, n. 93.

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Prelates and the Alien Priories The late fifteenth century witnessed a handful of disputes between churches which had acquired competing claims to alien priories through the reassignments which followed both the usurpation of 1461 and Edward IV’s subsequent changes of mind.127 In particular, King’s and Eton applied to Henry VII in 1489 for the return of everything they had lost to Yorkist foundations.128 Archbishop and Chancellor Morton delegated the case to be considered by four common and canon lawyers, including future bishops Nix and Warham,129 but this put the panel in the impossible position of deciding whose grant should have the most force: the political bias towards favouring the earlier Lancastrian grants would raise the spectre of whether the original grants to the French abbeys should be respected. The arguments were therefore declared to be futile, and the churches concerned were told to compromise, but not before they had, with episcopal supporters, indulged in some traditional jostling between churches and orders.130 Indeed, the royal colleges’ response to the judgement was the classic canon law statement (also deployed by French abbeys) that they could not compromise on the rights of their churches.131 The final phase of the alien priory story was therefore at one level an unseemly squabble between churchmen over the bonanza which the transfer of these properties had released. From a broader perspective, however, its significance lies in the fact that English churches were able to indulge in such traditional ecclesiastical competitiveness because very little property remained with the laity. It did not seem to occur to anyone as a possibility that these disputes might re-open some scope either for lay possession or for renewed claims from French abbeys.132 127

The most notable earlier dispute between recipients was between Syon and King’s for St Michael’s Mount: KCAR, SMM/2, 10, KCE/6, 139–40, 280, SYO/­ 3–5; CPR, 1441–6, pp. 111–12, 256. 128 PROME, parliament of 1489, item 37: they requested a commission headed by the two archbishops and two bishops. 129 Oxford, Queen’s College, Archives, 154 (= 5B27). 130 Bishop Langton of Salisbury, for Queen’s, vs Eton, over Monk Sherborne: Oxford, Queen’s College Archives, 5B22–5; Fox accepted Queen’s title. Bishops Alcock and Russell for the London Charterhouse, vs King’s, over Ogbourne: VCH, Middlesex, I, 161. 131 As n. 129: ‘they wer’ so charged by their othes after the ffourme of their foundation’ that they myght in no wyse mynysh ne put away any part of theyr lyvelod but hyt wer’ by the cohercion of the lawe’. King’s, however, seems to have been prepared to enter into negotiations, and came out with some compromises which salvaged some property: VCH, Cambridgeshire, III, 380. Eton appears to have remained intransigent and recovered nothing. 132 For such residual claims, see St Florent, Saumur, and Cîteaux, and perhaps Marmoutier-Tickford, above, nn. 31–2.

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Benjamin Thompson To that extent, the episode draws attention to some of the fundamental features of the alien priory narrative and the prelates’ role in it. First, this transformation of more than 175 priories and property holdings took place at lay initiative, and thus demonstrates the obvious but important power of king and laity within the late medieval Church. Much of the time the clergy were just responding to circumstances not of their own making. Their different reactions exhibit the traditional mode of ecclesiastical competition, but within the increasingly diversified Church of the late Middle Ages: the alien priories were founded at a time of black-monk dominance of the Church and monopoly in monasticism, whereas fifteenth-century clergy operated in a rainbow world of different orders and types of institution. It is hardly surprising that there was no liberty-of-the-Church solidarity between French abbots and English clergy, and that this fault-line underscores the nationalism of late medieval Churches. Where there was common ground was in the broad acceptance of the lay account of ecclesiastical endowment, which demanded continuing utility according to criteria defined by the laity, an acceptance which we cannot but see as a hostage to fortune. The adoption of this narrative by the abbots ultimately undermined their claims to continued possession of the property on the basis of the first founders’ wishes, in that it conceded to the laity the authority to distribute ecclesiastical goods. And their inflexibility in the face of changing circumstances denied them the compensation they might have secured through greater acceptance of reality. The English bishops also broadly accepted this narrative, just as they co-operated with the expropriation and reassignment of the alien priories; but they were able to influence lay decisions and mould the lay conception of utility. Thus they can take the credit for ensuring that very little alien property was secularized, but was instead channelled towards realizing their own vision of endowed institutions providing an educated clergy fit for the service of Church and State, by prayer as well as by administrative service. Such a vision was easily shared by Church and king, and just as much by the macho warrior Henry V as the allegedly pious and certainly ineffective Henry VI, to the extent that in neither case can we be sure of initiative and influence. The midcentury bishops may have seen themselves as carrying out the former’s unfulfilled vision, on behalf of the latter; therefore the outcome for the alien priories under a long-lived Henry V, or a competent Henry VI, might have been little different. All this suggests that the high-medieval dualistic division of the world into spiritual and temporal, ecclesiastical and secular, was no longer the dominant conception, but had become tempered by lay authority and the boundaries of nationalism. Yet in accepting this new dispensation the bishops saw no diminished role for 74

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Prelates and the Alien Priories themselves as they influenced the exercise of secular authority over the Church and ensured ecclesiastical possession of these ancient endowments. In fact, their seizing of the opportunity presented by the alien priories positively promoted continuing change and development in the English Church, and thus reminds us that the late-medieval Church was far from being a static institution just waiting to be reformed.

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Cardinals at the Court of Francis I Cédric Michon

The cardinals present in the court of Francis I (1515–47) can be categorized in three different ways. First the courtiers, in other words the cardinals from the most powerful court families who gravitated around the sovereign without occupying any political or administrative function. These were Cardinals Adrien Gouffier, Claude de Givry, Odet de Châtillon and Jacques d’Annebault. Then there were the cardinals who took advantage of the captive market of curial ecclesiastical missions, especially as chaplain (Cardinals Jean Le Veneur and Antoine Sanguin) or almoner. These missions were sometimes, though not always, a stepping stone to political service. Finally there were the cardinals who occupied a role in royal power and administration. The latter hailed from the ranks of State prelates whose presence in government was quite decisive. These were the Cardinals Antoine Duprat, François de Tournon, Jean Du Bellay and Charles Hémard de Denonville. It is important to situate these cardinals in their right place, between the court where they resided and the council around which they gravitated.

French cardinals and Renaissance cardinals An important development in the history of the cardinals was the rise in their number, starting with Sixtus IV (1471–84).1 Although during the Middle Ages, they rarely exceeded a maximum of thirty or so, the count exploded from the end of the fifteenth century. It was not until the pontificate of Sixtus V and the year 1586 that a reform limited the number at any one time to seventy. At that point, the old ideal of twenty-four cardinals was definitively abandoned. Throughout the  1

For this general introduction, see A. Tallon, ‘Les cardinaux à la Renaissance. Profil historique’, in Les cardinaux de la Renaissance et la modernité historique, ed. F. Lemerle, Y. Pauwels and G. Toscano (Lille, 2008), pp. 7–21.

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Cardinals at the Court of Francis I period of this study, that is from the pontificate of Julius II to that of Paul III (from 1503 to 1549), no fewer than 174 cardinals were created. The origin of these 174 cardinals reveals a second, well-known, break, namely the Italianization of the Curia, the Italian supremacy only in fact ­replacing the French supremacy of the Avignon Papacy. For the period that c­oncerns us, of 174 cardinals there were thus no fewer than 109 Italians. After that came the French (twenty-five) and then the Spanish (nineteen), with the two great Catholic powers relegating the other European monarchies or principalities far behind (Germany (six), England (four), Flanders (four), Portugal (three), etc.). This imbalance had the automatic effect that the interests of the great monarchies were defended in Rome by Roman cardinals gathered in parties, particularly French and Hispano-Imperial. France and Spain added national cardinals who also defended their sovereign’s interests, as was the case for Cardinals Du Bellay and Tournon in the 1540s and 1550s. This phenomenon represents what Alain Tallon calls the ‘third break’, that is to say ‘the institutionalization of relationships among cardinals and temporal Catholic, Italian and European sovereigns’.2 It is also possible to establish a typology of Renaissance cardinals, which can be developed according to the reasons for their promotion. From this point of view, Alain Tallon distinguished two main categories of cardinals. First, the Church cardinals, who owed their promotion to parish and ecclesiastical career paths or to links with the pope. Then, the State c­ ardinals who owed their promotion to a prince (with a tacit rule from the 1530s onward imposing a balance between France and the Habsburgs). There naturally existed a whole spectrum of sub-categories among Church cardinals, with those who owed their promotion to their proximity to the pope (the cardinal-nephews), those who owed it to their career in the Curia (canonists, administrators, generals of the order, theologians), those who owed it to their intellectual activity (Pietro Bembo), and those who owed it to their reformist aspirations (Contarini). But, for Church cardinals, the Renaissance did not content itself with profiles inherited from the Middle Ages. It created at least two new ones: that of cardinal-inquisitor who owed the purple to his work in the congregation of the Holy Office; and that of cardinal-diplomat, who, after having been a nuncio, was also rewarded by promotion to the cardinalate. This tempered the effects of the Italianization of the Holy College, since the cardinal-diplomats had seen much more than Italy during their stays in great European courts.

 2

Ibid., p. 14.

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Cédric Michon A notable absence in this period should be highlighted: that of the pastor-cardinal. None of the great reform bishops of the Renaissance was rewarded with the cardinalate for his activities. Even Jacques Sadolet, the famous bishop of Carpentras, was rewarded not for having resided in his diocese, but for his reputation as a humanist. The State cardinals were also a relatively diverse group. Individuals were often to be found among them who could almost play the role of leader of their national Church from time to time. France escaped almost totally a tradition put in place from the fifteenth century onward in Italy that saw, next to the cardinal-servants of great princely families, the appearance of cardinal-princes. Francesco Gonzaga began this custom in 1461 under the pontificate of Pius II, followed by Charles de Bourbon under Sixtus IV. This period dealt with aristocratic houses rather than ruling families. Thus all the great Italian families had a ‘family cardinal’, as did the great western monarchies. The House of Aviz started this trend with Alfonzo of Portugal in 1517, and then Henry of Portugal in 1545. The Habsburgs then followed with Andrew of Austria in 1576 and Albert in 1577.3 There were evidently no Church cardinals among French cardinals, just exclusively State cardinals. No French cardinal owed his promotion to his proximity to the pontiff. Though the protection of the sovereign was indispensable for every promotion to cardinal, it did not mean that the monarch was indifferent to the requests of certain of his councillors, nor that the king’s will sufficed in a context where the pope had of course to take into account not only French requests, but also Italian and Imperial ones. The promotions of French cardinals, on the whole, show French power in Rome. Taken one by one, they were indicative of the balance of power in the royal court. From this point of view, some strong men emerged. In other instances, it was as if the king of France strove to please a maximum number of leading servants or associates, which required that each one be moderately rewarded in order to satisfy a maximum number of people. Thus, seven promotions can be principally attributed to Francis I (Louis de Bourbon, Antoine Duprat, François de Tournon, Gabriel de Gramont, Jean d’Orléans, Jean Le Veneur and Charles de BourbonVendôme). Georges d’Amboise was directly or indirectly at the origin of the promotion of six cardinals (François-Guillaume de Castelnau  3

It must be noted that in a context of demographic uncertainty, it was dangerous to sterilize a branch of the family in this way, and certain monarchies had to ‘decardinalise’ princes, like Ferdinando de Medici in 1588, Henry of Portugal in 1578, and Albert of Austria in 1598: see ibid., p. 19.

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Cardinals at the Court of Francis I de Clermont-Lodève, Jean-François de La Tremoille, René de Prie, Louis d’Amboise, Antoine Bohier and Georges II d’Amboise). Anne de Montmorency, the most powerful servant of Francis I, was perhaps at the origin of three promotions (Odet de Coligny, Jean Du Bellay and Charles Hémard de Denonville), while two promotions can be attributed to Jean de Lorraine (Robert de Lenoncourt and Charles de Guise), and one each to Anne of Brittany (Robert Guibé), Artus Gouffier (Adrien Gouffier), Chabot (Claude de Longwy), the duchess of Étampes (Antoine Sanguin), Marguerite (Georges d’Armagnac), Claude d’Annebault (Jacques d’Annebault), and the duke of Lorraine (Jean de Lorraine). Nomination was not always easy to obtain, and letters overflow with the difficulties there were in obtaining the much-desired promotions. One of them, preserved in the Vatican archives, is particularly revealing. It recounts the campaign for the promotion of Jean d’Orléans, archbishop of Toulouse. The slowness of the affair brought Gabriel de Gramont, in charge of Italian affairs at court and regularly sent to Rome, to send several letters to Clement  VII. In his very first letter, dated 19 January 1531, Gramont explained with the greatest firmness that the pope should promote the archbishop of Toulouse, because his predecessors had promised it and, put simply, because the king, his sister and his mother wanted it: Holy father, the certainty that I think to have of the little pleasure you take in the creation of cardinals would silence me . . . only see clearly that the thing was more than reasonable . . . as is offered at present for the promotion of Msgr archbishop of [Toulouse] . . . on which the king, queen and my lady his mother have set their heart marvellously . . . and how holy father it should suffice to me that the above-mentioned lord and ladies write to you, I desired (for the servitude that I owe you) to say that you owe them to grant their requests of which I am assured you are aware. It must be underlined that it is not a question of a new creation but the continuation and execution of the highest goodwill that Yours have had.4  4

Rome, Archivio Segreto Vaticano (hereafter ASV), Principi, VI, fols. 182r–188r. Gabriel de Gramont, to the pope, from Paris, 19 January 1531: ‘Tressainct pere, la certainete que je pense avoir du peu de playsir que ce vous est de venir a creation de cardinaulx me cloueroit la bouche . . . nestoyt que veysse clayrement que la chouse feust plus que raysonnable . . . comme est telle qui se offre de present pour la promotion de monsr larcevesque de thle [Toulouse] . . . que le Roy Royne et ma dame leur mere ont merveilleusement a cueur . . . et combien tressaint pere quil me deust suffire que les dessusdicts seigneur et dames vous en escripvent, si nay je voulu (pour la servitude que vous doibz) laisser de vous dire que vous leur debvez octroyer leur requeste pour les raysons que suys asseure vous sont assez cogneues. Actendu mesmement quil nest question de creation nouvelle mays continuation et execution de bonne volunte premiere que les vres ont eu.’

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Cédric Michon Faced with a promotion slow in coming, Gramont raised his tone further, reporting that he had already informed the king that the appointment was imminent: I made excuses to the king, the queen and to madame that msgr the archbishop of Toulouse was not made cardinal these past four times and assured them on your part that he would be these next four times in September of which they were marvellously happy.5

Jean d’Orléans was only promoted two years later, on 3 March 1533.6 The pope then took his time sending the interested party the dispatch that rendered his promotion effective. Faced with the pope’s inaction, Gramont continued his pressure and went so far as to protest sanctimoniously through a formula heavy with threats that it would be desirable that, in this affair, the pope keep control: I wanted to write to you and plead that you please order the whole dispatch of the above-mentioned lord of Toulouse and send it immediately so that all could be conducted under real authority and obedience.

Concerned about clarity, he specified: ‘and would like to warn you not to fail my duty informing you that dispatch or no dispatch, he will take the red garments. Quod dolenter resero.’7 Jean d’Orléans did not enjoy being cardinal long, because he died on 23 September 1533 in Tarascon, on his way to Marseille to meet Clement VII who was coming to France to celebrate the wedding of his niece Catherine of Medici to Henry, the son of Francis I.

State cardinals and court cardinals under Francis I No French cardinal owed his promotion to his intellectual activities, to his reformist aspirations or to his inquisitorial or pastoral activities. On  5

ASV, Principi, VI, fol. 232r. Gabriel de Gramont, to the pope, from Paris, 19 July 1531: ‘Jay fait excuse au Roy a la Royne et a madame de ce que monsr larcevesque de Thoulouze navoit este faict cardinal les quatre temps passez et les ay asseurez de vre part quil le sera ces prochains quatre temps de septembre dont ilz ont este merveilleusement contans.’  6 Antonio Pucci and Esteban Gabriel Merino were the only two cardinals promoted before him, the first on 22 September 1531 and the second on 21 February 1533.  7 ASV, Principi, VII, fols. 67r–74r (Gramont to Clement VII, Costanza [Constance], 27 April 1532: ‘Je vous en ay bien voulu escripre et supplier quil vous plaise commander la depesche entiere dudict sr de Thoulouze et l’envoyer incontinent affin que le tout soit conduict soubz vredicte auctorite et obeissance’,  et ‘Et vous en veuil bien advertir afin de ne faillir a mon debvoir vous advisant que depesche ou non depesche, il prendra lhabit rouge. Quod dolenter resero.’

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Cardinals at the Court of Francis I the other hand, many owed it to their activity in service of the State, and more notably to their diplomatic activity. When examining the position at court of the cardinals of Francis I’s reign, it appears that ten played an important political role, one played a religious role and fourteen played no definite role and settled for being courtiers. Almost half of the cardinals in Francis I’s court thus owed their position to services rendered to the monarchy. They embodied the aristocracy of the State prelates. This group deserves a few words of introduction. In the great western monarchies at the end of the Middle Ages, prelates were considerably involved in royal service.8 In each kingdom a few dozen of them were so invested as to constitute an informal institution, present in a significant and even decisive manner, in all sectors of royal administration. In late fifteenth and early sixteenth century France, these State prelates made up a third of the king’s councillors, almost half of his diplomats, and were important agents of the central power in the provinces. They represent then, next to the courtiers and officers, the third pillar of the State and lead to a new approach in the reflection upon the nature of the monarchy in the Renaissance. Their presence reveals that, alongside domestic and bureaucratic paths there can be seen a third means of consolidation of the State, strongly ecclesiastical this time. These State prelates represented a trump card for the Crown, compensating for the deficiencies or the flaws of courtiers and bureaucrats. This highlights the eminently pragmatic dimension of the affirmation of royal power at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In France, it is appropriate to distinguish between two great types of State prelate-cardinals: those whose entry into the State and the court resembled that of courtiers, and those whose career paths bring more to mind that of officers, or experts in law or finance. All were from families split between service to the State and service to towns or principalities. These State cardinals belonged either to an ancient nobility, well implanted locally, such as François de Tournon, Jean Du Bellay or Georges d’Amboise, or to young dynasties of jurists or financiers like Guillaume Briçonnet or Antoine Duprat. Thus, diverse kinds of career existed. Whereas the path of Georges d’Amboise or Jean Du Bellay was that of a courtier, that of Antoine Duprat was administrative, following a classic cursus honorum. However, Antoine Duprat’s path was much less common than that of Georges d’Amboise. French cardinals were almost all courtiers and bureaucrats were the exception.

 8

C. Michon, La crosse et le sceptre. Les prélats d’État sous François  Ier et Henri  VIII (Paris, 2008).

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Cédric Michon In any case, these State prelate-cardinals were by definition very powerful: both at court, because they belonged to family and power networks, and in Rome where they were often sent as representatives of royal power. At court, they were also the privileged interlocutors of the nuncios. In this way, Cardinal Hippolyte d’Este, even before establishing himself as one of the councillors of Francis I, played something of the role of an intermediary between the nuncio and French royalty, for example in striving to keep lateness in interviews to a minimum. A handful of these prelates were often very powerful because they joined forces with the favourite councillor, veritable protector of the council, to form a duo at the head of the kingdom. This was the case with Cardinal Jean de Lorraine, associated with Anne de Montmorency between 1535 and 1541, and also Cardinal de Tournon, who governed with Admiral Annebault at the end of the reign. Moreover, other cardinals became known as specialists in certain matters, particularly in relations with Rome: this was so for Cardinals Gabriel de Gramont, Jean Du Bellay and Charles Hémard de Denonville, and to a lesser extent for Cardinal Hippolyte d’Este in the 1540s. It would also be hard to overestimate the influence of Cardinal Duprat at the end of the 1520s. In any case, there was clearly a political domination of the favourite councillors over other members of the royal council, be they cardinals, chancellors or secretaries. For the second half of the reign, the examples of Montmorency and Annebault highlight the domination of the officer over the cardinal. The partnership of Montmorency and Lorraine maintained a very clear hierarchy, with the Grand Master at the head of the duo. Several episodes illustrate this well. At the end of 1539, for example, while the emperor was en route for Paris, Francis I, who was ill, could not go to meet him. He sent Anne de Montmorency and his two sons. The commander left court in early November, leaving ‘behind him the cardinal of Lorraine, to replace him temporarily in his functions with the king’.9 Still, Montmorency wished to keep his prerogatives intact. He specified to the emperor’s ambassador that during his journey no attempt was to be made to treat the peace to come. Much more balanced, but still unequal, was the pairing formed by Claude d’Annebault and François de Tournon. Martin Du Bellay perfectly summed up the

 9

Calendar of State Papers, Spain, ed. G. Bergenroth et al., 13 vols. (London, ­1862–1954), VI(i), p. 203. Already in July 1537, in the absence of the great master, the cardinal de Lorraine managed all matters: Archivio di Stato di Modena (hereafter AS Modena), busta 14 (Alberto Turco to the Duke of Ferrara, [Paris] 29 July 1537).

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Cardinals at the Court of Francis I situation when he wrote that Tournon held the reins in the admiral’s absence.10 The influence of families linked to power was generally inversely proportional to that of their cardinal representative. Adrien Gouffier, Claude de Longwy, Odet de Châtillon, Jacques d’Annebault and Antoine Sanguin illustrate the helplessness of the most powerful courtiers to vest their ecclesiastical kin with political influence. The procurement of a legation for Gouffier, the attempts of Montmorency with Châtillon and the promotions to cardinal of Longwy, Annebault or Sanguin resulted only in the ascendance of rich prelates without political influence. An unspoken rule seemed to say ‘for the powerful family, no powerful cardinal’, as if the royal power did not want to give too much to the same family. In particular, the limited influence of cardinals of royal blood is striking. Although Jean d’Orléans de Longueville died several months after his promotion to cardinal, Louis de Bourbon was cardinal for almost thirty years under Francis I, but had very little political influence. He was regularly called upon by the sovereign from 1523 onward, however. That year, he was given the responsibility of negotiating with the ambassadors of Charles V and Henry VIII.11 After the defeat at Pavia, he was called to the council.12 Nevertheless, he remained in the background concentrating on the government of Île-de-France, in the absence of the count of Saint Pol, and confessed to be better made for advice than for follow-through.13 Thereafter, his activity accelerated, especially from the 1530s onward. He was then occasionally the interlocutor of ambassadors.14 He regularly participated in the council and received multiple financial commissions.15 Louis de Bourbon did not come into his own 10

See F. Nawrocki, ‘L’amiral Claude d’Annebault’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University Paris IV, 2009), pp. 522–8. 11 Catalogue des actes de François Ier, 10 vols. (Paris, 1887–1902; hereafter CAF), I, 368. 12 Paris, Archives nationales (hereafter AN), X1A 1528, fols. 466v–468v and 483v–484v. 13 AN, X1A 1527, fol. 179v (speech of the Cardinal de Bourbon to Parliament, 10 March 1525). 14 AS Modena, busta 11 (H. Ferruffino to the duke of Ferrara, Amiens, 14 June 1535, 24 June 1535, 27 June 1535); busta 13 (H. Ferruffino to the duke of Ferrara, Compiègne, 9 March 1537). 15 Ordonnances des rois de France. Règne de François  Ier, 9 vols. (Paris, 1903–83; hereafter ORF), V, 96 (16 October 1530 session); AN, X1a 8612, fols. 349r–349v (6 February 1535 session); AN, X1a 8613, fols. 26v–29r (25 February 1537 session), fols. 68r–76r (session of the month of August 1537), fols. 77r–79r (February 1538 session), fol. 484v (August 1543 session); Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (hereafter BnF), MS français 3005, fol. 109r (participation in the afternoon council in February 1543); CAF, III, 362, no. 9180 (6 July 1537); CAF, III, 350, no. 12643 (25 July 1542); CAF, III, 351, no. 12648 (26 July 1542).

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Cédric Michon however until the end of his life, under the reign of Henry II.16 Under Francis I, he was first and foremost a court prelate giving style to the royal entourage. On the wedding day of the king’s daughter, Madeleine, to the king of Scotland, James V, he celebrated a Mass.17 He was a member of the king’s inner circle, with Francis I’s son, the duchess of Étampes, the queen and the king of Navarre, the supreme commander, the cardinal of Lorraine and his brother Saint Pol.18 Although he was almost always at court, his influence was evidently due largely to his family origins, more than to his favour with the king or to his skill.19 He was mainly seen with the count of Saint Pol and the rest of his family. The ambassadors, for that matter, regularly alluded to ‘la casa de vandomo’ with its two heads, Louis de Bourbon and Saint Pol.20 Like the cardinals of royal blood, the different cardinals pushed by their families played rather modest roles. They were, in order of their arrival on the scene, Louis d’Amboise, Adrien Gouffier, Antoine Bohier, Claude de Longwy (from Givry), Odet de Châtillon, Antoine Sanguin, Jacques d’Annebault and Georges II d’Amboise. Adrien Gouffier (?1478–1523), bishop of Coutances and cardinal, owed his advantages to the social skills of his family and particularly of his two brothers, Grand Master and admiral, but occupied only a secondary role in service of the State.21 He was bishop of Coutances in 1511, of Albi in 1519,22 Grand Almoner of France in 1515 and cardinal the same year, then legate a latere in 1519.23 His political influence was wholly secondary on matters other than religion, a domain in which, incidentally, his influence was limited on the one hand by the desire of monks for independence, and on the other by the effective control of the king of France. 16

He was lieutenant-general in Paris and Île-de-France in the absence of the king: Catalogue des Actes de Henri II, ed. M-N. Baudouin-Matuszek (Paris, 2001), nos. 10419, 10644, 10569, 11879; and he regularly participated in the Council: ibid., nos. 11692, 11710, 11753, 11815. 17 AS Modena, busta 13 (H. Ferruffino to the duke of Ferrara, Paris, 1 January 1537). 18 AS Modena, busta 16 (H. Ferruffino to the duke of Ferrara, Vatteville, 25 August 1540). 19 AS Modena, busta 16 (H. Ferruffino to the duke of Ferrara, Saint-Prix, 18 October 1540). 20 AS Modena, busta 17 (H. Ferruffino to the duke of Ferrara, Dijon, 2 November 1541). 21 On the Gouffiers, see P. Carouge, ‘L’amiral de Bonnivet et sa famille (v.1450–1525)’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, École des Chartes, 1999). 22 Remember that Albi was one of the richest bishoprics in France. 23 B. Barbiche et S. de Dainville-Barbiche, ‘Les légats a latere en France et leurs facultés aux XVIe and XVIIe siècles’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 23 (1985), 93–165 (p. 151).

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Cardinals at the Court of Francis I Philippe Chabot, Guillaume Gouffier’s successor to the admiralty, would also make a cardinal of a member of his family. Claude de Longwy, bishop of Langres, was from the families of Longwy and Beaufremont, landowners in Comté and Burgundy since the thirteenth century.24 He was already bishop of Mâcon when his niece, Jeanne de Longwy, married Philippe Chabot de Brion, then governor of Burgundy, on 10 January 1527.25 Claude had indeed succeeded his uncle Étienne in the bishopric of Mâcon, in 1510. He participated in the Council of Pisa (1512) and then the Lateran Council (1514). On 8 July 1522 at SaintJean-de-Losne, he signed the treaties concluded between Francis I and Philibert of Luxembourg, in the name of the emperor, on the subject of the neutrality of Burgundy and the Mâconnais. On 25 May 1526, he presided over the Estates of the Mâconnais and was present at the Estates of Auxonne on 7 July 1527. On 16 December of the same year, he was present at the council held by the king on the subject of the Mâconnais.26 From the time of the wedding of Chabot to Claude de Longwy’s niece, the new admiral never stopped seeking to advance his uncle by marriage. He intervened with Montmorency and Louise of Savoy in order to obtain the abbey of Tournus, the bishopric of Auxerre, the abbey of Montiérender and the abbey of Saint-Pierre de Chalon.27 He wrote to Clement VII so that his uncle would obtain the bulls of the abbey of Saint-Étienne in Dijon.28 The difference in status of Claude de Longwy 24

L. E. Marcel, Le cardinal de Givry, 2 vols. (Paris, 1926), I, 1–3, II, 12–20. The Longwy family pursued good alliances because in 1538 Jacqueline de Longwy, sister of Madame Admiral, married Louis II, first duke of Montpensier: Marcel, Le cardinal de Givry, I, 3. 26 AN, J 821, nos 6, 7 and A.D. 21, B 18, fol. 56r; A.D. 21, C 7484. 27 BnF, MS français 3067, fol. 49r (Chabot to Montmorency); BnF, MS français 3067, fol. 75r (Chabot to Montmorency); BnF, MS français 3066, fol. 111r (Chabot to Montmorency), fol. 115r (Chabot to Louise of Savoy); BnF, MS français 3067, fol. 67r (Chabot to Montmorency). 28 ASV, Principi, VI, anno 1529–34, fols. 111r–119r (Philippe Chabot de Brion to Clement VII, Fonzac, 1 July 1530): ‘Holy father the king has written to you and once again made a presentation in favour of Msgr de Langres my uncle that it pleased your holiness to send him his provision and bulls of the abbey of St  Étienne of Dijon where he was engaged . . . and . . . elected . . . Requesting that it pleases Your Holiness to have this opinion and debt of mine in ordering and commanding these good pleasures to accomplish totally and very carefully this which would be a great honour for me as well as it would please to be heard more particularly by Msgr de Tarbes to whom I write and ask to present my very humble reverence and speak of these words to Your Holiness.’ (‘Tressainct pere le roy vous a cy devant escript et fait derechief presentement en faveur de monsr de Langres mon oncle a ce que plaise a vredicte sainctete luy vouloir faire depescher sa provision et bulles de l’abbaye de St-Etienne de Dijon ou il a este postulle . . . et . . . esleu . . . Requerant V. Ste quil luy plaise avoir ceste oppinion et creance de 25

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Cédric Michon between his promotion in Mâcon and his promotion in Langres was quite clear. Though the promotion in Mâcon was above all a matter of regional family influence, the promotion in Langres brought more powerful forces into play, familial (Chabot), but royal too. Thus Francis I wrote to the canons of Langres to let them know how he wished for them to cast their vote.29 The rise continued and on 7 November 1533 in Marseille, Clement VII promoted four French cardinals, including Claude de Longwy. Thereafter, he was largely content to appear at court, only occasionally playing an administrative role.30 For the rest, he was above all a ceremonial prelate who would occasionally host the sovereign in his home, in Givry or Langres.31 He was, in the same manner, sent to welcome envoys from foreign powers. Thus he went to welcome Cardinal Farnese at the gate of Amiens, in the company of the cardinal of Mâcon, Charles Hémard de Denonville.32 He played the role of ceremonial prelate while Denonville, after five years spent in Rome, played the role of the serving prelate, an expert in Italian and pontifical matters. The equivalent of Longwy for Montmorency’s family was Odet de Châtillon, who was made cardinal the same day. Born in ­Châtillon-sur-Loing on 10 July 1517, son of the first Gaspard de Coligny, Marshall of France, and Louise de Montmorency, elder sister of Anne de Montmorency, he was made cardinal at only sixteen, under the influence of his uncle.33 Although he wielded real political influence under Henry II, under Francis I he was only a court cardinal, absent from State affairs. Yet he came from a clan which, through its connection with the moy en mordonnant et commandant ses bons plaisirs pour totallement et tressongneusement iceulx accomplir qui me sera bien et honneur tresgrand ainsi quil vous plaire entendre plus particulièrement par Monsr de Tarbes a qui jescriptz et prie presentement faire la reverance treshumble de ma part et parler de ce propos a vre Ste.’) 29 Chamarandes-Choignes, Archives départementales de la Haute-Marne, 52, G. 15. See also Marcel, Le cardinal de Givry, I, 460–1. 30 In 1542, he was given the responsibility of raising 200,000 ecus in loans: CAF, III, 351, no. 12648 (26 January 1542). 31 AS Modena, busta 23 (Alvarotti to the duke of Ferrara, Givry, 15 September 1546, Langres, 13 October 1546). 32 Archivio di Stato di Mantova (hereafter AS Mantova), A.G. 639, G. B. (de Gambara, Amiens, 7 February 1540). See also Correspondance des nonces en France Carpi et Ferrerio, 1535–1540, ed. J. Lestocquoy, Acta Nuntiaturae Gallicae (hereafter ANG) 1 (Rome, 1961), p. 530. 33 M. Christol, ‘Odet de Coligny, cardinal de Châtillon’, Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français 107 (1961), 1–12 (p. 2). On Odet de Coligny, see the research being done by Nicolas Breton at the Université du Maine (Le Mans), particularly his article which will appear in the Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français.

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Cardinals at the Court of Francis I Supreme Commander de Montmorency, was likely to have the greatest influence. Châtillon’s youth is not an argument to justify his inactivity: prelates like Georges de Selve or Antoine de Castelnau died at thirty-two and twenty-nine years old respectively after ten years of very active service. What is more, his uncle the commander did everything he could to advance him. He tried, in September 1539, to obtain the legation of Avignon for him.34 From 1541, however, his uncle’s retirement deprived him of his most active support.35 Had he kept the king’s favour, the fate of Cardinal de Châtillon may not have been different. The admiral of Annebault, Montmorency’s successor, did not manage to make his brother an influential cardinal either. Indeed, Claude d’Annebault pushed his brother’s ecclesiastical career.36 Jacques was useful to him for that matter because on 6 December 1537, he (Jacques) borrowed a total of 11,250 livres tournois to contribute to the payment of Claude’s ransom.37 Pushed by the latter, the king proposed that the pope promote Jacques to the cardinalate in December 1540, though without success.38 In November 1541, it was the cardinal of Tournon’s turn to back Jacques’s candidacy.39 The admiral procured many very lucrative benefits for his brother. In this way he received grants of the monasteries of Mont Saint Michel, Saint Taurin of Evreux, Saint Pierre in Préaulx, Saint Serge near Angers, Bonport and Bec-Hellouin, all in commendam.40 Finally in December 1544, he received the cardinal’s biretta.41 Still, Jacques d’Annebault did not occupy any important political function and his involvement in the State was ­practically non-existent.42 34

AS Mantova, A.G. 638 (ambassador of Mantua to the duke of Mantua, VillersCotterêts, 4 September 1539). 35 With the rise of Henry II and the return of Montmorency, he was given minor missions. For example he was charged, along with the archbishop of Reims, Charles de Guise, with informing the duchess of Étampes ‘della sua mala fortuna’ at the death of her royal lover: AS Modena, busta 24 (Alvarotti to the duke of Ferrara, Paris, 20 May 1547). 36 The admiral had one brother and four sisters. 37 Nawrocki, ‘L’amiral Claude d’Annebault’, pp. 113–14. 38 Correspondance des nonces en France Capodiferro, Dandino et Guidiccione, 1541–1546, ed. J. Lestocquoy, ANG 3 (Rome, 1963), p. 99. 39 Correspondance du cardinal François de Tournon, ed. M. François (Paris, 1946; here­ after CCFDT), p. 222. 40 Nawrocki, ‘L’amiral Claude d’Annebault’, pp. 403–4. At the end of the 1530s, the abbey of Mont-St-Michel had revenues estimated at 8,000 livres tournois and that of Bec-Hellouin at 18,000 livres tournois: BnF, MS Français 15769, fols. 499r–503r. 41 AS Modena, busta 22 (G. Alvarotti to the duke of Ferrara, 25 January 1545). See also Nawrocki, ‘L’amiral Claude d’Annebault’, p. 405. 42 Nawrocki, ‘L’amiral Claude d’Annebault’, pp. 581–2. At Francis I’s death, Jacques d’Annebault was dragged into his brother’s disgrace.

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Cédric Michon Finally, aside from the cardinals created thanks to the support of the council’s protectors Gouffier, Chabot, Montmorency and Annebault, another cardinal is found, pushed by a less institutional influence, the king’s mistress. Antoine Sanguin (also called ‘cardinal de Meudon’), uncle of the duchess of Étampes, was a court prelate who occasionally involved himself in service to the State to the point of reaching the council’s antechamber. He turned out to be a governor of Paris in 1544, though he was largely inactive in this position. He was present at court to host and distract.43 In October 1540, he hosted the duke of Orléans, Vendôme, Saint-Pol, Annebault, Chabot, as well as the cardinal of Givry for dinner in his Parisian home.44 He accompanied the cardinal of Este in his travels in the Chartres region.45 It was also he who organized the reception of the English ambassadors come to negotiate in France in July 1546.46 Still it seems that in the last years of the reign the duchess of Étampes tried to place her uncle on the council, albeit in vain. Meudon was incidentally loyal to his niece, and at her urging, participated in attempts to restore respect for the admiral.47 Later, when the duke of Ferrara’s ambassador arrived at the French court in December 1543, he had letters of credit for various courtiers and prelates, as well as two ‘blank’ letters. He filled one out for the cardinal of Meudon, whose political influence he con-

43

This was how the ambassador of the duke of Ferrara presented him: AS Modena, busta 22 (Paris, 4 January 1546). 44 AS Mantova, A.G. 639, G.B. (Gambara to the duke of Mantua, Paris, 30 October 1540). 45 AS Modena, busta 21 (Alvarotti to the duke of Ferrara, Paris, 27 May 1545). 46 State Papers of King Henry the Eighth, ed. A. Strahan et al, 11 vols. (London, 1830–52; hereafter SP), XI, 251 (Lisle to Paget, Paris, 26 July 1546): ‘this night the Cardynall de Medon . . . preparith a greate bancket for us in the Lovers, where there shalbe a greate nomber of Ladyes’; SP, XI, 252 (Lisle to Paget, Paris, 27 July 1546): ‘Other I have not to write unto you, but of the greate chere the Cardinall of Medon dyd make unto us this last night, wherin there lacked no good meate nor drinck, nor good companye of ladyes and gentlewomen; but ther playes and other pastyme, as they had provided to shewe us, dyd not take effect, as they wold by like have had yt: the nomber of the people was so greate, and the place so letill, that there was no order. The Cardynall excused it by the devosion the people had to see thEnglisshmen, which came with so joyfull newes unto them.’ On 27 July, the English ambassadors left Paris to meet the king of France in Corbeil: ‘At Vile Neff Saynt George [Villeneuve-Saint-Georges] the Cardynall of Medon dyd abyde our commyng, where he had prepared a collation for us’: Registres des délibérations du bureau de la ville de Paris, ed. F. Bonnardot, A. Tuetey, P. Guérin and L. Le Grand, 15 vols. (Paris, 1883– ), III, 64. The cardinal hosted the king of France in his home in March 1546: AS Mantova, A.G. 640 (ambassador of the duke of Mantua to the duke, Paris, 15 March 1546). 47 AS Mantova, Cart. inv. div., 639 (Gambara to the cardinal and duchess of Mantua, Paris, 30 October 1540).

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Cardinals at the Court of Francis I sidered sizeable.48 Even so, Antoine Sanguin never had great political influence in spite of various rumours, such as that spread by the ambassador of Mantua that he would enter the council after Chabot’s death.49 I have not found even a trace of his presence on the council. At most, throughout the 1540s he was regularly given the responsibility of financial commissions. He thus imposed a tax of 280,000 ecus, fixed rights of gabelle and alienated portions of the demesne. It also seems likely that he ­participated in the finance council from time to time.50

State cardinals and courtier cardinals at Francis I’s court Cardinals were, by definition, caught between the Church, the pope and the king. Their position in society, determined by their affiliation with the Church, was also the fruit of royal and pontifical nomination. Once their biretta was obtained, were cardinals considered above all as the pope’s men? In other words: was there a party of the cardinals? Their attitude was sometimes ambiguous. Jean of Lorraine, for example, was committed to the defence of cardinals’ interests. Before the council in 1540, he declared to the legate Marcello Cervini: ‘Marcello, I will speak to you as a cardinal. In Germany, they are working for the ruin of our biretta and we will have to keep our eyes open.’51 In the same way, solidarity between cardinals can be found. Thus, the cardinals of Lorraine, Tournon and Du Bellay occasionally proved to be concerned about the interests of the Catholic Church, the papacy and the prelates, while wary of not involving the king. Du Bellay reported to the cardinals of Lorraine and Tournon in a December 1535 session of the consistory, during which the pope ‘greatly criticized the company and oneself for the long dissimulation which had worn him down in the matter of England’ and affirmed his determination to condemn England. Du Bellay reported this heated session to the cardinals of Lorraine and Tournon not because they were the king’s councillors, but because they were cardinals: 48

AS Modena, busta 19 (Alfonso Calgagnini to the duke of Ferrara, Melun, 23 December 1543). 49 AS Mantova, A.G. 640 (Gambara to the duke of Mantua, 2 June 1543). See also a similar rumour in ANG, III, x, 229 (Dandino to Cardinal Farnèse, Villers-Cotterets, 3 June 1543): ‘. . . madama de Tampes, quale farà anche del consiglio il cardinale di Medun suo zio and mons. Di Longavalle pur suo zio’. 50 C. Michon, ‘Antoine Sanguin (1502–1559), cardinal de Meudon’, in Les Conseillers de François Ier, ed. C. Michon (Rennes, 2011), pp. 557–60. 51 ‘Marcello, io ti parlero come cardinale. In Germania si trattarà la ruina de nostri bonetti and bisogna tenerci l’ochio aperto’: cited by A. Tallon, La France et le concile de Trente (1518–1563) (Rome, 1997), p. 110.

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Cédric Michon Monseigneurs, with the strongest and most powerful members, who will make the greatest efforts to maintain the state of the Holy See, it is legitimate to communicate the events; and for this, I would like to warn you . . . [he then reported the details of this quite tumultuous consistory and continued]: I wanted to recount the news of our college to you [my italics] so that you will see the moods that reign there . . . and to tell you, for a long time there has not been a pope less liked or likeable by the College, Romans and everybody . . . up to now, I have told the king as little I could in order to alter nothing, though I have often had and still have bites that are hard to swallow and are not easily digested . . . I wanted you to take into consideration the matters of the company as those who belong to it to hear them [my italics], being assured that you would know how to keep the oath of swords.52

Several accounts do exist which indicate that Francis I himself seemed to consider his prelates in general, and his cardinals in particular, as a different sort of courtier altogether. So, when Jean Du Bellay, in Rome, asked François de Tournon to intervene with the king to obtain the authorization to cut down trees at his abbey in Longpont in the diocese of Soissons, the cardinal brought him the refusal of the king who ‘became angry with us saying that he would clench his fist keeping all prelates from selling wood’.53 Still, the cardinals regularly affirmed their attachment to the freedoms of the Gallican Church. Gabriel de Gramont, who declared himself ‘forever a true and humble servant’ of Clement VII, considered ‘frivolous’ the pope’s proclaimed dissatisfaction at the granting of tithes by the Gallican Church. For him, it was a completely natural thing which called neither for comment nor displeasure.54 As for Du Bellay, he did not hesitate to declare himself openly Gallican when the Council of Trent was transferred to Bologna. Paul III hesitated to validate this transfer and the cardinal asked Henry II to demand that the pope speak out on the matter, adding the following commentary: which judgement you should not let your Gallican Church float, not knowing on which wind to turn; I say your, as much as you are by your titles and Apostolic privileges the true Protector, according to the

52

Correspondance du cardinal Jean Du Bellay, ed. R. Scheurer et al, 5 vols. (Paris, ­1973–2012; hereafter CCJDB), II, 210–18 (Jean Du Bellay to the cardinals of Lorraine and Tournon, Rome, 22 December 1535). 53 CCJDB, II, 192 (François de Tournon to Jean Du Bellay, Pagny, 10 December 1535). 54 ASV, A.A. Arm. I–XVIII, no. 2514 (Gabriel de Gramont to Clement VII, Plaisance, 29 December [1532]): ‘we have heard that you strongly bargain to let yourself go (sometimes based on the granting of tithes that the Gallican Church made to the king) and other frivolous things which you have at present to amuse’.

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Cardinals at the Court of Francis I oath you took at your coronation, like all the kings your predecessors since Clovis.55

The ambassador’s classic, slightly irritated, request for instructions takes on the form of a Gallican manifesto. Do these Gallican protests signify acceptance of royal power over the Church of France? What was the attitude of French cardinals in particular with regard to the authority of the sovereign in the nomination of benefices? Alain Tallon wrote of the ‘breaking wave’ of vituperation against the royal right of nomination formulated in the concordat of Bologna.56 The opposition from the start of parliament and the University of Paris is well known, as is Claude de Seyssel’s qualified defence of the principle of election to major benefices.57 However, under Francis I and Henry II, the monarchy did everything to silence this opposition.58 The cardinals were sometimes concerned by early nominations which created scandals.59 However not until the political and religious crisis of the 1560s was opposition fully expressed, including by those close to power such as the cardinal of Lorraine and other French prelates who, at Trent, deplored the royal right of nomination, which allowed the king to entrust bishoprics to brutes, heretics and ignoramuses.60 Thereafter, each time that the French clergy had the chance to express itself as an order, it requested the re-establishment of elections, notably in the Estates-General of Blois in 1576 or during the clergy assemblies of 1582 and 1585 or again during the second Estates-General of Blois in 1588–9.61 What was the position of the French cardinals on this question, when royal power was strong and they had everything to gain from a quasi-monopoly in the attribution of benefices? It is not surprising that

55

Lettres et mémoires d’Estat des Roys, Princes, Ambassadeurs et autres ministres sous les Regnes de François premier, Henry II et François II, ed. G. Ribier, 2 vols. (Paris, 1666), II, 162 (Jean Du Bellay to the king, from Rome, 14 September 1548). See A. Tallon, Conscience nationale and sentiment religieux en France au XVIe siècle (Paris, 2002), pp. 92–3. 56 Tallon, Conscience, p. 110–22. 57 C. De Seyssel, La monarchie de France et deux autres fragments politiques, ed. J. Poujol (Paris, 1961), p. 126, cited by Tallon, Conscience, p. 112. 58 Tallon, Conscience, p. 113. 59 Not always in the district concerned by the concordat for that matter. Jean Le Coullon (1526–87), labourer in Ancy, near Metz, wrote in his journal: ‘At this time was bishop of Metz Jean Cardinal of Lorraine. It is said he was a bishop in his mother’s womb. If he had been a girl, she would have been a bishopess.’ Cited by G. Cabourdin, Encylopédie illustrée de la Lorraine. Histoire de la Lorraine, Les temps modernes, 2 vols. (Nancy, 1991), I, 21. 60 Tallon, Conscience p. 114 and idem, La France, pp. 664ff. 61 Tallon, Conscience, p. 118.

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Cédric Michon no hostility was expressed towards the principle of the royal right of nomination. Does that mean then that they were rigorous when they coveted a benefice? One cardinal alone, it seems, played the canonical card against royal patronage. In this way the cardinal of Clermont disputed the promotion of Georges de Selve at Lavaur. A letter from Francis I to Clement VII clearly shows how the king of France meant to use the concordat of Bologna to reward his servants: Holy Father, for we have great singular Recommendation and advancement in the Holy Church of our dear beloved master Georges de Selve, Master Notary of the apostolic Holy See son of our beloved and faithful councillor Mr Jehan de Selve first president in our court of parliament in Paris, as much for his good virtuous manners and honesty in his person as in favour and contemplation of the great laudable virtues and commendable services that his said father has thus before done continually every day for us and the commonwealth of our kingdom.62

Yet, the promotion of Georges de Selve, in spite of the public support of Francis I, was not easily achieved. Indeed, Cardinal François-Guillaume of Clermont-Lodève, archbishop of Auch and legate of Avignon, put himself in the running. He had served Francis I as diplomat and more recently, in 1525, as lieutenant to the governor of Provence.63 Nephew of Louis d’Amboise, ex-bishop of Albi, he had already caused a problem in 1515, when he was elected by the chapter of Sainte Cécile Cathedral, which refused the resignation of Charles Robertet in favour of his brother Jacques, canon of Albi and his vicar-general. Francis I had to 62

ASV, Principi, IX, anno 1516–47, fols. 262v–268r (letter from Francis I to Clement VII, Bordeaux, 15 April [1526]): ‘Tressainct pere, pource que nous avons en tresgrande et singuliere Recommandation et avancement en saincte eglise de nre cher et bien ame maistre Georges de Selve prothonotaire du sainct siege apotolicque filz de nre ame et feal conseiller messire Jehan de Selve premier president en nre court de parlement a Paris, tant pour les bonnes meurs vertuz et honnestete qui sont en sa personne que en faveur et contemplacion des grans louables vertueux et recommandables services que son sondict pere a parcy devant faictz continuellement chacun jour a nous et a la chose publicque de nre royaume.’ 63 In late 1522, he was sent to the new pope Adrian VI carrying instructions to attempt conciliation with the emperor, without conceding anything concerning the emperor’s claims on Milan: AN, J 965, 5, no. 3 (instructions, dated from Blois, 11 August 1522). See also J.-P. Amalric, ‘Le cardinal d’Auch, François de ClermontLodève, ambassadeur de François Ier entre le pape Adrien VI and l’empereur Charles Quint (1522–1523)’, in Mémoire et actualités des pays de Gascogne, ed. J.-P. Amalric, Société archéologique et historique du Gers (Auch, 2001), pp. 490–504. He was named lieutenant-governor of Provence on 27 March 1525 (CAF, VII, 127, no. 2384).

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Cardinals at the Court of Francis I intervene to allow Jacques Robertet to enter Albi.64 At Lavaur, in 1526, the same situation arose. Through a series of letters that highlighted the prelate’s resistance, Francis I and his mother requested that the legate cardinal step aside. Francis I wrote from Saint Germain in a letter dated the first of April: for love of me and my prayer, [I beg you] cease the pursuit of the said bishopric, leaving it to the advantage of the son of the said first rightful president that he could have and claim the said bishopric.

As for Louise of Savoy, after a courteous but firm request, she was more direct: ‘I beg my cousin, that you are agreeable to the king and to me about the content above and all will be well with you.’65 Faced with such insistence, the cardinal of Clermont judged it more prudent to obey. He then received a letter of thanks from Georges de Selve.66 However, Clermont’s case was an exception. For that matter, it is significant that the only cardinal to oppose the royal will several times was a prelate from the margins, who, as legate of Avignon, was more concerned than others with a dual loyalty to the king and the pope that would offer him the opportunity to serve primarily his own career. Clermont’s resistance to the royal will did not stop at Lavaur and Albi, moreover. For example, he also opposed the creation of new canons in the chapter of the collegiate church of Romans in the Dauphiné and thus the promotion of Jean de Monluc.67 The same year, the legate chose to attack even more strongly, when he tried to block the handover of the very lucrative archbishopric of Auch to Cardinal François de Tournon. The latter was offended and protested to Montmorency, with a play on words: I no longer want to deal with him [the cardinal of Clermont] and would prefer to take my leave; if I die before him, I don’t care about daulx [‘daulx’ means garlic and/or Auch] nor onions; if he dies before

64

BnF, MS français 5500, fol. 277r: ‘Commission donnée pour faire cesser les troubles dont la ville d’Alby est le théâtre, depuis que l’évêque Charles Robertet s’est démis de son siège et que son frère Jacques Robertet a été nommé à sa place.’ 65 BnF, Carré d’Hozier, vol. 579: ‘pour l’amour de moy et de ma prière, [je vous prie] vous désister de la poursuite dudict evesché, vous demettant au proffict du filz dudict premier president de tout le droit que pouvez avoir et prétendre audict evesché’, and ‘Je vous prie, mon cousin, que vous complezes au Roy et a moy du contenu cy dessus et vous vous en trouverez bien’. 66 BnF, Carré d’Hozier, vol. 579. 67 BnF, MS français 5145, fol. 132r (Charles Hémard de Denonville and Georges de Selve to François de Tournon, Rome, 24 October 1537).

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Cédric Michon me, I hope with God’s help, that the king will not deviate from the good will of which he has assured me.68

Again, it is important to remember that the cardinal of Clermont was an exception and that cardinals generally did not oppose the king’s will over nominations. He was the only cardinal of Francis I’s reign who truly approached dual loyalty. On 18 July 1514, a bull from Leo X named him legate of Avignon. When in 1525 the king of France named him lieutenant-governor of Provence, he took advantage of his entry into a region where his functions as legate held him.69 Already, in late 1522, Francis I used Clermont’s connections with the papacy by having him intervene with the new pope, Adrian VI, to attempt arbitration with the emperor, without giving anything up over Milan.70 It seems that shortly after having been given this mission by Francis I, the cardinal of Clermont offered to the pope to meet him in Tarragona, without having referred it to Francis I ‘to show obedience and serve the apostolic seat’ [my italics],71 and seemingly gave it up only because the pope excused him. However, the cardinal of Clermont was the only French prelate whose services went to the pope first, and who thus professed his loyalty to the sovereign pontiff.

Cardinals’ patronage of art and architecture Apart from the favours they rendered to the council, diplomacy and administration, cardinals also participated in the splendour of Francis I’s court and the propagation of the curial model. Indeed, by their function, French cardinals were in regular contact with the pontifical court. They were then likely to contribute to the transmission of artistic models from Italy,72 and artistic patronage was a way to establish a position at court. The sovereign expected his courtiers to do him multiple favours. 68

CCFDT, p.  182 (François de Tournon to Anne de Montmorency, Lyon, 9 June 1537): ‘Je ne veux plus avoir a faire a luy [le cardinal de Clermont] et ayme myeulx en prendre l’aventure; si je meurs plus tost que lui, je n’ay que faire ne daulx [Auch] ne d’ongnons  ; s’il meurt plus tost que moy, j’espère, à l’aide de Dieu, que le Roy ne changera de la bonne volunté dont il luy a pleu m’asseurer.’ 69 He was appointed on 27 March 1525: CAF, VII, 127, no. 2384. 70 AN, J 965, 5, no. 3 (Instructions, dated from Blois, 11 August 1522). See also Amalric, ‘Le cardinal d’Auch’, pp. 490–504. 71 Cited by Amalric, ‘Le cardinal d’Auch’, p. 498 (Letter from Adrian VI to Charles V, Rome, 16 December 1522). 72 On these questions, see the forthcoming book by F. Bardati, Hommes du roi et princes de l’Église romaine: la réception des modèles italiens dans le mécénat des cardinals français (1495–1560).

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Cardinals at the Court of Francis I They notably had to open their purses when he needed subsidies; they also had to participate in the splendour of the court. There were ways of doing both things at once: courtiers could, for example, spare the sovereign from expenses for his feasts. This was the case of the cardinal Jean de Lorraine. The protection he accorded to Albert de Rippe, one of the most famous lutenists of the era, attests to his enlightened interest in music.73 At the same time, the upkeep of a large number of musicians who followed him everywhere denoted a well thought-out policy affirming his rank at court, as he did not hesitate to ‘lend’ his musicians to Francis I for great royal ceremonies, such as the interview with Henry VIII in Boulogne in October 1532.74 He was the only one to do this, and his prestige grew considerably in consequence. All the foreign ambassadors rhapsodised over the ‘cardinal of Lorraine’s musicians’. His musical patronage acted as a sort of intermediary for royal patronage, and was good for his position at court and in the government. This patronage, however, could concern even more visible areas, particularly architecture or sculpture. Indeed, cardinals were also builders. For these cardinals at court, the building of sumptuous homes in close proximity to the residences of the court can be explained in many ways. Firstly there was the attention paid to rank among courtiers. Then there was the problem of accommodation. Living in the king’s residence was a privilege, a favour, because even a château like Saint Germain had only eighty apartments.75 In this field, the courtiers’ main asset was their wives, because they had an advantage in the allocation of housing.76 Cardinals were, therefore, by definition disadvantaged, even though the clergy were not systematically excluded.77 For that matter, the problem of accommodation also arose in the opposite direction. In other words the most important courtiers did not have to worry only about accommodation at court or nearby, but also to be able to host the king during his travels. The need for homes near court meant a great amount of construction and renovation. This was the case particularly in Fontainebleau where, among the cardinals’ homes were those of Antoine Duprat, Jean 73

R. Freedman, ‘Le cardinal Jean de Lorraine mécène de la musique’, in Le mécénat et l’influence des Guises, ed. Y. Bellenger (Paris, 1997), pp. 161–73 (p. 168). 74 The Privy Purse Expenses of King Henry the Eighth, from November MDXXIX to December MDXXXII, ed. N. H. Nicolas (London, 1827), pp. 268–9. 75 M. Chatenet, La Cour de France au XVIe siècle (Paris, 2002), p. 63. 76 Ibid., p. 67. 77 For example out of fifty men housed in Saint-Germain-en-Laye between 1547 and 1550 whose names have been conserved, there were nine cardinals and one bishop (among whom were Louis de Vendôme, Odet de Châtillon, the cardinal of Vendôme, the cardinal of Ferrara and the cardinal of Guise).

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Cédric Michon Le Veneur, Hippolyte d’Este, and Jean Du Bellay, about which next to nothing is known.78 On the other hand, much better known is the residence financed by the latter for Philibert de l’Orme near his abbey of Saint Maur. It seems certain that Du Bellay’s goal was to create novelty, to construct something which resembled nothing built up to that point.79 The impression is that Du Bellay, through the intermediary of Philibert de l’Orme, wanted to be the first in France to apply the principles of Serlio.80 His architectural policy was one of prestige through novelty. Du Bellay seemed to want to show that he had no reason to envy the work of powerful secular courtiers. The Italianism of Saint Maur was probably inspired largely by the cardinal himself, who wanted to introduce to France Italian elements which had captivated him in his travels through the vineyards of Roman cardinals. There was an indirect interest for the king to have cardinals at court who frequented the Italian peninsula: they were essential participants in the radiance of the French court, in bringing Italian innovations. Leaving architecture for painting and sculpture, quite comparable analyses can be made. This is notably the case for religious works, whether church decorations or more personal projects such as tombs. For sculpture, French cardinals were indeed concerned to show that they mastered fashion perfectly and strove to employ the best artists, particularly foreigners when necessary, whether Flemish or Italian. This was the case of the bishops of Albi, Louis I and Louis II of Amboise who, for paintings of the Last Judgement in the cathedral of Saint Cécile in Albi, employed Flemish or Flemish-influenced painters, and for those of the cathedral’s vault (1509–14), called upon a workshop from Bologna. In the same way, artists responsible for the cathedral’s choir fence, though unknown, recall Antoine Le Moiturier and Michel Colombe by their style.81 Thus, ‘in Albi, religious art adopted . . . the forms of court art and royal art’.82 One wonders to what extent this imitation was a political testimonial serving as a voluntary, implicit, reference to the monarchy. 78

M. Roy, ‘Quelques hôtels de Fontainebleau au XVIe siècle’, Annales de la Société historique et archéologique du Gâtinais 28 (1910), 51–74. 79 In l’Instruction, Philibert de l’Orme dated the birth of a new architecture from this period: ‘Let it be remembered how it was done when I was starting Saint Mort for Msgr. Cardinal du Belloy!’: cited by Y. Pauwels, L’architecture au temps de la Pléiade (Paris, 2002), p.  48. See also H. Zerner, L’Art de la Renaissance en France (Paris, 1996), pp. 410–12; and J-P. Babelon, Châteaux de France au siècle de la Renaissance (Paris, 1989), pp. 327–9. 80 Chatenet, La Cour de France, pp. 290–1 and chapter 7. 81 J.-L. Biget, Histoire d’Albi (Toulouse, 2000), p. 147. 82 J.-L. Biget, Sainte Cécile d’Albi. Peintures (Toulouse, 1995), p. 213.

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Cardinals at the Court of Francis I Cardinals, by their weight in diplomacy, the council, royal administration and religious life, but also by the artistic energy they imposed at court, were truly prominent courtiers – to the point that it is tempting to say, paraphrasing Francis I, that ‘a court without cardinals is like a garden without flowers’.

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Part II Patronage and Learning

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An Abbot and his Books in Late Medieval and Pre-Reformation England James G. Clark

The century before the break with Rome witnessed the triumph of the bookish prelate. No longer was a place among the ‘princes of the priesthood’ (as one contemporary preacher pictured them) a likely prospect for those most unlikely clerks whose conspicuous promotion, powered by royal patronage, roused outrage and scorn from the writing desks of the clerical establishment.1 Such men had seen something of an Indian Summer under the last of the Plantagenets, when plague and political unrest had claimed more than one learned prelate and the power of clergie to mislead church and people had become a matter of public alarm.2 Here there were still rewards for the unschooled government servant, the adept, such as William of Wykeham, whose twenty-five years at Windsor won him Winchester, and the (reputedly) inept, such as Roger Walden, an un-watered fish, if ever there was one, in his twenty-three months at Canterbury.3 Yet these men were almost the  1

The preacher was a monk and his congregation were the assembled abbots and priors of the Benedictine General Chapter. The text is preserved in Worcester Cathedral Library, MS F10, fols. 291–7. See also W. A. Pantin, ‘A Sermon for a General Chapter’, Downside Review 51 (1933), 291–308.  2 The Black Death claimed Archbishop Thomas Bradwardine, called ‘doctor profundus’, in August 1349; Archbishop Simon Sudbury was beheaded by the peasant rebels in June 1381. See ODNB. For the public alarm over clergie see F. Somerset, Clerical Discourse and Lay Audience in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, 1999), pp. 22–61, esp. 13–14.  3 William of Wykeham’s only education may have been his early experience of service under Sir Ralph Sutton, constable of Winchester Castle: P. Partner, ‘Wykeham, William, (c.  1324–1404)’, ODNB. Roger Walden was reputed to be the scion of Smithfield butchers, although this did not mean, as it implied, a family of the meanest sort: R. G. Davies, ‘Walden, Roger (d.  1406)’, ODNB. Contemporary commentators derided him for his lack of learning: the monastic, Thomas Walsingham, writing at the report of his death, was uncompromising, ‘uiro penitus insufficienti et illiterato’ (‘an utterly incompetent and uneducated man’): The St Albans Chronicle: The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, ed.

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James G. Clark last of their kind. In fact it was Thomas Arundel, to whom Walden played interloper, and often himself represented as the archetype patrician prelate, who raised a succession of schoolmen on his return: the ascent of Repton [Repingdon] to Lincoln (1405), Skirlaw to Durham (1406), Courtenay to Norwich (1413), Chichele to St David’s (1410), Patrington to Chichester (1415) positioned learned, indeed academic, prelacy at the compass points of the provincial church.4 What was for Arundel a response to the present alarm was transposed by his successor into an enduring programme of reform. Archbishop Chichele set out to secure the link between book-learning and clerical, and in particular, pastoral leadership. Recognising that resources of patronage still shaped not only the end of a clerical career but even its beginning, he promulgated measures to provide for undergraduates otherwise unsupported and to challenge the monopolies that had arisen around the presentation to titles; as importantly, he urged a learned prelacy as a priority for the crown, Henry VI’s council responding in 1438 with the public expression of a will to ‘colonize the Lord’s vineyard with the learned’.5 By the time of his death in April 1443, the fruits of Chichele’s efforts were abundant: the senior English sees were held, for the most part, by graduate clerks whose progression to the prelacy, for the first time, mapped a common route from the (endowed) grammar school to the doctorate in theology of either of the laws.6 Their profile appears to mark, as one recent commentator has described it, an unmistakable

J. Taylor, W. Childs and L. Watkiss, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2003–11), II, 86–7; the secular, Adam of Usk, writing after 1399, condemned with the faintest of praise: ‘magis militaribus et mundialibus negociis quam clericalibus aut liberalibus imbutus’ (‘better versed in military matters and the ways of the world than in church affairs or learning’): The Chronicle of Adam of Usk, 1377–1421, ed. C. Given-Wilson (Oxford, 1997), pp. 81–2.  4 For the careers of these prelates, see ODNB. For their profiles as schoolmen, see Emden, BRUO.  5 For Chichele’s measures of reform, see The Register of Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1414–1443, ed. E. F. Jacob, 4 vols., Canterbury and York Society 42, 45–7 (Oxford, 1937–47), III, 37, 270–1; idem, Essays in the Conciliar Epoch (Manchester, 1943), p. 37&n. For the king’s council, see Memorials of the Reign of King Henry VI. Official Correspondence of Thomas Bekynton, Secretary to Henry VI and Bishop of Bath and Wells, ed. G. Williams, 2 vols., Rolls Series 56 (London 1872), I, 55–6.  6 For this generation of graduate clerks, see J. T. Rosenthal, ‘Lancastrian Bishops and Educational Benefaction’, in The Church in Pre-Reformation Society: Essays in Honour of F. R. H. du Boulay, ed. C. M. Barron and C. Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, 1985), pp. 199–211.

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An Abbot and his Books ‘changing of the guard’7 and, in the generation that followed, such men gained a ‘virtual monopoly’ at least over the lower and middling sees.8 The prelacy that confronted the new century was unrivalled in its learned prestige, counting among them a chancellor of Cambridge (Booth of Durham) and a vice-chancellor of Oxford (Fitzjames of London, 1506–22), the founders of any number of colleges and schools (Alcock, Fitzjames, Fox of Winchester, among others), one with experience as a schoolmaster (Fox); even the crown’s Italian appointments carried with them (when they came) some literary éclat.9 There was more to this change than a challenge to the established patterns of patronage and the creation of a cadre whose only baggage was their own professional training. Chichele and those that held office alongside him conceived of a prelacy that placed learning at the very centre of their pastoral mission. It was a view first aired at the councils but also, increasingly, articulated collectively in convocation and individually in their chapters.10 Above all, it was apparent in the record of their prelacies. The raw materials of learning were garnered at their sees: purpose-built libraries were provided for their clergy and – a new departure – for the people they served.11 The propagation of a new generation of clerks fit for any benefice was encouraged by the further patronage of school foundations including – another departure – a degree of collaboration between seculars and regulars in regions where any school was scarce.12 And learned authority appeared to course through the familiar roles and responsibilities of their office. For the first  7

V. Gillespie, ‘1412–1534: Culture and History’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism, ed. S. Fanous and V. Gillespie (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 163–94 (p. 167).  8 V. Davis, William of Waynflete. Bishop and Educationalist (Woodbridge, 1993), p. 21.  9 For these prelates, see ODNB, supplemented by Emden. For the Italians, such as Giovanni and Silvestro de’ Gigli, bishop of Worcester, 1498–1521, and Polidoro Virgili, archdeacon of Wells, 1508–46, see also ODNB and M. Wyatt, The Italian Encounter with Tudor England. The Cultural Politics of Translation (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 42–3, 54–6, 58, 60. 10 At Konstanz, Henry Abingdon argued ‘true prelates before everything [take] care of doctrina’: Gillespie, ‘1412–1534: Culture and History’, p. 167. At Bath and Wells, Thomas Bekynton affirmed learning as a ‘necessary virtue’ for any prelate: Bekynton Correspondence, ed. Williams, II, 76. 11 Bishop Bubwith bequeathed 1,000 marks for the construction of a library at Wells, said to be the largest in northern Europe: Register of Henry Chichele, ed. Jacob, I, 298–302 (p. 299). Bishop Carpenter provided public libraries at Worcester and Bristol while Bishop Lyhert planned a library at Norwich which may not have been realized: N. Orme, Medieval Schools (New Haven and London, 2006), pp. 84–5. See also the essay by Wendy Scase in this volume. 12 For a survey of school foundations see Orme, Medieval Schools, pp. 218–87, and for collaborations, pp. 238, 242, 244 (Bruton, Faversham, Winchcombe).

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James G. Clark time since the Black Death, serving bishops made noticeable contributions to current theological debates.13 That they preached was no different from their immediate predecessors, but unlike them, their sermons found readers, in increasing numbers, with the advent of print.14 The new technology and at least a trace of the humanist outlook led them to give spiritual counsel in new genres and forms, especially the vernacular English considered anathema to the authority of their office barely a century before.15 The largest body of clergy in England ‘after Arundel’, the monastic orders, whose prelates outnumbered the seculars, conspicuously so when summoned to sit in parliament, have not been thought of as party to these new approaches to clerical and pastoral leadership: in fact the emphasis on preaching, print and the use of the vernacular has encouraged the view that any new mode of prelacy was a secular phenomenon. In fact, in some recent accounts the monastic orders have been cast somewhat as pantomime villains whose venality set obstacles in the path of a general pedagogic and pastoral reform.16 They 13

For example Bishop John Alcock’s Mons perfeccionis otherwise in englysshe the hyll perfecc[i]on (London, 1496) [STC 2nd edn, 278] and Gallicantus . . . ad confratres suos in sinodo apud Bernwell (London, 1498) [STC 2nd edn, 277]. There was also scholarship which may have contributed to the contemporary reputation of this generation of which no trace survives, such as the Sentence commentaries of Courtenay, Fleming, Gray, Hallum, Lacy, et al. 14 Arguably the first of the post-Black Death prelates to find an audience for their sermons was Philip Repton [Repingdon]. The preaching of the later generations of secular prelates, particularly those that passed into print, deserves closer attention. Three English sermons of Alcock (1497), (1502) are known in print (STC 284, 285, 285.5) and three (1535, 1536, 1538) also of Longland (STC 2nd edn., 16795, 16795.5, 16796). See also J. I. Allen, ‘An Image of a Preaching Bishop in Late Medieval England: the 1498 Woodcut Portrait of John Alcock’, Viator 21 (1990), 301–22. For Longland, see also J. W. Blench, ‘John Longland and Roger Edgeworth: Two Forgotten Preachers of the Early Sixteenth Century’, Review of English Studies, 5:20 (1954), 123–43. See also, R. Sharpe, A Handlist of the Latin Writers of Great Britain and Ireland before 1540 (Turnhout, 1997), pp. 200, 278, 437–8, and the essay by Felicity Heal in this volume. 15 For example, John Alcock, Spousage of a virgin to Christ (Westminster, c.1497) [STC 2nd edn, 287]; John Longland, A sermo[n]d made for the kynge hys hyghenes at Rychemunte upon good fryday (London, 1535) [STC 2nd edn, 1535]. For an edition of Fox’s translation of the Regula benedicti (1516 [1517] n. s.) [STC 2nd edn, 1859], see B. Collett, Female Monastic Life in Early Tudor England: with an Edition of Richard Fox’s Translation of the Benedictine Rule for Women, 1517 (Aldershot, 2002). 16 For the resistance of the regulars to this trend, see B. J. Thompson, ‘Prelates and Politics from Winchelsey to Warham’, in The Fifteenth Century IV: Political Culture in Late Medieval Britain, ed. L. S. Clark and C. Carpenter (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 69–96 (p. 90). The real test of their position on learning and clerical progression in general would be to trace their own record of presentations to benefices.

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An Abbot and his Books did not welcome Chichele’s effort to rebalance the market for titles, nor his interference in the university (especially Oxford) scene, where their presence and power had grown steadily post-Wyclif; they were slow to respond to his, and his successors’ requests to support general resources, such as the nascent University Library.17 On the face of it, in the years of Chichele’s primacy they also appeared to be passing out of their own phase of graduate recruitment, particularly to offices in the conventual hierarchy, and resuming the patterns of progression which had obtained in the years before their colleges and cohorts of student monks were well-established. For a generation (c. 1375–1400) those students had supplied superiors to many of the senior houses, especially those of the Benedictines; from there a handful had risen to bishoprics and two even to the cardinalate.18 Yet, as their time passed, there was no easy succession for a fresh crop of graduates. The learned monks that entered office after Chichele faced troubled and not-infrequently interrupted terms; some were simply forced out; others secured their position only through episcopal intervention.19 In their place, so it would seem, came a greater number of graduates of the obedientiary system, an impression strengthened (albeit inadvertently) by the route through the cursus honorum now minutely recorded in the major prosopographical registers.20 Such men, whose preparation had been in domestic or manorial administration, appear often to have secured for themselves 17

For the regulars’ apparent reluctance to commit to the support of these initiatives, see Epistolae academicae Oxon. (Registrum F): a Collection of Letters and other Miscellaneous Documents Illustrative of Academical Life in the Fifteenth Century, ed. H. Anstey, 2 vols., Oxford History Society 35–6 (Oxford, 1898), I, 52–3, 62 (1430). 18 Pre-eminent among them were Simon Langham (Westminster) and Adam Easton (Norwich) but also of this generation were Thomas Brinton, monk-bishop of Rochester (1373–89), Thomas Chillenden, prior of Christ Church, Canterbury (1391–1411), and John [de] Malvern, prior of Worcester (1395–1423). See Knowles, RO, II, 54–8. 19 The self-consciously scholarly John Wheathampstead acknowledged his growing alienation from his convent and resigned his abbacy in 1440. Dr William Wroughton, chosen as compromise candidate for Chertsey by Bishop Waynflete in 1462 in the face of certain opposition, survived for a little less than three years before being deprived in 1465. Gilbert Multon, bachelor of theology, also appointed to his abbacy (Bardney) by the diocesan, endured to 1466 when he resigned: HRH, III, 16, 31, 63. 20 John Tillotson’s study of the obedientiaries of Selby Abbey has shown that the adept administrator might sustain a long career in the senior offices: J. H. Tillotson, Monastery and Society in the Late Middle Ages. Selected Account Rolls from Selby Abbey, Yorkshire, 1398–1537 (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 43–4, 94. For the pattern of office-holding, see also J. Greatrex, A Biographical Register of the Benedictine Cathedral Priories of the Province of Canterbury (Oxford, 1997) [hereafter, Greatrex, BRECP]; HRH, III.

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James G. Clark long and comparatively peaceable terms.21 David Knowles, whose pen portraits have done much to determine our view of monastic leadership, as representative of this period offered for the most part the successful steward of conventual business: from the conscientious (Washington [Wessington] of Durham), to the clubbable (Clown of Leicester) and the undoubtedly corrupt (Wallingford of St Albans). His case for the increasing autocracy of abbots at the turn of the century only raises the suspicion that now there were a number of superiors who were (or would be) secular commendators in all but the fact of their profession.22 There can be no doubt that the character of monastic leadership was changing in these later years. As Knowles found in the Rolls and other record series from which he drew his portraits, the documentary traces tell of the inexorable pull of temporal affairs, the straining of the devolved system of governance that had served since the early thirteenth century, sometimes to the point of distortion, and the alienation of the superior from his regular, conventual role. Yet we should be wary in our reading of these records, not only of the natural inference that the superior of this era, for better or worse, was primarily un homme d’affaires, but also of the weight we attach – in isolation – to the records themselves. As the great prosopographical enterprise of recent years has shown, to an extent of which earlier authorities (Knowles among them) were wholly unaware, the abbots and priors of this period left behind them more, and more varied, traces of their careers than any of their predecessors. Remarkably, we can even picture many of them, or, more precisely, we can see how they wished to be seen.23 Above all, we have their books, a greater number of them bearing certain signs of per21

For example, Edmund Herte, elected abbot of Pershore (1456–79) after service as cellarer, who held office for twenty-two years; John Wellys alias Bryggys, steward at Crowland before his election to the abbacy (1512), which he held until his surrender twenty-seven years later: HRH, III, 37–8, 57. 22 Knowles’ selection of ‘personalities’ to stand for the ‘end of the Middle Ages’ comprised William Clown (d. 1378), Philip Repingdon (d. 1419), Thomas Chillenden (d.  1411), John Wessyngton [Washington] (d.  1450), and John Whethamstede [Wheathampstead] (d. 1465), into whose later administration William Wallingford’s malign presence encroached. For the pre-Reformation period the administrators John Islip (Westminster) and William More (Worcester) were set alongside the scholars William Sellyng and Richard Kidderminster: Knowles, RO, II, 185–203; Knowles, RO, III, 87–99, 108–26. For his case for the autocracy of superiors at the turn of the century see ibid., II, 328–30. 23 For examples of contemporary portraits of monastic superiors, see the brass memorial for Prior Thomas Nelond of Lewes (d. 1430) at the church of St Peter, Cowfold, Sussex, and the stained-glass image of Abbot Thomas Spofforth of St  Mary’s, York (1405–21), at the parish church of St Mary, Ross on Wye, Herefordshire.

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An Abbot and his Books sonal ­ownership and use than survive for their secular counterparts.24 Arguably, these manuscript and printed volumes, so often cluttered with drafts, aides mémoire, and casual asides, carry us closer to the experience of their office than the formulaic entries that fill their registers. And they can offer us at least a glimpse of that dimension of leadership which in their case has been neglected: the ideas that informed their prelacy. * By contrast with secular prelates, there was no customary association between the office of monastic superior and the authority of books. Bishops were commonly identified with the pontifical, which was more than a manual for worship, the very embodiment of their governance of their church and people. 25 According to the Regula Benedicti, the authority of the superior was vested not in any written code but in their active conduct as pastor of their convent (RB, 2. 34: ‘sed semper cogitet qui animas sucepit regendas, de quibus et rationem redditurus est’). The Rule did charge the superior with the transmission of doctrine, both by example and exposition, but this was construed as the duty to secure the doctrina sana of the creed and their own profession, not to direct catechesis.26 It was with their pastoral staff that superiors were most commonly seen, in manuscript portraits, memorials, murals and the seals of their office, their active commitment to their cure, perhaps amplified by a banderolle speaking of the deity’s own shepherding.27 A book was a rare addition, to represent the discipline of the rule, or the superior’s own prayerful devotion.28 24

The surviving books of proven provenance are, of course, widely dispersed. Still the best starting-point is Neil Ker’s pioneering Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: a List of Surviving Books, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks 3, 2nd edn (London, 1964) [hereafter MGLB (1)] and its supplement compiled by Andrew Watson (London, 1987). This invaluable inventory of institutional book collection is now under revision. 25 For the importance of the pontifical in episcopal office see E. Palazzo, ‘The Image of the Bishop in the Middle Ages’, in The Bishop Reformed. Studies of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages, ed. J. Ott and A. T. Jones (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 86–91 (pp. 87–8). 26 It is worth noting that the pre-Benedictine code, the Regula magistri, did place particular emphasis on the role of the superior as ‘doctor’. See A. de Vogüé, Community and Abbot in the Rule of St Benedict (Kalamazoo, 1979), pp. 143–4. 27 For example, the mortuary roll for Abbot Wygenhall alias Sarreson of West Dereham (1429–55): BL Add. MS 46411. 28 For example, the mural portrait of Thomas Silksted[e] (1498–1524) of St Swithun’s Winchester, in the chapel that bears his name in the cathedral church, probably completed in his lifetime.

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James G. Clark Yet while these precepts, and their representation, held firm into the fifteenth century and beyond, in practice the office of superior had become ever more freighted with the written word. The superiors of the age of Chichele can have expected to have taken possession not only of the staff of the pastor (supplemented now by the ring and even the mitre of a prelate subject only to the pontiff) but also of a working collection of volumes, which experience had shown to be their equally essential tools. The recognition that a superior may require the use of certain books to carry out their responsibilities was apparent early on, and from the twelfth century there are examples of books prepared for, or expressly assigned to, the abbot.29 By the mid thirteenth century, it seems there might be a sors (allocation) of books tied to the office, passing from one incumbent to another: according to a contemporary inscription, a homiliary from Westminster Abbey was held in the designated book-cupboard of Abbot Richard de Crokesle.30 Later, as many monastic book collections expanded in response to the turn towards academic study, the place and purpose of these allocations was more sharply focused. An inscription from the Cistercian abbey at Stoneleigh identifies a liturgical book as ‘pro harnesio abbatis’, that is to say, quite literally, ‘for the “equipage” of the abbot’.31 A document of uncertain date from St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, appears to require that an allocation of books to the superior was to be returned to the conventual collection if and when he demitted office.32 At Bury St Edmunds and St  Albans, by the second half of the fourteenth century such an allocation had acquired a very precise ex libris ‘de studio [domini] abbatis’.33 From this phrase we might infer that the 29

For example, Longleat House, 10589, the ‘register’ of Henry of Sully, abbot of Glastonbury, dated to 1189, which, judging from the early incorporation of ­dis-bound leaves, including a singleton from a pre-Conquest copy of Isidore, was more than an administrative volume. See also K. Harris, Glastonbury Records at  Longleat House. A Summary List, Somerset Record Society 81 (Taunton, 1991), p. 3. 30 Cambridge, UL, Ee. 4. 23, fols. 137–44: ‘inventus fuit in armariolo R[icardus] de Crok[esle] abbas’. Richard was abbot of Westminster from 1246 until his death in 1258. 31 ‘missale pro harnesio abbatis’: for this book and its place in the superior’s ‘equipage’ see R. Pfaff, The Liturgy in Medieval England: a History (Cambridge, 2009), p. 261. 32 Canterbury Cathedral Archives, DCc, ChAnt/A166c (n.d.? 1411x1471). 33 For the St Albans books, see MLGB (1), 164–8. For late medieval variants of the ‘abbot’s study’ see, inter alia BL Royal MS 8 G I, fol. ivr; BL Royal MS 9 C X, fol. 2r, BL Royal MS 10 D III, fol. 2r and BL Add. MS 62777, fol. 1v, where ‘domini’ is added to the formula; San Marino, Huntington Library, HM 27187, flyleaf fol. iir. For the Bury book, see Cambridge, Jesus College, MS 18. See also W. A. Pantin, ‘English Monastic Letter-Books’, in Historical Essays in Honour of James Tait, ed. J. G. Edwards, V. H. Galbraith and E. F. Jacob (Manchester, 1933), pp. 201–23 (p. 214).

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An Abbot and his Books superior’s collection amounted to a quantity of books kept in a dedicated space within the monastery. A register compiled by the abbot’s chaplain at St Albans carries an inventory headed ‘librarium siue studium’, listing, as might be expected, the materials for writing, binding and sealing, which would seem to confirm its presence among the chambers of the abbot’s range.34 Whether the provision of a book – and writing – room was now a commonplace in the accommodation provided for the superior is by no means clear. Although the ground plans of many houses have been established, the purpose of particular chambers remains conjectural; quite apart from the superior’s collection, the location of the conventual book cupboards or library, and of the scriptorium is often only guesswork. Anecdotally, there are indications that St Albans may not have been the only (at least Benedictine) house where the superior had the benefit of some sort of studium. There was a library located above the prior’s chapel at Christ Church, Canterbury, although its relationship to the conventual library remains unclear; the superior’s chapel may have held its own allocation of liturgical books.35 When he resigned his office in 1536, Prior William More of Worcester (1518–36) requested that he retain the books he held in his chamber, although the reference might suggest his domestic space – bedchamber, solar – of the lodgings rather than a dedicated study.36 Likewise at Dover the Dissolution commissioners found enough books in the ‘prior’s chamber’ to warrant an inventory.37 The commissioners charged with building a case against Richard Whiting of Glastonbury (1525–39) took the books that condemned him from ‘the abbot’s study’.38 Even from these few glimpses, it would seem likely that later generations of superiors inherited a book collection of some scale ­ and scope. We know from borrowers’ lists that the Lenten sors for the ­conventual brethren was not strictly regulated and could run close to a dozen volumes. An inventory of books (and, interestingly, maps) held by the prior of Westminster Abbey at the end of the fourteenth century records half as much again.39 The permanent collection of the superior may have been larger. There were eight volumes remaining in the 34

Cambridge, UL, MS Ee 4.20, fol. 273v-76r at 275r. Canterbury, Cathedral Archives, DCc ChAnt/Z/141. For a book assigned to the abbot’s chapel at St Mary’s Abbey, York, see Cambridge, St John’s College, MS D 27 (James, 102), final leaf: ‘ad capellam domini abbatis’. 36 LP, X, 536. 37 TNA, E36/154, pp. 213–26 (p. 218). 38 LP, XIV(ii), 206. 39 For borrowers’ lists and their analysis, see: English Benedictine Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues, ed. R. Sharpe, J. P. Carley, K. Friis-Jensen and A. G. Watson, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 4 (London, 1996) [hereafter EBL], B87, 35

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James G. Clark prior’s lodging at Dover when it was placed in the custody of the commissioners, although we, as they, might infer that these were only what had been left behind.40 It may be that even for the superior, the allocation was not binding, and there are books that appear to have passed out of, as well as into, their hands.41 Also, it would appear that their allocation and the sense of priority that, presumably, it carried with it, was not always to the liking of the convent as a whole. According to its ex libris inscription, a copy of Bernard de Gordon’s Lilium medicinae was retrieved from the custody of Fountains Abbot Marmaduke Huby by one of his brethren, at, or shortly after, his death.42 If a residue remained as the office itself was passed on to a new incumbent, perhaps its foremost feature was the number of venerable books it contained. Still ‘in armariolo abbatis’ at the time of his successors, Richard Crokesle’s early thirteenth-century homiliary would have stood apart not only in its appearance but also in its contents, so different in form and tone from the devotional aids of their own day. One of the St Albans books inscribed ‘de studio abbatis’ (BL Add. MS 62777) is not itself a very venerable book, dating perhaps from the third quarter of the fourteenth century, but it does carry copies of two historical works that were central to the communal memory of the house, the Vitae duorum Offarum, attributed to Matthew Paris, and a continuation of the Gesta abbatum, which Paris himself initiated. The priority attached to domestic history might explain the presence of a thirteenth-century copy of the life of Edward the Confessor among the luggage carried by Abbot John Islip of Westminster (1500–32) when he visited his Gloucestershire estates in c.1502: there was perhaps no better moment to be reminded of past history than when viewing the present condition of the endowment.43 It appears that an anthology of annals and documents relating to Ely Cathedral Priory which bears the ex libris of Prior Robert Steward (1522– 39) was begun before his term of office and continued by him.44 Whether from the touch of elderly parchment, or from a narrative of early history, the later generations of superior would have been impressed by a sense of the past which weighed upon their prelacy.

40



41 42



43



44

pp.  555–63; B107, pp. 627–9; R. Sharpe, ‘Monastic Reading at Thorney Abbey, 1323–47’, Traditio 60 (2005), 243–78. TNA, E36/154, pp. 213–26 (p. 218). Aberystwyth, DN 4923: Thomas Clerke of Chester, and his prior, John Ley, both inserted their names in an English Polychronicon as ‘custos huius libri’. BL Add. MS 62131, fol. vi v. The book had been bequeathed to the abbey by William Pecke, vicar of Ripon, and was retrieved (liberatus . . . per manus) by Thomas Kydd. London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 761. London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 448.

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An Abbot and his Books With these histories and record books there was also a selection of liturgical volumes. Where the secular prelate was the custodian of the pontifical, the monastic superior perhaps presided over the portiforium or breviary. Here, whether accrued as a collection from earlier incumbents or presented to them as one of the symbols of their office, again there might be a precious, early manuscript. The t­hirteenth-century Muchelney Breviary appears to have been the permanent assign of its superiors, whose successive custody of it is apparent from the acta bound with it at the front.45 Prior William More of Worcester was at pains to retrieve and repair a breviary left at Rome by his predecessor, John Wednesbury (1507–18), perhaps because it pertained to his office.46 At the same time, a fine breviary was also a likely commission for a superior: the celebrated, printed breviaries of Marmaduke Huby of Fountains (c.1500) and Thomas Rowland of Abingdon (c.1528) were made to enhance their liturgical equipage.47 The deluxe missals commissioned in this period at Westminster, St Augustine’s Bristol, Abingdon, and, of course, Sherborne, also are better understood as a lavish investment in the superior’s own observant profile.48 With these compendia, the superior might expect to see a psalter: of the few of proven provenance, several carry a superior’s ex libris.49 Perhaps there was also a calendar and martyrology: a mid fourteenth century manuscript combining these with a Regula Benedicti and extracts from capitular and conventual constitutions may have been the assign of the prior of Belvoir; that it was in the prior’s hands might explain the fact that the calendar was annotated apparently with entries from a prayer roll 45

BL Add., MS 43405, at fols. iii–xxv. Greatrex, BRECP, p. 889. 47 Huby’s breviary survives as Oxford, Christ Church, e. 8. 29; Rowland’s breviary as Oxford, Exeter College, 9M 15792. For Huby, see also M. Carter, ‘The Breviary of Abbot Marmaduke Huby: Renaissance Design and Religious Change in Early Sixteenth-Century Yorkshire’, Bodleian Library Record 22:1 (2009), 17–34. 48 The Westminster missal (Westminster Abbey, MS 37) was the commission of Abbot Nicholas Litlington in 1382. The Abingdon missal (Oxford, Bodl., MS Digby 227) was made for Abbot William Ashendon in 1461. The Bristol missal (Bristol Public Library, MS 2) carries the Use of the Augustinian abbey and was perhaps the commission of the long-serving Abbot Walter Newberry (1428–51, 1456–72). The Sherborne missal (BL Add., MS 74236) was made for Abbot Robert Bruynyng (1385–1415). See also M. B. Parkes, Their Hands before Our Eyes: a Closer Look at Scribes. The Lyell Lectures delivered in the University of Oxford, 1999 (Aldershot, 2008), pp.  16, 46, 105; J. Luxford, The Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries: A Patronage History (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 204–5; N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries. II: Abbotsford to Keele (Oxford, 1977), p. 202. 49 For Oxford, Bodl., MS Lyell empt. 4, which bears the ex libris (fol. 5v) of Abbot Richard Bardney (1506–12). 46

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James G. Clark circulated from its parent house.50 The prominence of liturgy among the books of their office raises questions over the place of observance in the performance of their role. Visitation injunctions from the century before 1534 tell of the persistent – if not entirely irrevocable – ­separation of the superior from the conventual office and the daily mass.51 The evidence of the books may only strengthen this view since they would seem to point to a superior well-equipped to follow some portion of the h­ orarium within their own household. Yet the close interest shown by some in the creation of these books – and not only their decorative schemes – would seem to suggest a continuing acceptance, conceptually at least, of their position as guardians of the conventual opus. Just as representative of the superior’s canonical and practical authority was the rule of his profession and we might wonder whether an early or otherwise distinctive copy was another part of his inheritance. Of the comparatively few English manuscripts of known provenance, most have the appearance of working copies, prepared as a source of reference for the student or his teacher. On the other hand, the comparative reading of monastic rules apparent in several (surviving and attested) manuscripts of this period might point to superiors conscious of the role of early and eastern codes in the making of their office.52 Here there may be grounds for reasoning from the record of their acts. When we do glimpse superiors before their brethren the report is of men who have fortified themselves with the rule and regulatory manuals. When Abbot Roger [de] Newton of Darley led a delegation, with three other superiors, charged with the reform of Stone Priory in 1451, he framed each injunction with phrases from the Regula Augustini.53 In one 50

Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O. 9. 25 (James, 1437), fols. i, ix–xiv, 135v–148r. For examples see The Register of John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1486–1500, ed. C. Harper-Bill, 3 vols., Canterbury and York Society 75, 78 and 89 (1987–2000), II, 107–8 (Repton); III, 161 (Norwich). 52 For an example of a post-1350 manuscript of the Regula Benedicti, see Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk 1.22, fols. 131r–195r, copied in a large scale script perhaps indicating its function as a chapter or refectory volume. Oxford, Bodl., MS Lyell 19, is an early fifteenth-century anthology of English origin containing the rules of Benedict, Augustine and Basil, together with the pseudo-Bernard of Clairvaux’s Meditationes. See also A. C. de la Mare, Catalogue of the Collection of Medieval Manuscripts bequeathed to the Bodleian Library by James P. R. Lyell (Oxford, 1971), pp.  43–4. For attested copies see EBL, 384 (B68. 302, 303: Ramsey Abbey, mid-fourteenth century catalogue); St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, ed. B. C. Barker-Benfield, 2 vols., Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 13 (London, 2008), I, 48–9, II, 832–3, 885–6 (BA1. 656, 781h, 853h). See also de Vogüé, Community and Abbot, pp. 81–91. 53 Register of William Bothe, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, 1447–1452, ed. J. C. Bates, Canterbury and York Society 98 (2008), pp. 84–92. 51

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An Abbot and his Books of his final appearances before his fall in 1538 Abbot Robert Hobbes of Woburn (1529–38) was said to have ‘exhorted certain of his brethren to charity and rehearsed certain words of St Bernard ad Eugenium, “Tu quis es? Primatu Abel, gubernatione Noe, auctoritate Moyses, judicatu Samuel, potestate Petrus, unctio Christus, aliae ecclesiae habent supra se pastores, tu pastor pastorum es”’.54 At the core of the superior’s collection there were also likely to be books of canons governing monastic and conventual discipline. One of St Albans’ books labelled ‘de studio abbatis’ is a copy of Innocent IV’s apparatus on the decretals; it was copied in Italy, which may suggest a targeted purchase to extend, or even complete an existing reference collection; although not an expurgated text, the illustrative scheme seems to speak directly to a monastic superior, with half a dozen representations of clerical interactions with authority.55 It may have been Prior John Washington [Wessington] of Durham (1416–46) who directed the preparation of an anthology of the canons relating to monastic discipline which was subsequently copied and, it would seem deliberately, also circulated among the brethren for their instruction.56 In this Washington may have been continuing a pattern established by his predecessors as priors, since the popular digest of monastic canons, Abbas vel prior, has been traced to a Durham origin.57 A dedicated manual, in fact a fully formed text subdivided into three distinctions, drawn from the canons was compiled at an unidentified Cistercian house expressly for the use of the superior, and as if to recognize practice as well as precept, was bound together with a letter formulary.58 Another Cistercian book, associated with Robertsbridge Abbey, contains tables ‘de novellis’ (from the New Laws of Innocent IV) together with document templates for use in the conduct of a visitation and the election of a superior: inscriptions suggest it was in the custody of – and perhaps prepared for – either (or both) Prior John Morcock or Abbot Thomas Taylor.59 There is no doubt that the canons governing monastic life had entered into the claustral syllabus in the later Middle Ages: as book-lists show, some houses provided multiple copies either for the instruction of novices and juniors, or to support ongoing individual study. As we might expect, it would seem 54

LP, XIII(i), 981. The quotation is from Bernard of Clairvaux’s treatise De consideratione, addressed to Pope Eugenius III. 55 BL Royal MS 10 D III. The assign appears at fol. 2r. 56 See Durham Cathedral Library, MS B III 38. 57 See R. B. Dobson, Durham Priory, 1400–1450 (Cambridge, 1973), p. 381. 58 Now Oxford, Bodl., MS Lat. Th. F 5. A later (?post-medieval) hand has added ‘pedagogus abbatum ordinis cistercii’. 59 London, Society of Antiquaries, SAL/MS 14, fols. 1r–10v, 15r–33v, 33v–35r. For Taylor see also HRH, III, 326.

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James G. Clark this change was also apparent in the superior’s office. The abbots and priors of this period were perhaps as likely to have the canons to hand as a copy of the rule, and it was the doctrine of Decretum, Sext, etc., in which they now instructed their convents, by example and exposition. Whatever the extent of the ‘permanent’ collection of books assigned to the office, the superiors of this period also entered office with books of their own. Although it is perilous to judge from what has survived, and, of course, there were abbots and priors (Thomas Marlborough, Evesham, 1229–36; Simon Bozoun, Norwich, 1344–52) in earlier generations conspicuous for their personal libraries, it does seem to be a distinguishing feature of these last generations that they carried with them a working collection of books. By no means all of them were scholars of the stamp of an Easton or a Wheathampstead, yet it would seem that it was their schoolbooks which they kept closest to them as they rose through their convents. The examples that survive do not, for the most part, contain the required reference points of monastic observance  – rule, canons, preceptive manuals – nor devotional text. Rather, we find the Latin prose and verse that any later medieval student carried with them from school to university, together with some of the staple authorities of academic theology and the laws. Perhaps these reminders of their youth and (or) their early days in religion served as a palpable marker of how far they had come. Certainly, there is a hint of this in Abbot John [de] Ryhale of Swineshead’s inscription in his twelfth-century copy of Cicero: ‘monachus, scolaris et abbas’.60 For some their school or student days represented the start of a pattern, perhaps a passion for book purchases which could be fulfilled when they achieved high office. Abbot William Edys of Burton-on-Trent (1533–9) appears to have spent prodigiously on books even when a student monk at Oxford twenty-five years before his elevation to the abbacy: the survivors retain the tooled leather of an accomplished, presumably Oxford binder which it would seem, from the records of purchase on the pastedowns, they were given when he bought them as a young man. The contents of these reflect the mix of modish literary and theological interests of an Oxford undergraduate – secular or regular – in the early Tudor period. It may be only due to post-Dissolution losses that there is no evidence of how lavishly Edys extended his collection using the resources of his abbacy.61 In fact it was a common pattern among the superiors of this era to use 60

Cambridge, St John’s College, D 25 (James, 100), on the recto of the first flyleaf. John Wardboys of Ramsey represented himself as ‘bachilaurei theologic [sic] et abbatis’: BL Royal MS 14 C IX, fol. 1r; the latter two words are added by a different hand from the first. 61 For the career and books of William Edys, see Emden, BRUO; MLGB (1).

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An Abbot and his Books significant rewards of their office to transform a working collection of manuals and textbooks into a substantial personal library. Prior Thomas Goldston of Christ Church, Canterbury, made personal book purchases while in London on priory business.62 Such a project can be traced in the account book (and an associated 1531 inventory) of his contemporary, Prior William More of Worcester. More bought books at regular intervals during the years 1519–34; the intended use of these books is not specified but it does not follow that (m)any were destined for the conventual collection. An eclectic mix of works, as may have been the case with Edys, it may be read as the extension of interests initiated in the schoolroom and lecture hall.63 Generally, these later generations of superiors approached their books like any moderately learned clerk of the period, and a growing number of their own community, with the personal touches of the independent reader busy building a working collection of texts. The pattern of purchases made by Abbot Edys can be traced from his careful memoranda on the flyleaves of those that survive, recording the sum and sometimes the date of acquisition. Tables of contents were added, index notes were started (but rarely finished) and sketches of some intended composition, perhaps a sermon or other form of collation run for a phrase or more before they are interrupted. The customary crowd of clerical aide memoires is inflected only slightly, if decisively, by demonstrations of their senior status, an ex libris of some formality – if not a certain archness, as with the savage anathema of Abbot Wheathampstead – and, particularly among the early Tudor generation, an armorial bearing or rebus.64 Abbot Islip’s book of hours, originally a proprietary manuscript rather than a commission, was filled with his striking rebus (see fig. 1).

62

Canterbury Cathedral Archives, DCc., Ch. Ant./M/396. EBL, pp. 662–72 (headnote at pp. 662–3; 1531 inventory at pp. 664–5; account book entries at pp. 665–72 (B117)). The account book entries were previously printed in The Journal of Prior William More, ed. E. S. Fegan, Worcestershire Historical Society 21 (Worcester, 1914). 64 For examples: Abbot Edys’ copy of the printed pseudo-Theodolus’ Ecloga and other works, now Cambridge, St John’s College, A. 2. 1, which is clustered with notes, particularly on the title page of each article. For an example of Abbot Wheathampstead’s anathemas, see BL Royal 8 G X, a volume commissioned as part of his programme of copying for presentation to Gloucester College, Oxford, fol. 1v, ‘Fratribus Oxonie datur in munus liber iste / per patrem pecorum prothomartiris Amgligenarum, / quemsi quisraptat, raptim titulumve retractet, / vel Iude laqueum vel furcas sensiat’. For armorial bearings in a superior’s book, see Abbot Robert Steward’s manuscript copy of works of Richard Rolle of Hampole, adorned on the final leaf, with his personal arms, suspended from a ragged staff, now Cambridge, St John’s College, B. 1 (James, 23). 63

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James G. Clark

Fig. 1  Book of hours belonging to Abbot John Islip of Westminster, now Manchester, John Ryland Library, MS Lat. 165, showing his striking ‘eye’ and ‘slip’ (i.e. reed) rebus. Reproduced by permission of the John Ryland’s Library, University of Manchester (Copyright of the University of Manchester).

Beyond a handful of liturgical books which perhaps should stand apart as belonging to another dimension of their role, they did not commit, as many of their predecessors had done, to conspicuous programmes of book production. In this respect, John Wheathampstead 116

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An Abbot and his Books of St Albans (1420–41, 1452–65) appears out of step with the emerging patterns of monastic prelacy. His accounts bear witness to significant expenditure on the production of deluxe manuscripts, apparently in an intense phase of activity in the opening decade-and-a-half of his first term; while some were prepared as gifts to patrons and four graduals (costing £20) were assigned to the monastic choir, the greater part of the corpus appears to have been made for his own use (a number of them containing his own compositions) to be held in his own studium.65 In their cultural consumption, many of his contemporaries appear already more closely aligned to their secular counterparts, channelling the resources of their office – and, of course, licitly or otherwise, of their convent – into architectural schemes. That is, with one exception: the making of books retained, indeed renewed, its role for these superiors as a valuable currency to be expended among their distinguished patrons. One part of Wheathampstead’s programme was to prepare manuscripts for presentation to John, duke of Bedford and Humphrey, duke of Gloucester.66 His successor, John Stoke (1440–52), presented – although, apparently did not give – Matthew Paris’ illustrated vita Albani to Henry VI when he visited in 1448.67 Henry was the recipient at Bury St Edmunds of a manuscript of John Lydgate’s English lives of Edmund and Fremund beautifully illustrated by Robert Pygot, presumably commissioned under the direction of Abbot William Curteys (1429–46).68 Given what we know of their varied routes into office, these presentations cannot be regarded as an outward projection of the cultural values of the scholar-prelate. Rather it does show the superiors of the period, like their secular counterparts, responding to the changing cultural patterns of lay society. In their selection of texts, not only illustrated but also vernacular renderings of the oldest saints’ lives, there was more than a hint of the same impulses guiding Bishops Alcock, Fox and Longland, to engage directly with their patrons’ devotional interest. The production of richly decorated parchments and rolls conveying a grant of confraternity to a patron should also be considered in this context. Abbot John Wickham of Evesham (1435–c.1460) seems to have presided over the making of a six-part roll for presentation to Ralph Boteler, Lord Sudeley, between 1447 and 1452, to mark his and 65

Annales monasterii sancti Albani a Johanne Amundesham, monacho, ut videtur conscripti AD 1421–1440, ed. H. T. Riley, 2 vols., Rolls Series 28 (1870–1), II, 255–77 (pp. 256, 259, 264, 268–70); EBL, B88, pp. 564–71, B89, pp. 571–2. 66 Annales monasterii sancti Albani a Johanne Amundesham, II, 256; EBL, B88, pp. 564–71. 67 Dublin, Trinity College, MS 177. 68 BL Harley MS 2278. The royal arms appear in an initial on fol. 6r.

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James G. Clark his wife’s entry into the abbey’s confraternity; the roll carried a genealogy of Sudeley and, unusually, a mappa mundi derived from Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon.69 The preparation of obituary rolls at the passing of a superior should surely be considered as another dimension of this enterprise. The responsibility of the new incumbent and the convent itself, these productions were nonetheless predicated on the capacity of parchment, its script and image, to convey something of the spiritual authority of the departed prelate to his network of subjects and patrons. The counterpoint to these public and patronal projects is the (generally, greater) extent to which the superiors of later generations can be seen to be applying their own time and craft in making books for their own purposes. It was presumably the desire to extend both his own and the convent’s pastoral resources that led Abbot John Brinkley of Bury (1361–79) to begin a copy of Simon Boraston’s Distinctiones, which his sacrist William Barwe subsequently completed; that the task passed to, or was taken up by him may be a sign that the volume was intended for use in one of the communal spaces of the convent, such as the chapter house.70 Miscellanies owned and part copied by Thomas Spofforth of St  Mary’s, York (1405–21) and Thomas Cleobury of Dore (1516–26?), show superiors compiling an anthology at intervals over a number of years as and when the opportunity to acquire new material, and, no doubt, to take up the stylus, arose.71 Cleobury made his collection in the transition from script to print; perhaps as significant as the appearance of several printed fragments is his continued inclusion of pieces he had copied himself. Notwithstanding the demands of their office, or indeed its traditions, given the superiors of early times renowned for their incapacity with script, this was a generation generally experienced in bookhands. Prior Thomas Ledbury of Worcester (1438–43/4) went so far as to copy an (unidentified) devotional text in his own hand for presentation to the president of the Benedictine General Chapter.72 The mix of scholarly, ‘library’ works and liturgies formed only one part (and precisely what proportion remains unclear) of the book resources of these superiors. Their inheritance would surely also have included documentary material, perhaps both archival, that is the 69

London, College of Arms Muniment Room, 18/19. See also P. Barber, ‘The Evesham Map. A Late Medieval View of the World,’ Imago mundi 47 (1995), 13–33 (pp. 13, 26–7). 70 Oxford, Bodl., MS Bodley 216. Brinkley copied to letter D, and Barwe thereafter. Parkes, Their Hands before Our Eyes, p. 21. 71 BL Harley MS 2628; BL Harley MS 218. 72 Greatrex, BRECP, pp. 833–4; Documents Illustrating the Activities of the General and Provincial Chapters of the English Black Monks 1215–1540, ed. W. A. Pantin, 3 vols., Camden 3rd s. 45, 47, 54 (1931–7), III, 98–9.

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An Abbot and his Books records of earlier administrations, and ‘live’, representing the current causes of the house. The organization of monastic archives has not attracted the critical attention applied to libraries. As with certain libraries, and certainly studia, scriptoria, the locus of the muniment room in the ground plan remains largely conjectural. Only for a handful of the most prominent Benedictine monasteries – Westminster, Bury St Edmunds, Glastonbury – has there been any attempt to map the scale and scope that their archives had achieved by the later Middle Ages.73 The care, custody and deployment of these holdings inside the convent remains largely unbroken ground. Rod Thomson has provided a point of entry in his survey of Bury St Edmunds. He finds approaches to the collation and classification of documents which speak of ‘well-arranged and readily accessible archives’ and he suggests that their organization must have closely paralleled that of the library books.74 If so, and a general rule, then it would follow that later centuries saw the formation of subordinate collections, to support particular functions, or offices of the monastic community. Of these, it does seem that the superior’s office developed to some degree as an adjunct to any central, conventual collection of muniments. Abbot Bere of Glastonbury (1493–1525) kept with him a clerk, Thomas Gunwyn, who had a special knowledge of the muniments.75 Here it is important to distinguish between the records of the superior’s own administration, the documents generated by their own clerks and the registers compiled to preserve fair copies of them, and the historic records of the house. Whether, at the greater houses, it was nothing less than a self-contained chancery or, at modest foundations, amounted to the superior’s chaplain acting as amanuensis, any superior held with them both bound books and loose parchments that recorded their daily acta.76 At Bury it has been suggested that they kept an act book which would be used as the draft of their fair-copy register.77 Abbot Thomas Swynton of Fountains (1471–8) may have kept to hand such a book which he had compiled when he was a junior obedientiary.78 Whatever its size or structure, it shared a common root, in the 73

B. F. Harvey, The Obedientiaries of Westminster Abbey and their Financial Records, c. 1275–1540 (Woodbridge, 2002); R. M. Thomson, The Archives of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Record Society 21 (Woodbridge, 1980); Harris, Glastonbury Abbey Records at Longleat. 74 Thomson, Archives of the Abbey of Bury, pp. 1, 3. 75 Gunwyn emerges from the shadows as the compiler of Bere’s terrier of the abbey’s demesnes: BL Egerton MS 3034. 76 For the chaplain as amanuensis, see Pantin, ‘English Monastic Letter-Books’, p. 207. 77 Thomson, Archives of the Abbey of Bury, pp. 22–3. 78 BL Add. MS 40011.

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James G. Clark seal on which, it would appear, the later superiors continued to impress their particular preferences.79 However, in addition, in a number of instances, if not always, they also held their own, or their office’s own, copies of key archival materials; charters recording significant endowments and transactions arising from them, privileges, sometimes the acta of their predecessors. It is unclear if these were intended as duplicate copies, to match for the superior what was already held centrally, or that the superior’s office was now recognized as the appropriate repository for the most comprehensive records. At Christ Church, Canterbury, the superior seems to have held an archive of wider utility, holding the ‘gret boke of fees’ of the archbishop which he could be called upon to offer for the scrutiny of interested lay parties.80 Generally, the preservation of cartularies and registers is too patchy to pinpoint precisely the place in the archival hierarchy of those that do survive. If the principal cartularies, in particular, were now assigned to the superior’s office, or had been annexed there, it may add weight to the case for a galloping autocracy in monastic administration towards the end of the fifteenth century.81 What is certainly clear is the tendency of these later superiors to take an interest in the making and keeping of archival collections which extended beyond the demands of their routine administration. Abbot John Newton of Battle (1463–90) appears to have first formed an interest in the historical records of his house during his brief term as cellarer (1457–9); certainly one of two collections that carry his ex libris appears to have been assigned to that office and had been begun by two of its earlier incumbents. It may be that Newton, the last named owner, had brought the discrete booklets together. They combined general historical texts with an inventory of relics.82 Abbot Robert Fuller of Waltham appears to be the main copyist of a cartulary.83 Abbot John Lilly ­(1462–c.1473) of Rufford: the cartulary of recent acta prior to his abbacy is attributed to him as compiler on the first folio, ‘compilatum a dompno Johanne . . .’.84 Prior Thomas Forster of Wombridge ­ (1494–1509) and Abbot 79

For their variable representation in seals see, for example, a fourteenth-century Gloucester seal, depicting the abbot in an architectural setting, bearing a crosier (TNA, DL25/255/204), a Peterborough seal of the same period, showing the abbot, seated without any symbol of office (TNA, DL25/30) and a Flaxley seal, also fourteenth century, in which the superior carries both crosier and book, both of which sprout flower stems (TNA, DL25/257/207). 80 East Sussex Record Office, GLY/24 (c. 1450–5). 81 Pantin, ‘English Monastic Letter-Books’, p. 207. 82 San Marino, Huntington Library, HM 30319: inventory of relics at fols. v–vi v. 83 BL Harley MS 3739. 84 BL Add. 82958, fol. 1r.

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An Abbot and his Books Thomas Ramridge of St Albans (1492–1519) both commissioned cartularies although the personal intent was no less apparent from inscriptions and, for Ramridge, the addition of a stylized capital portrait.85 This enterprise could involve a level of investment comparable to their library books. John Islip entered into collaboration with the king’s own chancery clerks to make the deluxe copy of the quadripartite indenture, illuminated by the hand of the so-called ‘flamboyant artist’.86 The impression of hands-on interventions in record keeping is supported anecdotally. Abbot Rowland of Abingdon explained to officers of the Crown how ‘I and my cowncell [have been] makyng uppe such bokes and recomptes’.87 Although the Dissolution commissioners were almost duty bound to describe the study of their subject Abbot Whiting of Glastonbury as awash with [papal] pardons and bulls, it may be only an exaggeration of the general class of material to be found at his desk.88 It was an increasingly common complaint in the later phases of episcopal visitation that the established patterns of record keeping had unravelled, and that there were few, if any, ‘bokes and recomptes’ ready for examination.89 Of course, the signs of the superiors’ commitment to such work may be as much a cause as a consequence of this trend. The number, variety and contemporary treatment – that is the schemes of inscriptions and even, sometimes, illustrations – of these volumes does urge a fresh view of the place of texts and their learned authority in the prelacy of these later generations. One clear tendency, apparent as much from the conventual books they inherited as personal volumes and subsequent purchases, is their commitment to exercising the traditional role of the superior as instructor in doctrine. Many of the superiors of this period made a presentation, during their reign, of at least one book to their convent. These were frequently volumes drawn from their own collections, although sometimes they seem to have been sought especially for the purpose. Almost invariably, they were, as single texts, or anthologies, works to stimulate traditional forms of meditative lectio: John Wykwon of Evesham (1435–c.1460) gave his monks the gospel harmony of William of Nottingham, a manuscript which originally belonged to, and had been made by, a parish priest, which

85

BL Egerton, MS 3712, inscriptions at fols. 1r, 97r; BL Arundel MS 34, fol. 18r. BL Harley MS 28. See also M. Condon, ‘God Save the King! Propaganda, Piety and the Perpetual Memorial’, in Westminster Abbey: the Lady Chapel of Henry VII, ed. T. Tatton-Brown and R. Mortimer (Woodbridge, 2003), pp.  59–97 (pp.  72–3, 81–2). 87 TNA, SP1/91, fol. 89r. 88 LP, XIV(ii), 206. 89 Register of John Morton, ed. Harper-Bill III, 161, 162, 163–4 (Norwich, 1499). 86

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James G. Clark presumably Wykwon had first acquired for his own use.90 Thomas Bo(o) th of St Mary’s York (1464–85) directed a thirteenth-century Bible to his conventual brethren, again quite possibly from his own collection.91 John Brinkley offered at least two volumes for the convent, the Simon Boraston already mentioned, and a collection of meditations surely destined to supplement the supply of reading material in the cloister cupboards.92 The commitment to claustral instruction remained a feature of their conduct to the very end. Only months before his surrender, Abbot Stephen Sagar purchased a two-volume edition of Denis the Carthusian (Cologne, 1533) for the expressed use of brethren in the chapter house.93 For some the same understanding of their role was expressed in efforts to support and enhance their brethren’s liturgical performance. Thomas Spofforth of York appears to have put aside other business to complete a revision of the house’s ordinal and customary initiated by his predecessor, Thomas de Stayngreve (1389–98): the surviving manuscript would appear to be a copy, perhaps commissioned by the abbot, for the use of the convent.94 Abbot John Bracey of Muchelney (1471–90) not only inherited the breviary but also worked upon it, composing a new hymn to the Blessed Virgin Mary adapted from Te Deum, perhaps to provide a ‘script’ for the celebrations to mark the completion of the Lady Chapel.95 In a period of progressive appropriations, this impulse to liturgical leadership might extend to the churches under their direct jurisdiction, and where it was not now unknown for the superior himself to celebrate. Certainly, it is worth noting among the purchases of Prior William More a missal bought for the (appropriated) parish church at Bromsgrove. 96 It would be wrong to infer that their commitment to the fundamentals of monastic devotion was purely professional, projected outwards as it were, to those, professed and unprofessed, under their pastoral authority. 90

92 93 94

BL Royal MS 4 E 11, ex dono at fol. 1r. MLGB (1), pp. 217, 321. BL Royal MS 8 E X. Windsor, St George’s Chapel, III. C. See also MLGB (1), pp. 95, 267. Cambridge, St John’s College, MS D. 27 (James, 102). The greater part of the liturgical text was printed in the Henry Bradshaw Society: The Ordinal and Customary of the Abbey of Saint Mary, York. St John’s College, Cambridge, MS. D.27, ed. the abbess of Stanbrook and J. B. L. Tolhurst, 3 vols., Henry Bradshaw Society 73, 75, 84 (London, 1933–6). For Stayngreve and Spofforth see HRH, III, 90. 95 BL Add. 43405, fols. iv r–v. Printed (where is it misidentified as from Glastonbury) in Memorials of King Henry V, ed. C. A. Cole, Rolls Series 11 (London, 1858), pp. lxi. For Bracey see also HRH, III, 54. 96 Cambridge, University Library, Add. MS 6688: ex dono at fol. 372v. See also P. Binski and P. Zutshi, Western Illuminated Manuscripts. A Catalogue of the Collection in Cambridge University Library (Cambridge, 2011), no. 242, p. 226. 91

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An Abbot and his Books The volumes that passed through their hands are heavily glossed, for the most part on matters concerning scripture, theology or Christian morality. Of course, generally these are schemes of glosses accrued from different hands, but even so they suggest a choice on the part of the superior to keep beside a work replete with supplementary discussions. One or two of the later survivors carry a sequence of glosses in a single, steady hand which may be that of the superior owner himself. A printed text (1475) of Augustine de Ancona’s Summa de ecclesiastica potestate which belonged to Abbot John Selwood of Glastonbury (1456–92) was systematically annotated by the same reader apparently with a dual purpose: to highlight the specific powers of the pontiff in such matters as indulgence and visitation, and to draw attention to underlying theological principles, such as the threefold nature of law, eternal, natural and positive. Another printed volume (1526), containing the works of Rupert of Deutz on the gospel of Matthew and the Trinity, which appears to have been one of the books belonging to Abbot Richard Kidderminster of Winchcombe (1488–1525) and passed into the conventual library after his death, is glossed throughout by a hand which employed an idiosyncratic ‘nota’ mark in the form of a reversed ‘N’ with dots placed above and below the diagonal (see fig. 2). This reader was especially concerned to elaborate on the author’s exegesis, adding points of etymology (the derivation of Nazareth) and history (the geneological descent of Joseph and Mary) and repeating the commentator’s exposition, where there are resonances for regular observance.97 These are only a sample, of course, yet for their own part they point to a practice of close reading, grounded in intimate knowledge of scripture, patristic, and monastic authorities – the ‘Selwood’ glosses reference Anselm of Bec – and more than a modicum of church history, since the first printed leaf of the tabula in the the Selwood book carries a note ‘scriptus huic liber anno 450’.98 It might also be said that they point to patterns of thought that conformed very closely to the conventions of the medieval schoolroom, with an almost irrepressible fascination for the exposition of literal and historical sense of the text and tendency to turn over and over the essential tenets of doctrine. In the context of a book belonging to a later medieval or pre-Reformation superior these readings can be interpreted in a number of ways. Certainly they may demonstrate that there was indeed a space among the shifting occupations of their prelacy for sustained – if unremarkable – lectio. They might also stand as a reminder of the didactic dimension of their role. The pattern of a superior’s preaching is not easily recovered from later sources, and 97

Cambridge, Clare College, G. i. 9, e.g., pp. vii, xxiv–xxv, lxxii. Cambridge, St John’s College, Ii. 3. 39, first (unnumbered) leaf of tabula.

98

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James G. Clark

Fig. 2  Marginal notation perhaps in the hand of Abbot Richard Kidderminster of Winchcombe: Cambridge, Clare College, G. i. 9. Reproduced by permission of the President and Fellows of Clare College, Cambridge.

the signs of their detachment from the conventual routine would seem to suggest that they invariably missed the traditional moments for abbatial instruction, the daily chapter, the collations delivered at, or after the mealtime (as was Anselm’s wont at Canterbury) or after Vespers. The prosopographical registers have recovered from extra-mural records an impression of regular preaching commitments, not only within their own corporate network, such as meetings of the orders’ chapters, but at mixed gatherings of clergy (such as the councils), at the university church at Oxford, or at the principal parishes in the liberty of their house.99 Few of their sermons have survived – markedly fewer, in fact 99

Prior William Worstede of Norwich (1427–36) may be presumed to have preached at the Council of Basle, which he attended, and he preached ‘commendabiliter’ to clergy and people at a Benedictine chapter meeting; Prior William Basyng alias Kingsmill of Winchester was university preacher on Easter Sunday 1528; Prior Richard Crosby of Coventry (1398–1437) was deterred from his intention to preach at the city parish of Holy Trinity because of unrest: Greatrex, BRECP,

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An Abbot and his Books than those of the brethren in their charge – although anecdotally some were recognized by their contemporaries for their skill. The schemes of glosses in their books, which, strikingly, seem to privilege the staple scriptural and moral expositions of the routine sermon, surely offer us a further glimpse of this role. In fact the seam of historical, indeed antiquarian, enthusiasm that can be followed through their books might be a further marker of their preaching activity. Their choice of texts, and the marginal comments that surround them, were concentrated on the history of their order in general and their own house in particular. The sermons that survive from the period after 1400, whether known to have been delivered within a conventual setting, at a capitular gathering, or to a ‘public’ congregation of seculars and laity, made their recurrent themes the origins of their order and the prestige of their greatest foundations and their shrines. Notwithstanding their costly bindings and their conspicuous marks of personal identity, at one level these may have been the ­necessary tools of a working prelacy. * The Rhineland scholar monk and superior of Sponheim, Johann Trittenheim (1483–1506), made a characteristically splenetic outburst at his brethren as he struggled to maintain order over them, opining that they would ‘rather have a ploughman (arator) as their abbot than a learned rhetorician (orator), they would rather have a rustic, a guardian of pigs, than to have a guardian of minds’.100 There has long been a suspicion that, in the generations before the Dissolution, the leadership of monasteries in England was given over to those who had followed the furrows of conventual administration – and, latterly, court politics – lending monastic prelacy a narrow character, at a time when the practice of their secular counterparts appeared to be taking the opposite turn. In fact the abbots and priors of this period entered into an office in which the place of books was established, and expanding. It would appear that many of them inherited a collection of practical, working texts, as well as sometimes a dedicated space in which to refer to them, perhaps rather sooner than their brethren gained their own purpose-built library. These facilities offered a foundation not only to further personal patterns of

pp.  573–5 (p.  574), 671–2, 805–7. The prominence of the cathedral priors may be only because of their better preserved archives. Abbot William Walwayn of Eynsham (1469–after 1483) may have been the author of sermons seen at Norwich by John Bale: Sharpe, Latin Writers, p. 875. 100 N. L. Brann, The Abbot Trithemius (1462–1516). The Renaissance of Monastic Humanism (Leiden, 1981), p. 124.

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James G. Clark consumption but also to make the provision of books an arm of their conventual and, indeed, their wider, public leadership. In so far as it can be glimpsed in the surviving fragments, their use of these books does offer some fresh insights into their approach to, and priorities for, the governance of their houses. The (re)ordering of the monastic office was an objective for some, notwithstanding their personal pattern of attendance apparent from the visitation records; assuring the quality, aesthetic as much as aural, of the conventual mass was an allied aim. A command of the ever-growing corpus of canons and constitutions also appears as a central tactic for conventual discipline. Their own application of learning can also be more sharply focused from this material: more than any other, there are traces of exegetical reading for collations and sermons within and beyond the convent walls. Their choice of reading, and the tone of their comments, might suggest that, by contrast with the celebrated seculars of the era, there was little that was progressive about the exercise of their office. Yet we should be wary of misrepresenting the seculars’ enterprise in libraries, schools and print. Their effort may have employed the physical book more conspicuously than the placemen that preceded them, but they shared a common aim with the regulars, a reaffirmation of the most venerable pastoral values, of moral conduct, spiritual discipline and sound observance as the cornerstones of good doctrine.

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Prelates and the Provision of Books: Bishop John Carpenter’s Carnary Library Wendy Scase

The most celebrated achievements of John Carpenter as bishop of Worcester (1443–76) are his educational initiatives, including his foundation of the Carnary Chapel Library at Worcester and of the Kalendars’ Library associated with All Saints’, Bristol. This essay will attempt to shed new light on Carpenter’s activities in relation to the provision of books in his diocese, with a particular focus on the Worcester library. It will review and revise the current interpretation of the sources of evidence for the ordinances of the library, revising our assessment of what they can and cannot tell us; consider a recent suggestion concerning the holdings of the library; and propose new avenues for investigation of these foundations.1 John Carpenter (c. 1402–76) became bishop of Worcester in 1443 and held the see until his death.2 He was an Oxford graduate and held various

 1

In tackling this subject I am picking up some unanswered questions that I asked long ago in an article on the provision of books in fifteenth-century London: W. Scase, ‘Reginald Pecock, John Carpenter and John Colop’s “Common-profit” Books: Aspects of Book Ownership and Circulation in Fifteenth-Century London’, Medium Ævum 61 (1992), 261–74.  2 The major source for his career as bishop is his register, which survives in two volumes now in the care of the Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service. In 1968 Roy M. Haines, building on and complementing a Birmingham MA thesis by M. J. Morgan, examined the registers for evidence of the administrative structures and practices during Carpenter’s tenure as bishop and to make an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of his episcopate: R. M. Haines, ‘Aspects of the Episcopate of John Carpenter, Bishop of Worcester 1444–1476’, JEH 19 (1968), 11–40; M. J. Morgan, ‘John Carpenter, Bishop of Worcester, 1444–1476’ (unpublished MA dissertation, University of Birmingham, 1960). See also R. M. Haines, ‘Carpenter, John (c. 1402–1476), bishop of Worcester’, ODNB. Haines found that Carpenter’s attitudes and achievements were those typical of his class: ‘Carpenter had the cast of mind common to that class of educated secular clerks to which he belonged. It had its strengths in the encouragement of learning and charitable foundations’: Haines, ‘Aspects’, pp. 39–40.

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Wendy Scase positions at Oriel College from 1417. He attracted royal ­patronage and Henry VI appointed him master of St Anthony’s Hospital in London in 1433. This appointment finds him in relation with educated and prominent London clerics who were leaders in education and preaching. He was also associated with prominent citizens of London. Here his connections seem to have been the result of kinship with leading Londoners and in particular with another John Carpenter, Common Clerk of the city of London, who died in 1442. Through this connection too he came into contact with influential innovation and new thinking.3 Scholars have long recognized that his foundation of the Carnary Library at Worcester and the Kalendars’ Library in Bristol shows the influence on Carpenter of the foundation of a new library at London’s Guildhall in the 1420s, an initiative in which John Carpenter the Common Clerk played a key role.4 The Carnary Library was housed in the Charnel Chapel of Worcester Cathedral Priory. In the early thirteenth century part of a cemetery for the Benedictine monks of Worcester Cathedral Priory at the east end of the cathedral was cleared. The bones were moved to the crypt of a new chapel built by William of Blois, bishop of Worcester (1218–36), near the north porch.5 At first the chapel was a chantry foundation for Masses for the souls of the dead. Walter de Cantilupe, William’s successor, endowed it in 1265 with funds for four priests, to be appointed by the bishop, to celebrate Mass for the former bishop.6 The number of priests grew as other churches were appropriated to it.7 But the fortunes of the institution seem to have faded towards the end of the fourteenth century, when Bishop Henry Wakefield recorded that the chapel and house were in ruins.8 In 1386 Bishop Wakefield arranged for the priory to oversee the chantry and the sacrist of the cathedral became  3

Haines, ‘Aspects’, pp. 39–40. For the Guildhall Library as a ‘pioneering project’ and a model for Carpenter’s foundations, see for example N. Orme, Medieval Schools: From Roman Britain to Renaissance England (New Haven, 2006), pp.  83–4. For John Carpenter the Common Clerk and his associates at the Guildhall, see the important new work in L. R. Mooney and E. Stubbs, Scribes and the City: London Guildhall Clerks and the Dissemination of English Literature, 1375–1425 (York, 2013); and for his biography see M. Davies, ‘Carpenter, John (d.  1442)’, ODNB. Still valuable is T. Brewer, Memoir of the Life and Times of John Carpenter (London, 1856).  5 P. Hoskin, ‘Blois, William de (d. 1236)’, ODNB; for the position of the new chapel see P. Barker, Techniques of Archaeological Excavation, 3rd edn (London, 1993), pp. 48–9.  6 VCH Worcester, II, 94–112.  7 Ibid., IV, 408–12.  8 H. J. Wilkins, Was John Wycliffe a Negligent Pluralist? Also, John de Trevisa, his Life and Work (London, 1915), p. 63.  4

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Bishop John Carpenter’s Carnary Library r­esponsible for presenting candidates for appointment as chantry priests.9 The purpose and fortunes of the chapel were transformed again when Bishop John Carpenter founded the library there in the middle of the fifteenth century. In his survey of London (1598), John Stow described the Guildhall Library, Carpenter’s model, as ‘a fayre and large librarie’ adjoining the Guildhall Chapel on the south side and bearing on two sides the initials of Richard Whittington and William Bury, whose estates funded the foundation.10 It must have had at least two floors, for Stow describes it as ‘now lofted through’ and turned into a storehouse for clothes. Recent archaeology has added to our picture of the London Guildhall Library.11 The library was positioned close by the Guildhall, and the building was part of the ambitious and impressive rebuilding and redesign of the Guildhall and its precinct that took place in the fifteenth century. Excavation has revealed five foundation piers which were probably those of the library, confirming that it must have had at least one floor above ground level, and a cesspit that probably served a latrine associated with the library building. A fragment of cornice discovered during the excavations suggests that the interior was elegantly appointed.12 A copper-plate engraving of c.  1559 may illustrate the south side of the library; if it does, it appears to show that it had four windows with rounded arches on that side, suggesting that it would have provided good light for readers.13 Unfortunately, by contrast, archaeological evidence and the built environment have very little to contribute to our knowledge of the Carnary Library at Worcester. The chapel was between the north porch and the bishop’s palace. The crypt partially survives today, but the Charnel Chapel itself is gone. It appears that a house close to the west end of the cathedral is partially built on the site. This is 10, College Yard, said by the survey of listed buildings to incorporate the former

 9

VCH Worcester, IV, 408–12. J. Stow, A Suruay of London Contayning the Originall, Antiquity, Increase, Moderne Estate, and Description of that Citie, written in the yeare 1598 (London, 1598), p. 219; STC 23341. 11 For an account of the foundation of the Guildhall Library based on documentary sources supplemented by archaeological evidence obtained 1985–99, see D. Bowscher, T. Dyson, N. Holder and I. Howell, The London Guildhall: An Archaeological History of a Neighbourhood from Medieval to Modern Times, 2 vols., MoLAS Monographs 36 (London, 2007), I, 208–10. 12 Bowscher et al., The London Guildhall, I, 210, fig. 203. For a plan showing the position of the library in relation to the other buildings in the precinct see ibid., I, 206–7. 13 Bowscher et al., The London Guildhall, I, 209, fig. 201. 10

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Wendy Scase entrance to the crypt and a fourteenth-century wall in its basement and boundary.14 The most important sources of evidence for the Carnary Library are documentary: the registers of the bishops of Worcester. The first reference to the foundation relates to gifts of shops and other property in September 1458 to provide for a chaplain who shall serve as librarian.15 We also have records of the appointment of chaplains, starting with William Skryvener alias Hurley who was appointed as master of the chapel and given ‘custodiam librarie’ in the chapel in 1461.16 Four further appointments are recorded. The foundation was dissolved in 1540 and the fifth chaplain, Roger Neckham, is recorded as receiving a pension.17 The most extensive documentary source about the foundation occurs in the register of Silvester de Gigli, bishop of Worcester 1498–1521, where several pages are devoted to a document concerning the foundation of the library.18 These pages tell us that Carpenter donated goods and with other donations he provided for the creation of a new library in the Carnary Chapel. In case any books shall be alienated or uncared for, he has provided for the prior and chapter to appoint, through the sacrist, a ‘magister’ or someone given ‘custodia’ of the library in perpetuity. He has given quarters for the use of the chaplain who shall be allocated the upper and lower rooms at the end of the library and provision is also made for the chaplain’s clothing and food. To this end Carpenter and fellow feoffees transfer to the prior and convent a messuage with garden and shops and rooms over the shops and two stone cellars beneath, by gift of Robert Poleyn, John Hayward of Gloucester, Thomas Dunstable and one John Carpenter, mercer, to be held by the prior and convent in perpetuity for the use of the cathedral sacrist.19 14

Listed as ‘No 10 with Attached Walls, Railings, Gate and Pier, Worcester’ (English Heritage Building ID 488698) in British Listed Buildings Online [http://www.brit ishlistedbuildings.co.uk/, accessed 1 May 2013]. It is clear, looking at 10, College Yard today, that the building is significantly raised above the present level of the cathedral. 15 Worcester, Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service (hereafter WAAS), Register of John Carpenter, 2 vols., I, fol. 175r–v (new pagination, pp. 357–8). 16 WAAS, Reg. Carpenter, I, fol. 167v (new pagination, p. 342). 17 N. Orme, Education and Society in Medieval and Renaissance England (London, 1989), p. 37. 18 WAAS, Register of Silvester de Gigli, I, fols. 132r–134v (new pagination, pp. 253–8). 19 A Robert Poleyn of Worcester appears in CPR, 1446–1452, p. 237. Haines suggests that John Carpenter mercer is the same as John Carpenter the Common Clerk but this is ruled out by the fact that the latter died in 1442, unless the grant was somehow posthumous (for his date of death see M. Davies, ‘Carpenter, John

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Bishop John Carpenter’s Carnary Library The sacrist shall appoint a chaplain to the Carnary to celebrate Mass and have custody of the library and the books. The chaplain shall be a Bachelor of Theology or at least graduate and ‘sufficienter instructus’ in both Old and New Testaments. Once or twice a week the chaplain shall read publicly a moral lecture on the Old or New Testament – ­according to the discretion of the bishop – to anyone who wishes to attend and shall preach in the cathedral church or at the cemetery cross. He shall also be responsible for explaining dubious and uncertain points of scripture insofar as he is able (‘dubia et obscura sacre scripture . . . iuxta facultate sue scienciam declarabit’ (fol. 134r; new pagination p. 257)). The chaplain’s responsibilities with regard to the curation of the books are also spelled out in some detail. Parallels have been drawn between the Carnary Library provisions as set out in this document and those for the Kalendars’ Library in Bristol. This library was associated with and took its name from the guild of the Kalendars, a religious guild of clergy and laypeople that met at All Saints’ Church, Bristol, on the first day (the kalends) of each month. The guild priests lived in a house adjoining the north side of the church. From c.  1451, Bishop Carpenter was engaged in reforming the guild. His reforms included the appointment of graduate clergy to the office of prior of the guild, and revision of the role of prior to include service as librarian and lecturer.20 The ordinances for the Kalendars’ Library issued by Carpenter in 1464 make provision for the appointment of a chaplain who shall be a Bachelor in Theology or a Master of Arts, a scholar of the Old and New Testaments and sufficiently instructed (‘sufficienter instructum’) to preach. He shall reside at the library and open it for two hours in the morning and afternoon to explain dubious and obscure points of scripture insofar as he is able (‘fuerit dubia et obscura sacre scripture . . . iuxta sue facultate scienciam’).21 The parallels between the two sets of ordinances, in wording and in provisions, are striking. For example, the provisions for the handling of a newly acquired book are exactly parallel. The Kalendars’ ordinances state that whenever any book is bequeathed, donated or assigned to the library it shall immediately be chained and it shall be recorded in an inventory along with its value: (d.1442)’, ODNB). John Hayward of Gloucester is probably the prior of Llanthony, Gloucester, from 1457. For the priory and its priors, see VCH Gloucester, II, 87–91 and HRH, II, pp. 414–15, III, 469–71. 20 N. Orme, ‘A Bristol Library for the Clergy’, in his Education and Society in Medieval and Renaissance England (London, 1989), pp. 209–19 (pp. 214–15); Orme’s chapter is the key study on the Kalendars’ Library. 21 The Kalendars’ ordinances are at WAAS, Reg. Carpenter, I, fols. 197r–198r (new pagination, pp. 401–3).

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Wendy Scase Ita quod quociens contigat aliquem librum eidem librarie qualiter eumque legari donari seu assignari infra xv dies postquam . . . in huiusmodi libraria incontinenter cathenetis Et in huiusmodi inuentare . . . conscribatur cum vero valore eiusdem.22

Three copies of the inventory of books were to be maintained, to be held by the prior, dean and mayor, and there was to be an annual stock-check. The Carnary provisions are almost identical: Ita quod quotiens contingat aliquem librum eidem librarie qualitercumque legari donari seu assignari infra tres dies posquam [sic] adopta est posessio huiusmodi . . . Et tunc incontinenter in dicta libraria Cathenetur Ac in Inventarijs conscribatur vna cum vero valor eiusdem’.23

The Carnary inventory or catalogue of books was to be kept in three copies held by the master of the library, the cathedral sacrist and the bishop. New acquisitions were to be entered in the bishop’s copy of the catalogue. Partly on the basis of the very close parallels between the two documents it has been believed that the two foundations of the Kalendars’ and Carnary Libraries were closely similar and that the two initiatives were therefore closely related and part of a coherent strategy initiated and implemented by Carpenter. Haines comments, for example, that ‘The regulations [for the Kalendars’ Library] are almost identical with those of the Carnary’.24 Close examination of the Carnary materials however reveals rather less, and more, than has previously been noticed. The document concerning the Carnary in the register is often cited as Carpenter’s statutes or ordinance documents for the Carnary.25 But whereas the Kalendars’ ordinances are dated 1464 and are found in Carpenter’s register, the context of the Carnary material is a document in the register of the absentee Italian bishop of Worcester, Silvester de Gigli, that dates from 1513, some fifty years after the foundation of the Carnary Library. This late date in itself need not cause hesitation about the status of the document but some of the other framing material must. A side-note in de Gigli’s register describes the material as a ‘copia’, but the compiler of the account does not appear to have had access to a copy of the original ordinances. The register for the period when the library was founded survives, yet there is no copy of the ordinances in 22

WAAS, Reg. Carpenter, I, fol. 197v (new pagination, p. 402). WAAS, Reg. Silvester de Gigli, I, fol. 134r (new pagination, p. 257). 24 Haines, ‘Aspects’, p. 34. Cf. Orme, ‘A Bristol Library for the Clergy’, p. 215. 25 Orme, Education and Society, p.  36 describes this material as the Carnary’s ‘statutes’. 23

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Bishop John Carpenter’s Carnary Library it. The text is described as the ‘tenor’ of the ordinances and is preceded by a preamble where reference is made to the testimony of one Henry Lewis.26 Henry testified that according to Robert Inkberrow there used to be an old document (‘scriptum vetestum’, fol. 132v; new pagination p.  254) of the ordinances in a chest when Robert was registrar to Carpenter. Reference is also made to what is known ‘memoriter’. This ‘old document’, therefore, does not seem to have been available at the time that the ordinances were entered into the register of Silvester de Gigli. It is difficult therefore to know how reliable this entry in de Gigli’s register is. We should consider the possibility that the text of the detailed provisions was compiled in 1513 on the basis of the text of the  ordinances of the foundation of the Bristol Kalendars’ Library, which are in Carpenter’s register and would therefore have been available to the compiler of the material in the later register. The close parallels between the documents could be explained by dependence of the Carnary document on the Kalendars’ ordinances. If this analysis suggests that we may know rather less about the detailed provisions for the Carnary Library than we have thought, further analysis of the material also adds to our knowledge of the foundation and in particular of the relation of the foundation, and the  textual record of it, to Carpenter’s administration of his diocese. Robert Inkberrow, the person so central to Henry Lewis’s testimony and to establishing the authority of the material in the Carnary ordinances, was, as Lewis testified, registrar to John Carpenter. He was appointed in 1469 and served Carpenter as registrar and subsequently principal registrar until the bishop’s death in 1476.27 Citing the registrar as authority for the veracity of the document was of a piece with the role of registrar, since the registrar recorded, curated and signed documents as well as acting for the bishop in many ways.28 This role is eloquently expressed by Inkberrow in the record of his appointment as registrar, which, being written in the first person in Carpenter’s register, gives the appearance that he wrote it himself, as if he were, as it were, authorising his own authorization.29 There may have been other reasons for why Lewis cited Inkberrow, in addition to his being, as registrar, a recognized recorder and conserver of authoritative institutional memory. As archivist and record-keeper for the bishop his role would have included, it is reasonable to assume, keeping custody of the bishop’s copy of the Carnary 26

I have not been able to identify Henry Lewis further. Haines, ‘Aspects’, p. 22 lists the known registrars. 28 For the increased importance of the role of registrar in the fifteenth century, see Haines, ‘Aspects’, p. 22. 29 WAAS, Reg. Carpenter, I, fol. 237v (new pagination, p. 482). 27

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Wendy Scase Library catalogue and overseeing the annual stock-checking on his behalf. A further link between Inkberrow and the library is attested by his will. In 1503 Robert Inkberrow bequeathed two books to the Carnary library, a ‘book of provincial constitutions called Lynwode’ and a ‘book called vienna’.30 That he made a bequest to the Carnary strengthens the inference that, however convenient it was, Robert Inkberrow’s knowledge of, and interest in, the traditions of the Carnary Library were not purely invention on the part of Henry Lewis. It appears that Inkberrow, by virtue of the office of registrar with its extensive delegated powers and responsibilities, had played some kind of role in administering the foundation and perhaps his legacy indicated that he publicly supported, or even had been influential in shaping, the aims and ideology of the foundation. I shall develop this suggestion below when I discuss wider contexts for these foundations. Inkberrow’s will is also evidence that some of the provisions for the Carnary set out in the 1513 document were believed by him, a decade or so earlier than the ordinances were entered in de Gigli’s register, to be operative. He stipulates that the books he bequeaths to the library shall be chained (‘cathenent’) and shall remain in the library in perpetuity (‘Remaneant in librario carnarie Wigorniensis ibidem perpetue Remanere’). Of course, the practice of chaining to prevent the taking away, loss and even theft of books was not at all exceptional. Neil Ker’s study of parish libraries has 103 records of libraries in England where books were chained and Ker states that the practice was ‘common’.31 P. R. Robinson’s study of medieval London parish libraries provides numerous examples of references to chaining of books in wills and inventories.32 However, as registrar Inkberrow would of course have had access to the Kalendars’ Library ordinances and could have formed his idea of the practices appropriate to the Carnary on that basis. Possibly his reference to the formulation also found in the Kalendars’ ordinances in his will is evidence that he continued to play a role in shaping and disseminating the practices and ideas associated with the Carnary library. 30

TNA, PROB 11/14. In his will, Robert Inkberrow is styled ‘clericus’ and rector of the parish church of St Swithun in Worcester. Nicholas Orme suggests that the latter book was probably a biblical commentary by Hugh of St Cher, often called Hugh of Vienne: Orme, Education and Society, p. 37. 31 N. R. Ker, A Directory of the Parochial Libraries of the Church of England and the Church in Wales, rev. M. Perkin (London, 2004), pp. 83–107 and p. 30. 32 P. R. Robinson, ‘A “Prik of concience cheyned”: The Parish Library of St Margaret’s, New Fish Street, London, 1472’, in The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya, ed. T. Matsuda, R. A. Linenthal and J. Scahill (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 209–22.

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Bishop John Carpenter’s Carnary Library The Carnary Library is not mentioned in Neil Ker’s Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, and no surviving book can be definitely associated with the foundation.33 Inkberrow’s donations are the only references we have to titles of volumes held at (or at least, destined for) the Carnary Library. In the next part of this essay I propose to review other evidence from which we might infer something of the holdings of the library and in particular to consider a recent suggestion concerning the possible identification of survivals from the Carnary Library on the basis of the evidence that they were probably chained. Fifty-seven books with chaining marks associated with Worcester Cathedral survive. In his catalogue of the medieval books of Worcester Cathedral, R. M. Thomson suggests that these chained Worcester books may have belonged to the Carnary.34 I shall examine this suggestion by investigating the Worcester books that carry evidence of chaining. The foundation documents tell us that John Carpenter deposited ‘certos libros’ in the library. The titles and nature of the volumes are not specified, but we can infer from the duties of the chaplain something of the resources that must have been provided. As I argued above, the evidence for those duties for the first fifty years of the foundation is not as secure as we have thought. But the text of the ordinances of 1513 suggests that the stipulations for preaching and explaining uncertain points of scripture were held to apply then. Explaining points of the Old and New Testaments and lecturing must have required some biblical glosses. Preaching at the cemetery cross would have required access to preaching materials, perhaps preachers’ handbooks containing exempla and florilegia or even model sermons. And celebrating Mass would have required service books. These inferences provide some guide to the kind of material we may be looking for. It would, of course, be very exciting if the fifty-seven Worcester books with chaining marks could be identified with those at the Carnary. So how far does Thomson’s suggestion conform with what we can deduce about at least some of the volumes in the collection? Thomson suggests that ‘Nothing could be more likely than that the cathedral priory should have been asked to contribute some of its books, perhaps duplicates, to form at least the basis of the Library in the Carnary Chapel’.35 We know that John Carpenter expected the 33

N. R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, 2nd edn (London, 1964). No surviving books can be securely linked with the Kalendars’ Library either: Orme, ‘Bristol Library’, p. 215. 34 A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts in Worcester Cathedral Library, ed. R. M. Thomson with M. Gullick (Cambridge, 2001), pp. xxxiv–xxxv. 35 Ibid., p. xxxv.

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Wendy Scase c­ ollection of books in the library to grow. His specification for how new accessions were to be treated suggests how growth was envisaged; the ordinances say what must happen, ‘quotiens contingat aliquem librum eidem librarie qualitercumque legari donari seu assignari’ (‘whenever it happens that any book comes to the library by any means, whether it be bequeathed, donated, or assigned’). Bequest and donation are exemplified by Inkberrow’s and Carpenter’s gifts to the library. According to Neil Ker the word ‘assignari’ was used in relation to books in friars’ libraries when a book was ‘assigned’ to a particular friar. Clearly this meaning cannot be relevant here. But it was also used when a book was assigned a particular place within a collection.36 Thomson’s suggestion that the Carnary books were assigned from the priory’s collection would seem to fit with this expected mode of acquisition of books for the library. Allocation of priory books to the Carnary might in principle conform with the ‘assignation’ of books to a particular part of a collection. Several of the books that bear chaining marks display traces of acquisition and use by Worcester monks. Worcester Cathedral, MS F. 62, for example, an early fourteenth-century Summa Confessorum by John of Freiburg, carries an inscription that records that the book belongs to St Mary’s Worcester through the offices of Henry Fouke, monk of Worcester, who bought it from Worcester monk Richard Bromwich, formerly prior of Abergavenny, for twenty shillings (fol. 1).37 Thomson detects the hands or other traces of many other Worcester monks in the books (seventy-two in all): for example the name Richard Lichfield, a monk at Worcester from 1412, is found in Worcester Cathedral, MS F. 61.38 But it is not clear from the other evidence of the foundation that the Carnary books were considered to be part of the priory’s collection. The Carnary Library books do not seem to have been intended specifically for the use of the monks. Nor is it easy to see why chained books such as Worcester Cathedral, MSS F. 62 and F. 67 would have acquired the distinctive labels of c. 1530 that bear tables of contents and are distinctive of Worcester books, unless, as Thomson suggests, the monks retrieved items assigned to the Carnary once the collection had begun to grow.39 According to Thomson, certain physical features of the surviving chained books in the Worcester Cathedral collection suggest that the practice of chaining ceased after the end of the fifteenth century: 36

Ker, Medieval Libraries, p. 326. Detail illustrated in Thomson, Descriptive Catalogue, pl. 37(b) and cf. the catalogue entry on p. 39. 38 Ibid., pp. xix, 38. 39 Ibid., pp. xxxv, xxxvii, and pl. 20. Thomson lists 162 examples of the characteristic vellum labels. 37

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Bishop John Carpenter’s Carnary Library ‘the evidence of overcovers and pastedowns indicates that chaining was abandoned after c.  1500’.40 But Robert Inkberrow’s will of 1503 directs that the books he bequeaths to the library are to be chained. Furthermore, the foundation ordinances of 1513 include clear directions concerning chaining. Since books that entered the library in the early sixteenth century were expected to be chained, this suggests that any books acquired at that time, at least, are not now numbered among the surviving Worcester Cathedral volumes. The 1513 ordinances for the Carnary stipulate that the books in the library shall be ‘depensis et deponendis’.41 I take it that ‘depensis’ might mean ‘hanging’, i.e., suspended. If so, possibly chains were attached to a rail that ran along the top of a desk upon which the chained books lay and could be opened and consulted, and the chain was attached to the book in a particular place. We would expect a book that was described as hanging, and so resting on a lectern, to have been chained at the top of the front board. Only fifteen or sixteen of the fifty-seven Worcester books with chaining marks had a staple in this position.42 A related problem with Thomson’s hypothesis is that the Worcester books with chain marks seem to have been chained according to various different storage systems. Given that chaining was to be carried out by and for the Carnary Library, one would have expected that the books would all have been chained in the same way. In his study of chained libraries, Streeter describes several systems of chaining.43 The Worcester volumes seem to have been chained in ways consistent with several of these different systems. Three Worcester volumes were chained at the top of the back board44 and the other Worcester volumes that bear traces of chaining were chained at the foot of the front or back board,45 or, in one instance, in the middle of the back board.46 It is not clear that all of these books could have come from a single collection described as ‘hanging’. Finally, the Worcester books with chaining marks do not obviously correspond with what we know of the contents of the Carnary books. There is no evidence that any were owned by John Carpenter. None 40

Ibid., p. xxxv. WAAS, Reg. Silvester de Gigli, I, fol. 134r (new pagination, p. 257). 42 Worcester Cathedral Library, MSS F. 11, F. 32, F. 53, F. 57, F. 60 (?), F. 67, F. 79, F. 81, F. 83, F. 84, F. 108, F. 109, Q. 7, Q. 21, Q. 23, Q. 51. 43 B. H. Streeter, The Chained Library: A Survey of Four Centuries in the Evolution of the English Library (London, 1931). 44 Worcester Cathedral Library, MSS F. 20, F. 76, F. 77. 45 Chain marks at foot of front board: Worcester Cathedral Library, MSS F. 31, F. 62, F. 107, Q. 27, Q. 70 (?); chain marks at foot of back board: F. 8, F. 28, F. 39, F. 52, F. 55, F. 69, F. 71, F. 101, F. 124, F. 143, F. 167, Q. 16, Q. 48, Q. 66, Q. 69. 46 Worcester Cathedral Library, MS F. 21. 41

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Wendy Scase c­ontains Hugh of St Cher or Lyndwood, the books bequeathed by Robert Inkberrow. (Indeed there is no copy of either work in any of the surviving Worcester manuscripts, with or without chain marks.) Many of the Worcester books with chain marks could have been used for the activities of preaching, lecturing and explication of the bible with which the master of the library was tasked. But though extensive annotation in many of the volumes is evidence of active use, the annotating hands look, or identifiably are, pre-fifteenth century (e.g., Worcester Cathedral, MSS F. 11, F. 32, F. 67, F. 77). In F. 76, a gloss of Genesis, names dated by Thomson to the sixteenth century occur, but so does a vernacular verse line (not noticed by Thomson), ‘where ys the man that . . .’ (fol. 156r). This late, informal annotation seems to suggest uses of the volume far removed from those intended for the Carnary books. Thomson’s hypothesis that some of the Carnary books may survive among the volumes now associated with the cathedral priory looks improbable therefore, and Thomson’s implied assumption that we should look to relations between the priory and the chapel to understand the Carnary Library does not appear to be borne out. But it is also worth considering links in other directions and trying to place Carpenter’s foundations in wider contexts. One wider context is provided by the foundation of the Guildhall Library. As we have seen, the Guildhall Library has been recognized as the probable model for Carpenter’s foundations in Worcester and Bristol. In previous studies the link has largely been discussed in terms of the personal connection between the two John Carpenters. In his essay on the Kalendars’ Library, for example, Nicholas Orme notes: in 1425 another John Carpenter, clerk to the corporation of London, took a leading part in opening the Guildhall Library in London, a library chiefly of theology, kept by two priests, and open to the public. The bishop knew his namesake the clerk, and seems to have based his libraries at Bristol and Worcester on the Guildhall model.47

Beyond noticing that the two John Carpenters were acquainted, Orme does not explore the connection between the two men and their library foundations any further. There is, however, a fair amount of evidence for how Carpenter’s initiatives may have been shaped and have acquired their particular characteristics. The foundation of the Guildhall Library was one of the projects carried out by John Carpenter the Common Clerk as executor of the wills of two mercers: Richard Whittington, lord mayor of London, who died in 1423, and William Bury. Carpenter and the other executors were 47

Orme, ‘A Bristol Library for the Clergy’, p. 210.

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Bishop John Carpenter’s Carnary Library to use Whittington’s estate for the good of his soul, but the manner in which they did so was largely left to their discretion.48 It appears that the library at the Guildhall was founded on Carpenter’s initiative and that Carpenter managed the foundation until his death.49 The two Carpenters are associated in 1441 when the king granted them Theobald’s manor in Cheshunt.50 The purpose of the grant was to provide income for the hospital of St Anthony, where the future bishop was master. In the same year, the future bishop set up a free grammar school at St Anthony’s hospital; the hospital of St Benet Fink, the parish church next door, was appropriated to endow the school.51 The future bishop became directly involved in the Common Clerk’s library initiatives when he served as executor for his will, dated the same year. The Common Clerk directed that any of his books not specifically mentioned in his will were to be given to the Guildhall Library. Volumes selected were to be placed and chained there by his executors ‘for the profit of the students there, and those discoursing to the common people’.52 The future bishop was the lead executor and it is reasonable to assume that in that capacity he would have been closely associated with the choice of books for the library and with arranging to have them chained and placed there. Thanks to recent research by Linne Mooney and Estelle Stubbs we now know a great deal more about the literary role and activities of John Carpenter the Common Clerk and the Guildhall.53 The common clerk was a paid officer of the Guildhall who maintained the archives of the courts held there and, from the early fifteenth century, took on the role of city archivist. He was also permitted to serve as petition- and letter-writer on behalf of city companies and individuals.54 On the basis of palaeographical analysis of Carpenter’s scribal work, Mooney and Stubbs have recently suggested that Carpenter was the copyist of three manuscripts of Middle English poetry: two of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis and one of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde.55 Carpenter is one of several scribes associated with the Guildhall whom Mooney and Stubbs 48

R. Smith, ‘The Library at the Guildhall in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, The Guildhall Miscellany 1 (1952), 3–9 (pp. 3–4). 49 Bowscher et al., The London Guildhall, I, 208. 50 Brewer, Memoir of the Life and Times of John Carpenter, p. 52. 51 Orme, Medieval Schools, p.  235; A. F. Leach, The Schools of Medieval England (London, 1915), p. 261. 52 Brewer, Memoir of the Life and Times of John Carpenter, pp. 143–4. 53 Mooney and Stubbs, Scribes and the City, pp. 86–106. 54 Ibid., p. 8. 55 Ibid., pp. 86–106. The Gower manuscripts are Philadelphia, Rosenbach Museum and Library, MS 1083/29 and Cambridge University Library, MS Dd.8.19 and the Troilus is New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.817.

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Wendy Scase have identified as copyists of vernacular poetry. Mooney and Stubbs suggest on the basis of this evidence that the Guildhall was a centre for the production and storing of copies of vernacular manuscripts. We have, therefore, in close proximity, two novel enterprises associated with the dissemination of books, both of them closely associated with John Carpenter the Common Clerk: an enterprise devoted to the dissemination of books by means of the new library, and an enterprise devoted to the collection and production of vernacular books. The question of the relationship between the Guildhall Library project and the project of disseminating vernacular literature described by Mooney and Stubbs remains to be fully investigated. One form of relationship could have been the deposit of the vernacular books copied by the Guildhall clerks in the library. Mooney and Stubbs note one small possible piece of evidence for such a relation. A fragment of Chaucer’s Troilus in the collection of William Cecil that was copied by another Guildhall scribe could be a survival from the Guildhall Library books, since Cecil was responsible for removing the collection from the library at its dissolution.56 As master of St Anthony’s, the future Bishop Carpenter already figured among an elite of secular clergy in high-profile positions in the city of London. The Common Clerk was associated with many of these clerics and the future bishop’s association with him can only have made these connections stronger. Those nominated in Carpenter’s will to select books for the Guildhall Library were two such men: William Lichfield and Reginald Pecock. Pecock’s innovative ideas concerning the provision of vernacular books for the laity – and his associated conviction for heresy – are well known. There is a direct connection with the bishop’s own foundations, in that the first chaplain appointed at the Kalendars’ Library was John Harlow, recently found guilty of supporting Pecock.57 As executor of the Common Clerk’s will, if not otherwise, the future bishop also came into contact with at least one other person who was involved with new kinds of book charity in London: John Colop, to whom the Common Clerk bequeathed 20s.58 Colop was a prime mover in a scheme to make books more widely available in the city by means of an initiative that used estates to fund the production of new volumes of vernacular literature. Surviving examples bear inscriptions that identify them as common-profit books, i.e., volumes not owned by an individual but made available for circulation.59 We 56

Mooney and Stubbs, Scribes and the City, p. 106. Orme, ‘A Bristol Library for the Clergy’, p. 213. 58 Brewer, Memoir of the Life and Times of John Carpenter, p. 100. 59 Scase, ‘Reginald Pecock, John Carpenter and John Colop’s “Common-profit” Books’. 57

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Bishop John Carpenter’s Carnary Library do not know how these books were exchanged by readers. An informal arrangement cannot be ruled out, but equally it is possible that some kind of more formal arrangement along the lines of a library was in place or at least envisaged, though it would presumably have had to have been a rather different arrangement from a chained library. Bishop John Carpenter, therefore, potentially had available to him a number of models for the provision of books to inform his own foundations. The role played by the Common Clerk John Carpenter in the foundation and management of the Guildhall Library might illuminate further the role of Robert Inkberrow in respect of Bishop Carpenter’s Carnary Library. As archivist, scribe and record keeper, the bishop’s registrar Inkberrow played a role in respect of the bishop and diocese somewhat parallel to that played by the Common Clerk for the mayor and aldermen of the city of London. Carpenter’s first appointee at Worcester, as well as being a graduate, may also have served as a clerkadministrator of some kind for, as we have seen, he was styled William Skryvener ‘alias’ Hurley.60 The role played by the clerks at the Guildhall may have suggested to Bishop Carpenter the use of diocesan administrators and scribes for developing and supervising the library. Whether Inkberrow or Hurley extended their hands to copying books as well as supporting the Carnary Library, like their counterparts in the Guildhall, and whether vernacular books found their way into their library must remain, for now, unanswered questions.

60

WAAS, Reg. Carpenter, I, fol. 167v (new pagination, p. 342).

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The Bishops and the Printers: Henry VII to Elizabeth Felicity Heal

The archbishop and his printer Matthew Parker, Elizabeth’s first archbishop of Canterbury, was in love with antiquities. He was also more than half in love with the political and cultural power of printing. Print offered him the possibilities of winning friends and influencing people, promoting the interests of the fledgling Church of England, and displaying his personal engagement with early British history. Elizabeth Evenden’s study of John Day, the Protestant printer, has revealed how crucial it was for this erudite archbishop to have the resources of the press at his command.1 Their relationship evolved in the 1560s and was consolidated by Day’s printing of Ælfric’s A Testimonie of Antiquitie (1566 or 7) and his development of Anglo-Saxon characters for this and for William Lambarde’s edition of early law codes, Archaionomia (1568).2 Parker financed the new font necessary to print these works, but it was Day whose technical skills ensured their effective presentation, the general accuracy of the print and hence much of the authority of these evidences from the distant national past. The success of these projects encouraged Parker to become a more active patron of the printer, explicitly deploying Day’s books as artefacts in the struggle to win active support for the Protestant bishops. So he initiated a series of presentation copies of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, The Bishops’ Bible and Christian Praiers and Meditations and The Whole Workes of Tyndale, Frith and Barnes, whose frontispieces were elaborately coloured, and then elegantly bound, designed to be given to  1

E. Evenden, Patents, Pictures and Patronage: John Day and the Tudor Book Trade (Aldershot, 2008).  2 Ælfric, A Testimonie of Antiquitie Shewing the Auncient Fayth in the Church of England Touching the Sacrament of the Body and Bloude of the Lord here Publikely Preached . . . above 600 Yeares Agoe (London, J. Day, ?1566). W. Lambard, Archaionomia sive de Priscis Anglorum Legibus (London, J. Day, 1568).

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The Bishops and the Printers the queen and key members of court and council. The work of colouring and binding was undertaken at Lambeth, and by 1572 Day had established a private press there, the purpose of which ­primarily to produce Parker’s own De antiquitate Britannicae ecclesiae et privilegiis ecclesiae Cantuariensis – the history of the see of Canterbury from St Augustine to his own time.3 Presentation and personal copies of De antiquitate survive in the Bodleian, in Cambridge and in the British Library, the one for the queen beautifully bound in dark green velvet and illuminated.4 All were illustrated with the arms of earlier archbishops and with a frontispiece of the arms of the first generation of Elizabethan bishops (see fig. 1). In a letter to Lord Burghley accompanying a presentation copy of De antiquitate Parker referred to his ‘ambitious fantasy in setting out our church’s arms in colours’ inserted loose into the copy, so that Burghley could remove and burn it if he so desired. The text, Parker declared, remained essentially private, printed ‘(yet reserved to myself)’, to ‘go abroad’ only if it was favoured by Burghley.5 It did, of course, go abroad in two editions, but Parker’s skilled printer, with the ‘drawers and cutters, painters, limners, writers and bookbinders’ in his employment at Lambeth created a unique gift-offering to the great for the defence of the Church’s interest. All of this was serious as well as politically astute. Parker patronized men of learning who could assist the Church, and ensured that their work reached a knowledgeable public. In his own copy of De antiquitate, still at Lambeth, he listed the printed projects he had supported. In addition to the texts already mentioned he sponsored John Stow who assisted him in editing Matthew Paris’ Chronica maiora and Thomas Walsingham’s Ypodigma Neustriae, and he gave his chaplain Josselin the task of editing Gildas’s De excidio.6 In so doing he regularly turned to Day as his favoured printer, but accepted the assistance when necessary of Day’s arch-rival Reyner Wolfe, who had the patent to print

 3

M. Parker, De antiquitate Britannicae ecclesiae et privilegiis ecclesiae Cantuariensis cum Archiepiscopis eiusdem 70 (London, J. Day, 1572; 2nd edn, 1574). Evenden, Patents and Patronage, pp. 105–17. See also M. Aston, ‘The Bishops’ Bible Illustrations’, in The Church and the Arts, ed. D. Wood, Studies in Church History 28 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 267–85.  4 Elizabeth’s copy is BL shelfmark C.24.b.8, and there is another BL copy given to Lord Arundel, shelfmark C.24.b.7.  5 Correspondence of Matthew Parker D.D, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. J. Bruce and T. T. Perowne (Cambridge, 1853), p.  425. The copy survives as Sel.3.229 in Cambridge University Library.  6 D. J. Crankshaw and A. Gillespie, ‘Matthew Parker’, ODNB.

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Felicity Heal

Fig. 1  Frontispiece of Parker’s De antiquitate (1572). Oxford, Bodleian Library, A.19.9.Th. Reproduced by ­permission of the Bodleian Libraries, the University of Oxford.

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The Bishops and the Printers all manner of works in Latin, and Wolfe’s successor Henry Bynneman.7 Parker and his advisors were clearly well-informed about the London print trade and used it to their advantage. The royal printer Richard Jugge was an active promoter of the 1568 Bishops’ Bible, and the archbishop was determined that he should have the profit. ‘Sir’, he wrote to Cecil, ‘he hath well deserved to be preferred: a man would not think he had devoured [sic] so much pain as he hath sustained’.8 Even though John Day towered above others after he had printed the editions of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, his strong sense of the importance of a commercial project, and his propensity to take on too many commitments, made alternatives useful. When Parker deemed it worthwhile to have a short printed record of three enthronement feasts he had discovered in the course of his researches on ecclesiastical history, he used John Cawood, one of the royal printers.9 It scarcely seems surprising that an archbishop of Canterbury, operating more than ninety years after the introduction of printing in England, should also make extensive use of the press for the quotidian activity of church government. Proclamations, advertisements and special sets of authorized prayers supplemented the key books of bible, common prayer and homilies, ordained to be purchased for every church. Reyner Wolfe printed one of the most enduring of these orders when Parker produced a broadsheet of the so-called ‘prohibited degrees’ of consanguinity: ‘An Admonition to all suche as shall intende hereafter to enter the state of matrimony’.10 This was still being reprinted as a separate broadsheet into the late seventeenth century. The archbishop also made extensive use of printed visitation articles (again the work of Wolfe), covering both his own diocese of Canterbury and some of the occasions when he acted as metropolitan visitor. Versions survive for 1563, 1567, and 1573, and though they do not seem to have separate injunctions attached to them, the archbishop was always at pains to ensure that parishes had copies of the 1559 royal injunctions as their key reference text for discipline.11  7

E. G. Duff, A Century of the English Book Trade (London, 1948), pp. 71–2; A Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers, 1557–1640, ed. R. B. McKerrow (London, 1910), p. 60.  8 Correspondence of Parker, ed. Bruce and Perowne, p. 337.  9 O quantum in rebus inane intronizatio Wilhelmi Warham, Archiepiscopi Cantuar. (London, J. Cawood, ?1570). 10 An Admonition to all Suche as Shall Intende Hereafter to Enter into the State of Matrimony Godly and Agreably to Lawes (London, R. Wolfe, 1571). It is frequently ordered by episcopal injunctions to be displayed in a convenient place in the church. 11 Articles to be Enquired of in the Visitation of the . . . Archebyshop of Canterbury (London, R. Wolfe, 1563); Articles to be Enquired of within the Dioces of Norwiche,

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Felicity Heal The printing press had of course long been the necessary means of disseminating the key texts of religious reform, doctrinal statements and the disciplinary documents necessary to implement the royal will in the localities. By the 1560s most English parish churches were equipped with bibles, books of common prayer, psalters and homilies; academic inventories routinely show the works of Luther, Calvin and Bullinger alongside the usual intellectual fare of the Fathers and the classics.12 But, as Andrew Pettegree has shown, the trajectory of print development in England is markedly different from that of Continental Europe. Caxton’s early achievements were not matched by his successors: the market for vernacular books remained relatively small, printing of crucial Latin books for a scholarly readership failed to develop fully, and the absence of indigenous sources of paper restricted levels of production.13 Historians have given much thought to how this affected the process of religious change, especially to issues associated with the printing of works in English overseas, but less to the specific issue of how the leaders of the Church used the process of publication during the Reformation. There was no Luther or Calvin intent on directing every tract as the prime tool of evangelization: yet the bishops had to strive for both instruction and uniformity, and gradually to develop ways of doing so through the medium of print.14 To consider how they did this it is necessary to pursue several interconnected themes: first, how the bishops as spiritual leaders used the printers to disseminate their own writing; second how far they encouraged and promoted the writing of others to promote approved religious belief; third, what specific roles they played in support of official printing of the key texts of the Reformation; and finally how they utilized print in bringing ­discipline and control to their own dioceses. The article will ­endeavour

in the Metropoliticall Visitation (London, R. Wolfe, 1567); Articles to be Enquired of Within the Dioces of Canterbury (London, R. Wolfe, 1573). 12 See R. Hutton, ‘The Local Impact of the Tudor Reformations’, in The English Reformation Revised, ed. C. Haigh (Cambridge, 1987), pp.  114–38 (pp.  124–5) for acquisition in Edward VI’s reign. We will have more systematic evidence for the later period after the publication of John Craig’s study of parochial book ownership. E. Leedham-Green, Books in Cambridge Inventories, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1986), II, pp. 160–3, 172–80, 507–13. 13 A. Pettegree, ‘Printing and the Reformation: the English Exception’ in The Beginnings of English Protestantism, ed. P. Marshall and A. Ryrie (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 157–79. 14 The close relationship between the great reformers and their printers is particularly well exemplified by Gilmont in his study of Calvin: J-F. Gilmont, John Calvin and the Printed Book, trans. K. Maag, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 72 (Kirksville, 2005), esp. pp. 181–207.

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The Bishops and the Printers to consider all of these themes, though its central concerns are the publications of the bishops themselves and the use made of print in their sees.

Prelates and printing before the break with Rome Natalia Nowakowska has demonstrated that there was an extraordinarily broad initiative among late fifteenth century prelates to use the press to promote liturgical reform. She identified over a hundred breviaries and missals sponsored and usually funded by bishops from fiftytwo different dioceses across Europe.15 In this lengthy list of revised and refurbished liturgies England features only once. In 1500 Cardinal Morton, as archbishop of Canterbury, sponsored Richard Pynson, to revise and print a missal ‘according to the use of Sarum’.16 Even this example of official support for a more standardized form of worship was left without much overt evidence of episcopal input. The book is badged with the arms of the archbishop and has another frontispiece with the royal arms, but, unlike many of the Continental imprints, Morton provided no preface to explain why he funded the project. We must assume that the sort of top-down reform through printing that appealed to so many prelates in Germany and the Low Countries was of less importance in England. After 1500 the relatively large market for printed missals was met overwhelmingly by French and Flemish production of volumes of Sarum Use.17 There is, however, one small-scale initiative that approximates more closely to the Continental examples. Richard Fox, bishop of Winchester, translated the Rule of St Benet and had it printed in 1517 for the benefit of nuns, explicitly using the press because ‘we wolde not that there shulde be any lacke amongis them of the bokis of this sayd translation’.18 Fox used the authority of his office to ‘cause’ Pynson to print, and had the frontispiece stamped twice with his personal badge of the pelican in its piety. 15

N. Nowakowska, ‘From Strassburg to Trent: Bishops, Printing and Liturgical Reform in the Fifteenth Century’, Past and Present 213 (2011), 3–39. 16 Missale secundum usum ecclesie Sarum Anglicane (London, R. Pynson, 1500). 17 The most distinctive example in the island of Britain, which parallels those cited by Nowakowska, is the breviary printed by Bishop Elphinstone of Aberdeen in 1509, which reformed Scottish worship and made its calendar distinct from the English uses: Breviarii Aberdonensis ad per celebris ecclesie Scotorum usum pars hyemalis (Edinburgh, W. Chepman, 1509). 18 Here Begynneth the Rule of Seynt Benet, trans. R. Fox (London, R. Pynson, 1517), sig. Aiiv. The bishop states explicitly that the idea of translation came from nuns in his Winchester diocese.

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Felicity Heal The difficulty of production for ecclesiastics is explained partly by the small scale of the English printing industry during Henry VII’s reign. But when printers were assured of sales they could act decisively enough. Caxton was already printing broadsheet indulgences on behalf of the papal commissary as early as 1476, and the trade continued until the crisis of Church and State under Henry VIII.19 A characteristic example from Lancashire was found by Robert Swanson as part of his investigation of indulgences. It is a grant from Sixtus IV for the support of the Knights Hospitaller defending Rhodes – issued in this case to one John Hawardyne in 1480–1.20 The Hawardyne indulgence was part of a mass-produced run: many fragments survive and some seem to be unsold copies not used because of the time-limitation on the pardon. Some speculative calculations by Robert Swanson and Christopher de Hamel suggest that 3000 such documents could be produced in a day if two printers were involved, as it seems John Lettou was with Caxton. Thereafter it seems to have been routine for the papal collectors such as Giovanni de Gigli to have indulgences printed: in 1489 de Gigli ordered his sub-collectors to take printed forms from him as needed. In the years preceding the Reformation such printed indulgences sometimes took on a more localist form: Bishop Longland and Cardinal Wolsey jointly issued an indulgence for the repair of Rickmansworth church and in about 1527 Richard Pynson printed for Wolsey a special indulgence for those who prayed for the royal family.21 The Guild of St Mary, Boston had been using its unique powers of indulgence to issue printed forms from at least 1504, and in 1523 Thomas Cromwell, as their agent, asked Pynson for no less than 4000 printed letters and briefs.22 This was ephemera, but on a formidable scale. So the limited nature of print production provides only a partial explanation for the bishops’ general lack of engagement with the press. In the case of diocesan administration much may be explained by a combination of the sophisticated use of manuscript communication and the vested interest of those who controlled the administration 19

G. Rosser, ‘A Note on the Caxton Indulgence of 1476’, The Library 6th s. 7:3 (1985), 256–8. 20 R. N. Swanson, ‘Caxton’s Indulgence for Rhodes, 1480–81’, The Library 7th s. 5:2 (2004), 195–201. 21 T. Wolsey and J. Longland, Be it Knowen to All Cryste[n] People . . . (London, J. Skot, c.1525). P. Neville-Sington, ‘Press, Politics and Religion’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, III, 1400–1557, ed. L. Hellinga and J. B. Trapp (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 576–607 (pp. 583–4, 589). 22 A. J. Slavin, ‘The Gutenberg Galaxy and the Tudor Revolution’, in Print and Culture in the Renaissance, ed. G. P. Tyson and S. S. Wagenheim (Newark NJ, 1986), pp. 90–109.

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The Bishops and the Printers under the bishop’s chancellor. Diocesan enquiries at visitation and all subsequent administrative activity, could be conducted by tried and tested means. A notable example is the excellent record of visitations in the vast diocese of Lincoln under William Smith and John Longland, each apparently fully scribal.23 Here as elsewhere it is important to be aware that some ephemeral print communication has been lost, but there is nothing in the detailed surviving records to indicate that this was so. On the other hand, bishops did slowly begin to establish a presence in early print culture. The first to do so was John Alcock, bishop of Ely from 1486 to 1500. Alcock’s training was in law but he was unusual among his fellow prelates in being an active preacher.24 Between 1497 and his death five of these sermons appeared in print – all but one in English. They included a sermon to nuns about to take their vows, one on the feast of the boy bishop, and Mons perfectionis or the hylle of perfeccyon, printed by both Wynkyn de Worde and Richard Pynson. The Latin work is a homily addressed to the Ely clergy punningly titled for the bishop Gallicantus . . . in sinodo apud Bernwell.25 To ask who was behind the publications, and what their purpose was, is inevitably to speculate. We do know, however, that the first text, a sermon to the Carthusians of Coventry, was sponsored by the prior before whom it was preached. It may be that the printers themselves knew more about Alcock than other prelates: he had been instrumental in setting up the household of the young Prince Edward, son of Edward IV, at Westminster in the 1470s and is likely to have encountered Caxton and his workshop then. But even if the printers were willing to experiment with the sermons, they needed assurance of proper return, and it therefore seems most likely that the initiative came from the bishop himself or his circle. In the conclusion to Alcock’s sermon on a text from Luke 8 – ‘he that hath ears to hear let him hear’ – he pronounced:

23

Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1517–31, ed. A. H. Thompson, 3 vols., Lincoln Record Society 33, 35, 37 (1940–7). 24 For a more detailed discussion of Alcock’s activity see F. Heal, ‘The Bishops 1486–1559’, in The Bishops of Ely and their Diocese: 1109–2009, ed. P. Meadows (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 148–58. 25 J. Alcock, Desponsacio virginis xpristo. Spousage of a virgin to Christ (London, W. de Worde, 1497); In die Innocencium sermo pro episcopo puerorum (London, W. de Worde, ?1498); Mons perfeccionis: Otherwise in Englysshe, the Hyll of Perfecc[i] on (London, W. de Worde, 1496); Gallicantus Iohannis alcok epi Eliensis ad co[n] fratres suos curatos in sinodo apud Bernwell (London, R. Pynson, 1496). All except Gallicantus were reprinted, Mons perfeccionis several times. Alcock’s preaching was sufficiently famous that another tract, The Abbaye of the Holy Ghost, was wrongly attributed to him – first in recorded form by John Bale.

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Felicity Heal Friends . . . thyse wordes whiche you have herde by my symplenesse and by your materyall eeres, may be understoode also by your Inward eeres of your soule by true Intellecte and so put in execusyon.26

Alcock aimed at a wider audience, particularly focusing on the regular and secular clergy. His Gallicantus, though in sermon form, was primarily a set of injunctions to his diocesan clergy of the kind often issued by reforming bishops in synods. The printers offered one distinctive contribution to the process of stamping episcopal authority on these texts. Wynkyn de Worde prefaced several of his prints with an image of the bishop – generic rather than specific but nevertheless novel in English printing.27 The cut was provided for the first edition of Mons perfeccionis and thereafter used in further editions of that text and the Sermon on Luke. But de Worde was not very consistent in his use of his block and allowed several editions through without it. Pynson, who printed Gallicantus, showed far more awareness of the relationship between image and text with his special woodcut on the bishop preaching. The cut is so pertinent to the occasion that it has been suggested that the clergy turn away from their bishop to indicate hardness of heart and refusal to hear his moral lesson – a dominant theme of the sermon (see fig. 2).28 Even if this subtlety was lost on readers, it is surely important that Pynson could focus on the visual embodiment of the prelate as preacher. The distinctiveness of Alcock’s printed sermons has not been sufficiently stressed in the secondary literature.29 They predated by ten years the sustained campaign by Lady Margaret Beaufort to put John Fisher’s sermons into print, often taken as the point of departure for the relationship between bishops and the press. However, it must be acknowledged that Fisher’s treatise on the fruitful sayings of David differed from Alcock both in content – especially its sharper focus on scripture – and in presentation. Language and image left the reader in no uncertainty that this was a tract with royal sponsorship: it was ‘made and compyled . . . at the exortacyon and sterynge’ of the king’s mother, 26

J. Alcock, Sermon on Luke VIII (London, W. de Worde, 1497), sig. Dviiir. Nowakowska found visual depictions of bishops in six of her sample of studied  liturgical texts, though more (twelve) had coats of arms: ‘Strassburg to Trent’, p. 13. 28 J. Smith, ‘An Image of a Preaching Bishop in Late Medieval England: the 1498 Woodcut Portrait of Bishop John Alcock’, Viator 21 (1990), 301–22. 29 The only printed comparison that survives is an Easter sermon of Richard Fitzjames’s, printed around 1495, two years before he was elevated to the see of Rochester: R. Fitzjames, Sermo die lune in ebdomada Pasche (London, W. de Worde, ?1495). For a valuable comment on Alcock see A. Ward, ‘A Sermon for a Boy Bishop by John Alcock, Bishop of Ely’, Ephemerides Liturgicae 112 (1998), 58–62. 27

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Fig. 2  John Alcock preaching to his clergy. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. 1. Q. 5. 33 (frontispiece). Reproduced by ­permission of the Bodleian Libraries, the University of Oxford.

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Felicity Heal and featured her arms as frontispiece.30 His next English publication, his funeral sermon for Henry VII, was commissioned in the same way, and reaffirmed his loyalty to Lady Margaret, but offered a rather different visual message. Wynkyn de Worde used here for the first time a representation of the bishop preaching with the king’s corpse prone beneath him, an image so carefully constructed and detailed that it has been suggested it was taken from life (see fig. 3).31 De Worde certainly thought it was a valuable cut, because he re-used it, altering the foreground, for the month’s mind sermon on Lady Margaret herself. The woodcut was still available to be used for Fisher’s first anti-Lutheran sermon of 1521, now with the lower quadrant occupied by print. In the process Fisher is moved from being a key figure preaching devotedly above the memorials of royalty to himself being the commanding presence. The visual presentation of the bishop was more consistent than his rhetorical location on the title page – the month’s mind sermon carries no title page mention of Fisher, but by 1521 the printer placed his name and title in bold, endorsed ‘by the assignment’ of Cardinal Wolsey, and the papal legation in a deft display of orthodoxy.32 Fisher was intimately involved in the printing of the campaign against Luther. For example, his chaplain wrote to the archdeacon of Rochester urging him to get Wynkyn de Worde to put the 1521 sermon into print, telling him to ‘speke to Jhon Gowghe [de Worde’s assistant] to see it diligently done and trewly printed’.33 There is less evidence for the later English sermons challenging heresy, but they must all have met with the b ­ ishop’s endorsement.34

30

J. Fisher, This Treatyse Concernynge the Fruitful Saynges of David the Kynge and Prophete . . . (London, W. de Worde, 1509). 31 J. Fisher, This Sermon Folowynge was Compyled . . . by the Right Reverende Fader in God John Bysshop of Rochester (London, W. de Worde, 1509); Here After Foloweth a Mornynge Remembraunce of the Noble Prynces Margarete Countesse of Rychemonde (London, W. de Worde, 1509). 32 ‘Letters of Bishop Fisher, 1521–23’, ed. G. J. Gray, The Library, 3rd s. 4:4 (1913), 133–45 (p. 139); J. Fisher, The Sermon of Joh[a]n the Bysshop of Rochester Made Again the P[er]nicious Doctryn of Martin Luther w[ith]in the Octaves of the Asce[n]syo[n] by the Assygneme[n]t of the Moost Revere[n]d Fader i[n] God the Lord Thomas Cardynal of Yorke [and] Legate ex latere from our Holy Father the Pope (London, W. de Worde, 1521). 33 Robert Caly, who reprinted the 1521 sermon under Mary, recorded that it had been ‘written and put in print by the author’: A Sermon Very Notable, Fruictefull and Godlie, Made at Paules Crosse in London (London, R. Caly, 1556). 34 J. Fisher, A Sermon Made at Paulis . . . Concernynge Certayne Heretickes (London, T. Berthelet, ?1526); Here After Ensueth Two Fruytfull Sermons (London, W. Rastell and P. Treveris, 1532).

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Fig. 3  Bishop Fisher preaching at the burial of Henry VII. Oxford, Bodleian Library, 4o T 16 Th. BS (title page). Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Libraries, the University of Oxford.

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Felicity Heal Yet, while Fisher apparently readily presented his English sermons and writings to the London press, most of his Latin output was published on the Continent – in Cologne, Antwerp, Paris and Louvain. Sometimes this is explained by his direct intervention in doctrinal debates being conducted in other centres of learning: De unica Magdalena (1519) was published in Paris where there was current scholastic controversy about Mary Magdalene.35 His challenge to Lutheranism was conducted at home and abroad: Assertionis Lutheranae confutatio (1523) was published in Antwerp, and his later tracts in Cologne.36 The scale of production and ease of circulation for works which needed to intervene in the great controversies of the age made the great European printing centres Fisher’s logical choice. This raises, however, the question of whether he could have published at home effectively in the learned tongue. Language was a possible problem. The early printers did not really attempt to compete in the market for the classics, and presentational issues did arise in their handling of Latin. The Bodleian copy of Alcock’s Gallicantus, for example, has thirty-five linguistic corrections of the text in an early hand. But opportunities at home were increasing: Johann Siberch’s short-lived Cambridge press produced to a high standard in the early 1520s; was patronized by Fisher as chancellor of Cambridge; and had as one of its prints the Pace translation into Latin of the former’s 1521 sermon.37 A second example offers more insight into the possibilities and limitations of indigenous publication by the bishops before the break with Rome. Bishop Longland of Lincoln was one of the select group of prelates who was a distinguished preacher and a figure of some influence at court. His exposition on the Penitential Psalms and Lenten sermons, given before the king between 1519 and 1523, was published in 1527, and three of his occasional sermons were also printed in the same year.38 Both sets, with elegant Roman font and formal title pages, were printed in Latin, though the originals of the court sermons must have been in English. The bibliographic history of the books is complex: the key point is that there was a flurry of publication of the Latin texts under the aegis of Richard Pynson, but a significant delay before the final sermons of the 35

J. Fisher, De unica Magdalena, libri tres (Paris, Bade, 1519). R. Rex, The Theology of John Fisher (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 65–77. 36 J. Fisher, Assertionis Lutheranae confutatio (Antwerp, Hillenius, 1523). Rex, Theology, pp. 80–92. 37 J. Fisher, Contio quam anglice habuit reverendus pater Ioannes Roffensis Episcopus in celeberrimo nobilium conventu Londini, trans. R. Pace (Cambridge, J. Siberch, 1521). E. P. Goldschmidt, The First Cambridge Press in its European Setting (London, 1955). 38 J. Longland, Psalmus trisesimus septi. conciones expositivae (London, R. Pynson, ?1527); Psalmus sextus (London, R. Pynson, ?1527); Ioannis Longlondi Dei gratia Lincolnien[sis] Episcopi, tres conciones (London, R. Pynson, 1527).

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The Bishops and the Printers penitential cycle, which were not produced until 1532, and then under Robert Redman’s imprint.39 This clearly suggests that there were difficulties, financial or otherwise, associated with this ambitious project. The slow pace of production could reflect commercial considerations, or the difficulty of translating and setting such a lengthy set of tracts (they eventually reached 864 pages). But market of a kind there was, since most of the blocks of the psalms survive in eight to ten copies. The question is what (or who) prompted the investment in this accumulation of sermons delivered by a court preacher over nearly a decade. It is tempting to see the hand of Wolsey. All three of the occasional sermons link to the Cardinal – delivered at his legatine visitation in 1519; at the foundation of Cardinal College; and against Luther in 1527. But on Pynson’s title page William Warham is confidently identified as the midwife of the project. Moreover, a letter survives in the Lincoln archives in which Warham urged Longland to put his sermons ‘furthe to be redde openly to the profecte of many’. It was Longland’s duty, as he preached more sermons, ‘continually [to] putt them to prynte for the common prefecte’.40 The Penitential Psalms, on the other hand, carry a dedication to Henry VIII and a very explicit emphasis on their royal endorsement, and, of course, someone had laboured to render them into Latin. We might conjecture that, while the sermons both flattered Wolsey and were encouraged by Warham for their support of orthodoxy, Longland himself also valued them for another constituency. Longland’s self-presentation in his dedication to Henry was as the learned court preacher of a Renaissance monarch and, indeed, he had humanist credentials. He was a reasonably regular correspondent of Erasmus’s, and the latter discussed work on the psalms with him.41 Was Pynson persuaded to publish the Penitential Psalms as a ‘humanist’ venture, demonstrating the bishop’s intellectual credentials?

Preaching and propaganda after 1530 Prelates and the English print industry were therefore not strangers to one another before the 1530s, but there is an episodic quality about

39

J. Longland, Psalmus quinquagesimus conciones expositivae eiusdem Ioannis (London, R. Redman, 1532). J. Blench, ‘John Longland and Roger Edgeworth: Two Forgotten Preachers of the Early Sixteenth Century’, Review of English Studies n.s. 5 (1954), 123–43. 40 Longland, Tres conciones, title page. M. Bowker, The Henrician Reformation: the Diocese of Lincoln under John Longland, 1521–47 (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 11–12. 41 M. Bowker, ‘John Longland’, ODNB.

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Felicity Heal publications of sermons and homilies, and even more limited evidence that the press was utilized for communication within the Church. In these respects, as in so many others, the world began to change rapidly in the decade of the break with Rome. The drive came, of course, from a regime that needed to produce propaganda for internal and external consumption, and to enforce on its clergy a wholly new level of political discipline. Two leading clerics, Stephen Gardiner, already a bishop, and Edward Fox, were employed in the work of international propaganda. Fox’s Opus eximium, de vera differentia (1534) was the culmination of his contributions to the divorce campaign, and surely helped to secure him the bishopric of Hereford. Gardiner’s more famous De vera obedientia (1535) spoke explicitly to an incredulous Europe, as well as providing a test of his loyalty to the new order.42 Thomas Berthelet, the king’s printer, published both Latin texts in Roman type, as was conventional and necessary for readers beyond English, but the frontispieces of these two key works are interestingly different. Fox’s is anonymous, even in the 1538 second edition when he was bishop of Hereford; Gardiner’s tract is presented as the work of an orator. He is proclaimed in bold capitals ‘STEPHANI WINTON’ in Berthelet’s title page, typographically associated with his presentation of ancient orators such as Cicero. The form signalled the structure of the content. It also surely highlighted the issue of status: this was the oration of a senior and well-known (conservative) prelate, whose endorsement mattered in the international Church. Most of the bishops were not needed as international defenders of the regime: their more urgent task was the enforcement of conformity at home. At this point it occurred to some of the diocesans that the printers could help. John Longland, faced with the need to order preaching of the royal supremacy and the removal of the pope’s name from mass books in his vast diocese of Lincoln, arranged for a broadsheet, probably the work of John Byddell, to be printed for circulation.43 The mandate is particularly valuable because we have context in a letter from Longland to Cromwell written on 25 June 1535, in which he observes that all his clerks would not have time to copy the order swiftly so ‘I have caused twoo thousand of the same to be putt in prynte for the spedy and good setting forward therof’.44 He sought confirmation from Cromwell that it was acceptable to proceed in this way. It may be John Stokesley of

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Stephani Winton episcopi de vera obedientia oratio (London, T. Berthelet, 1535). S. Wabuda, ‘Bishop Longland’s Mandate to his Clergy, 1535’, The Library 6th s. 13:3 (1991), 256–9. 44 BL, Cotton MS Cleopatra E.VI, fol. 272r. 43

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The Bishops and the Printers London did much the same, telling the vicegerent that he had ‘affirmed and published’ all the king’s conclusions to his parishes.45 The injunctions of 1536 and 1538 presented a greater challenge to the bishops. Cromwell followed the model already established above and circulated printed letters in 1536, reaching down to the clergy of individual deaneries, the names left blank on the surviving copies. In 1538 this exercise was repeated, with the blanks reaching down to individual parish level.46 But by 1538 the bishops had had their jurisdiction restored after its earlier suspension under the vicegerency and this seems to have encouraged some of them to use print to reach out in their own visitations. Rowland Lee wrote to Cromwell saying that the injunctions he had prepared for Coventry and Lichfield had been sent to ‘Mr Bartlett the printer, to have them put in print if you approve them’.47 They were printed by Berthelet, though no original copy survives. The same is true of those of Archbishop Lee of York for 1538. Curates were ordered to have a copy within forty days of publication ‘And when the same shall be printed within six days after the same shall come to their knowledge.’48 The sole survivors are Nicholas Shaxton’s injunctions for the archdeaconry of Dorset. Printed by Byddell, they were in the usual way to be sold at his London shop, and also ‘at the closegate in Salisbury’, thereby making it easy for the clergy to purchase their required copy.49 These are unlikely to have been the only examples of the use of print: Wabuda suggests that in London diocese Bonner used the printers for the admonition to readers of the English Bible and, in the early 1540s, for circulation of recantations such as those of Thomas Becon, Nicholas Shaxton and Anne Askew.50 This underlines how ephemeral these print runs were, and how difficult it therefore is to trace novel use of the press by bishops and their officials. The bishops were not only required to orchestrate preaching campaigns and disciplinary activity in favour of the royal supremacy, they also had to preach themselves and through preaching to affirm their 45

TNA, SP 1/94, fol. 87r. The term published could, of course, just mean disseminated. 46 Neville-Sington, ‘Press, Politics and Religion’, pp. 591–2. In both 1536 and 1538 Berthelet was the publisher of the Injunctions. 47 LP, XIII(i), no. 1231. 48 Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, ed. W. H. Frere and W. A. Kennedy, 3 vols. (London, 1910), II, 14. 49 Injunctions Gyven by the Bysshop of Salysbury Throughout his Dioces (London, J. Byddell, 1538). 50 Wabuda, ‘Bishop Longland’s Mandate’, p. 256. The form in which these survive in Foxe’s Acts and Monuments strongly suggests an original printed record.

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Felicity Heal own identity with the new order. Cromwell as vicegerent in spirituals used the press enthusiastically to promote change, and expected his prelates to do the same. John Stokesley had the unusual courage to resist this pressure when he claimed that his extempore preaching of the royal supremacy was unsuitable for print.51 John Longland and Cuthbert Tunstall were both identified with essentially conservative positions in the 1530s, but as preachers before the king were unable to escape so lightly. Tunstall’s important Palm Sunday sermon of 1539 was given formal treatment at the hands of the royal printer; Longland’s two Good Friday sermons were printed by Thomas Petyt.52 In these cases we may assume that the bishops themselves were not necessarily eager to rush into print. A very different case is that of Hugh Latimer. Latimer was hot property during the heady years of reform, and his powerful attack on the failures of the clergy in convocation in 1536 swiftly went into print, to be followed by a translated version printed by Berthelet. The front page of the translation reads as an apologia for printing, offering that ‘thingis well said to a fewe, maye be understande of many, and do good to all that desire to be better’.53 Latimer himself was quite willing to engage with the printers, petitioning against Berthelet in 1537 that Thomas Gybson should have the right to publish the Bishops’ Book since he would ‘set it forth in a good letter and sell it good cheape, whereas others sell too dear, which lets many to buy’.54 This slightly naive intervention did not work: an accomplished printer like Berthelet must have spent sufficient time cultivating those at the centre of political power to ensure that his monopoly on key works such as this was maintained. But even Berthelet could not supply the needs of the Church in this new regime: the English language primer produced by John Hilsey, Fisher’s successor at Rochester, was published in large quantities by several London printers and publishers including John Waylande and Thomas Petyt.55 And, in the most famous case, Richard Grafton and

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TNA, SP 1/94, fol. 87r. J. Longland, A Sermo[n]d Spoken Before the Kynge his Maiestie at Grenwiche, upon Good Fryday (London, ?J. Mayler, 1536); A Sermonde Made Before the Kynge his Maiestye at Grenewiche, upon Good Frydaye (London, T. Petyt, 1538). 53 Concio quam habuit Reverendiss[ime] in Christo pater Hugo Latimer[us] ep[iscop]us Worcestri[a]e in co[n]ve[n]tu spiiritualiu[m] (London, J. Nicolas for J. Gough, 1537); The Sermon that the Reverende Father in Christ Hugh Latimer, Byshop of Worcester, Made to the Clergie in the Convocation (London, T. Berthelet, 1537/8). 54 LP, XII(ii), no. 295. 55 The Manual of Prayers or the Prymer in Englysh and Laten (London, J. Wayland, 1539). For the print history see C. Butterworth, The English Primers, 1529–45 (New York, 1952), pp. 190–1, 204–7. 52

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The Bishops and the Printers Edward Whitchurch as publishers of the Great Bible had to work in Paris to achieve a sufficient print run. In the years after the break with Rome there was of necessity increased engagement between the bishops and the London printers. Yet conflict remained between the needs of the Church, the capacity of the industry, and the commercial judgements of publishers. There were a few among the leading prelates of the mid-century who chose, like Fisher, to publish a very significant body of work on the Continent. Stephen Gardiner entered vigorously into debate with Martin Bucer in the 1540s, and logically chose to have his controversial writings published in centres like Louvain and Cologne. Several of Cuthbert Tunstall’s writings, among them his commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics and his De veritate corporis et sanguinis . . . Christi, were printed in Paris during Mary’s reign.56 Outside the ranks of the episcopate it is interesting to find that Peter Martyr Vermigli, the leading Protestant theologian in Oxford under Edward VI, risked sending his commentaries on Corinthians to Bullinger for printing in Switzerland. He did so because there ‘a godly and learned corrector’ could be employed to handle Greek and Hebrew as well as Latin.57 Bishops, like other authors, could be fastidious about their pet projects: when John Day, much later, published John Parkhurst’s poems, Ludicasive Epigrammata Iuvenilia (1571), the bishop moaned that London printers had no expertise in this field: ‘I know neither the printer, nor yet the corrector, which ought to be a good versifier’.58 This seems unreasonable in the light of Binns’s study of the care taken by correctors and compositors in the production of Latin books.59 Rather, commercial considerations, especially perhaps in the area of religious controversy, were paramount, as John Day told Parker ‘loth he and other printers be to printe any Lattin booke, because they will not here be uttered, and for that Bookes printed in England be in suspicion abroad’.60

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Stephani Winton, episcopi Angli, Ad Martinum Bucerum epistola (Louvain, J.  Sassenus, 1546); Ad Martinum Bucerum De impudente eiusdem Pseudologia conquestio (Cologne, M. van Neuss, 1545); C. Tunstall, Compendium et synopsis in decem libros Ethicorum Aristotelis (Paris, M. de Vascosan, 1554); De veritate corporis et sanguinis domini nostri Iesu Christi in eucharistia (Paris, M. de Vascosan, 1554). 57 Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, ed. H. Robinson, 2 vols., Parker Society 37–8 (Cambridge, 1847), II, 488–9. 58 The Letter Book of John Parkhurst, Bishop of Norwich, ed. R. A. Houlbrooke, Norfolk Record Society 43 (London, 1974), p.158. 59 J. Binns, ‘STC Latin Books: Evidence for Printing-House Practice’, The Library, 5th s. 32:1 (1977), 1–27. 60 Correspondence of Parker, ed. Bruce and Perowne, p. 411.

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Visitation articles and injunctions To trace the uncertain path towards the full use of the printing press it is necessary to return to the core episcopal duties of discipline and administration. Here there seems to be no consistent pattern of change under Henry VIII. Even Longland’s management of Lincoln was not wholly innovative: a few months after he had circulated his printed mandate, he was instructing his archdeacons to show the king’s order on preaching to the clergy, allowing every priest ‘to write them oute’.61 The inertial interests of diocesan officials no doubt inhibited rapid change. And little attempt was made to reach beyond the clergy as intermediaries, to address the laity directly, a process that would have increased the print runs for episcopal orders. For example Rowland Lee’s injunctions required only that all priests having cure of souls acquire a copy. This began to change with the articles and injunctions prepared for the Edwardian royal visitation of 1547. The orders were produced in multiple editions by Richard Grafton, now King’s Printer, the enquiries clearly reached down to the churchwardens and the injunctions were to be read twice a year in the churches.62 The logic was to follow the same path for episcopal visitation and the leaders of the Edwardian Reformation employed Grafton or Wolfe to print diocesan articles: Cranmer’s for Canterbury survive for 1548; those for Norwich sede vacante for 1549, and Ridley’s for London for 1550. John Taylor handled the problem of the large diocese of Lincoln by producing printed articles for his 1552 visitation.63 So few copies of each survive that we must assume there are lost prints as well.64 We should not, however, conclude 61

Lincoln Diocese Documents, ed. A Clark, EETS OS 149 (London, 1914), p. 196. Churchwardens’ accounts rarely list the purchase of the royal injunctions, even in parishes that are carefully compliant with the orders, but they are specifically mentioned at Pyrton in Oxfordshire and Bishops Stortford in Hertfordshire: The Churchwardens’ Accounts of Marston, Spelsbury and Pyrton, ed. F. W. Weaver and G. N. Clark, Oxford Record Society 6 (Oxford, 1925), p. 68; The Early Churchwardens’ Accounts of Bishops Stortford, 1431–1558, ed. S. G. Doree, Hertfordshire Record Society 10 (Ware, 1994), p. 290. 63 Articles to be Enquired of, in Visitacions to Bee Had, Within the Diocesse of Cantorbury (London, R. Grafton, 1548); Articles to be Enquired of in the Visitation of the Diocese of London (London, R. Wolfe, 1550); Articles to be Enquired of in the Visitacion of . . . Joh[a]n Bysshop of Lyncoln (London, R. Wyer, 1552). 64 For example, no print text has survived of Bishop Hooper’s very distinctive visitation of Worcester diocese, though Hooper had access to the short-lived printing press established by John Oswen at Worcester, and used him to print his Godly and Most Necessary Annotations in the xiii Chaptyer too the Romaynes (Worcester, J. Oswen, 1551) and his An Homelye to be Read in the Tyme of Pestylence (Worcester, J. Oswen, 1553). And two Hampshire accounts pay for books of bishop’s injunc62

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The Bishops and the Printers that there was a mass rush to follow the example of the royal visitors. Apart from Taylor, the obvious thing that surviving printed examples have in common is that they are for those dioceses with easy access to the London printers. The same is true for the Marian period where Bonner’s enquiries for London are very fully recorded in print, but the only other survivor is a small set of enquiries for Canterbury diocese, where there happened to be a short-lived printing press in these years (see fig. 4).65 The first Elizabethan generation of prelates used print for diocesan interrogatories, but even then a standardized assumption about the merits of print communication had not fully emerged. We have seen that Parker expected to print articles for Canterbury. John Parkhurst’s friendship with John Day meant that visitation enquiries for Norwich were printed: Robert Horne of Winchester, Edwin Sandys of Worcester and Thomas Young of York all have surviving sets. Once again allowance must be made for loss: Grindal’s first London visitation does not survive in print, but his archdeacons printed their own enquiries at the beginning of the reign, and at least two London parishes recorded the purchase of what appear to be his diocesan articles of 1561. Surviving visitation articles from the mid-century and indeed their early Elizabethan successors are usually modest in form of printing – they present themselves as workmanlike documents intended for an immediate practical purpose. Cranmer’s sets are typical in having only nine and five pages respectively. This meant that it was feasible to require churchwardens to have copies, available for a modest price (often 4d.) and provided for them by the summoner or equivalent figure.66 This began to have impact in the churchwardens’ accounts especially in London diocese. St Andrew Hubbard, Eastcheap, bought a book of articles in 1552, and St Mary at Hill invested in two of Bonner’s sets of articles in 1555, while Bishops Stortford acquired one in the same year.67 By the 1560s more London churches were paying for books of articles, though it is tions in 1551–2, which must relate to the visitation of Bishop Ponet: The Early Churchwardens’ Accounts of Hampshire, ed. J. F. Williams (Winchester, 1913), pp. 41, 116. 65 Articles to be Enquired in thordinary Visitation of the Most Reverende Father in God, the Lorde Cardinall Pooles Grace (Canterbury, J. Mychell, 1556). 66 A characteristic entry for St Benet’s Gracechurch, London for 1561 reads ‘Paid to one of the proctors . . . for a little book of artycles 4d.’: London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter LMA), MS 1568, pt. 1, fol. 64r. 67 The Church Records of St Andrew Hubbard, Eastcheap, c.1450–c.1570, ed. C. Burgess, London Record Society 34 (London, 1999), entry 177; The Medieval Records of a London City Church: St Mary at Hill, 1420–1559, ed. H. Littlehales (London, 1905), p. 397; Churchwardens’ Accounts of Bishops Stortford, ed. Doree, p. 306.

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Fig. 4  Cardinal Pole’s Articles of Enquiry for Canterbury Diocese, 1556. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce PP 247 (title page). Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Libraries, the University of Oxford.

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The Bishops and the Printers not always clear if these were royal or episcopal interrogatories.68 Even outside London there is spasmodic evidence that wardens felt obliged to buy in these new-fangled little books.69 Injunctions, while usually bound and presented with articles, gave the opportunity to instruct in more permanent ways. Ridley’s injunctions for London were explicitly designed to be retained in the parish church and used in conjunction with the 1547 royal orders. Both Ridley and Taylor stated that their objective was to achieve ‘an uniformitie’ in their dioceses. After 1559 the printed royal injunctions became a powerful tool for articulating this objective of uniformity of worship and behaviour. The regular reprinting, and the large number of parishes that certainly did acquire them is indicative of their impact: far greater, it would seem, than that of the earlier orders.70 The bishops could simply use these national orders, or could supplement. If they chose, as they usually did, the latter route, there was surely strong inducement to print so that instructions would survive in a standardized form. Most, like Parker, or like Jewel in Salisbury, achieved uniformity through an insistence on the quarterly repetition of the royal injunctions. Archbishop Grindal’s injunctions for York in 1571 went further: his orders were to be read twice yearly in each church, alongside the quarterly reading of the queen’s injunctions.71 The surviving material suggests that the story of the impact of print on diocesan visitations and other orders was incomplete in the middle years of Elizabeth’s reign. This is confirmed by visitation evidence, for example for Gloucestershire, that scribal communication was still the norm well into the 1570s.72 It is only at the beginning of the seventeenth century that we can say with confidence that all ecclesiastical 68

See, for example, Lambeth Churchwardens’ Accounts 1504–1645, ed. C. Drew, 4 parts, Surrey Record Society 40, 43, 44, 47 (Frome, 1940–50), I, 86 – for 1566; LMA, MS 1586, part i, fol. 78v – for St Benet’s Gracechurch, 1561/2; LMA, MS 3476/1, fol. 58v – for St Margaret Moses, Friday St, 1561. 69 See, for example, Churchwardens’ Accounts of Betrysden, 1515–1573, ed. F. R. Mercer, Kent Records 5 (Ashford, 1928), p.  134 – for 1566; Transcription of the Churchwardens’ Accounts of the Parish of Tilney All Saints, Norfolk, 1443–1589, ed. A. D. Stallard (London, 1922), p. 196 – for 1561/2; Early Churchwardens’ Accounts of Wandsworth, 1545–1588, ed. C. T. Davis (London, 1900), p. 19 – for 1564/5. 70 STC gives nine separate editions of the 1547 royal injunctions, but twenty-five for those of 1559, which were reprinted throughout the reign of Elizabeth. 71 Injunctions Given by the Reverend Father in Christ John, by Gods Providence, Bishop of Salisbury (London, H. Denham for R. Jackson, 1569); Iniunctions Given by the Reverende Father in Christ, Edmonde by the Providence of God, Archbishop of Yorke (London, W. Seres, 1571). 72 Tewkesbury Churchwardens’ Accounts, 1563–1624, ed. C. J. Litzenberger, Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Society, Gloucester Record Series 7 (Stroud, 1994),

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Felicity Heal a­ dministrators automatically turned to the press, presumably because by then relatively easy access to publishers made the calculation logical and financially attractive. Repetition of such predictable themes as discipline in the English Church began to acquire a more stable structure, which must also have encouraged repeat printing of similar materials at visitation.73

Episcopal relations with the printers from Edward VI to Elizabeth Although the London print shops began to produce a range of episcopal orders after the 1540s they must always have been a trivial part of the profit to be made from the Church. The right to publish bibles, prayer books, psalters and catechisms was the privilege to be fought for. A well-documented example is the tussle between Reyner Wolfe and John Day for what seems to be the right to print the 1553 catechism. This pitted Cranmer, who had long favoured Wolfe, against the duke of Northumberland, who offered support to Day. It was resolved by dividing the privilege, Day gaining a broad right to publish the text in English and Latin, Wolfe retaining a claim on the Latin.74 It may also have been Northumberland who favoured two members of the London stranger churches as translators and printers of the second Edwardian Prayer Book in French, even though Bishop Goodrich had already sponsored a translation for use in the Channel Islands.75 As these examples suggest, the bishops could not guarantee that one printer would get their official patronage: in the shifting world of Tudor politics powerful laymen were quite likely to have primary influence, as Cromwell had apparently done with the choice of Grafton and Whitchurch as printers of the Great Bible. The favour of Cranmer or, under Mary, of Gardiner or Bonner, was an obvious route to profitable privileges. This may explain the willingness of printers to produce other episcopal writings, notably pp. 10–24. The first mention of a book of articles comes at the archiepiscopal visit of 1577: ibid, p. 37. 73 Fincham calculates that even in the early seventeenth century survival rates for prints of episcopal visitations was only about 40%: Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church, ed. K. Fincham, 2 vols. (Woodbridge, 1994– 7), I, xiv–xv. 74 D. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer (New Haven, 1996), pp. 524–5. 75 The Remains of Thomas Cranmer, D.D., ed. H. Jenkyns, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1833), I, 354; A. Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth-Century London (Oxford, 1986), p. 95.

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The Bishops and the Printers c­ontroversial works in English which did not necessarily have wide popularity. For example, Reyner Wolfe expended great typographical effort on Cranmer’s Answer to a crafty and sophistical cavillation devised by Stephen Gardiner (1551), using three different typefaces.76 It became necessary to lavish such care on controversial works as the habit of including the opponent’s challenge in a refutation. Wolfe could at least rely on Cranmer’s reputation for sales: limited editions of controversies were more likely, as when Henry Wykes printed Robert Horne’s answer to John Feckenham’s declaration of scruples about the Oath of Supremacy.77 Robert Caly showed more than mere efficiency when he printed Gardiner’s Assertion of the True Catholique Fayth (1551), his defence before the royal commissioners, from Rouen in 1551. It may be that his happy career under Mary, when he was the favoured printer of the bishops and also instrumental in the republishing of Fisher’s English sermons, owed much to this early courage.78 Caly also offers a rare glimpse into the value he attached to his relationship with the Catholic bishops. In 1558 he printed Thomas Watson’s Holsome and Catholyke Doctrine Concerning the Seven Sacraments. ‘It pleased’, says his preface to the reader, ‘the right reverend father in god Thomas Bushoppe of Lyncolne . . . to commytte to me the printynge of the same’ so ‘I have by goddes helpe done my diligence therin in setting forthe the same truly and uncorruptly accordynge to the very copye delivered unto me’. The problem for Caly was that pirated copies were in circulation, and his preface went on to specify exactly the foliations by which the false printing might be identified. Watson’s commission was both an honour and a benefit to his publisher.79 The experience of John Day and his relationship with the more radical reforming wing of the Edwardian Church must have been similar. Day was particularly associated with John Hooper and printed his biblical commentaries alongside a series of other powerful evangelical works. He printed the sermons of Latimer, and translations of Calvin, including one by the future bishop 76

MacCulloch, Cranmer, p. 487. For Cranmer’s letter seeking to ensure that Wolfe could print the volume despite the prohibition on controversial writing, see Remains of Cranmer, I, 343–4. 77 An Answeare Made by Rob. Bishoppe of Wynchester to a Booke . . . Touchinge the Othe of the Supremacy, as M. John Fekenham, by Wrytinge Did Deliver unto the L. Bishop of Winchester (London, H. Wykes, 1566). 78 J. Loach, ‘The Marian Establishment and the Printing Press’, EHR 101 (1986), 135–48 (pp. 137–40). 79 ‘Robert Calye the printer to the Christen reader’, in Holsome and Catholyke Doctryne Concernynge the Seven Sacraments of Chrystes Church . . . by the Reverend Father in God Thomas Byshop of Lincolne (London, R. Caly, 1558), preface. The second edition does not carry this apology.

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Felicity Heal Miles Coverdale. Latimer at least was a sure-fire seller, showing Day’s commercial instincts as well-honed.80 The leaders of the Edwardian Church had clearly attached immense value to the role of the London printers in disseminating reformed ideas, including translations of Bullinger, Calvin and other continental reformers whose work would otherwise have been limited in its impact. Meanwhile bibles, books of common prayer, and the Paraphrases of Erasmus were produced in sufficient quantities for the English parishes. Yet it was that scourge of reformers, Edmund Bonner, who took the further step of integrating the use of print into a full programme for the instruction and discipline of his own diocese. Bonner’s early intimacy with the printers when he supervised the production of the Great Bible in Paris played some part in this, and by the first years of his London episcopate he was using administrative blanks for tax collection and printed circulars on the execution of heretics.81 In Mary’s reign he seized the initiative in printing very detailed articles and injunctions for his diocese, writing A Profitable and Necessary Doctryne for the instruction of his clergy, adding homilies and then a separate catechism.82 All of this can make him appear a counter-Reformation prelate avant la lettre, and he knew that he was pursuing a bold and independent path: ‘in religious matters’, he observed, ‘it was meet to proceed firmly and without fear’.83 Cardinal Pole later endorsed his actions by ordering the use of the Homilies throughout the realm. What he could not do himself he sponsored others to undertake: he ‘set furthe’ a St Andrews Day sermon by John Harpsfield, and may have been one of those James Brooks ‘coulde not well . . . withstande’ in printing his 1554 Paul’s Cross sermon.84 Bonner’s initiatives were, in part, the consequence of the unusual circumstances of Mary’s early reign, with a vacancy in the see of 80

Evenden, Patents, Pictures and Patronage, pp. 25–6. A. J. Slavin, ‘The Tudor Revolution and the Devil’s Art: Bishop Bonner’s Printed Forms’, in Tudor Rule and Revolution: Essays for G. R. Elton from his American Friends, ed. D. J. Guth and J. W. McKenna (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 13–23. 82 A Profitable and Necessarye Doctryne, with the Homilies, went through at least ten imprints: E. Duffy, Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Queen Mary (New Haven, 2009), pp. 59–60. On its relationship to the 1543 King’s Book see ibid, pp. 65–7. 83 Calendar of State Papers, Spain, ed. G. Bergenroth et al, 13 vols. (London, 1862– 1954), XIII, 66. 84 A Notable and Learned Sermon or Homilie, Made Upon Saint Andrewes Daye Last Past . . . by Mayster Jhon Harpesffeild (London, R. Caly, 1556). A Sermon Very Notable, Fruictefull, and Godlie Made at Paules Crosse, . . . by Iames Brokis Doctor of Divinitie (London, R. Caly, 1553). Bonner divided his patronage between Caly and the royal printer, John Cawood, though the latter took the lion’s share of the profitable market in the works of instruction. 81

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The Bishops and the Printers Canterbury until 1555. But in the sharpness of their focus on one diocese, and their holistic sense of the value of print, they were in contrast to preceding episcopal efforts. The Elizabethan Settlement turned the new bench of bishops once more to collective action, and the complex implementation of the royal will. If Bonner had a natural successor as a prelate deeply engaged with printing it was John Jewel of Salisbury. Jewel provided in Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae (1562) the first great public defence of the Church of England and spent much of the rest of his career refuting the attacks of the Catholic exiles at Louvain. He knew his printers well. The Apologia was printed by Reyner Wolfe and the two English translations that were rapidly produced also bore his imprint: the best Protestant printers were on the case. They did not always please. He wrote to Peter Martyr sending him the Apologia, while complaining of its faults like ‘every thing that is printed in this country: such is the negligence of our printers’.85 Yet he came to trust at least one of them. When Henry Wykes was given the task of printing his lengthy Defence Jewel sent him to William Cecil to persuade him to allow the work to be dedicated to the queen and to ‘attende upon your ho[noures] leasure to that purpose’.86 Jewel, as we have noted, also provided lengthy injunctions for his see of Salisbury. Yet Jewel also proceeded in ways that were sharply different from those of Bonner. Of course, his audience and purpose were different: he faced outwards, defending the Church against international Catholicism, rather than inwards, on the work of conversion. He saw his labours as collective in their impact. John Parkhurst, writing to Hans Wolf, the translator of the work into German, observed that, though Jewel was the sole author ‘he published it in the name of us all’.87 Having said this, Jewel was not generally reticent in his defence of the new Church: his challenge sermons, which predated the Apology, were explicitly provocative and began the long (print-based) controversy between himself and the Catholic apologists. The first challenge sermon and the letter exchange between Jewel and his first opponent, Dr Cole, was printed by John Day, ‘set forthe as nere as the author could call it to remembraunce’.88 It was therefore somewhat disingenuous that he later lamented the ‘fatality’ that had attached the hostility of the

85

The Zurich Letters, ed. H. Robinson, 2 vols., Parker Society 50–1 (Cambridge, 1842), I, 101. 86 TNA, SP 12/ 44, fol. 27r. 87 Letter Book of Parkhurst, ed. Houlbrooke, p.  72. The Apologia and its two early translations appeared without authorial attribution. 88 The Copie of a Sermon Pronounced by the Bishop of Salisbury at Paules Crosse (London, J. Day, 1560), sig. Aiir.

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Felicity Heal Catholics so exclusively to himself. The results were the hugely burdensome A Replie unto M. Hardinges Answeare (1565) which ran to 641 pages in the first edition; and A Defense of the Apologie (1567) to 742 pages.89 The controversy skewed Jewel’s religious influence in a distinctive way. Those in authority in Church and State supported his polemics. His early printers were Day and Wolfe, figures close to Cecil and Parker: he was permitted to dedicate Defense to Elizabeth. Only after his death in 1573 did his reputation as the first intellectual saint of the Church of England flourish. Laurence Humphrey was commissioned to write his biography, incorporating his controversies, and having Day as printer. Between the mid-1570s and the end of the 1580s editions of four different sets of Jewel’s sermons were published, while the Apology remained a best-seller. In sharp contrast to the anonymity, or modest labelling, of his early writing, after his death his works are marked boldly with his personal and episcopal identity. The Latin version of his controversial work, translated by William Whitaker, is headed ‘Ioannis Iuelli, Salisburiensis in Anglia nuper episcopi’.90 In a manuscript list of English divines ‘which have written within these 20 years’, dating from about 1588, eleven episcopal authors are listed.91 Most of them are of the second Elizabethan generation, promoted in the 1570s or later, and they indicate a sharp increase in the number of bishops publishing while in office. Most published works of controversy, like Jewel defending their Church, printing with a wide range of different print shops as the industry expanded. One might argue, with some exaggeration, that it had taken a hundred years from the arrival of printers in England before the episcopate became fully engaged in person and in office with a different form of communication. But the most interesting feature of the divines list is that it excludes Archbishop Parker, though Pilkington, Horne and Alley of Exeter from his generation are listed.92 The greatest favourer of print, and, in his own manner, strong defender of the fledgling Church, was not deemed worthy of inclusion in a list of ecclesiastical champions. We do not know 89

J. Jewel, A Replie unto M. Hardinges Answeare (London, H. Wykes, 1565); A Defense of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande (London, H. Wykes, 1567). Both works are clearly attributed to Jewel, but his authorship is not vaunted on the title pages. 90 Ioannis Iuelli, Salisburiensis in Anglia nuper episcopi adversus Thomam Hardingum, trans. W. Whitaker (London, T. Vautrollerius, 1578). 91 Historical Manuscripts Commission: Calendar of the MSS. of the Marquess of Salisbury, 24 vols. (London, 1883–1976), XIII, 393. 92 It must be said that the list is not exhaustive: Parkhurst’s poems are understandably excluded, but so is Grindal’s sermon at the obsequies for the Archduke Ferdinand (1564) and Richard Davies’ sermon at the funeral of the first earl of Essex (1577).

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The Bishops and the Printers who drew up the 1580s list, though the full list of clerical authors might suggest a puritan bias.93 It certainly points to a print culture of sermons and polemics. Though these had been a major part of episcopal writing since the Reformation they do not really fit the Parkerian model from which this article began. Parker may have developed and sustained the use that the Church made of the printers through his relationship with Reyner Wolfe and John Day, but his rather cosy and elegant world of gilded books and illuminated presentation gifts was not to outlast his own archiepiscopate.

93

Among the very significant puritan names are those of William Fulke, John Knewstubb, John Field and William Perkins.

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Part III Identity and Display

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Treasure, Material Possessions and the Bishops of late Medieval England Christopher Woolgar

Debates about wealth and its moral character go to the heart of the Christian message. No late medieval bishop could have been unaware that his principal charge was a spiritual one; nor could he be ignorant of the evangelical poverty that had formed so compelling an element in Christ’s ministry, emulated by groups like the mendicant friars. Yet society also expected great households – and bishops had some of the most impressive establishments – to conduct themselves in a way that brought honour to their estate. The episcopacy was therefore closely bound to an investment in material possessions, in buildings and a style of living that placed them among the greatest magnates.1 The eleventh and twelfth centuries had seen a proliferation in possessions: many more people, bishops not least among them, had many more things. Personal goods, like jewellery, were keenly appreciated. Clothing and personal attire identified groups, an individual’s worth and standing. There was simply more money, more gold and especially silver, an acceleration in commerce, in financial transactions and, indeed, in loans.2 Few bishops can have been insensitive to the contradictions and paradoxes of their position. On the one hand, investment in property, even down to building barns, might be seen as benefiting the Church and the cause of devotion. On the other, one can point to personal ambiguity at this pattern of life, to bishops like Thomas Cantilupe, who were uncomfortable with outward shows of wealth and possessions, and who maintained rigorous regimes of self-mortification and spiritual devotion,

 1

J. Mann, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire: The Literature of Social Classes and the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 62–3; G. Todeschini, Richesse franciscaine. De la pauvreté volontaire à la société de marché, trans. N. Gailius and R. Nigro (Paris, 2008), pp. 12–14, 22–3.  2 D. Hinton, Gold and Gilt, Pots and Pins: Possessions and People in Medieval Britain (Oxford, 2005), pp. 203–5.

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Christopher Woolgar along with an avoidance of personal luxury and sensory stimulation.3 That did not mean that the material possessions of the episcopacy might not be astonishing. When Bishop Sandale of Winchester died in 1319, he had a ruby ring that was valued at £100, part of an estate totalling in all more than £5498 – and he was not untypical of those who held the greatest sees.4 Preachers, like the Dominican John Bromyard, were swift to condemn those prelates who had more servants to serve them at mealtimes than at Mass, who more readily gave bread to their dogs than to the poor, whose bedchambers were more ornate than their churches, their tables more ready than their altars, their cups more precious than their chalices, their horses more expensive than their missals, and their cloaks more beautiful than their chasubles.5 This dichotomy between the material possessions of the late medieval episcopate and spiritual ideals has the potential to tell us much about the way bishops lived their lives, how goods were employed and how patterns of possession changed. Much of our comprehension of the material culture of the later Middle Ages is restricted, however, as it does not expose the connections implicit in goods or consider what is meant by possession. It is some twenty-five years since Arjun Appadurai’s volume on the social life of things brought a range of views to this subject that help identify ‘the sociality’ of objects, the ways in which goods circulated, and the links between material objects, individuals and groups.6 It is no longer possible to read an episcopal will or inventory as a straightforward listing of possessions. There are many connections implicit and explicit in these documents: liturgical, spiritual, individual and institutional. Goods were entrusted or given to individuals on different bases; there was an understanding that particular things would happen to some classes of item; and some objects almost intrinsically had ‘lives’ of their own, powers that we might struggle to define. Outright ownership, in a modern sense, and the unfettered  3

C. M. Woolgar, The Senses in Late Medieval England (London, 2006), pp. 193–205. Testamentary Records of the English and Welsh Episcopate, 1200–1413: Wills, Executors’ Accounts and Inventories, and the Probate Process, ed. C. M. Woolgar, Canterbury and York Society 102 (Woodbridge, 2011; hereafter TREWE), pp. 211, 217.  5 J. Bromyard, Summa praedicantium (Nuremberg, 1485), Prelatio, v. 17.  6 A. Appadurai, ‘Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value’, and I.  Koytoff, ‘The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process’, in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. A. Appadurai (Cambridge, 1986), pp.  3–63, 64–91, opened up discussion beyond the physical commodification and economics of possession. This wider significance of objects appears from, among others, the essays in Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and Its Meanings, ed. T. Hamling and C. Richardson (Farnham, 2010), e.g., S. Sweetinburgh, ‘Remembering the Dead at Dinner Time’, pp. 257–66.  4

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Treasure, Material Possessions and the Bishops ability to dispose of goods, was perhaps more unusual than one would expect. Restrictions on the goods of the clergy were wider than those on goods held by secular society, and bishops were more constrained than other clerics in terms of what might happen to moveable property in their care. Some of this is usefully revealed in wills and other arrangements for goods on death, as we can see patterns and intentions that were as complicated as those for real property. A close reading of episcopal wills and inventories allows patterns to emerge which are useful for developing our understanding of the role played by goods and possessions in medieval society in general.

Treasure Treasure was a special category of possession. Gold and silver, in bullion, in coin or in manufactured items, from vessels to precious textiles including threads wrapped with gold or silver, along with jewels, precious stones and similar articles, are all found in abundance among the property held by late medieval bishops.7 We might propose four principal characteristics of episcopal treasure. Most prominent were goods with Christian associations, liturgical goods which gave treasure a sacred character. Second, there were those objects, like gold and silver vessels generally, that evoked the honourable standing of the bishop. A further dimension was connected with memory: goods that inspired remembrance through decoration, the history of ownership, or even items of antique origin, reshaped for a Christian context, such as the cameos that went to the grave with Archbishop Hubert Walter.8 Lastly, there was cash, or objects of precious metals that might be convertible into cash. There were tensions between the economic dimension of wealth and its other characteristics.9 Jewels, for example, from their shine, were  7

Determining the origins of items of treasure, its composition, how it might have circulated and its use are all important in an analysis of this material. See L.  Webster, ‘Ideal and Reality: Versions of Treasure in the Early Anglo-Saxon World’, in Treasure in the Medieval West, ed. E. M. Tyler (York, 2000), pp.  49–59 (pp. 50–2, 56–7).  8 M. Henig, ‘Archbishop Hubert Walter’s Gems’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 136 (1983), 56–61.  9 H. Van Werweke, ‘Monnaies, lingots, ou marchandises? Les instruments d’échange aux XIe et XIIe siècles’, Annales ESC 2 (1932), 452–68, and the discussion in K. Pomian, ‘Les trésors: sacré, richesse et pouvoir’, in Le trésor au Moyen Âge: discours, pratiques et objets, ed. L. Burkart, P. Cordez, P. A. Mariaux and Y. Potin (Florence, 2010), pp. 131–60 (pp. 152–3).

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Christopher Woolgar seen as emitting light, which had an especial beneficence; Gervase of Tilbury, in his Otia imperialia, held that all stones had magic properties, and even noted the importance of bishops consecrating them to restore them when they had become corrupted.10 There were many things of high value in a bishop’s household that had these attributes, from gold and silver, or silver gilt vessels, at dinner tables and buffets, to coin itself. At the same time, objects were also a form of visible memory, and work on ecclesiastical treasuries has shown how they might be employed to create or enhance links to new cults, saints, and legends.11 Equating treasure with ‘wealth’ in an economic sense – let alone a spiritual sense – is, however, problematic. The approach that would give us a ‘rich list’ of the medieval episcopate, like those that appear in the Sunday newspapers, is riddled with many problems. We can establish some patterns in the use of wealth and treasure, however, which are helpful in giving a general picture of how medieval bishops used these resources. Executors’ accounts and their accompanying inventories show the ways in which wealth and treasure were distributed: they are especially useful in giving us a cross-section of these resources at a bishop’s death. First, these demonstrate that much of the wealth listed in this documentation did not necessarily belong to the bishop. A large proportion was held in a form of trust. Known as the implementum or complementum, this was the quota of goods, especially livestock and farming equipment, that was to remain on the estates of the see and to pass undiminished from bishop to bishop. It was one of the achievements of the thirteenth-century episcopate to establish that these goods should not simply be plundered by the Crown, even if the king might hold the lands of the see during a vacancy: each new bishop was to receive them from his predecessor, either directly, or by way of executors or keepers of the see during a vacancy. The implementum sometimes included liturgical goods and goods for the episcopal household, even down to the kitchen utensils. This was an investment that allowed bishops to maintain episcopal dignity, in a manner that the great household and their position implied.12 Second, the inventories show the contents of the episcopal chapel, typically with an extensive collection of vestments, silver vessels and jewels. The episcopal chapel, however, was derived from a range of 10

Gervase of Tilbury, Otia imperialia: Recreation for an Emperor, ed. and trans. S. E. Banks and J. W. Binns (Oxford, 2002), pp. 614–19. 11 P. A. Mariaux, ‘Trésor, mémoire, collection à Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, 1128–1225’, in Le trésor au Moyen Âge, ed. Burkart, Cordez, Mariaux and Potin, pp.  333–44 (p. 334). 12 TREWE, pp. xxvii–xxviii.

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Treasure, Material Possessions and the Bishops sources, some of which exercised an on-going connection, as will appear later. Third, bishops held cash. On the death of Roger de Pont l’Évêque, archbishop of York, in 1181, he was found to have had some £11,000 in old, silver coin (money that had not been re-minted), and £300 in gold, besides silver vessels.13 Richard Gravesend, bishop of London, who died in 1303, left in his treasury £148 in sterling,14 besides small amounts of foreign coin.15 In 1310, Thomas Bitton of Exeter had in his treasury some £1,282, including plate, rings and other valuable goods. Of this, £1,026 was in sterling – that is, nearly a quarter of a million silver pennies – along with more than 3,000 farthings, and a few foreign coins.16 The inventory of another bishop of Exeter, Walter Stapeldon (d.1326), shows in his chamber £801 1d. in sterling, 1,006 florins ‘de agno’ and 4,000 florins of Florence. He also had £515 worth of silver plate, besides his domestic vessels.17 On the death of John of Pontoise, bishop of Winchester, it was claimed that 50,000 marks in florins and sterling passed to his executors, along with 12,000 florins of Florence that were hidden in the ground next to his bed. He was accused of neglecting the castles and manors of the see, and destroying the woods of the bishopric, to the tune of 40,000 marks profit to himself.18 13

‘Ymagines historiarum’, in Radulfi de Diceto decani Lundoniensis Opera historica, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols., Rolls Series 68 (London, 1876) II, 12. 14 Account of the Executors of Richard, Bishop of London, 1303, and of the Executors of Thomas, Bishop of Exeter, 1310, ed. W. H. Hale and H. T. Ellacombe, Camden Society n.s. 10 (London, 1874; hereafter Executors), p. 47. 15 Executors, p. 55. 16 Ibid., pp. 1–3: 246,240 silver pennies; 3,014 farthings. It is worth setting this in the context of the overall money supply, as the proportions are different. Estimates now place the total volume of English currency around 1310 in the range £1.5 to £1.9 million: M. Allen, ‘Silver Production and the Money Supply in England and Wales, 1086–c.1500’, Economic History Review 2nd s. 64 (2011), 114–31 (p. 128). From an analysis of coin hoards, the volume of halfpence and farthings in the currency is estimated at this point to have been about 5% of the total value of the currency; and foreign coins at around 10–15% of the value of English pence in 1290–1310, and 5–10% in 1319–51. Foreign gold coins made an important contribution to the currency from the 1320s to 1344, when English gold coinage was first produced: M. Allen, ‘The Volume of the English Currency, 1158–1470’, Economic History Review 2nd s. 54 (2001), 595–611 (pp. 602–3). 17 The Register of Walter de Stapeldon Bishop of Exeter (A.D. 1307–1326), ed. F. C. Hingeston-Randolph (London, 1892), pp. 566–70. The production of silver in the south-west of England was a significant addition to the currency in the first decades of the fourteenth century, but it was under royal control, and is probably therefore not an element in the amounts held by the bishops of Exeter. See M. Allen, Mints and Money in Medieval England (Cambridge, 2012) pp. 244–6, 251. 18 J. H. Denton, ‘Complaints to the Apostolic See in an Early Fourteenth-Century Memorandum’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 20 (1982), 389–402 (pp.  392, 401).

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Christopher Woolgar It is easy to associate accusations of avarice with these vast sums – and some historians have been as quick as contemporaries to characterize medieval bishops in this way – but this is not the whole story.19 In the theological discourse of the twelfth and thirteenth century the amassing of treasure was increasingly seen as socially significant: the treasure of salvation – the treasure of the poor – was underpinned by the goods and charity of the Church. Canonists and the friars, especially Franciscans like John Pecham, sought to turn treasure from a useless accumulation to something virtuous and productive; from treasure that was endlessly received to something that was continually disbursed, a circulating spiritual treasure, an appropriate use for economic goods linked to evangelical poverty.20 Episcopal treasure is indicative of the capacity bishops had as financiers – and coin was only a part of this. Other assets, especially plate, might be readily convertible to currency.21 To help understand episcopal wealth, we can compare the returns made by the executors of two archbishops, Winchelsey and Stratford (Table 1, p. 190). The domestic departments of the households – kitchen, pantry, buttery and hall – had comparatively little in the way of valuable goods: both Winchelsey and Stratford had just over 1% of their wealth in this area. This is a common pattern: the investment made by bishops was concentrated in liturgical textiles and goods – of Stratford’s goods, £1,100, or 17%, was in this area. Silver vessels would have appeared in hall from time to time, but it was the bishop’s chamber that was the focus of display. The value of beds and other textiles for the bishop’s chamber is sometimes very high, whereas those of the hall hangings is not. Some £2,949 of Stratford’s wealth was in stock and produce (that is, beyond the implementum), just over 45%; Winchelsey’s figure was similar, £2,901, about 69% of his wealth, but we have no statement about the implementum. On the other hand, 23% of Stratford’s inventory, £1,494, was in cash, treasure or assets that could be quickly ­converted

Beyond the increased circulation of foreign gold coin, it is possible that Stapeldon and Pontoise were more engaged with continental events than Bitton, or were expecting to do business overseas. 19 Matthew Parker on John Pecham, for example, in a misunderstanding of the documentation: TREWE, pp. xlviii, 8. 20 G. Todeschini, ‘Trésor admis et trésor interdit dans le discours économique des théologiens (XIe–XIIe siècles)’, in Le trésor au Moyen Âge, ed. Burkart, Cordez, Mariaux and Potin, pp. 33–50 (especially pp. 39, 48). 21 One dimension, however, we can assess as a lesser component. While we know comparatively little about the operation of ecclesiastical mints, what evidence there is suggests that the profits were modest rather than substantial – and that coin for mints, or profits of mints, is unlikely to be a significant component in the treasure held by bishops: Allen, Mints and Money, pp. 210–13.

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Treasure, Material Possessions and the Bishops to that, as opposed to £693, 16.5% of Winchelsey’s.22 Six per cent of Stratford’s resources – £402 – had been loaned out, as opposed to 10% of Winchelsey’s, £418. In these figures, the proportion that derived from land was substantial. This was effectively a valuation of a working business, of corn and stock, and a high level of reinvestment is implicit in these figures: they were not profit, but assets, and agricultural assets may or may not be realizable in the same way as plate. But this does raise the question of how the two might be connected, and how much cash one might store as treasure, vis-à-vis income, and what one might one do with it. This begins to tell us about the management of overall wealth. In the debates about capital investment in medieval society, some practices can be shown to have been very conservative. If the Franciscan ideal was to spend all that had been received on charitable works, others were much more restrained, especially by the end of the Middle Ages. In 1528, the revised statutes for Corpus Christi College in Oxford, the new foundation of Bishop Fox of Winchester, the wealthiest see in England, required all spending to take place out of the previous year’s income, rather than that of the current year, with the funds kept in two separate chests.23 This implies that the house had to set aside an amount up to its total annual revenue as a reserve. Our two archbishops did not do that, but the level of their cash and convertible assets is very striking. A further dimension to this can be seen in the loans made by the episcopacy. In the case of the two archbishops some £400 each was involved, and we know that in Winchelsey’s case a quarter of that was bad debt. Something similar appears from the accounts of the executors of Thomas Bitton of Exeter in 1310. They recorded arrears on accounts of the bishop’s receiver general of £1189 and the clerk of the household of £298. ‘Arrears’ can be interpreted in various ways: essentially they were funds an accountant still had to hand over; but he may have held it as cash in hand and not surrendered it, or it may have been money he had not received, and by the later Middle Ages it was common to identify at great length who owed 22

There is some evidence to suggest that this is the element that will have fluctuated most between churchmen. Nearly a quarter of the wealth of Dean Kilkenny of Exeter was in cash and plate: D. N. Lepine, ‘“Getting and Spending”: the Accumulation and Dispersal of a Thirteenth-Century Clerical Fortune’, Reports and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science 136 (2004), 37–70 (p.  44); Death and Memory in Medieval Exeter, ed. D. Lepine and N. Orme, Devon and Cornwall Record Society n.s. 47 (Exeter, 2003), p. 171. 23 G. D. Duncan, ‘An Introduction to the Accounts of Corpus Christi College’, in The History of the University of Oxford. Vol. 3, The Collegiate University, ed. J. McConica (Oxford, 1986), p. 575.

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Christopher Woolgar him what. In the case of Bitton’s executors, they usefully separated out a section of the arrears of the receiver general and the clerk of the household as loans. The receiver general’s account had loans of about £80, with £60 lent to three clerks, members of the Charlton family, £10 to the prior of Bodmin, 50s. to a knight and about £5 possibly to two household officials, a baker and a cook. £172 of the arrears of the clerk of the household were also loans. Three knights had each been lent £10; the prior of Plympton £60, the archdeacon of Exeter £33 6s. 8d. and another archdeacon £8; a canon of Wells £10, and four other individuals sums between 6s. 8d. and £20. In addition to these sums, the executors had been able to collect £123 worth of loans, including the 100 marks owed by Robert Winchelsey and a further 50 marks owed by the bishop of Bath and Wells; but another sum, of nearly £53, was regarded as desperate debt, £35 of which was owed by Dom. Henry de Ralegh – the sum had been advanced him for a horse and as a loan.24 This gives a total of about £430 for Bitton’s loans, beyond his cash reserve of £1020. Bitton and the two archbishops were engaged in recycling their wealth, but in a restricted way: Bitton’s loans link rising clergy in the south west and some institutions; but smaller loans were available to knights. Lending money was an expectation of the episcopate, particularly to the ecclesiastical sector, but also beyond. In some cases it was a risky business: in 1404 the prior of Colne, for example, owed Bishop Braybrooke of London £50, and there was little prospect of it being paid.25 While some of the arrears on bishops’ accounts may reflect the use of financial instruments to facilitate cash flow in the economy, the cases where items are specifically identified as loans suggest that lending may have been an important element in their activities. The recognisances for debt handled by executors, such as those of Robert Burnell of Bath and Wells, and the smaller numbers for John Stratford, John Langton of Chichester and Henry Brandeston of Salisbury, suggest some involvement in this way.26 Other bishops were debtors, sometimes to other bishops: Henry Woodlock of Winchester owed at least £1500 in bonds on his death in 1316, some to his successor, Bishop Sandale, and it was a decade before his executors made payment.27 Other prelates, such as William Bottlesham of Rochester, in 1400, and Tideman of Winchcombe, bishop of Worcester, in 1401, were declared

24

26 27 25

Executors, pp. 20–2. TREWE, p. 98. Ibid., pp. 4, 10, 18, 58. Ibid., p. 62.

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Treasure, Material Possessions and the Bishops intestate because of the level of their debt.28 These financial transactions are inseparable from an appreciation of episcopal goods and possessions, for ultimately it was the convertibility of gold and silver plate that could make this possible.

Material possessions Beyond these transactions, bishops had many goods that linked together people, or people and institutions, and these bring us to other characteristics of possessions. The will of Lewis Charlton, bishop of Hereford, who died in 1369, may stand for many examples.29 He came from a clerical family: his uncle, Thomas, had been bishop of Hereford; and Lewis Charlton received jointly with his brother legacies of his uncle’s ecclesiastical goods. At least some of Lewis Charlton’s silver vessels were decorated with the family arms, and Charlton’s brothers inherited them. Other goods had connections to further branches of the family. He bequeathed a silver bowl with a cover that was his mother’s, with the Pole arms inside, and had on the lid the arms of Bishop Thomas Charlton, to Thomas Bisshbury, rector of Ashbury. Lewis Charlton also left him the small Sarum missal which he had had made at Oxford, and a small gradual, which had Lewis Charlton’s arms depicted in the initial letters of the text for the major feasts. Bisshbury was given another personal, liturgical text, a volume which the bishop was accustomed to use to say the canonical hours – and a long list of other goods, down to sumpter saddles and kitchen utensils, ‘so that he will pray for me or will make arrangements to same end’ (‘ut oret et orare faciat pro me’). The personal connection of these goods is very apparent, and Bisshbury would have readily recalled whose arms decorated the missal as he prayed. Charlton had made some purchases in his lifetime of goods from his predecessor’s executors, particularly liturgical books of Hereford use. His vestments had connections to local families, demonstrated through the heraldry that was embroidered on them: for example, to the families of Corbet of Caus and Geneville. Other bequests completed circles of giving, by returning things to their donors, or giving to contexts in which the original donor might be commemorated. Charlton gave to the collegiate church of Ottery St Mary the vestments that were given to him by John Grandisson, bishop of Exeter. There was other silverware, not ornamented with coats of arms, which he had acquired from Thomas Trillek, bishop of Rochester, who 28

Ibid., pp. 52, 68, 91, 249–51. Ibid., pp. 109–12.

29

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Christopher Woolgar had been a prebendary of Hereford. The possessions of a later bishop of Hereford, John Trefnant, inventoried in 1404, reveal a similar pattern of silver and gilt vessels, including some from M. Thomas de Busshebury, possibly the person named in Charlton’s will.30 This gives a picture of goods passing round in circles where connection could be made and connotation was well understood. Not all gifts were absolute. Conditional gifts, or gifts with reversions, are not uncommon in medieval wills, and their use implies a complexity that at least matches the provision of remainders and reversions of real property. Stephen Gravesend, bishop of London, in his will of 1337, bequeathed to his successor the use of a book containing many memoranda about the church of London, on condition that after his death it was restored to St Paul’s.31 In 1368, Thomas Percy, bishop of Norwich, left all his books to William de Blyth, archdeacon of Norfolk, for the term of his life, and subsequently to be sold for the direct benefit of his soul, or for them to be given to places that would then pray for him.32 Other wills reveal property that was loaned out, or in the possession of others on a temporary or longer term basis: for example, the abbess of Malling had a set of hall hangings that Bishop John Sheppey of Rochester had bought and which he bequeathed in 1360 to his successor.33 The relationship between the bishop and his cathedral church in terms of goods was a close one. Many bishops received goods, especially liturgical goods, from their cathedral church on taking up the see, with the expectation that these would be returned at the conclusion of their episcopate. The goods received by Simon Meopham in 1328 on his elevation to Canterbury included the mitre and pontifical of John Pecham; gloves, candelabra and a bible of Robert Winchelsey; and the chrismatory of Walter Reynolds.34 Bishops sometimes improved these goods, before returning them to the see. Bishop Mitford of Salisbury remade a crosier, the stock of which had been of wood and which had been part of the implementum of the bishopric, bequeathing it to the see of Salisbury in perpetuity. His will carefully notes that the value of the silver in the old crosier was five marks, doubtless with an eye to the account that his executors would have to give for the goods that belonged to the see.35 Others added to the communal stock with bequests of mitres and vestments. 30

32 33 34 35 31

Ibid., p. 257. Ibid., p. 121. Ibid., p. 175. Ibid., p. 220. Ibid., pp. 163–4; also pp. 176–7 for Reynolds handing on the same goods. Ibid., p. 165.

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Treasure, Material Possessions and the Bishops As well as this group of goods, there was a further category of liturgical material over which the cathedral church had a claim, at least by custom, and that was the bishop’s chapel. The chapel comprised the bishop’s principal liturgical vestments and ecclesiastical ornaments. At Durham, these were gathered in to the cathedral priory and were exhibited at the bishop’s obit Mass.36 The chapel of Bishop Alexander Tottington of Norwich was to be brought to the cathedral priory in procession before his body; and the church was also to have the horse that carried the chapel and one of his horses that pulled the coach with his body.37 Evidence from the see of Ely suggests that, by the fifteenth century, the handing over of the episcopal chapel to the cathedral church had become a sufficiently predictable practice for it to be commuted for a cash payment – of £50 in the case of John Fordham.38 There was a presumption that the goods and equipment related to sacerdotal functions should not be exposed to sale, but handed on in contexts where they would continue in liturgical use. For all that these goods might not be tradeable, they could nonetheless be used in support of commercial transactions. Much as Edward III was able to pledge a succession of crowns and circlets to raise finance for war in 1339,39 so archbishops might employ their mitres. Alexander Neville of York had pledged an impressive mitre worth £193 6s. 8d. to the lord mayor of London, William de Walleworth, but with Neville’s treason the king attempted to recover the mitre from Walleworth’s wife (and executor) – eventually agreeing a settlement instead.40 Richard Gravesend of London had pledged a choir cope, embroidered with images, and two candelabra, to Master Peter de Askerne, as part of 110 marks he was owed by the bishop.41 This recognition of value in a bishop’s goods left them open to depredation and theft more generally. A mitre of Archbishop Courtenay was stolen from his household at St Albans around Christmas 1391 by one John Grede, late a clerk of the archbishop’s chapel, and by one of the household squires (the two had also participated in a theft of silver vessels from the household when it was at Croydon around the Purification in 1390).42 Silverware must have always been a temptation: John Bromyard refers on two occasions in his Summa praedicantium 36

38 39

Ibid., p. 22. Ibid., p. 253. Ibid., p. 27. The Wardrobe Book of William de Norwell 12 July 1338 to 27 May 1340, ed. M. Lyon, B. Lyon and H. S. Lucas, with J. de Sturler (Brussels, 1983), pp. 78, 408, 414–15. 40 CCR, 1385–1389, p. 597. 41 Executors, pp. 48–9. 42 CPR, 1391–1396, p. 597. 37

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Christopher Woolgar to searches at the gate of the household and the discomfort felt by those who were leaving, legitimately, with silver vessels that had in fact been handed to them.43 We have a record of the theft of a gilt, covered cup from the possession of Thomas Cantilupe, albeit before he was a bishop. The silver had been taken to London for a meal Cantilupe was to give for the Lord Edward, and a servant, hired for the occasion, surreptitiously made off with it.44 Other alienations were as blatant, if oblique in the execution. The executors of Richard Gravesend, bishop of London, sold an altar frontal and super-frontal to Walter Langton, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, for £20, but Langton would only ever pay £10 and the executors, try as they might, could not obtain the balance.45 Other goods were given in remembrance and friendship, as well as for the purpose of recalling someone to mind in prayer. Jewels were popular gifts. John Sheppey of Rochester in 1360 gave William of Wykeham a diamond ring with an inscription, not for the value of the thing, but out of friendship and remembrance – and that he would supervise the executors, and protect them against ill wishers.46 There are long lists of jewels and rings given in this way. William Edington, bishop of Winchester, in his will of 1366, left rings and jewels to Simon Sudbury of Canterbury; John Harewell, bishop of Bath and Wells; and William of Wykeham, then clerk of the privy seal (a gold ring with a ruby, and a jewel worth £20). Dom David Wollore was left a jewel; Robert Wyvil, bishop of Salisbury, a gold ring with a ruby and £40 which he owed Edington; and Isabel, abbess of Romsey, a gold ring with a ruby so that she might pray for his soul (‘ad orandum pro anima mea’) and £20.47 Ring-giving created connections and many of those objects listed must have had some wider connotations. Bishop Stapeldon’s inventory contained ninety-two rings, most of which were common and for giving, ‘donativi’.48 Lewis Charlton made gifts of his rings to the shrine of St Thomas Cantilupe at Hereford with the exception of two, one of 43

Bromyard, Summa praedicantium, Avaricia, xi. 47; and Mors, xvii. 100. Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 25v. 45 Executors, p.  48. Episcopal households were as vulnerable to highway robbery as other elite establishments. I am grateful to Dr A. McHardy for the reference to her paper describing the theft of Archbishop John Stratford’s register from Archbishop Arundel’s household in 1402, travelling through Rogate, Sussex: ‘The Loss of Archbishop Stratford’s Register’, Historical Research 70 (1997), 337–41. 46 TREWE, p. 221. 47 Edington’s will, printed in Registrum Simonis Langham, Cantuariensis archiepiscopi, ed. A. C. Wood, Canterbury and York Society 53 (London, 1956), pp. 318–25 (p. 318.) 48 Register of Walter de Stapeldon, ed. Hingeston-Randolph, p. 566. 44

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Treasure, Material Possessions and the Bishops which was the ring with which he was consecrated, and the other was bequeathed to the Confessor’s shrine at Westminster.49 Pontifical rings were especially valued. That of Richard Gravesend of London, in 1303, was given as a legacy to the archbishop of Canterbury;50 but bequests of a bishop’s pontifical ring to the metropolitan or, during a vacancy, to the prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, had a customary basis. The king also received the bishop’s best ring, as well as other goods, his palfrey and cup.51 Cups, along with silver vessels, equally formed the currency of donation. These were among the most popular things to give in upper-class circles. Lists of household goods therefore give us valuable insights into the connections that many bishops had in this way, made patent by heraldic decoration. We can see something of this in the goods of Walter de Stapeldon. As well as pairs of basins, enamelled with images of a bishop, Stapeldon had other basins: one with the royal arms, and a further pair with the Bitton arms, those of his predecessor in the see. He also had a pitcher with a cover, with the Dinham arms; a gilt, covered cup, with the Hereford arms; and another, gilt, covered cup, with the Droxford arms (of John Droxford, bishop of Bath and Wells, his contemporary, who was also an exchequer official).52 Family connections might manifest themselves in other ways among moveable property. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we find a growing notion of special goods that belonged to a family and that might not be alienated from it (paralleling the goods that belonged to the see). This was the genesis of what were to become heirlooms, although they were rather more diffuse in their nature than the lawyers of the seventeenth century had in mind. One group within this category were named cups. Among the possessions of Bishop Bitton of Exeter was a cup called ‘Hulle’: his executors returned it to the family without setting a value on it.53 Others might make goods like this a special gift to institutions where they were to be commemorated. Bishop Alexander Tottington of Norwich, who had been prior of the cathedral priory there, left the monastic refectory a silver gilt cup with a cedar cover, ornamented with gold and ebony, along with the words ‘siphus Alexandri’.54 Bitton and Stapeldon had drinking horns, which must have seemed old-fashioned, and which may have been a further category that could 49

51 52 53 54 50

TREWE, pp. 109–12. Executors, p. 55. TREWE, p. lii; Executors, pp. 24–5. Register of Walter de Stapeldon, ed. Hingeston-Randolph, pp. 568–70. Executors, pp. 2, 30–1. TREWE, p. 254.

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Christopher Woolgar be used in this way, even though the assignment of Bitton’s drinking horn as a legacy suggests that there was no lasting connection in this instance.55 An idea of the range of goods that might be considered as having this special family connection can be seen from bequests of ‘principalia’. Bishop Edmund Stafford of Exeter, in his will proved in 1419, left his nephew Thomas Stafford ‘nomine principalium’ a bed of silk, namely a cover with tester, celure, curtains, tapet and costers for the chamber; a hall, or set of hangings, embroidered with his father’s arms; a tablecloth with a sanap and two other cloths, one long and the other short, and the board or principal table for the hall at Broad Clyst. He also left him a silver, covered cup called ‘Archer’.56 The association with the family through coats of arms, of goods that were to be held at a particular place, is typical. A further category of goods were objects with special virtues or powers, and relics. These brought to mind much more than the memory of a predecessor. We can trace small quantities of goods in this category. On occasion, they must have been of some antiquity – and when they have a cash value set against them it is often small – reminiscent in many ways of some of the items that appear as special family goods or heirlooms. Bishop Grandisson had in his possession a basin that had belonged to Edmund of Abingdon, which he bequeathed to Salisbury Cathedral, where Edmund had been treasurer.57 Several bishops had items that had belonged to St Thomas Cantilupe of Hereford: Ralph Baldock of London had a portable altar of jasper, and Stephen Gravesend of London in 1337 bequeathed to the archbishop of Canterbury a great ring with a sapphire that had belonged to Thomas.58 Cantilupe himself had a hair garment that had been his uncle’s, the saintly Walter Cantilupe, bishop of Worcester.59 John de Sandale, bishop of Winchester, at his death in 1319 was in possession of a belt that had belonged to Robert Winchelsey, archbishop of Canterbury, which was considered to be a relic.60 Among the most intimate of a bishop’s possessions was his clothing, yet this was also a key element in display. Table 1 demonstrates 55

Executors, p. 2; Register of Walter de Stapeldon, ed. Hingeston-Randolph, p. 565. The Register of Henry Chichele Archbishop of Canterbury 1414–1443, ed. E. F. Jacob and H. C. Johnson, 4 vols., Canterbury and York Society 42, 45–7 (London, 1937– 47), II, 156–7. 57 The Register of John de Grandisson, Bishop of Exeter (A.D. 1327–1369), with Some Account of the Episcopate of James de Berkeley (A.D. 1327), ed. F. C. HingestonRandolph, 3 vols. (London, 1894–9), III, 1554. 58 TREWE, pp. 75, 120. 59 Ibid., p. 66. 60 Ibid., p. 212. 56

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Treasure, Material Possessions and the Bishops the level of investment in the wardrobe and the chapel. A bishop’s liturgical vestments were typically his most elaborate clothing, with silks and embroideries: for example, the choir cope of red cloth of gold, fringed with gold and pearls, with images of archbishops of Canterbury, and on the back the shield of Thomas Becket, bequeathed in December 1405 by Roger Walden to Christ Church, Canterbury.61 Prominent in these textiles are the connections that come from the liturgical seasons, from the range of colours associated with liturgical practice, elaborate embroideries, especially of religious images, images of angels, saints, Christ, the Virgin, and of special saints, such as Thomas Becket; and other connections, for example, with coats of arms. Despite the example of Lewis Charlton, the placing of coats of arms appears to have been restricted to certain types of vestment and less in evidence than might have been expected. Arms appear on albs, stoles and maniples;62 on apparels of albs;63 on chasubles;64 and on burses for corporals.65 Other liturgical items or items of ecclesiastical dress with arms include cloths, typically with arms of England;66 galoshes and sandals;67 and orphreys.68 Vestments might be received as gifts: this connection was well remembered, even if it was not reinforced by the presence of armorial escutcheons. Thomas Bitton, for example, had been given a vestment – tunicle, dalmatic and chasuble – by the earl of Cornwall.69 Armorial decoration was generally far less in evidence on liturgical textiles than it was on domestic hangings, where it was frequently a very prominent element. Away from church, bishops also had some distinctive elements of clothing. Garments such as chimers and rochets appear in the inventories, but there are not as many of these specified as one might expect. John Burghill of Coventry and Lichfield mentioned his best chimer in his will of 1412.70 Bishop Mitford of Salisbury left chimers to female relations: of scarlet with a hood, both furred with miniver, to Joan the wife of Hugh Bisley; to Maud, the wife of Richard Osbern, he left a chimer

61

63 64 65 62

66

68 69 70 67

Ibid., p. 266. Ibid., p. 109: Corbet of Caus. Ibid., p. 207: England and France, on apparels of John de Sandale of Winchester. Ibid., p. 111: Geneville arms. Ibid., p. 93: Braybrooke arms; p. 128, embroidered with ‘AH’ for Adam Houghton of St David’s. Ibid., p. 143. Ibid., p. 163. Ibid., p. 209. Executors, p. 4. TREWE, p. 103.

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Christopher Woolgar of violet with a hood, both also furred with miniver.71 Bequests of clothing, or simply passing clothing, to female relations appear as a common pattern. Linen rochets were owned by Bishop Braybrooke, some of a fine linen of Reims;72 and there was a single one inventoried among the goods of Bishop Baldock.73 Episcopal clothing was distinctive in other ways. Bishops made use of cloths that were more modest and much less showy than those employed by the secular elite, for example, wearing burnets and russets, albeit fine ones.

Conclusion Why do goods and treasure matter? With all their connotations, worldly and ecclesiastical, they were essential to the honour and standing of the prelate; they placed him in context; they offered expectation or disappointment; and they had a force of their own. The account by Bishops Fox and Gardiner of their visit to Pope Clement VII at Orvieto in 1528 shows their astonishment at the pope’s goods: the goods of the papal bedchamber, they surmised, were hardly worth twenty nobles; they had been led through rooms with the hangings falling from the walls, bare of furniture.74 The message was clear: whatever the qualities of the individual, the papacy had lost any semblance of honour and power. Goods were also badges of connection, marks of friendship, demonstrations of loyalty and emblems of devotion. A bishop’s special interests might be apparent in this way. The executors of William Lenn of Worcester, who made his will in 1363 while bishop of Chichester, were expected to commission a series of paintings in the cathedral of the Magdalen’s story, and Lenn asked his executors to use as a model the image of the resurrection and Magdalen before the risen Christ that was engraved on his small seal.75 ‘Ownership’ is too narrow an approach for looking at possessions in the Middle Ages. One needs to see all the connections 71

73 74

Ibid., p. 166. Ibid., p. 95. Ibid., p. 80. L. Pastor, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, trans. R. F. Kerr, 14 vols. (London, 1901–24), X, 1–2. On the death of a pope, the papacy was peculiarly vulnerable to the depredation of its goods, even to the extent of stripping the body of a deceased pope, whereas English and Welsh bishops had effectively ensured the transmission of goods belonging to the church to successors in the see, and used wills to transfer goods they held in their own right. See A. Paravicini-Bagliani, The Pope’s Body, trans. D. S. Peterson (Chicago, 2000), pp. 89–107, 128–31. 75 TREWE, p. 155. 72

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Treasure, Material Possessions and the Bishops and transactions, from prayer, memory and responsibility, that is, the temporary custody of the goods of church or see, to friendship, association and power. The special category of treasure offers an opportunity to think further about these connections and how they might be employed by the episcopacy. Inventories and executors’ accounts show the scale of the asset and the extent to which some bishops at least were prepared to commit their resources as loans. Although the beneficiaries included other prelates and religious institutions, we know little about what the funds were to be used for. What is markedly absent from the reckoning is a notion of how goods might be used to support the poor, but that does not mean that was not done: some direct support for poor relief came through the household and its practices, especially before the Black Death, when it was not uncommon for the poor to be received at meals, possibly living in the household too. A further disposition was frequently made in the final division of residual property in wills themselves. The practices discussed here, however, present a contrast to the Franciscan ideals of poverty and the theories of continually circulating wealth as treasure for the poor. It is therefore a disappointment that the final account of Pecham’s executors, although available to Matthew Parker in the sixteenth century, cannot now be traced. There were three principal changes in the pattern of episcopal possessions between 1200 and the end of the Middle Ages. Firstly, and most obviously, one can point to the volume and diversity of goods. If there was an increase in the volume of material possessions through the eleventh and twelfth centuries, there was much more again through the later Middle Ages. The scale of the investment in decoration and those touches that establish connection were also more apparent. Secondly, there was a clearer notion of what goods ‘belonged’ to whom, that is, what belonged to the see, what was customarily ascribed in a particular way, and what belonged to family – and also how those goods might be managed legally, with bequests catering for future contingencies. We have a much clearer sense of what the legalities of ‘possession’ might mean. Thirdly, there was much more in the way of clothing and textiles specified in later wills and inventories: in some of the wills of the thirteenth century, clothing, even liturgical vestments, hardly featured at all. This does not mean that it did not exist, but that it appears less of a concern for this type of document, perhaps because it was handled in another way. Wills are intensely personal documents and they can conceal as much as they reveal. Customary patterns of disposing of goods, for example, are one feature that is only apparent when one looks across a group of documents and associated probate material. These documents, however, 189

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Christopher Woolgar are crucial in allowing us to understand how bishops viewed this world and its material culture, on the threshold of eternity. Well might Bishop John Sheppey of Rochester conclude his rather particular will of 1360 with his own, trembling hand (‘cum manu mea tremula’).76 Table 1: The material possessions of two archbishops

Cash, jewels and wardrobe Chamber Chapel Books Hall Pantry and buttery Almonry Kitchen Stables Silver vessels Forinseca Wool Total on the manors except corn,   customs sold, etc. Corn and customs sold Debts owed to the deceased per scripta   et recogniciones Uncertain debts Total inventory

Winchelsey (d.1313)

Stratford (d.1348)

  £311   3s. 4d.   £25   7s. 6d.  £117  5s.   £9  2s.   £1  4s.   £23 10s. 7½d.   £17   5s. 4d.   £8  9s.    £5   6s. 8d.   £357 13s. 9d.   £131 18s. 4d.   £16 13s. 8½d. £1409 19s. 8½d.

  £810 19s.1

£1475 11s. 3¾d.   £310   5s. 8d.

£1445 16s. 8d.4   £402 13s. 4d.

  £107 11s. 8d. £4232   1s. 3¼d.

£6509 14s. 4d.

£1100   3s. 8d.2  £200   £26 13s. 4d.   £20 16s. 8d.   £20   1s. 8d.   £181   3s. 4d.   £684   1s. 9d.  £300 £1203 12s. 3d.3

Sources: Registrum Roberti Winchelsey Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi, ed. R.Graham, 2 vols., Canterbury and York Society 51–2 (London, 1952–6), II, 1345–7; TREWE, pp. 226–8. Notes: 1  Thesaurus (i.e., cash), jewels, wardrobe and arms. 2  Includes chapel books. 3  Livestock beyond the implementum. 4  Corn in the granaries and the barns only.

76

Ibid., p. 222.

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Episcopal Embodiment: The Tombs and Seals of Bishops in Medieval England and Wales Elizabeth A. New1

The visual representation of a medieval bishop is a familiar one. The mitred figure vested for Mass, blessing and holding a pastoral staff, is widely understood as the visual signifier for the episcopate.2 The inter-relationship of this image in figural sculpture, glass, manuscripts and sepulchral monuments has elicited much comment, particularly in the context of the creation of episcopal authority and lineage in a specific cathedral or diocese.3 Sigillographic evidence is, however, very often neglected in such inter-media discussions.4 This is unfortunate for, unlike manuscripts with their limited audiences, and glass where details are often difficult to discern from the ground, episcopal seals and tombs are usually easily visible and share a number of similar features. Both were in the public arena, representing and projecting an office and providing an embodiment of authority and dignity, while at the same time  1

I am grateful to Dr Claire Daunton and to Dr Christian Steer for their helpful ­comments on a draft of this essay.  2 The image was so familiar that it became the subject for subversive humour. See, for example, the famous depiction of Ysengrin the Wolf dressed as a bishop, blessing and holding a crosier, found in a late thirteenth century English Book of Hours: Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, MS W.102, fol. 78r: www.thedigitalwal ters.org/Data/WaltersManuscripts/W102/data/W.102/sap/W102_000159_sap. jpg, accessed 18/01/13.  3 See, for example, R. Biebrach, ‘The Medieval Episcopal Monuments in Llandaff Cathedral’, Archaeologia Cambrensis 159 (2010), 221–39; P. Lindley, ‘Retrospective Effigies, the Past and Lies’, in Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology at Hereford, ed. D. Whitehead, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 16 (Leeds, 1995), pp. 111–21.  4 Exceptions include important work by Paul Binski and Kate Heard: P. Binski, Becket’s Crown. Art and Imagination in Gothic England 1170–1300 (New Haven, 2004), esp. pp. 38, 105–6, 110; K. Heard, ‘Image and Identity in English Episcopal Seals, 1450–1550’, in Pagans and Christians – from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, ed. L. Gilmour, BAR International Series 1610 (London, 2007), pp. 301–8.

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Elizabeth A. New identifiable with a particular individual. As such, seals and tombs were two of the prime media through which episcopal identity was created and expressed. This essay will explore the relationship between the seals and tombs of bishops, both in general terms and through case studies. This will demonstrate that such studies, integrated into wider discussions, can add significantly to our understanding of the creation and expression of episcopal identity, both personal and corporate.

The image of the bishop: seals and early effigial monuments Bishops were among the earliest non-royal users of seals in medieval Western Europe, and from the eleventh century most in France and the Holy Roman Empire began to employ seals with a representation of a vested ecclesiastic.5 The survival of the matrix of ‘Ethilwald the Bishop’ (probably Æthelwald of East Anglia, active c.  845–70) ­demonstrates that Anglo-Saxon bishops owned seals, but exactly how pre-Conquest seals were used in England is a matter of considerable debate.6 The current scholarly consensus is that the use of seals as an integral means of ­documentary validation emerges in England only in the mid e­ leventh century, with leading ecclesiastics as the earliest known non-royal seal users in this context.7 Seal impressions (or the casts of now-lost ­impressions) demonstrate that a number of ­eleventh-century bishops, ­including Odo of Bayeux, (d.  1097), Osbern of Exeter (d.  1103) and Anselm of Canterbury (d. 1109), owned and used matrices.8 From the late e­ leventh until the mid-fourteenth century, the design on English  5

B. M. Bedos-Rezak, When Ego Was Imago: Signs of Identity in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 2011), pp. 100–1.  6 T. A. Heslop, ‘English Seals from the Mid-Ninth Century to 1100’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 133 (1980), 1–16, (pp. 2–3, 15–16).  7 B. M. Bedos-Rezak, ‘The King Enthroned, a New Theme in Anglo-Saxon Royal Iconography: the Seal of Edward the Confessor and its Political Implications’, in Kings and Kingship, ed. J. T. Rosenthal (New York, 1986), pp. 53–88, reprinted in B. M. Bedos-Rezak, Form and Order in Medieval France (Aldershot, 1993), section IV, esp. pp. 53–6; P. D. A. Harvey and A. McGuinness, A Guide to British Medieval Seals (London, 1996), pp. 3–4; E. A. New, Seals and Sealing Practices, British Records Association, Archives & the User 11 (London, 2010), pp. 3–4.  8 W. St John Hope, ‘The Seals of English Bishops’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries 2nd s. 2 (1885–7), 271–306 (pp. 272–3); T. A. Heslop, ‘Seals’, in English Romanesque Art 1066–1200, ed. G. Zarnecki, J. Holt and T. Holland (London, 1984), pp. 298–319 (pp. 298–301). Odo’s seal is known only from an antiquarian drawing: L. C. Loyd and M. D. Stenton, Sir Christopher Hatton’s Book of Seals (Oxford, 1950), pl. VIII, no. 431.

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Episcopal Embodiment:The Tombs and Seals of Bishops and Welsh ­episcopal seals of dignity (the principal seal of a bishop) was ­standardized: the image of an ecclesiastic, s­ tanding dressed in full ­pontificals, wearing a mitre, blessing and holding a pastoral staff (fig. 1).9 From the second quarter of the twelfth century the figure is ­sometimes depicted standing on a corbel, a feature which became ­increasingly common in the early thirteenth century, and from the mid  thirteenth century a canopy was usually incorporated into the design.10 The appearance of effigy tombs in Britain has likewise elicited a great deal of scholarly comment in recent years.11 The emergence of effigial monuments as a form of commemoration in medieval Western Europe has been identified as starting in the later eleventh century, and their rapid adoption in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries is usually seen as being intimately connected with the development of the concept and doctrine of Purgatory.12 At this time the teaching of the Schools, and particularly developments in theology and philosophy, provided new ways of seeing humanity’s place in Creation. Because of this, it became more acceptable to create representations associated with a specific person.13 Arising from this were the notions of a sense of self and the uniqueness of the individual which could be expressed through effigial tombs.14 The details of the design, materials and location of early effigial tombs in Britain have been discussed, both generally and in focused studies.15  9

Heslop, ‘English Seals from the Mid-Ninth Century’, pp.  11–12; New, Seals and Sealing Practices, pp. 59–61. A small number of twelfth-century bishops used seals with a seated rather than a standing figure, an image probably derived from Imperial models: see Heslop, ‘Seals’, in English Romanesque Art, p. 299. 10 New, Seals and Sealing Practices, pp. 59–61; Hope, ‘The Seals of English Bishops’, p. 274. 11 See, for example, S. Badham, ‘Our Earliest English Effigies’, Church Monuments Society Newsletter 23 no. 2 (Winter 2007/8), 9–13; N. Saul, English Church Monuments in the Middle Ages: History and Representation (Oxford, 2009), p. 28. 12 See for example Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 120; P. Binski, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation (Ithaca, 1996), p. 71. 13 The idea of self and the individual in the Middle Ages are much-debated topics, particularly in relation to the twelfth-century ‘renaissance’. Recent scholarship has largely reached a consensus that that men and women in the medieval West, especially from the later eleventh century, possessed a personal sense of self, albeit not along exactly the same lines as the modern sense of individual identity. For important and recent debates on this complex subject, see for example C. Morris, The Discovery of the Individual 1050–1200 (New York, 1972); L’individu au Moyen Âge, ed. B. M. Bedos-Rezak and D. Iogna-Prat (Paris, 2005); R. J. Ganze, ‘The Medieval Sense of Self’, in Misconceptions about the Middle Ages, ed. S. J. Harris and B. L. Grigsby (New York, 2008), pp. 102–16. 14 See for example Binski, Medieval Death, pp. 92–115. 15 Saul, English Church Monuments, pp.  26–33, for example. Focused studies

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Fig. 1  Cast of the seal of Jocelin of Wells, bishop of Bath. Reproduced by permission of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

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Episcopal Embodiment:The Tombs and Seals of Bishops The model for these earliest figural tombs is, however, the subject of surprisingly little debate and it is almost always stated that the sculpted figures on the façades of churches provided the model.16 Furthermore, it is often noted that the image on tombs, especially in England, appears to be a standing figure laid flat rather than taking the form of a truly recumbent figure, especially with regard to the fall of drapery. Debate on the subject often relates to the ‘Panofskian tension’ that this produces.17 While it would be naive to deny that architectural statuary was one model for figural monuments, seals may be proposed as another influence on early effigial tombs. Seals with the image of a bishop had, after all, been used by English prelates for at least half a century or more before the date of the earliest surviving tomb effigy. The influence that seals appear to have had on tombs is, however, not only in form but also, especially in the context of episcopal monuments, in meaning. The earliest extant effigy tombs from medieval Britain are generally accepted to date from the mid twelfth century, with the great majority commemorating ecclesiastics.18 Effigy tombs did not immediately become the dominant form of funerary monument – for example Hubert Walter, archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1205), instead chose a sarcophagustype tomb (discussed below) – but they became increasingly fashionable during the first half of the thirteenth century. Surviving evidence makes it clear that prelates, and especially the (usually) wealthy episcopate, were the principal patrons of this new form of monument. include F. Anderson, ‘Three Westminster Abbots: a Problem of Identity’, Church Monuments 4 (1989), 3–15; F. Anderson, ‘The Tournai Marble Tomb-slabs of Salisbury’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Salisbury Cathedral, ed. L. Keen and T. Cocke, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 17 (Leeds, 1996) pp. 85–9. 16 Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 29, 143; Lindley, ‘Retrospective Effigies, the Past and Lies’; P. Brieger, English Art 1216–1307 (Oxford, 1957), p. 100. 17 Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 143; E. Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture. Its Changing aspects From Ancient Egypt To Bernini, ed. H. W. Janson (London, 1964), pp. 53–5. 18 It has been suggested that the figure of an abbot, now at Bathampton, may be a sepulchral monument: Badham, ‘Our Earliest English Effigies’. Whether or not this is indeed a grave-marker and the precise date of the sculpture is a matter of debate, and most scholars instead cite the twelfth-century monuments at Westminster, Salisbury, Exeter, Ely and Peterborough as the earliest extant effigial tombs in Britain: see Saul, English Church Monuments, pp.  29–35, figs 5, 6; B.  Cherry, ‘Some Cathedral Tombs’, in Exeter Cathedral: A Celebration, ed. M. Swanton (Exeter, 1991), pp.  156–67 (p.  157). It should, however, be noted that our assumptions about sepulchral monuments are based on surviving tombs, and that these represent only a small proportion of the original material. For a discussion of this problem, see P. Lindley, Tomb Destruction and Scholarship: Medieval Monuments in Early Modern England (Donnington, 2007). I am grateful to Dr Christian Steer for helpful comments on this matter.

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Elizabeth A. New Stylistic details of the pioneering twelfth-century tombs have been examined closely by scholars but the generic prototype is, as noted, almost always cited as figural sculpture on major churches.19 To anyone familiar with sigillographic material, however, it is clear that the ­ effigial tombs of bishops, particularly in the twelfth and early thirteenth ­centuries, have very close affinities with episcopal seals of dignity. Others have made important observations about this relationship, although in a British and episcopal context this is usually limited to specific examples.20 A broader investigation is long overdue. Kathleen Nolan’s study of the seals and tombs of Capetian royal women is a pioneering work which demonstrates that an examination of tombs in conjunction with sigillographic evidence can indeed provide important new information concerning representation and identity.21

Seals and tombs: separated by a common image? Before turning to the case studies, there are two important issues that must be addressed. Apart from a common image (one which, moreover, appears in a variety of other media), is there really a genuine relationship between seals and tombs? After all, medieval seal matrices were small objects, principally made of metal from the later twelfth century onwards,22 while tombs are, of course, much larger and made of stone, suggesting that different craftsmen and techniques were required. 19

There are a few exceptions: for examples see the nuanced discussion in Binski, Becket’s Crown, esp. pp.  110–11; and Heard, ‘Image and Identity in English Episcopal Seals’. 20 W. Dodsworth, An Historical Account of the Episcopal See and Cathedral of Sarum, or Salisbury (Salisbury, 1814), p.  191, part III, pl. 1; Binski, Becket’s Crown, pp.  105–6. Jane Sayers used Hugh of Balsham’s seal as a means of attempting to ­identify  a thirteenth-century episcopal tomb in Ely Cathedral, but concluded that  the  ­sigillographic image was too generic to assist in this instance: J. Sayers, ‘A Once “Proud Prelate”: An Unidentified Episcopal Monument in Ely Cathedral’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 162 (2009), 67–87 (p. 78 and fig. 15). 21 K. Nolan, Queens in Stone and Silver. The Creation of a Visual Imagery of Queenship in Capetian France (New York, 2009). Nolan’s methodology (especially her reliance on antiquarian sources of questionable veracity) and misconceptions about seals and sealing practices unfortunately undermine this important study. 22 T. A. Heslop, ‘Seals as Evidence for Metalworking in the Later Twelfth Century’, in Art and Patronage in the English Romanesque, ed. S. Macready and F. H. Thompson, Society of Antiquaries Occasional Paper n.s. 8 (London, 1986), pp. 50–60. Heslop notes that, until the 1160s, the majority of surviving matrices are made from stone and bone, p. 50.

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Episcopal Embodiment:The Tombs and Seals of Bishops Furthermore, seals were used during a bishop’s lifetime while the principal purpose of a tomb is post-mortem commemoration. With regard to the creation of the physical objects, there is certainly evidence of the same craftsmen working on seals, tombs and associated items. Prime examples are Anketil, a goldsmith who made the new shrine of St Alban in c. 1129 and who is known to have engraved seals,23 and ‘Master’ Hugo of Bury St Edmunds, the artist of the Bury Bible who is credited with creating a number of items, including perhaps a seal of the monastery.24 Furthermore, as Paul Binski has rightly remarked, the creative milieu (in its broadest sense) of medieval England was a multi-media environment which can properly be understood only through a holistic approach.25 For example, in his discussion of the west front of Wells Cathedral (usually cited as the model for effigy tombs of the thirteenth century) Binski draws upon manuscript illumination, metalwork, architectural sculpture and seals as influences and models.26 In more specific terms, it has been suggested that the retrospective tomb effigy of Bishop Giso (d. 1088) at Wells has considerable similarities with the seal of Jocelin of Wells (d. 1242), who almost certainly commissioned the monument.27 A striking example that demonstrates that seals could be used as the direct model for images in other media is found in the will of William Lenn (d. 1373), drawn up in 1363 while he was bishop of Chichester. Lenn made a bequest towards a new wall painting of Mary Magdalene in Chichester Cathedral ‘ad modum et similitudinem sicut sculpebantur in meo parvo sigillo’, in the clear expectation that the matrix or an impression from it would be available for inspection by the craftsman or those directly involved

23

Heslop, ‘Seals as Evidence for Metalworking’, p. 51. T. Graham, ‘Bury St Edmunds, Hugo of (fl. c.1130–c.1150)’, ODNB; C. M. Kauffmann, ‘The Bury Bible (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 2)’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 29 (1966), 60–81 (p. 64). Heslop suggested that Master Hugo himself made the second seal of the monastery of Bury St Edmunds, while McLachlan proposed that it was produced by his workshop or followers: Heslop, ‘Seals’, no. 356; E. P. McLachlan, ‘In the Wake of the Bury Bible: Followers of Master Hugo at Bury St. Edmunds’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 42 (1979), 216–22 (p. 220). 25 Binski, Becket’s Crown, p. 111. 26 Ibid., pp. 109–11. 27 Ibid, pp. 105–6, fig. 93. It is interesting to note that Jocelin himself was commemorated by a cast metal effigy (now lost) and it is tempting to speculate whether this also had affinities with his episcopal seal. For a discussion of Jocelin’s tomb (sometimes described as a brass), see N. J. Rogers, ‘English Episcopal Monuments, 1270–1350. II: The Episcopal Monument’, in The Earliest English Brasses. Patronage, Style and Workshops 1270–1350, ed. J. Coales (London, 1987) pp. 15–37 (p. 21). 24

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Elizabeth A. New in ­commissioning and creating the image.28 Furthermore, seals were objects that operated in a public context and attention was deliberately drawn to them, increasing their potential to influence. Brigitte Bedos-Rezak has commented that ‘Few medieval artefacts were the focus of such sustained attention and a­ nalysis as were seals’.29 In 1279 Archbishop John Pecham re-sealed a document in the presence of ‘the greater part’ of his household, while the will of John Sheppey, bishop of Rochester (d. 1360), records that, with ‘shaking hand’, the testator had impressed his seal ‘beatissimi patroni mei consignavi’.30 If we turn to the meaning of seals in the twelfth century, the ­argument for their role as a model for effigy tombs becomes even stronger. Seals were used to authenticate – often in very public contexts, as demonstrated by the examples cited above – and therefore had to be recognizable. Their increased use in the later eleventh and early twelfth centuries necessitated the rapid development of semiotic paradigms which would make sigillographic imagery intelligible. Although seals were a medium for representing an individual, the image used on the seals of the ecclesiastic and secular elites was one that could be interpreted by the employment of iconographic types, with the legend acting as the prime individual identifier.31 Brigitte Bedos-Rezak has proposed that, in the eleventh to mid thirteenth centuries, ‘images on seals are stereotypic. They sort and classify by socio-economic categories.’32 But seals do not just represent; they also embody and act in place of their owner.33 Indeed, in the later eleventh to early thirteenth centuries, sealing clauses emphasize the physical imprinting of the matrix, and twelfth-century

28

Testamentary Records of the English and Welsh Episcopate, 1200–1413: Wills, Executors’ Accounts and Inventories, and the Probate Process, ed. C. M. Woolgar, Canterbury and York Society 102 (Woodbridge, 2011), no. 22/1, pp.  154–5. At the time of writing no extant impression of Lenn’s ‘small seal’ (probably his subsidiary seal) has been identified. Lenn is traditionally said to have been buried at Worcester (he was bishop of Worcester at the time of his death) but no memorial survives: D. N. Lepine, ‘Lenn, William (d. 1373)’, ODNB. 29 B. M. Bedos-Rezak, ‘Image as Patron. Convention and Invention in FourteenthCentury France’, in Patrons and Professionals in the Middle Ages, ed. P. Binski and E.  A. New, Harlaxton Medieval Studies 22 (Donnington, 2012), pp.  216–36 (p. 222). 30 Testamentary Records, ed. Woolgar, p. xliii and no. 33/1, p. 222. 31 B. M. Bedos-Rezak, ‘Towns and Seals: Representation and Signification in Medieval France’, in Town Life and Culture in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. B. Pullen and S. Reynolds (Manchester, 1990) pp. 34–47 (p. 34). 32 B. M. Bedos-Rezak, ‘In Search of a Semiotic Paradigm: the Matter of Sealing in Medieval Thought’, in Good Impressions: Image and Authority in Medieval Seals, ed. N. Adams, J. Cherry and J. Robinson (London, 2007), pp. 1–7 (p. 2). 33 Bedos-Rezak, ‘Image as Patron’, esp. p. 226.

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Episcopal Embodiment:The Tombs and Seals of Bishops seals are sometimes ‘strengthened’ by the deliberate imprint of a finger or tooth or insertion of hair into the wax.34 Therefore an episcopal seal did not just contain a representation of its owner; the image expressed and embodied the spiritual and temporal authority vested in the individual bishop and the episcopate as a whole. It is of considerable interest in this context to consider what has been written about the first effigial monuments. To take just two examples, Paul Binski, when discussing the appearance of figural effigies, suggests that early tombs present the deceased as a ‘socially and culturally constructed entity’,35 while Nigel Saul proposed that such monuments ‘were designed to locate the deceased in the setting of a divinely ordained order’.36 In other words, effigial monuments follow exactly the same pattern as seals in the creation of a semiotic vocabulary and, indeed, the tombs of clerics appear to have adopted sigillographic paradigms from the outset. In order to test this theory that seals significantly influenced tomb design, and to demonstrate how close the affinities between the different media appear to be, the following case studies will highlight some examples.

Seals and tombs: case studies Among the earliest extant effigial tombs in Britain are two ­twelfth-century figural grave covers in Salisbury Cathedral, one of Tournai marble with a later-medieval head in place of the original, and one of Purbeck marble. These monuments were removed from Old Sarum when the new cathedral started to receive burials in 1226 and, along with a plain Tournai coffin lid, were (re)placed carefully over the translated bodies of bishops Osmund (d. 1099), Roger le Poer (d. 1139) and Jocelin de Bohun (d. 1184).37 Unfortunately, as a part of a significant reorganization within in the cathedral in 1789–90 the grave covers were moved from their original locations, an act that resulted in much debate about which effigy relates to which bishop.38 It is now generally accepted that the Tournai 34

Bedos-Rezak, ‘In Search’, p. 2. Binski, Medieval Death, p. 93. 36 Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 176. 37 T. Tatton-Brown and J. Crook, Salisbury Cathedral: The Making of a Medieval Masterpiece (London, 2009), pp. 52, 54, 55. 38 Daphne Stroud and Freya Anderson suggest (respectively) that the Purbeck and Tournai effigies were retrospective monuments to Bishop Osmund: see D. Stroud, ‘A 12th-Century Effigy in Salisbury Cathedral’, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine 86 (1993), 113–17; F. Anderson, ‘The Tournai Marble Tomb-slabs of Salisbury’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Salisbury Cathedral, ed. L. Keen 35

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Elizabeth A. New effigy (possibly a retrospective memorial) commemorates Bishop Roger and the Purbeck effigy Jocelin de Bohun.39 What is of particular note is that as long ago as 1814 William Dodsworth, an early historian of the cathedral, used the episcopal seal of dignity of Jocelin de Bohun as the prime means of identifying his tomb (fig. 2).40 The pose on the seal and tomb are identical and details of the figure, such as the deep regular folds at the foot of the surplice and distinct orphreys on the chasuble, can be closely correlated.41 The Purbeck effigy is generally dated to the 1180s,42 which means that, unless the remarkable similarity between the images is coincidental, Bishop Jocelin’s seal would have been a model for the tomb and not vice versa, since the seal matrix and impressions from it would have been available for inspection soon after Jocelin’s consecration in 1142.43 Furthermore, by c. 1180 the image of a mitred and vested figure, blessing and holding a crosier, was well established as the standard motif on episcopal seals, so the craftsmen who worked on Jocelin’s tomb – or the person(s) who commissioned the effigy – may very well have been familiar with the generic form if not the specific example.44 Although the monument cannot be securely dated, it is tempting to speculate that it was commissioned in Jocelin’s lifetime and, indeed, before he resigned the see and T. Cocke, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 17 (Leeds, 1996), pp. 85–9. 39 Although Stroud’s assertion was accepted in a 1996 RCHME publication, more recent scholarship has rejected both Stroud and Anderson’s proposals. See Sumptuous and Richly Adorn’d: the Decoration of Salisbury Cathedral, ed. S. Brown (London, 1999), pp.  6–7, 114–5; Tatton-Brown and Crook, Salisbury Cathedral, pp. 54–5; Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 29–30. I am grateful to Professor Brian Kemp for his comments on this matter. 40 W. Dodsworth, An Historical Account of the Episcopal See, and Cathedral Church, of Sarum, or Salisbury (London, 1814), p. 191, pl. between pp. 190–1. 41 The best surviving impression of Bishop Jocelin’s seal is attached to a confirmation of c.  1175×1180: BL, Add. Ch. 47425; Salisbury 1078–1217, ed. B. R. Kemp, English Episcopal Acta 18 (Oxford, 1999), no. 95. 42 Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 29 and n. 28. 43 Jocelin was elected in 1141 but not consecrated until the following year: B. R. Kemp, ‘Bohun, Jocelin de (1105×1110?–1184)’, ODNB. The earliest extant and securely datable impression of his seal of dignity is from a document of 1175×1178, but a fragmentary impression survives from a confirmation granted 1155×1165: Salisbury 1078–1217, ed. Kemp, nos. 47, 102. 44 Impressions of seals with this standard motif are known for many twelfth-century English bishops, including Ralph, archbishop of Canterbury (1114–22), Robert, bishop of Bath (1136–66), Richard of Ilchester, bishop of Winchester (d.  1188), Hervey, bishop of Ely (1109–31), and Alexander, bishop of Lincoln (1123–48): English Romanesque Art, nos. 342–5 (all entries by T. A. Heslop); W. de Gray Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 6 vols. (London, 1887), nos. 1490, 1685.

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Fig. 2a  (left) Seal used to identify the monument to Jocelin be Bohun, as illustrated in W. Dodsworth, An Historical Account of the Episcopal See, and Cathedral Church, of Sarum, or Salisbury (London, 1814), plate between pp. 190–1. Fig. 2b  (right) The monument to Jocelin be Bohun as illustrated in W. Dodsworth, An Historical Account of the Episcopal See, and Cathedral Church, of Sarum, or Salisbury (London, 1814), plate between pp. 190–1.

in 1181 to became a Cistercian monk at Forde.45 Following his resignation impressions of Jocelin’s seal would have been available for consultation, but only attached to important documents. Furthermore, Jocelin may well have had the opportunity to see at first hand and be influenced by effigial tombs on the Continent.46 Since he was extensively involved in Church politics he is precisely the sort of prelate who would have been conscious of, and attuned to, the nuances of episcopal dignity, making him a prime candidate for patronage of this new form of memorial. 45

Kemp, ‘Bohun, Jocelin de’. Ibid.

46

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Elizabeth A. New In the thirteenth century the design of Hubert Walter’s tomb in Canterbury Cathedral, while not effigial, also has close affinities with that of seals. Archbishop Hubert’s tomb is often linked to the similar memorial of Arnulf of Lisieux (d.  1181), and both have been compared to ancient sarcophagi. These may indeed provide one prototype, but attention has been drawn to very similar heads within quatrefoils that appear on episcopal and monastic seals in the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.47 Ancient gemstone seals were popular with leading ecclesiastics and the higher nobility in this period, and it has been proposed that this fashion for ancient gems may have been the genesis of the head-in-quatrefoil image on seals and, ultimately, a model for Hubert Walter’s tomb.48 As with Jocelin de Bohun, details of Hubert’s life and episcopal career strengthen the association between his sepulchral and sigillographic models, and help to explain the unusual design of his tomb. Archbishop Hubert was very well travelled, having joined Richard I on crusade and returned to England via Sicily.49 It is while in the Middle East and the Mediterranean that he may have acquired in person the ancient gem seal set in the head of his crosier.50 Although apparently without much formal education, Hubert was an experienced administrator and moved in learned circles.51 He would therefore have been exposed on his travels to a range of tomb styles and to ideas about post-mortem commemoration. If directly involved in the commissioning of his tomb, Hubert Walter may well have brought these influences to bear. It has also been suggested that Elias of Dereham played a significant role in the commissioning.52 This is noteworthy, since Elias has been associated with a number of innovative building and decorative projects and later worked closely with Jocelin of Wells, the patron of retrospective tombs for his predecessors at Wells. Henry of Gower (d.  1347), bishop of St David’s, is remembered principally for rebuilding the bishops’ palace and the erection of a

47

Binski, Medieval Death pp. 81–2; Binski, Becket’s Crown, p. 38; T. A. Heslop, ‘The Conventual Seals of Canterbury Cathedral’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Canterbury before 1220, ed. N. Coldstream and P. Draper, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 5 (Leeds, 1982), pp. 94–100. 48 Binski, Becket’s Crown, fig. 35; M. Henig, ‘The Re-Use and Copying of Ancient Intaglios Set in Medieval Personal Seals, Mainly Found in England: An Aspect of the Renaissance of the 12th Century’, in Good Impressions, pp. 25–34 (p. 29). 49 R. C. Stacey, ‘Walter, Hubert (d. 1205)’, ODNB. 50 Binski, Becket’s Crown, fig. 35. 51 Stacey, ‘Walter, Hubert’. 52 N. Vincent, ‘Dereham, Elias of (d. 1245)’, ODNB.

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Episcopal Embodiment:The Tombs and Seals of Bishops ­ agnificent pulpitum in his cathedral.53 The latter incorporates his m tomb, considered one of the finest effigial monuments from medieval Wales, the construction of which Bishop Henry oversaw during his lifetime.54 Elsewhere, Henry of Gower was closely involved in a number of programmes of building and remodelling. In addition to the cathedral and palace works at St David’s, he oversaw the construction of the hospital of St David in Swansea and the reconstruction of Lamphey, the episcopal residence in southern Pembrokeshire.55 While the actual level of Bishop Henry’s personal input to these projects remains conjecture, he appears to have been a man who paid attention to appearance and the intrinsic value of what this conveyed.56 Furthermore, like his predecessor Henry of Abergavenny, his patronage of buildings and decoration was closely connected to the promotion of his bishopric.57 From surviving impressions, it is clear that Henry of Gower’s episcopal seal of dignity was engraved in an assured manner, and the fine detail leads to the conclusion that its manufacture was entrusted to a particularly skilled craftsman (fig. 3a).58 While we have no firm evidence as to how active a role the bishop took in the creation of this seal, Glanmor Williams notes that the ogee-arched niche within which the image of the bishop stands is remarkably similar to the Great Hall entrance porch in Gower’s palace at St David’s (fig. 3b), and remarks that ‘it reveals that he had the same instinctive feeling for detail as he had for his big-scale building designs’.59 Furthermore, the cinquefoils on the arms of the diocese and cathedral are echoed both in the ‘tablet flowers’ on the arcaded parapet of the bishop’s palace and on Gower’s seal.60 It

53

G. Williams, The Welsh and their Religion (Cardiff, 1991), pp. 93–116 (chapter previously published in Archaeologia Cambrensis 130 (1981)). 54 Ibid., p. 103. 55 Ibid., esp. pp. 103, 109. 56 R. Turner, ‘St Davids Bishops Palace, Pembrokeshire’, Antiquaries Journal 80 (2000), 87–194, suggests that Henry of Gower did have a significant personal interest in the building projects that he commissioned. 57 For Henry of Abergavenny, who incidentally had a fine seal and is traditionally believed to be commemorated by one of the earliest effigial tombs in Wales, see Biebrach, ‘The Medieval Episcopal Monuments’, pp. 221, 232. 58 The Society of Antiquaries’ cast of Henry of Gower’s seal of dignity is the most complete example of this item so far identified. A clear but damaged impression (with the top portion of the figure missing) is attached to TNA, DL25/31, and a small fragment of an impression is attached to Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales, Penrice & Margam Charters 396. 59 Williams, Welsh and their Religion, p. 102. 60 Turner, ‘St Davids Bishops Palace’, p. 168. The flowers on Gower’s seal are sexfoils rather than cinquefoils, although it has not been established exactly when the number of petals on the diocesan arms was fixed.

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Fig. 3a  Cast of the seal of Henry of Gower, bishop of St David’s. Reproduced by permission of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Fig. 3b  Entrance porch of the Great Hall, St David’s Palace. Photo: Rhun Emlyn.

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Fig. 3c  Tomb of Henry of Gower in St David’s Cathedral. Photo: Lowri Emlyn.

is certainly tempting to speculate that Bishop Henry, whose stamp can be seen on the design of buildings, also took a close interest in his seal. This was, after all, one of his principle means of identification and representation. When one compares this seal with Bishop Henry’s tomb, it is clear that there are close stylistic and iconographic affinities (fig. 3c). The hand with which the sepulchral bishop blesses is, as in a number of other cases, held to the body in an awkward manner (perhaps to minimize the loss of such an important feature through wear and tear) but otherwise the gestures are remarkably similar. In addition, the details of dress bear close c­ omparison: both wear a mitra pretiosa and low amice, for example. There are likewise close parallels which can be seen between the episcopal seal and tomb of Edmund Stafford, (d.  1419) bishop of Exeter (figs. 4a, 4b). Stafford’s seal would have been made within a few months of his elevation to the episcopate in 1395,61 and takes the form common in the later fourteenth century, placing an image of the 61

Birch, Catalogue of Seals, no. 1565; A. Tuck, ‘Stafford, Edmund (1344–1419)’, ODNB.

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Fig. 4a  Cast of the seal of Edmund Stafford, bishop of Exeter. Reproduced by permission of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

diocesan saint at the centre of the design with the figure of a supplicant bishop beneath.62 Stafford’s alabaster tomb in Exeter Cathedral is now somewhat decayed,63 but there are obvious affinities between it and Stafford’s seal: the elaborate canopy, mitra pretiosa and heavy folds of the chasuble. The effigy’s crosier has been lost, but its head was comparatively large and facing away from the figure, just as on the seal. It 62

Hope, ‘Seals of English Bishops’, p. 277. Cherry, ‘Some Cathedral Tombs’, p. 161.

63

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Fig. 4b  Tomb of Edmund Stafford in Exeter Cathedral. Photo: author.

should be noted that Stafford’s tomb was commissioned and almost certainly executed during the bishop’s lifetime, strengthening the case for an active connection between the two media and Stafford’s agency in the manufacture.64 Stafford was actively involved in government at 64

Ibid. The tomb and its setting is discussed in some detail in P. Cockerham, ‘Lineage, Liturgy and Locus: the Changing Role of English Funeral Monuments’, Ecclesiology Today 43 (2010), 7–28 (pp. 7–11).

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Elizabeth A. New a time of political uncertainty and turmoil, so may well have been particularly well-attuned to the importance of establishing and expressing authority and stability.65 While the appearance of high-relief effigial tombs has clear affinities with seals, a close relationship can also be seen when one turns to memorial brasses. Two examples from Hereford Cathedral make this point very clearly.66 Only the indent from the monumental brass c­ ommemorating Thomas Cantilupe (d.  1283) survives, but here the episcopal seal of dignity provides important clues as to the details of the lost memorial.67 Although the head of the crosier is facing in the opposite direction, the outline of the figure in the indent is remarkably similar to that on the seal. More pertinently, the feet of the figure on the seal rest on a wolf, Cantilupe’s rebus, just as the odd shape at the foot of the indent can most satisfactorily be explained as the image of a wolf.68 Furthermore, both seal and indent clearly display fleurs-de-lis in reference to the Cantilupe arms.69 The brass formed part of the shrine-tomb erected by Richard Swinfield, Cantilupe’s successor and enthusiastic promoter of his cult.70 Swinfield had been prebendary of Hereford and a favoured member of Cantilupe’s household, so would have had ample opportunities to view Cantilupe’s seal and to be influenced by its design.71 The magnificent brass commemorating John Trillek (d. 1360), bishop of Hereford, fortunately survives (figs. 5a, 5b).72 Here a comparison reveals some ­remarkable similarities between this memorial and Trillek’s highquality seal of dignity, particularly in relation to the mitre, crosier, amice, and decoration at the base of both the seal and brass.73 Contemporary 65

Tuck, ‘Stafford, Edmund’. The relationship between the seals and memorial brasses of Thomas Cantilupe and John Trillek are discussed at greater length in E. A. New, ‘The Tomb and Seal of John Trillek, Bishop of Hereford: Some Comparative Thoughts’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, forthcoming. 67 Cantilupe’s indent is illustrated and discussed at some length in P. Binski, ‘The Stylistic Sequence of London Figural Brasses’, in Earliest English Brasses, pp. 69–175 (pp. 70–1). Cantilupe’s seal is reproduced as the frontispiece in St Thomas Cantilupe Bishop of Hereford: Essays in His Honour, ed. M. Jancey (Hereford, 1982); for a description of the seal, see Birch, Catalogue of Seals, no. 1605. 68 E. G. Benson, ‘The Cantilupe Indent in Hereford Cathedral’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society 8:7 (1949), 322–30. The indent is illustrated, but Benson makes no reference to Cantilupe’s seal. 69 Binski, ‘The Stylistic Sequence’, pp. 69–175 (p. 71). 70 N. J. Rogers, ‘English Episcopal Monuments, 1270–1350’, in Earliest English Brasses, pp. 15–37 (p.  32, where the indent is also illustrated). 71 P. Hoskin, ‘Swinfield, Richard (d. 1317)’, ODNB. 72 Trillek’s brass is described most fully in P. Heseltine and H. M. Stuchfield, The Monumental Brasses of Hereford Cathedral (London, 2005), p. 12. 73 Hereford Cathedral Archives, HCA MS 3158. 66

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Fig. 5a  (left) Impressions of the seal of John Trillek, bishop of Hereford. Hereford Cathedral Archives, HCA 3158 and HCA 2851. Reproduced by permission of the Dean and Chapter of Hereford Cathedral. Fig. 5b  (right) Memorial brass of John Trillek in Hereford. Reproduced by permission of the Dean and Chapter of Hereford Cathedral.

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Elizabeth A. New fashion or related craftsmen may go some way to explaining this close ­relationship, but it is also tempting to speculate whether in this instance Trillek’s seal was the principal model for the brass.

Seals and tombs: differences While there are manifestly close similarities between episcopal tombs and seals, and some instances where a seal may well have been a direct model for a tomb, there are also a number of differences between the two media. By the mid to later thirteenth century, effigial tombs had begun to develop their own vocabulary, Hugh of Northwold’s elaborate monument at Ely being a prime example of the complex iconography of tomb design.74 The architectural features found on episcopal monuments, especially from the early to the mid thirteenth century, are almost certainly influenced by the ‘framing’ of sculpture on the exterior of churches,75 but do not appear on episcopal seals of dignity until a couple of generation later – and here tombs may well have influenced seals.76 Two particular features demonstrate the complex inter-relationship of a range of media and raise interesting questions about the formation and projection of certain types of episcopal identity. One is the object upon which the feet of the bishop rests as depicted on seals and tombs. On seals the figure is, in virtually all cases, standing on a corbel or architectural feature.77 In contrast, while the feet of some tomb effigies rest on an architectural feature, it is far more common to find a beast, most often a lion or dragon, beneath the episcopal feet. This creature is usually interpreted as a symbol of sin or evil, and in particular as an allusion to Psalm 91. 13, an interpretation strengthened by the manner in which the butt of the pastoral staff is frequently stabbed into the

74

See, for example, the discussion of this tomb in Binski, Becket’s Crown, pp. 98–101; Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 178–80. 75 Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 154–7, 176. 76 J. P. Dalton, The Archiepiscopal and Deputed Seals of York 1114–1500, Borthwick Texts and Calendars 17 (York, 1992), pp. 36–7, makes a direct connection between the ‘framing’ of façade statues and seals, and suggests that the three-dimensional canopy seen on the seal of dignity of William Zouche (1342–52) was almost certainly modelled on the vaulted canopies in the west window of York Minster. Dalton makes the further important observation that canopies appear at roughly the same time on brasses and seals. 77 On episcopal seals of the twelfth and earlier thirteenth century the feet of the figure are often unsupported. See for example the seal of Walter de Gray (d. 1255), Birch, Catalogue of Seals, no. 2304.

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Episcopal Embodiment:The Tombs and Seals of Bishops beast.78 This image also occurs in manuscripts and, as well as a general biblical and Christian resonance, it has been suggested that it relates to the investiture of the bishop with his pastoral staff, a ‘rod for correcting vice’.79 This makes the absence of the creature beneath the b ­ ishop’s feet in seal iconography puzzling, since seals embodied episcopal authority and had pedagogical potential.80 It does however mark a clear ­distinction between the traditions of sepulchral and s­ igillographic imagery. The representation of a figure at prayer is the other key feature that separates tomb and seal imagery. Evidence suggests that the attitude of supplication, with the hands of the recumbent figure placed together, does not occur on effigial monuments in England until the third quarter of the thirteenth century. This is some time after this joined-hands attitude appears in manuscripts, but at roughly the same time as the kneeling donor figure with hands raised together becomes a prevalent feature in manuscripts and glass.81 The earliest episcopal seal of dignity known to feature a suppliant figure is that of Thomas de Lisle, bishop of Ely, made in 1345, and this attitude of prayer is not common until later in the fourteenth century.82 While this might appear to indicate that seals lag behind other media in this instance, it should be noted that the s­ uppliant figure does appear on the subsidiary seals of bishops from the early t­ hirteenth century.83 The issue of exactly why the suppliant figure did not transfer to the episcopal seal of dignity until much later is something that deserves further attention. It might well be ­connected with the shifting perceptions of prelates, both from within the highest levels of the Church and secular society, and that we should look to ­developments in theology and other visual media for explanations.

78

For this interpretation see for example M. Roberts, ‘The Effigy of Bishop Hugh de  Northwold in Ely Cathedral’, The Burlington Magazine 130 (1988), 77–84 (p. 79). 79 T. A. Heslop, ‘Towards an Iconology of Croziers’, in Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture Presented to Peter Lasko, ed. D. Buckton and T. A. Heslop (Stroud, 1994), pp. 36–45 (p. 43). 80 E. A. New, ‘Biblical Imagery on Seals in Medieval England and Wales’, in Pourquoi les sceaux? La sigillographie nouvel enjeu de l’histoire de l’art, ed. M. Gill and J-L. Chassel (Lille, 2011), pp. 451–68 (esp. p. 466). 81 I am grateful to Dr Claire Daunton and Dr Julian Luxford for their helpful comments on this matter. 82 Birch, Catalogue of Seals, no. 217; Hope, ‘Seals of English Bishops’, p. 277. 83 Hope, ‘Seals of English Bishops’, p. 277.

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Elizabeth A. New

Seals and tombs: meanings The seal and act of sealing were powerful concepts. A matrix retained images and words, but it was only in the impression that they became manifest. Furthermore, one matrix existed but multiple copies of the seal could be made, which raised questions about what constituted an ‘original’ and provided the means of ensuring direct authority as expressed through the seal.84 The seal was an object with legal application, but it had a resonance that went far beyond the administrative. Matthew Paris recounted the horrified reaction when Robert Grosseteste stamped on a document sent to him by Canterbury Cathedral Priory, because the image on the attached seal was of the martyrdom of Becket and Bishop Robert was deemed to be trampling on the saint.85 The episcopal seal embodied both the individual and the office of bishop. Despite the limited size, the figure depicted on the seal was a representation of a real bishop, and the various layers of vestments carefully rendered.86 The image was too small to show the pontifical ring, but the crosier and, from the early twelfth century, the mitre are clearly depicted in all cases. The attitude of benediction was, on occasion, used on the seals of mitred abbots, but for the most part was restricted to bishops, presumably referencing both the general role of the cleric as providing spiritual protection or absolution and the pontifical blessing used in rites such as ordination.87 When the image changed to that of a suppliant figure care was still taken to represent the mitre and crosier, thus maintaining the semiotic tradition. At the same time, this shift enabled the diocesan saint to be placed centre stage, something that has led a number of scholars to see these seals as part of the creation or furthering of what is often termed ‘institutional genealogy’ for a particular diocese.88 84

Brigitte Bedos-Rezak has, for example, proposed that the impression of the royal seal has greater veracity than the document to which it was attached because, although multiple impressions could be made, they all issued from a matrix which directly embodied the power of the king: Bedos-Rezak, ‘Image as Patron’, p. 226. 85 Cited in Binski, Becket’s Crown, p. 133. 86 See, for example, the detailed analysis of the vestments depicted on the seals of the archbishops of York in Dalton, Archiepiscopal and Deputed Seals, pp. 30–2. For this reason – combined with the ability closely to date them – episcopal seals are often used in studies of the development of ecclesiastical dress and liturgical vestments. See, for example, J. Mayo, A History of Ecclesiastical Dress (London, 1984), p. 41. 87 I am grateful to Dr Martin Heale for his observation that only mitred abbots and priors were depicted in the attitude of benediction, a privilege usually granted in conjunction with the pontificalia. 88 K. Heard, ‘A Glazing Scheme for Archbishop John Stafford’, JEH 60 (2009), 673–88.

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Episcopal Embodiment:The Tombs and Seals of Bishops From the origins of the generic visual identifier on eleventh-century episcopal seals, through to those of the mid sixteenth century, there was therefore a degree of visual stability. The enduring ‘logo’ identified the position occupied by the seal owner and promoted the idea of the episcopate as an arbiter of spiritual authority. Kate Heard, discussing the seals of fifteenth-century bishops, has gone as far as suggesting that episcopal seals were used to ‘promote the validity and unassailability of [the bishops’] position’, and it is difficult to disagree with this statement.89 Furthermore, one only needs to look at the radical changes to the design of episcopal seals in the mid sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to realize quite what a powerful image of Catholic authority this had become.90 On the death of a bishop his matrix was destroyed. While it was necessary to ensure that the matrix could not be used to forge documents, there may have been symbolic and theological reasons that have further implications for our ‘reading’ of episcopal seals and tombs. The deceased bishop’s seal matrix was broken, and seals were sometimes buried with their owners.91 The material might instead be re-used in another manner, and at Durham the tradition was to offer the metal to the shrine of St Cuthbert. The silver matrix of Richard de Bury (d. 1345) was, for example, made into a chalice, while that of his successor Thomas Hatfield (d. 1381) was fashioned into an image of a bishop and suspended at the foot of Cuthbert’s shrine.92 The destruction of the matrix marked the end of the bishop’s authority in life. His tomb, which in many cases had remarkable similarities to seals, extended that authority into the afterlife. Furthermore, seals in life and tombs in death marked the individual bishop as part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and sometimes quite deliberately were used to foster the idea of episcopal lineage and authority across the ages. Such 89

Heard, ‘Image and Identity’, p. 306. See also Biebrach, ‘The Medieval Episcopal Monuments’, esp. pp. 232–3. 90 M. Aston, ‘Bishops, Seals, Mitres’, in Life and Thought in the Northern Church c.1100–c.1700, ed. D. Wood, Studies in Church History Subsidia 12 (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 183–226. 91 M. Anderson, ‘Medieval Seal Matrices found at Castles and Castle Mounds in Denmark’, in Good Impressions, pp. 77–80 (p. 72). The deposition of a matrix for Isabella of Hainault in her tomb is discussed in J. Cherry, ‘Medieval and PostMedieval Seals’, in 7000 Years of Seals, ed. D. Collon (London, 1997), pp. 124–42 (p. 134) and Nolan, Queens in Stone and Silver, p. 95. A wax impression of the seal of Pope Clement IV (d. 1268) was found in his tomb: J. Gardner, The Tomb and the Tiara. Curial Tomb Sculpture in Rome and Avignon in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1992), p. 14 and n. 85. 92 Aston, ‘Bishops, Seals, Mitres’, p.  184, incorrectly citing C. Hunter Blair, ‘Note upon Medieval Seals’ Archaeologia Aeliana 3rd s. 17 (1920), 254–5.

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Elizabeth A. New observations lead inevitably to the speculation that the sepulchral monument became in some ways the ‘new’ episcopal seal, representing and embodying (in this case quite literally) the bishop. It has been noted that the careful representation of the correct regalia on tombs reflects actual burial practice, with the complex layering of vestments, mitre and crosier faithfully copying the manner in which the corpse was attired and, helpfully, identifying the figure as a bishop,93 just as he had been so identified on his seal. It has further been suggested that the burial of bishops in full pontificals, with crosier, ring and chalice, rendered the tomb ‘a time capsule’ awaiting opening at the Last Judgement.94 In this case sealing in a biblical context, especially the sealing of the Sepulchre of Christ and the sealing of the Elect with the Holy Spirit, must surely have come to mind when clerics placed the body of their deceased bishop in his tomb to await its unsealing at the End of Days. The seal was also used as a metaphor in medieval theological discourse,95 including the idea of God as the matrix and the soul as an impression, concepts that add further layers of meaning to a consideration of the association of seals and tombs.

93

Cherry, ‘Some Cathedral Tombs’ p.  158; M. Sillence, ‘The Two Effigies of Archbishop Walter de Gray (d.  1255) at York Minster’, Church Monuments 20 (2005), 5–30. 94 Binski, Medieval Death, p. 97. 95 See B. M. Bedos-Rezak, ‘Replica: Images of Identity and the Identity of Images in Prescholastic France’, in The Mind’s Eye. Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages, ed. J. Hamburger and A-M. Bouché (Princeton, 2006), pp. 46–64 for a full discussion.

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Cistercian Abbots as Patrons of Art and Architecture: Northern England in the Late Middle Ages Michael Carter

The patronage of Cistercian abbots in the late Middle Ages has often been judged harshly by scholars. Nikolaus Pevsner famously damned the lodging built by Abbot Thomas Chard (c. 1505–39) at Forde Abbey, Dorset, as being on a scale ‘to justify the Reformation and Dissolution’.1 His comments are reflective of a wider English historiographical tradition that has tended to disparage the monastic life in the late Middle Ages, with patronage of art and architecture often interpreted as evidence of the decline and spiritual malaise into which the religious orders, especially the Cistercians, had fallen.2 There can be no doubting that the late Middle Ages was a period of change for the Cistercians and other religious orders. Whether it was also one of decline has been questioned by a recent generation of scholars, who have found evidence of reform, renewal and vibrancy.3  1

J. Newman and N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Dorset (Harmondsworth, 1972), p. 210.  2 The great monastic historian, Dom David Knowles, asserted that the scale of ‘corporate magnificence’ at late medieval monasteries was ‘neither necessary for, nor consistent with, the fashion of life indicated by their rule and early institutions’: Knowles, RO, III, 256. Similarly, ‘material preoccupations’ at English Cistercian abbeys in the late medieval period were cited by Charles Talbot as evidence of the order’s ‘low ebb’ and ‘languid spirit’ in the late Middle Ages: see C. H. Talbot, ‘Marmaduke Huby, Abbot of Fountains (1495–1526)’, Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis 20 (1964), 165–84 (p. 165).  3 There is a burgeoning ‘revisionist’ literature on the monastic and religious orders in late medieval England, exemplified by the editor’s introduction to Monasticism in Late Medieval England, c. 1300–1540, ed. M. Heale (Manchester, 2009), pp. 1–74. Other important publications include K. Stöber, Late Medieval Monasteries and their Patrons: England and Wales, c. 1300–1540 (Woodbridge, 2007) and the editors’ introductions and collections of essays in The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England, ed. J. G. Clark (Woodbridge, 2002); The Culture of Medieval English Monasticism, ed. J. G. Clark (Woodbridge, 2007); and Monasteries and Society in

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Michael Carter Cistercian monasteries in the late Middle Ages were quite unlike those of the twelfth century.4 Their architecture and material and visual cultures lacked the austerity which so defined the order’s art and architecture in its early days. However, it is important to recognize that the order’s attitude towards its material and visual cultures evolved considerably over the course of the Middle Ages.5 Indeed, by c. 1300 earlier prohibitions on matters artistic such as bell towers, images, coloured and pictorial window glass and the possession of sumptuous vestments and altar plate had largely ceased to apply.6 For some scholars this is evidence of the order’s adaptation to the realities of late medieval society and religious belief and practice.7 Glyn Coppack has suggested that the extensive re-planning of many English Cistercian monasteries between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries was undertaken by monks who ‘were very aware of their identity and religion, something which their buildings were shaped to reflect’.8 Julian Luxford concluded that the scale and focus of patronage at Benedictine monasteries in the two centuries before the Suppression was an excellent indication of that order’s strength, solvency and pride, reflecting the ‘widespread and self-conscious pious commitment’ of Benedictine monks and nuns at the end of the medieval period.9 Luxford showed that Benedictine superiors were by far the most important patrons of their monasteries’ art and architecture. Taking a lead from Luxford, this article will examine the extent of patronage attributable to Cistercian abbots, focusing on the order’s fourteen abbeys in northern England (fig. 1) in the period c.  ­1300–1540. However, it must be acknowledged from the outset that the material and documentary evidence does not match the richness of that available to Luxford, whose sample of forty-five

the British Isles in the Later Middle Ages, ed. J. Burton and K. Stöber (Woodbridge, 2008).  4 For an analysis of the planning of the order’s monasteries in this period, see G.  Coppack, ‘The Planning of Cistercian Monasteries in the Late Middle Ages: The Evidence from Fountains, Rievaulx, Sawley and Rushen’, in The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England, ed. Clark, pp. 197–209.  5 T. N. Kinder, Cistercian Europe: The Architecture of Contemplation (Grand Rapids, 2002), p. 37.  6 For a discussion of the evolution of Cistercian legislation on art and architecture, see C. Norton and D. Park, ‘Introduction’, in Cistercian Art and Architecture in the British Isles, ed. C. Norton and D. Park (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 1–10 (pp. 4–8).  7 Kinder, Cistercian Europe, p. 25.  8 Coppack, ‘The Planning of Cistercian Monasteries’, p. 209.  9 J. M. Luxford, The Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries, 1­ 300–1540: A Patronage History (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 206–7.

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Fig. 1   Map showing the location of Cistercian abbeys in ­northern England. Drawn by Steve Edwards.

monasteries provided enough material for a book-length study.10 Nevertheless, almost all the northern Cistercian abbeys offer some evidence of abbatial patronage dating from the late medieval period, and much of this evidence has either largely been overlooked or is capable of r­einterpretation. Gaps in the material can also be filled by  calling  upon evidence from abbeys elsewhere in England and Wales. 10

Luxford, Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries, pp. 4–27.

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Michael Carter

Whose patronage? All male Cistercian communities had an abbot at their head, whose responsibilities were detailed in the Rule of St Benedict. These included caring for the material wellbeing of his brethren.11 It was abbots as the leaders and personifications of their communities who, at first sight, appear to have been the most energetic patrons of the art and architecture of Cistercian monasteries in the later Middle Ages, thus paralleling the situation at Benedictine monasteries as revealed in Luxford’s study.12 However, can all internal patronage at northern Cistercian abbeys indicated by heraldry or described in chronicles safely be attributed to abbots? Luxford’s examination of Benedictine patronage showed that many of the works credited to monastic superiors were in fact the fruit of more communal enterprises, funded by contributions from general monastic incomes.13 It is likely that this was true to an even greater extent for the Cistercians. The order did not adopt the Benedictine practice of allocating specific manors for the support of the abbot and his household.14 Moreover, by the late Middle Ages the financial independence of Cistercian abbots was, in theory, severely curtailed. The constitution of the order issued by Pope Benedict XII in 1335 (Fulgens sicut stella, usually referred to as the Benedictina) placed firm restrictions on abbatial control of finances.15 Supervisory rights were vested to monastic communities, and the consent of the General Chapter was required for loans. Two bursarii were to be appointed for each house, who were to receive and distribute all revenues. The bursars allocated funds for the use of abbots, who were required to account annually to the bursars and other senior office holders within their monastery for their expenditure. Any funds given directly to an abbot were to be handed to the bursars on pain of suspension.16 The Benedictina also mandated that all houses were 11

Rule of St Benedict, ch. 2, 64. Luxford, Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries, pp. 51–82. 13 Ibid., pp. 56–60. 14 For the Benedictine practice, see Knowles, RO, II, 240–4. The earliest Cistercian evidence for accounting practices relates to Kingswood Abbey, Gloucestershire, where in 1240 all expenditure was under the control of the bursar and cellarer: see Knowles, RO, I, 76. 15 The full text of the constitution is given in Magnum Bullarium Romanum, a Beato Leone Magno usque ad S. D. N. Benedictum XIII. Tome primus, ad A. B. Leone Magno ad Paulum IV, ed. L. and A. Cherubini, A. Auda and J. Paulus (Luxemburg, 1727), pp. 209–17. 16 Magnum Bullarium Romanum, pp.  209–11. For discussions of its financial provisions, see P. McDonald, ‘The Papacy and Monastic Observance in the Later Middle Ages: The Benedictina in England’, Journal of Religious Studies 14 (1986), 117–32 (p.  121); L. J. Lekai, The Cistercians: Ideals and Reality (Kent OH, 1977), pp. 72–3; Kinder, Cistercian Europe, p. 75. 12

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Cistercian Abbots as Patrons ofArt and Architecture to obtain a conventual seal, thereby further securing communal control of finances. This had been the situation in England since the Statute of Carlisle of 1307, which required all Cistercian abbeys to possess a conventual seal which was to be deposited in the custody of the prior and four ‘worthier’ and more discreet members of the community. The abbot could no longer commit his house to a debt or obligation by means of a personal seal.17 The surviving accounts of English Cistercian monasteries show that the abbot was allocated a sum for his expenses, but that it was the convent which funded expenditure on liturgical furnishings, fixtures and equipment, as well as the maintenance and renovations of the church and conventual buildings. The accounts of Meaux for 1393–4 allocated a mere 10s. to the abbot for his expenses,18 hardly enough to fund the ambitious building programmes and the provision of the sumptuous altar furnishings lovingly described in the abbey’s chronicle. The annual allowance allotted to the abbot of Fountains in 1457–8 was more generous at £30.19 Nevertheless, this would have been a woefully insufficient amount to pay for the extensive works conducted at the monastery during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Evidence that the monastery funded these is provided by the bursar’s accounts for 1457–8, which record payments to glaziers and masons.20 Similarly the accounts of Sawley Abbey for 1481 detail payments to carpenters, glaziers, masons, plumbers and tilers.21 Building works at Whalley were also funded from the general monastic income. The accounts for 1478 record that £10 14s. was spent on the fabric of the church, which increased to £22 in 1520 and £23 in 1521.22 17

T. A. Heslop, ‘Cistercian Seals in England and Wales’, in Cistercian Art and Architecture in the British Isles, pp. 266–83 (pp. 273–4, 278). For the clauses in the Statute of Carlisle and the Benedictina regarding conventual seals, see Heslop, ‘Cistercian Seals’, pp. 282–3. 18 Chronica monasterii de Melsa: a fundatione usque ad annum 1396, auctore Thoma de Burton, abbate. Accedit continuatio ad annum 1406 a monacho quodam ipsius domus, ed. E. A. Bond, 3 vols., Rolls Series 43 (London, 1866–8), III, lxvi. 19 Memorials of the Abbey of St Mary of Fountains, ed. J. R. Walbran and J. T. Fowler, 3 vols., Surtees Society 42, 67, 130 (Durham, 1863–1918), III, 12. 20 Ibid., III, 52, 56, 57, 85. 21 The accounts are printed (but incorrectly attributed to 1381) in T. D. Whitaker, The History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven in the County of York (London, 1805) pp. 63–9, an error corrected in G. Coppack, C. Hayfield and R. Williams, ‘Sawley Abbey: The Architecture and Archaeology of a Smaller Cistercian House’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 155 (2002), 22–114 (p. 25). 22 T. D. Whitaker, An History of the Parish of Whalley and Honor of Clitheroe in the Counties of Lancaster and York (Blackburn, 1801), p. 100 (1478 and 1521); O. Ashmore, ‘The Whalley Abbey Bursars’ Accounts for 1520’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 114 (1962), 49–72 (p. 72) (1520). Evidence from Cistercian abbeys outside the geographical scope of this study also ­underlines the point

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Michael Carter It seems unlikely that abbots were able to call upon personal or familial wealth to fund their patronage. Few late medieval Cistercian abbots originated from elite families. Instead, the majority seem to have belonged to families of non-gentry, or at most minor gentry status, which often had long-standing connections with the monastery that their offspring entered. An example is Abbot William Marshall of Kirkstall (1509–28) who raised the height of his abbey’s crossing tower. The Marshall family of Allerton, near Leeds, where Kirkstall had a grange, are documented as connected with the abbey from the thirteenth century.23 Marshall’s local origins are indicated by his appointment in 1519 as supervisor of the will of his brother, Christopher Marshall of Potternewton, a village in close proximity to Allerton.24 Similarly, the family of Abbot Robert Chamber of Holm Cultram (1507–c.  1530) were tenants of the monastery’s grange at Raby Cote from the fifteenth century.25 The research of Claire Cross has shown that Yorkshire’s Cistercian abbots, like the superiors of religious houses in other orders, performed valuable services for the local community until the very end of the Middle Ages.26 In 1511 Abbot Marshall of Kirkstall witnessed the will of Richard Baines of Leeds, and in 1519 Brian Palmes, serjeant-at-law, appointed Marshall his executor.27 Cistercian abbots also undertook services for the State, for example Abbot Robert Thornton of Jervaulx (1511–33) was appointed to a royal commission to gather corn in northern England.28 The secular status and influence of these Cistercian abbots was nothing compared to the position of authority which they enjoyed within their abbeys, where they lived apart from their convent in separate lodgings,

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that the monastery itself funded expenditure on art and architecture. The cost of decorating the church at Beaulieu Abbey, Hampshire, at the end of the thirteenth century is itemized in the bursar’s accounts: see The Account Book of Beaulieu Abbey, ed. S. F. Hockey, Camden 4th s. 16 (London, 1975), pp. 34, 242. The construction of the abbot’s ‘nova aula’ at Sibton Abbey, Suffolk, in 1368 was funded to the tune of £24 6s. 4d. from the monastery’s general income, and from the same source Geoffrey le Glaswryth was paid 31s. 7d. for its glazing: see Sibton Abbey Estates, ed. A. H. Denney, Suffolk Records Society 2 (Ipswich, 1960), p. 29. G. D. Barnes, Kirkstall Abbey, 1147–1539: An Historical Study, Thoresby Society 58 (Leeds, 1984), pp. 16, 30–31. Ibid., p. 84. F. Grainger, ‘The Chambers Family of Raby Cote’, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society n.s. 1 (1901), 194–232 (pp. 194–6). C. Cross, ‘Monasticism and Society in the Diocese of York, 1520–1540’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5th s. 38 (1988), 131–45. Testamenta Eboracensia. A Selection of Wills from the Registry at York, ed. J. Raine and J. W. Clay, 6 vols., Surtees Society 4, 30, 45, 53, 79, 106 (Durham, 1832–1902), IV, 24–5, 107. LP, IV(2), no. 3822.

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Cistercian Abbots as Patrons ofArt and Architecture attended by retainers and servants which, in the case of the abbots of Fountains, included members of the local gentry community.29 As will be seen shortly, inscriptional and heraldic evidence repeatedly suggests that Cistercian abbots were active patrons. However, this patronage was only possible because of the participation of the convent and the use of the often substantial income derived from the monastery’s estates. Indeed, in the late Middle Ages, the Cistercians were maximising the feudal income obtained from this source.30 The importance of the contribution of the entire community is suggested by the heraldry that adorns the greatest Cistercian building in northern England of the late Middle Ages, the tower of Abbot Marmaduke Huby (1495–1526) at Fountains. Huby’s patronage is indicated by his monogram and motto, ‘Soli Deo honor et gloria’ (‘to God alone be honour and glory’). The tower is also decorated with the arms of the abbey’s historic and current ecclesiastical and lay benefactors. However, it is the arms of the abbey, azure, three horseshoes, or,31 which appear most often, on no less than six occasions within the inscriptions surrounding its upper storeys, and the shields also held by many of the angels which support and surmount the image niches.32 Fountains was a rich monastery. At the Suppression, its annual income was over £1000, wealth that was comparable to some Benedictine cathedral priories.33 Huby spent this income lavishly. In a letter to the General Chapter at Cîteaux written in April 1517 he stated that during his tenure of office he had spent 1000 marks in defence of his order, 34 money which would have been appropriated from the general income of his monastery. However, such lavish expenditure could lead to conflict between abbots and their monks. Abbot John Paslew (1507–37) undertook extensive building work at Whalley, including the construction of a Lady Chapel and the rebuilding of his own lodging, and in 1520 his total expenditure amounted to £500 out of the abbey’s annual income of £900.35 He

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For details of the household, see Fountains Abbey Lease Book, ed. D. J. H. Michelmore, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series 140 (Leeds, 1981), pp. xxviii–xxix. 30 For a discussion of the ways in which this was achieved, see ibid., pp. xlv–xlvi. 31 Heraldic Visitation of the Northern Counties in 1530 by Thomas Tonge, ed. W. H. D. Longstaffe, Surtees Society 61 (Durham, 1862), p. 51. The source of these arms is unclear and cannot be connected to any of the monastery’s abbots or benefactors. 32 W. H. St John Hope, ‘Fountains Abbey’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 15 (1900) 269–402 (pp. 315–16). 33 Knowles, RO, III, 473. 34 Letters from the English Abbots to the Chapter at Cîteaux: 1442–1521, ed. C. H. Talbot, Camden 4th s. 4 (London, 1967), pp. 242–6. 35 O. Ashmore, A Guide to Whalley Abbey, 6th edn (Blackburn, 2003), pp. 7–9.

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Michael Carter also secured the right to use the mitre and other pontificalia in 1516.36 His community clearly resented the expense involved in obtaining this privilege. After the suppression of Whalley in 1537, several of its former monks complained to the royal authorities that Paslew had for six or seven years continually diminished the plate of the house ‘since he took it upon himself to be a mitred abbot’.37 Mindful perhaps of the ill ease of their brethren about their expenditure, some Cistercian abbots were taking steps to obtain an income which was independent and distinct from their convents by securing papal permission to acquire benefices normally reserved for the secular clergy. One such abbot was John Burton (1489–1510) of Rievaulx. The abbot converted the monastic infirmary at Rievaulx into an abbatial lodging after receiving the authorization of Pope Alexander VI in 1497 to hold a lay benefice ‘to enable him to be maintained in abbatial dignity’.38 Abbot Robert Thornton of Jervaulx (1510–33), whose artistic patronage will be discussed presently, was granted a similar privilege in 1516.39 It is also of note that Abbot Thomas Chard of Forde in Dorset and Abbot Robert King of Thame (c. 1527–39) in Oxfordshire, both of whom built palatial lodgings, also successfully appealed to the papacy for permission to hold multiple livings.40

The extent of abbatial patronage The use of conventual incomes and independent sources of funding allowed generations of Cistercian abbots to be energetic and at times prolific patrons. The surviving material evidence for this is abundant. Heraldic and inscriptional evidence shows that the monastic churches at Fountains, Holm Cultram and Kirkstall were renovated or rebuilt under the auspices of their respective abbots. John Darnton ­(1479–95) 36

CPL, XIX, 492–3. LP, XII(1), no. 621. 38 CPL, XX, 530–1. For the lodging, see P. Fergusson and S. Harrison, Rievaulx Abbey: Community, Architecture and Memory (New Haven, 1999), pp. 132–5. 39 CPL, XX, 387–8. 40 Rome, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Lateran Reg. 1463, fols. 334r–335r, 14 Kal Jan 1524 (19 December 1524), permission for Abbot Chard to hold incompatible benefices: Rome, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Lateran Reg. 1477, fols. 164r–169r, permission for Abbot King to hold suffragan bishopric, and grant of indult to retain abbey of Thame and to hold a third benefice. All dated 7 Id Jan 4 Clement VII (7 January 1527). I am extremely grateful to Dr Martin Heale for these references. For Chard’s lodging, see A. Emery, Greater Medieval Houses of England and Wales 1300–1500, III: Southern England (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 560–5. Abbot King’s house at Thame is considered by Emery, ibid., pp. 180–3. 37

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Cistercian Abbots as Patrons ofArt and Architecture r­emodelled the east end of the church at Fountains, work which involved taking down the vaults of the chapel of the Nine Altars and its partial refenestration, an inscription dating this work to 1483. The abbot recorded his patronage with his rebus (the eagle of St John, the letters dern and a tun), together with the motto Benedicite fontes Domino, which punned on the name of the abbey (‘Oh you fountains, bless the Lord’). The abbot also renovated the nave, inserting a great west window, again advertising his patronage with his rebus, which is accompanied by the date 1494.41 Rebuilding at Fountains continued under Abbot Huby, notably the great bell tower attached to the north transept, which is ornamented with liturgical inscriptions as well as Huby’s motto and monogram.42 At Holm Cultram, Abbot Chamber added a porch to the west front of the abbey, recording his patronage with an inscription and heraldry (fig. 2),43 and an ex situ fragmentary sculpture records that the abbot covered it, or some other building, with lead.44 Abbot Marshall of Kirkstall had his initials inscribed on the buttresses of the storeys he added to the church’s crossing tower.45 Abbots were also patrons of the bells which hung in such towers, and a surviving example can be found at the parish church of St Peter, Kirkthorpe, near Wakefield, which is inscribed with the name of one of Marshall’s predecessors, Abbot John Bardsey (1392–1410),46 while a bell inscribed with the name of Abbot Thomas York (c. 1450–c. 1470) still hangs at Holm Cultram.47 41

Hope, ‘Fountains Abbey’, pp. 296, 312. Ibid., pp. 314–16; M. Carter, ‘The Tower of Abbot Marmaduke Huby of Fountains Abbey: Hubris or Piety?’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 82 (2010), 269–85. 43 The architecture of Holm Cultram, including Chamber’s porch, is discussed by S. Harrison, ‘The Architecture of Holm Cultram’, in Carlisle and Cumbria: Roman and Medieval Architecture, Art and Archaeology, ed. M. McCarthy and D. Weston, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 27 (Leeds, 2004), pp. 239–56. Also see the description in G. E. Gilbanks, Some Records of a Cistercian Abbey: Holm Cultram, Cumberland (London, 1899), pp. 120–1. 44 The much abbreviated inscription, which is now ex situ inside the abbey porch, reads: ‘Chab’ ltruxit op’ ho plubogo texit’. Gilbanks, Some Records of a Cistercian Abbey, p. 121, gives this translation: ‘Chamber erected this building, and covered it with lead.’ 45 W. H. St John Hope, ‘Kirkstall Abbey’, in Architectural Description of Kirkstall Abbey, ed. W. H. St John Hope and J. Bilson, Thoresby Society 16 (Leeds, 1907), pp. 1–72 (p. 16); P. Leach and N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England. Yorkshire, West Riding: Leeds, Bradford and the North (London 2009), p.  505; M. Carter, ‘Abbot William Marshall and the Architectural Development of Kirkstall Abbey, Yorkshire, in the Later Middle Ages’, Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies 1 (2012), pp. 115–42. 46 J. Wardell, An Historical Account of Kirkstall Abbey (Leeds, 1890), p. 34. 47 The Register and Records of Holm Cultram, ed. F. Grainger and W. G. Collingwood, Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society Record Series 7 (Kendal, 1929), p. 149. 42

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Fig. 2  Holm Cultram Abbey, porch built by Abbot Robert Chamber in 1507. Photo: author.

Some of the furnishings provided by abbots for their monastic churches also survive, notably the choir-stalls from Whalley Abbey which were removed at the Dissolution to the nearby parish church. The initials WW on one of the misericords suggest that the stalls were commissioned during the abbacy of William of Whalley (1418–34),48 a conclusion supported by a reference to the induction of Abbot John Eccles in 1438 ‘in nova stalla’.49 Bench-ends and screens from Jervaulx Abbey survive at St Andrew’s, Aysgarth, Yorkshire. The initials HM or HW of an unidentified abbot decorate one of the bench-ends (fig. 3) and an intact screen. A second bench-end is carved with the rebus of William Heslington, abbot of the monastery from 1475 to 1510. A fragment of another screen has the initials of Adam Sedbar (1533–7), the final abbot of Jervaulx, and the date 1536,50 just one year before the 48

C. Tracy, English Gothic Choir-Stalls, 1400–1540 (Woodbridge, 1990), p. 1. BL MS Harley 1830, fol. 24r. 50 The intact screen and bench-ends were formerly attributed to the workshop of the Ripon carver William Bromfeld: see J. S. Purvis, ‘The Ripon School of Carvers 49

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Fig. 3  St Andrew’s, Aysgarth, bench-end carved with the m ­ onogram of an unidentified abbot of Jervaulx. Photo: author.

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Michael Carter abbot was ­executed and the monastery brutally suppressed following the Pilgrimage of Grace. A black mourning vestment from Jervaulx decorated with Last Judgement imagery and the rebus of Abbot Robert Thornton also survives.51 Illuminated books showing evidence of abbatial patronage are also extant, including the richly decorated two-volume chartulary from Furness Abbey which has an introductory verse recording that the work was undertaken by John Stell, a monk of the house, in 1412 at the order of Abbot William Dalton (1406–18),52 who also donated a decorated manuscript comprising a collection of theological works to his monastery.53 Books were also acquired by abbots for their personal use. The most striking example is the breviary of Abbot Huby now in the library of Christ Church, Oxford. It has added illuminated borders and initials in the Renaissance style, and the shield in the base of the opening page of the psalter is illuminated with Huby’s monogram and motto (fig. 4).54 An enamelled roundel from Rievaulx Abbey with the arms of Abbot John Inkeley (1449–63) demonstrates that northern Cistercian abbots were patrons of luxury metalwork.55 The quality of liturgical metalwork in Cistercian abbeys is suggested by the morses from Warden Abbey, Bedfordshire, which are decorated with the monogram of Abbot Walter Clifton (c.  1377–97).56 Abbot Clifton was also a patron of stained glass, panels in the parish church at Old Warden depicting both himself and St Martha.57 Although no significant stained glass has survived from a and the Lost Choir-Stalls of Bridlington Priory’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 29 (1929), 157–201 (pp. 165–7). This attribution has been challenged and re-assessed: see Tracy, English Gothic Choir-Stalls, pp. 25, 72. 51 London, V&A, 697–1902, discussed by M. Carter, ‘Remembrance, Liturgy and Status in a Late Medieval English Cistercian Abbey: The Mourning Vestment of Abbot Robert Thornton of Jervaulx (1510–33)’, Textile History 41 (2010), 145–60. 52 The first part of the chartulary is TNA, DL 42/3, the second, BL MS Add. 33244. The inscription appears in BL MS Add. 33244, fol. 2r. For illustrations and a description of the manuscript, see K. L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1390–1490, 2 vols., Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 6 (London, 1996), I, fig. 145–9, II, 121–3. 53 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Jones 48. 54 Oxford, Christ Church College, e. 8. 29. It is discussed in M. Carter, ‘The Breviary of Abbot Marmaduke Huby: Renaissance Design and Religious Change in Early Sixteenth-Century Yorkshire’, Bodleian Library Record 21 (2009), 17–34. 55 G. C. Dunning, ‘Heraldic and Decorated Metalwork and Other Finds from Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire’, Antiquaries Journal 45 (1965), 53–63. 56 M. Carter, ‘Cracking the Code: The Warden Abbey Morses, Luxury Metalwork and Patronage at a Cistercian Abbey in the Late Middle Ages’, Antiquaries Journal 91 (2011), 175–93. 57 For discussions of the panels, see R. Marks, ‘Cistercian Window Glass in England and Wales’, in Cistercian Art and Architecture in the British Isles, pp.  211–27

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Fig. 4  Breviary of Abbot Marmaduke Huby, the first page of the Psalter with Huby’s monogram and motto ­illuminated in the base. Reproduced with the kind ­permission of the Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford.

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Michael Carter Cistercian house in the northern counties, it must be the case that the abbots of these houses both commissioned, and were depicted in, similar panels. Abbots were also patrons of domestic architecture, improving both their own accommodation and that of their community. Cistercian abbots had always occupied a room or lodging apart from the rest of the community, and by the early thirteenth century the order’s abbeys in England were being equipped with separate houses for the abbot.58 In the later Middle Ages these houses were renovated and completely rebuilt at several abbeys, including Fountains. There are now only scanty remains of the abbot’s house, which was situated to the east of the main monastic nucleus. However, excavations in this area in the mid nineteenth century uncovered evidence of its rebuilding by Huby, including ‘stones bearing the well-known initials MH’.59 Abbots were also concerned with the comfort of their communities, which included the provision of misericords, or meat refectories. Cistercian monks originally had a strictly vegetarian diet. This was relaxed by the Benedictina in 1335, and by c. 1480 it had become the practice to eat meat on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.60 Abbot Darnton provided the community at Fountains with a misericord adjoining his own residence at approximately the same time, its floor tiles inscribed with the abbot’s initials.61 Evidence of patronage can be found outside monastic precincts, for example at the granges of Fountains, several of which were rebuilt during Huby’s abbacy. These include Bewerley Grange where the abbot’s initials and motto appear on the east end of the chapel.62 Fragments of similar inscriptions occur at Brimham Grange,63 the monastery’s accounts for 1457–8 recording the expenses incurred by the abbot during his visits there.64 At the Dissolution silver plate for the abbot’s use at Brimham included a chalice, a goblet and salt of silver (pp. 225–6) and R. Marks, Stained Glass in England During the Middle Ages (London, 1993), pp. 11, 19, 169, 174, 180. 58 For discussion of the lodgings of Cistercian abbots and their development, see T. Coomans, L’abbaye de Villers-en-Brabant: Construction, configuration et signification d’une abbaye cistercienne gothique, Cîteaux: Studia et Documenta 11 (Brussels, 2000), p. 455. 59 Memorials of Fountains, II, 143. For a description of Huby’s development of the abbot’s lodging, see Hope, ‘Fountains Abbey’, 335–9 and G. Coppack, Fountains Abbey: The Cistercians in Northern England, 2nd edn (Stroud, 2004), p. 102. 60 Lekai, Cistercians: Ideals and Reality, pp. 73, 371. 61 Coppack, Fountains Abbey, p. 97. 62 N. Pevsner and E. Radcliffe, The Buildings of England. Yorkshire: West Riding, 2nd edn (Harmondsworth, 1967), p.  100; C. Platt, The Monastic Grange in Medieval England: A Reassessment (London, 1969), p. 189. 63 Platt, The Monastic Grange, p. 192. 64 Memorials of Fountains, III, 25, 52, 67.

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Cistercian Abbots as Patrons ofArt and Architecture and seven silver spoons.65 Several of the granges of Newminster Abbey were also rebuilt, but here the architecture appears to have been concerned with defence rather than luxury. Abbot John Butler (c. 1453–79) erected a tower at Rothley,66 and by the Suppression the granges at West Ritton and Nunnykirk had also been fortified.67 There is also evidence of conventual or abbatial patronage at appropriated churches. The bursar’s account of Fountains Abbey for 1457–8 records the purchase of a retable for the church at Crosthwaite costing 26s. 8d.68 In the nineteenth century there was ‘ancient stall work’ with the arms of Kirkstall Abbey at the church of St Mary, Barnoldswick, the original site of the abbey.69 In 1620 Roger Dodsworth recorded the arms of Byland Abbey glazed into the east window of Bubwith church, accompanied by the inscriptions ‘Orate Pro Abbate de Biland, qui fieri fecit medietatem hujus finestre’ (‘pray for the abbot of Byland, who made half this window’) and ‘Arma domus de Biland’ (‘arms of the house of Byland’).70 There are also instances of abbots contributing to buildings in which their monasteries had no direct interest. During his short tenure as abbot of Kirkstall, Robert Killingbeck (1499–1501) contributed to the rebuilding of nearby Leeds parish church, a now lost inscription from its east end recording that he donated stone for the construction of ‘Our Lady’s service’, or Lady Chapel.71 The abbot’s toponym suggests that he was from a hamlet within the parish of Leeds. Sepulchral monuments of abbots also provide interesting evidence of patronage, ranging from the humble cross slab in the nave of Rievaulx Abbey of Abbot Henry Burton (1423–9),72 to the chest tomb of Abbot Chamber at Holm Cultram, which is sculpted with the abbot’s rebus and depicts the abbot and his entire community (fig. 5).73 65

Ibid., I, 293–4. Chartularium abbathiae de Novo Monasterio ordinis Cisterciensis fundatae anno MCXXXVII, ed. J. T. Fowler, Surtees Society 66 (Durham, 1878), p. 262. 67 C. J. Bates, ‘The Border Holds of Northumberland’, Archaeologia Aeliana 2nd s. 14 (1891), 1–465 (p. 21). 68 Memorials of Fountains, III, 52. 69 J. C. Cox, Bench-Ends in English Churches (London, 1916), p. 179. The bench-end is no longer there, but the arms of the abbey are sculpted in ex situ stonework which is now incorporated into the east wall of the chancel. For the grange, see Platt, The Monastic Grange, p. 189. 70 Yorkshire Church Notes, 1619–1631 by Roger Dodsworth, ed. W. Clay, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series 34 (Leeds, 1904), p. 247. 71 T. D. Whitaker, Loidis and Elmete (Leeds, 1816), p. 50. 72 P. Fergusson, G. Coppack and S. Harrison, Rievaulx Abbey, North Yorkshire (London, 2006), p. 9. 73 M. Carter, ‘hys . . . days here liven was. The Monument of Abbot Robert Chamber at Holm Cultram’, Church Monuments 27 (2012), 38–52. 66

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Fig. 5  Holm Cultram Abbey, monument of Abbot Chamber. Photo: Pat Bull.

Cistercian attitudes towards internal patronage The surviving material evidence can be augmented by documentary sources, especially the chronicle of Meaux Abbey. The author, Abbot Thomas Burton (ruled 1396–9; died, 1437), stated in its preface that his intention was the glorification of his predecessors (a further indication that patronage could be over-attributed to abbots). Burton was concerned that ‘the memory of the illustrious men, the abbots of Meaux, is almost lost on account of sloth and neglect, and I grieve that their light is obscured’.74 He describes how almost all his predecessors added to or improved the buildings and furnishings of their monastery in some way. The abbey’s church was rebuilt under successive abbots between c. 1200 and the consecration of the high altar in 1247.75 At the same time, Meaux’s abbots devoted resources to the construction and equipping of the claustral and domestic buildings to serve the needs of the choir monks and lay brethren. This work is described in as much detail as grander architectural projects, an indication that the paternal responsibility of an abbot was to focus his building activities on the physical needs of his community. The chronicle also describes the furnishings which individual abbots commissioned for the church. These included the stalls for the choir

74

Chronica monasterii de Melsa, I, 71. Ibid., I, 326.

75

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Cistercian Abbots as Patrons ofArt and Architecture monks provided by Abbot Michael Brun (1235–49).76 Abbot Roger of Driffield (1286–1310) placed two retables decorated with pictures on the high altar,77 which Abbot Adam de Skyrne (1310–39) further decorated with an altarpiece painted with the evangelists, prophets and apostles.78 Abbot Hugh of Leven (1339–49) commissioned a remarkable figure of the crucified Christ for the rood.79 The altars of St Benedict and St Peter were embellished with painted retables by Abbot William de Scarborough (1372–96), who also installed the Jesus bell in the abbey’s campanile.80 The continuation of the chronicle details Burton’s own contributions to the art and architecture of Meaux, which included the provision of three more bells for the tower, the repair of the cloister, the construction of a mill and the fitting out of a chamber for his predecessor.81 Burton’s comments about the patronage of Abbot William (1249–69) provide important insights into the attitudes of late medieval Cistercian abbots towards patronage. Burton describes how the abbot built a bell tower and placed within it a great bell called Benedict.82 The General Chapter at Cîteaux decreed in 1157: ‘let stone towers with bells not be built’.83 This prohibition was expanded upon in a codification of Cistercian legislation in 1237 to state: ‘let stone towers with bells not be built nor [wooden] towers of extravagant height [be built]’.84 This decree was repeated in the codification of the order’s legislation issued in 1257, approximately the time when the tower was built at Meaux. 85 However, this regulation was replaced in 1289 with a general decree prohibiting ‘novelty’ and ‘superfluity’ in the order’s buildings. This clause was again ratified in 1316 and was so vague that it could be interpreted as allowing towers.86 Burton was therefore writing his chronicle at a time when the order’s legislation on towers no longer applied. Indeed, it is clear that he saw nothing wrong in the building of the 76

Ibid., II, 63. Ibid., II, 237. 78 Ibid., II, 312. 79 Ibid., III, xi, 35. 80 Ibid., III, 224. 81 Ibid., III, 240–2. 82 Ibid., II, 119. 83 ‘Turres lapideae ad campanas non fiant’: C. Norton, ‘Table of Cistercian Legislation on Art and Architecture’, in Cistercian Art and Architecture in the British Isles, pp. 315–93 (p. 328). 84 ‘Turres lapidee ad campanas non fiant, nec lignee altitudinis immoderate’: ibid., p. 368. 85 Ibid., p. 378. 86 Norton and Park, ‘Introduction’, p.  8; Norton, ‘Table of Cistercian Legislation’, p. 384. 77

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Michael Carter bell tower by his thirteenth-century predecessor. Far from admonishing Abbot William for contravening the order’s legislation, he praised his sanctity, virtue and maintenance of discipline within his monastery. Moreover, he records that Abbot William was buried in a prestigious location, before the lectern in the chapter house, and that miracles were attributed to him.87 The so-called ‘President Book’ of Fountains Abbey provides further insights into the attitudes of late medieval Cistercian abbots towards patronage. A gesta abbatum written in the mid fifteenth century, it records the election, death and burial of the monastery’s abbots from its foundation in 1132 to 1442.88 It is possible that its author was the scholarly Abbot John Greenwell (1442–71), who himself initiated a programme of repair and renovation of the abbey church.89 Only very brief details of the deeds of individual abbots are provided in the ‘President Book’, but the abbacy of John of Kent (1219–47) is described in unusual detail, the author recording that ‘he built and finished the Nine Altars, the cloister, the infirmary, the pavement, and guesthouse, to receive Christ’s poor as well as the great ones of the world.’90 Patronage was still considered estimable by Cistercian abbots at the very end of the Middle Ages. In 1517 Abbot William Helmsley of Rievaulx (1513–30) wrote to the abbot of Cîteaux asking to be allowed to join Marmaduke Huby as one of the reformers of the northern province, noting the ‘many good things’ Huby had undertaken at Fountains, where he was ‘the cultivator of discipline, the planter of piety . . . and the new repairer of his church’. The abbot of Rievaulx also commented favourably on Huby’s patronage of St Bernard’s, the Cistercian college at Oxford, writing: We can say for sure, he built a hall, a very beautiful chapel with glass in the windows, and he erected the walls of the fourth and last part of the forementioned college until the roof . . . because the forementioned abbot of Fountains had a strong love and desire to build and raise this college, and to provide it with vestments, ornaments and the foretold 87

Chronica monasterii de Melsa, II, p. 119. Memorials of Fountains, I, 170–95; translated in A. W. Oxford, The Ruins of Fountains Abbey (Oxford, 1926), pp. 127–41. 89 Archaeological excavations at Fountains have unearthed stratified numismatic evidence dating the tiling of the south transept floor to Greenwell’s abbacy: see R.  Gilyard-Beer and G. Coppack, ‘Excavations at Fountains Abbey, North Yorkshire, 1979–80: The Early Development of the Monastery’, Archaeologia 108 (1986), 147–88 (p.  160). The payments to glaziers and masons recorded in the bursar’s accounts for 1457–8 also date to Greenwell’s abbacy: see Memorials of Fountains, III, 56, 57, 85. 90 Oxford, Ruins of Fountains Abbey, p. 134. 88

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Cistercian Abbots as Patrons ofArt and Architecture necessities, and above all other things for books from a charitable collection among the fathers of the Kingdom to establish a library for the use of the students there.91

The purposes of patronage: memory, commemoration and status The comments of Abbot Helmsley can leave little doubt that patronage was seen as a pious act, a component of the competent and fatherly administration of his house by an abbot. The chronicles from these northern houses also suggest that Cistercian communities had an awareness of the architectural and artistic development of their monasteries, and the specific contributions of individual abbots. Their patronage provided a visual reminder of the history of Fountains, Meaux and doubtless other houses. Grateful generations of monks no doubt rewarded the generosity and diligence of deceased abbots with prayers for their eternal rest. Although it is outside the geographical parameters set for this study, an inscription on the west front of the church at the Cistercian abbey of Valle Crucis, Denbighshire, provides explicit evidence of the commemorative purpose of patronage, recording as it does the benefaction of Abbot Adam (c. 1330–40) with a request that his soul may rest in peace.92 Abbots appear to have been eager to make a distinct contribution to their monastery’s art and architecture. Burton records that several of his predecessors at Meaux discontinued work commenced by a predecessor, instead focusing their attention and resources on a project of their choosing. For instance, Abbot Adam of Skyrne (1310–39) started work on a chapel above the monastery’s great gate, but work on the structure was discontinued and removed by Abbot Hugh of Leven (1339–49), whose own patronage included the commissioning of the crucifix for the rood and the covering of the monks’ dormitory with lead.93

91

Letters to Cîteaux, pp. 239–41. In 1503, Huby entered into an agreement with the architect William Orchard for ‘the structure of the building of Bernard College’: see W. H. Stevenson and H. E. Salter, Early History of St John’s College, Oxford, Oxford Historical Society 1 (Oxford, 1939), p.  28. Orchard (fl.  1468–1505) was a prominent Oxford architect, who also worked at Balliol and Magdalen: see J. Harvey, English Mediaeval Architects: A Biographical Dictionary Down to 1550, rev. edn (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 220–2. 92 +ADAM.ABBAS FECIT.HOC:OPVS:N.PACE/QVIESCAT:AME’: D. M. Robinson, The Cistercians in Wales: Architecture and Archaeology, 1130–1540 (London, 2006), pp. 141, 290. 93 Chronica monasterii de Melsa, III, 35–6.

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Michael Carter Patronage of a new project appears to have been a rite of passage for a Cistercian abbot and a way of announcing his election to office.94 Robert Chamber was elected to the abbacy of Holm Cultram in 1507.95 He commemorated the start of his abbacy by constructing a porch at the west front of his monastery’s church.96 An inscription on the doorway arch (fig. 2) records that it was the product of Chamber’s patronage and dates the work to 1507: ‘Robertus Chamber fecit fieri hoc opus, Ao. Dni. M’D’VII’ (‘Robert Chamber caused this work to be made, A[nn]o D[omi]ni 1507’). The abbot also recorded his patronage by placing his rebus, a chained bear, punning on his first name and surname, beneath a crosier with his initials to the side, on a corbel to the south of the door.97 The use of inscriptions and heraldry by monastic superiors to advertise their status and patronage was common in the late Middle Ages.98 The earliest surviving evidence of inscriptional or heraldic evidence to record the patronage of a Cistercian abbot in England and Wales is the inscription at the west front of Valle Crucis noted above.99 The use of both personal and institutional heraldry appears to have emerged shortly after. The seal used by Abbot John Lindley of Whalley in 1362 was decorated with the arms of his abbey,100 and the early fifteenth century seal of Abbot Robert Gower of Jervaulx (1399–1425) features both the arms of the abbey and those of his family, and in 1417 the abbot was using a signet ring inscribed with his personal arms.101 This heraldry not only advertised patronage, but also asserted ecclesiastical status. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, abbots of several northern Cistercian abbeys acquired the right to the mitre and other ornaments and privileges normally reserved for bishops. Benedictine abbots had been mitred since the eleventh century, and by the end of the late Middle Ages the superiors of many of the richer  94

For comparable Benedictine evidence, see Luxford, Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries, p. 55.  95 H. Summerson, Medieval Carlisle: The City and the Borders from the Late Eleventh Century to the Mid-Sixteenth Century, 2 vols., Cumberland and Westmorland Archaeological and Antiquarian Society Extra S. 25 (Kendal, 1993), II, 471.  96 For a description, see Harrison, ‘The Architecture of Holm Cultram’, pp. 244–5.  97 Gilbanks, ‘Some Records of a Cistercian Abbey’, pp. 120–1.  98 For discussions of the use of heraldry by late medieval abbots and priors, see M. Heale, ‘Mitres and Arms: Aspects of the Self-Representation of the Monastic Superior in Late Medieval England’, in Self-Representation of Medieval Religious Communities: The British Isles in Context, ed. A. Müller and K Stöber (Berlin, 2009), pp. 99–124.  99 Robinson, The Cistercians in Wales, pp. 141, 290. 100 R. H. Ellis, Catalogue of Seals in the Public Records Office. Monastic Seals (London, 1986), p. 97. 101 Ibid., p. 44.

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Cistercian Abbots as Patrons ofArt and Architecture Benedictine monasteries in Britain had the right to use the episcopal insignia.102 However, it was not until the early fifteenth century that any Cistercian abbots in England were granted the pontificalia. The first appears to have been Abbot Gower of Jervaulx who received the privilege when attending the Council of Pisa in 1409,103 and soon after he was depicted wearing the mitre on his seal. In c.  1413, the anti-pope John XXIII granted similar rights to Abbot John Ripon (1410–34) of Fountains. However, Pope Martin V revoked these privileges in 1429.104 It was not until 1459 that Abbot Greenwell once again secured the right to the episcopal insignia for the abbots of Fountains.105 One side of a sculpted late fifteenth century window head in the chapel of the Nine Altars at Fountains depicts a cleric wearing a mitre. This is probably Abbot Darnton as the other side is carved with the abbot’s rebus.106 Huby’s monogram also incorporated a mitre, and symbols of his status and office feature prominently on a stone carved with his rebus. The letters of his name are composed of a twisting dragon-like creature and the ‘h’ incorporates a bird, probably a hobby, punning on the abbot’s surname. In the centre is a crosier fitted with a sudarium, a cloth attached near the knop to protect the metal of the staff from tarnishing and the abbot’s hand from its cold touch. It is also notable that the mitre depicted on Huby’s rebus, like that of an unidentified abbot of Jervaulx on a bench end at Aysgarth, is a jewel-encrusted mitra pretiosa (jewelled mitre). Papal grants for abbatial use of the pontificalia became more generous in the later Middle Ages, and often, as in the case of Abbot John Paslew of Whalley, gave permission for the use of the jewelled mitre.107 Such mitres, with edges of silver and gilt, set with pearls, stones and silver, are listed in inventories from both Fountains and Whalley, as are silver crosiers.108 102

For a discussion of the acquisition of the pontificalia by monastic superiors in the British Isles, see Heale, ‘Mitres and Arms’, pp. 99–109. 103 CPL, VI, 159. 104 Ibid., VII, 144. 105 Ibid., XII, 34. Ripon possibly received this grant when eliciting the anti-pope’s support in his disputed election as abbot of Fountains in c. 1413–14, for which, see E. F. Jacob, ‘One of Swan’s Cases: the Disputed Election at Fountains Abbey, 1410–16’, in Essays in Later Medieval History, ed. E. F. Jacob (Manchester, 1968), pp. 79–97. 106 Hope, ‘Fountains Abbey’, p. 296; J. France, The Cistercians in Medieval Art (Stroud, 1998), pp. 119–21. 107 CPL, XX, 492–3. For a discussion of grants for use of the jewelled mitre, see Heale, ‘Mitres and Arms’, p. 103. 108 Memorials of Fountains, I, 289–90; M. E. C. Walcott, ‘Inventory of Whalley Abbey’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 19 (1867), 103–10 (p. 107).

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Michael Carter Much as Cistercian abbots used patronage to proclaim their status, their patronage was also an act of piety. Huby’s motto was ‘Soli Deo honor et gloria’ (‘to God alone be honour and glory’), the biblical source of which is 1 Timothy 1.17. The motto appears on all Huby’s extant architectural projects, such as the tower at Fountains, the chapel at Bewerley, as well as on floor tiles from Fountains,109 and is also illuminated with his monogram in his breviary. The motto had a dual purpose, not only recording the abbot’s patronage, but also dedicating the object to the praise and glory of God. Huby is well known as a reformer and for his dedication to his order.110 He asserted these qualities by placing his motto and lengthy liturgical inscriptions around the upper storeys of his great bell tower at Fountains. The inscriptions have their source in the offices sung at a Cistercian monastery on a Sunday and all can be found in the order’s breviary. Their position on the tower follows the structure of the monastic day.111 It is notable that reforming Cistercian abbots such as Huby placed great emphasis on the correct observation of the offices and following the rhythm of the monastic bells.112 The abbot also directed his patronage towards saints to whom he was devoted. The feasts of several English saints, including St Oswald on 5 August and St Wilfrid on 12 August, have been added in manuscript to the calendar of Huby’s printed breviary.113 St Oswald (d. 642) was king of Northumbria and before his death in battle did much to promote Christianity within his kingdom. He soon became the focus of a cult that achieved international fame, his head and other relics being enshrined in Durham Cathedral Priory. His cult remained popular after the Norman Conquest and was enthusiastically promoted by the twelfth-century archbishop of York, Henry Murdac, who had been abbot of Fountains.114 Huby and the community at Fountains appear to have had a special devotion to this saint. In the early fifteenth century, the abbey was even using the saint’s fictional arms (four rampant lions between a cross) on

109

J. Stopford, Medieval Floor Tiles of Northern England. Pattern and Purpose: Production Between the 13th and 16th Century (Oxford, 2005), pp. 54, 236–8. 110 Talbot, ‘Marmaduke Huby’; D. Baker, ‘Old Wine in New Bottles: Attitudes to Reform in Fifteenth-Century England’, in Renaissance and Renewal in Church History, ed. D. Baker, Studies in Church History 14 (Oxford, 1977), pp. 193–211. 111 For a discussion of the inscriptions and their relationship with the liturgy of the Cistercians, see Carter, ‘The Tower of Abbot Marmaduke Huby’, 274–9. 112 G. G. Perry, ‘Visitation of the Monastery of Thame, 1526’, EHR 3 (1888), 704–22 (p. 713). 113 Carter, ‘The Breviary of Abbot Marmaduke Huby’, p. 27. 114 D. Rollason, ‘St Oswald in Post-Conquest England’, in Oswald: Northumbrian King to European Saint, ed. C. Stancliffe and E. Cambridge (Stamford, 1995) pp. 164–74.

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Cistercian Abbots as Patrons ofArt and Architecture its seal.115 The abbey possessed a relic of St Oswald, and Huby obtained official permission from the Cistercian General Chapter in 1495 for the liturgical celebration of his feast at Fountains; a year later he sought authorization for the observation of the feast at the daughter houses of Fountains and all Cistercian monasteries in the province of York.116 Huby rebuilt the chapel at Winksley, a grange of the monastery, which was dedicated to SS Oswald and Cuthbert, and as usual he recorded his patronage by inscribing his initials and motto, which was adapted to express his devotion to the two saints: ‘MH, In Honore Dei et Sancti Cuthberti et Oswaldi’.117 There is also evidence of Cistercian devotion to St Wilfrid (c.  633– 709). Wilfrid was an appropriate focus for such devotion as he introduced Benedictine monasticism to northern England at the monastery he founded in Ripon. The medieval minster in the town was jointly dedicated to St Peter and St Wilfrid, and was extensively rebuilt in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.118 In 1457, Abbot Greenwell incurred expenses of 8d during his journey to Ripon to celebrate St Wilfrid’s day and also spent 7d. on a signum, 119 the ‘sign’ or pilgrim badge of the saint.120 Huby even attempted to appropriate St Wilfrid’s cult for his abbey. The antiquary John Leland visited Ripon in c.  1538 and recorded in his Itinerary that Huby had taken steps to establish a cell of monks from Fountains on the site of Wilfrid’s monastery, based around its former chapel, writing: One Marmaduke . . . abbate of Fountaines, a man familiar with Salvage Archebisshop of York, obteinid this chapelle of hym and prebendaries of Ripon: and having it gyven onto hym and to his abbay pullid down the est end of it, a pece of exceeding auncient wark, and buildid a fair pece of new werk with squarid stones for it, leving the west ende of very old werk stonding.

Leland also records the presence of some inscriptions on the new wall of the chapel built by Huby naming Anglo-Saxon saints,121 perhaps 115

C. T. Clay, ‘The Seals of the Religious Houses of Yorkshire’, Archaeologia 78 (1928), 1–36 (p. 17), illustrated pl. III.2. 116 Rollason, ‘St Oswald’, pp. 164, 177. 117 Memorials of Fountains, I, 152. 118 P. Leach and N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England. Yorkshire, West Riding: Leeds, Bradford and the North (London, 2009), pp. 645–6, 655–8. 119 Memorials of Fountains, III, 103, 246. 120 For pilgrimage to Ripon and the relics of St Wilfrid, see D. Webb, Pilgrimage in Medieval England (London, 2000), pp. 83–4. 121 The Itinerary of John Leland in or About the Years 1535–1543, ed. L. Toulmin Smith, 5 vols. (London, 1907–10), I, 80; Memorials of Fountains, I, 152.

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Michael Carter s­uggesting that the abbot recorded his patronage with an inscription similar to that found at Winksley.122 Monastic patrons were frequently buried in close proximity to the work they had commissioned.123 In 1349 Abbot Hugh of Leven was buried before the crucifix he had caused to be made for the rood screen at Meaux.124 The abbey’s chronicle records that pilgrims flocked to the monastery to see this miracle-working image, and doubtless Abbot Hugh hoped to benefit from their prayers.125 Burial before the rood was an especially desirable location. Referring to the location of the crucifixion above the entrance of rood screens, the German Carthusian Ludolphus of Saxony (c. 1300–78) stated in his Vita Christi ‘no one can enter from the Church militant into the Church triumphant except by means of the cross’.126 The fragments of the Romanesque wooden figure of Christ crucified from South Cerney, Gloucestershire, represent a rare survival of a rood from medieval England. In his recent analysis of this sculpture Richard Marks argued that it was an example of a Triumphkreuz.127 The iconography of continental Triumphkreuze, such as that at Halberstadt (c.  1215–20), with its resurrecting figure of Adam at the base, provides a further explanation of why Abbot Hugh would have thought that burial before the rood was desirable: the redemption provided by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, and the hope that the soul lying at its foot would, like Adam, be saved and resurrected.128

Conclusion Cistercian abbots dominated their communities, lavishly spending the resources of their abbeys on their patronage of art and architecture. 122

Memorials of Fountains, I, 152. Huby’s work on the site of Wilfrid’s monastery is discussed by R. A. Hall, ‘Antiquaries and Archaeologists in and Around Ripon Minster’, in Yorkshire Monasticism: Archaeology, Art and Architecture from the 7th to the 16th Centuries, ed. R. L. Hoey, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 16 (Leeds, 1995), pp. 12–30 (pp. 14–15). 123 For Benedictine examples, see Luxford, Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries, pp. 80–1. 124 Chronica monasterii de Melsa, III, 37. 125 Ibid., III, 35–6. 126 Quoted in J. E. Jung, ‘Beyond the Barrier: The Unifying Role of the Choir Screen in Gothic Churches’, Art Bulletin 82 (2000), 622–57 (p. 633). 127 R. Marks, ‘From Langford to South Cerney: The Rood in Anglo-Norman England’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 165 (2012), 172–210. 128 For a discussion of the significance of burial before the rood, see D. Park, ‘Medieval Burials and Monuments’, in The Temple Church in London: History, Architecture and Art, ed. R. Griffith-Jones and D. Park (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 67–91 (pp. 77–8).

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Cistercian Abbots as Patrons ofArt and Architecture Indeed, the scale and focus of their patronage was little different from that seen elsewhere in the contemporary English Church. Although some abbots secured a separate income that enabled them to be maintained in a dignity befitting their office, it was by and large the general income of the monastery that funded this patronage, and accordingly it was often directed to the material comforts and needs of their communities. Thus, the rebuilding of conventual churches and the provision of vestments, stalls and luxury altar plate were rewarded with the prayers of the grateful monks for the repose of the souls of their father abbots. Late medieval Cistercian abbots themselves certainly believed this patronage to be a responsibility of their office and worthy of esteem. Therefore, they proudly advertised their contribution to their convents’ art and architecture with inscriptions, mottos and heraldry. Yet, crucially, their patronage was more than simple self-aggrandisement, and abbots such as Clifton at Warden, Chamber at Holm Cultram and Huby at Fountains used patronage to express their piety and devotions in the quest for the everlasting salvation of their souls.

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Cistercian Abbots in Late Medieval Central Europe: Between the Cloister and the World Emilia Jamroziak

From the very beginning of monasticism, the role of the abbot was central to the way in which communities of monks functioned on a practical and spiritual level. The abbot was the father and spiritual leader of the community, responsible for guiding the monks towards salvation by preaching, taking confessions, and officiating in the liturgy, while, at the same time, he was head of the monastic community in all its temporal functions. In the twelfth century, the abbot was often the only ordained priest in many Cistercian communities. The Benedictine tradition emphasized hierarchical dependence and total obedience to the abbot: ‘the Abbot represented Christ, and his monks obeyed his command as if they were wishes from God’.1 Although Cistercian observance was based on the Rule of St Benedict, the white monks curbed the autocratic power of their abbots by the structure of the Chapter General, the filiation system and visitations. This uniformity of practice was also intended to prevent arbitrary decisions of abbots in the very important matter of the liturgy – the leaders of individual communities were not supposed to introduce any changes to the order-wide form of liturgy. Unlike Benedictine abbots who held their position for life, it was not unusual for Cistercian abbots to resign and occasionally even to be deposed if they were seen, by the abbot of the mother house or other delegate of the General Chapter, to fail seriously in their duties.2 Moreover, Cistercian tradition also emphasizes the importance of the horizontal ties between members of the community, friendship and love between monks. Bernard of Clairvaux described the abbot’s role as that of a loving mother who instructs and corrects the

 1

M. G. Newman, The Boundaries of Charity: Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform, 1098–1180 (Stanford, 1996), p. 47.  2 J. France, ‘The Cistercian Community’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order, ed. M. B. Bruun (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 80–6 (pp. 81–2).

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Cistercian Abbots: Between the Cloister and the World monks.3 As Martha Newman has emphasized, the Cistercian customary, the Ecclesiastica Officia, does not expect the monks to show subservience to the abbot as Benedictine customaries required. Only the monk sitting next to the abbot in the chapter meeting had to bow to him. Moreover, an abbot who was late for prayers was punished like all other monks guilty of that transgression.4 Just as many aspects of monastic life changed in the later Middle Ages, the ways in which abbots related to their communities and the outside world also altered substantially. The most striking of these changes was the greater involvement of the abbot in matters outside the monastic community. The office of the abbot became, in many ways, more separate and distinct from the communal identity of the monastic community. As a result, many of the duties of care for the community were delegated to the prior.5 This development was not a part of some ‘monastic decline’ or ‘corruption’, but a part of processes of change, renewal and adjustment to the changing social, political and economic conditions of late medieval Europe. Usually, Cistercian abbeys were centres of large landholdings, involved in regional ecclesiastical politics. Moreover, the Cistercian order’s visitation system required regular absences of abbots from their monasteries. The influence of secular powers, their financial expectations of the seemingly rich Cistercian abbeys, and the need to lobby at royal courts and even attend parliamentary assemblies were further factors that necessitated regular absences.6 The shift in the nature of the abbatial office was the result of several processes affecting later medieval Cistercian monasticism, coming from the wider world but also closely linked to the evolving nature of the Cistercian communities, and had many different manifestations. On the representational level, abbots started to share characteristics of other prelates, especially bishops. This can be observed through the development of abbatial residences, separate seals and coat of arms. Increasingly some abbots assumed roles akin to a benefactor of their communities and thus symbolically established a separate identity from that of the monastic  3

C. W. Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1982), pp.  115, 157, 166; C. Waddell, ‘The Liturgical Dimension of Twelfth-Century Cistercian Preaching’, in Medieval Monastic Preaching, ed. C. Muessig (Leiden, 1998), pp. 335–50 (p. 336).  4 Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, p. 50.  5 This was, of course, also the case with commendatory abbots, who were nonresident. See W. J. Telesca, ‘The Problem of the Commendatory Monasteries and the Order of Cîteaux during the Abbacy of Jean de Cirey, 1475–1501’, Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses 22 (1971), 154–77.  6 For an analysis of late medieval Cistercian monasticism, see E. Jamroziak, The Cistercian Order in Medieval Europe: 1090–1500 (Harlow, 2013), pp. 238–84.

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Emilia Jamroziak corporation. Equally important were changes in the wider characteristics of the late medieval Cistercian order. First, the growing role of higher education among the Cistercians from the second half of the thirteenth century created a number of monks whose academic qualification ‘fasttracked’ them into abbatial offices and gave a different perspective on their role.7 Second, the importance of reform within the order from the late thirteenth century onwards led to the development of a group of particularly prominent abbots who were involved in the reform missions of other monasteries, sometimes on a large, trans-regional scale.8

Abbatial residences The Rule of St Benedict prescribed that the abbot should share the dormitory with the monks, and this was initially implemented by the Cistercians. The Ecclesiastica officia was rather vague concerning abbatial accommodation beyond a simple prescription for common sleeping arrangements for the abbot in the dormitory and eating with the guests in the guest-house.9 In practice, the duties of the abbatial office required separate space and a shared dormitory was highly impractical. Often specific local circumstances intervened too, as in the well-attested case of Abbot Ailred of Rievaulx, whose illness forced him to move away from the dormitory.10 Despite the subject’s importance, there is no systematic study of medieval Cistercian abbatial accommodation across the order and only very brief studies for specific regions exist.11 The residences of abbots are usually mentioned in the architectural histories of particular  7

On the role of higher education in the late medieval Cistercian order, see Jamroziak, The Cistercian Order, pp. 248–54.  8 The first significant abbatial figure who was sent by the General Chapter to inspect and reform other communities within the order was Stephen Lexington, who was entrusted with a major reforming campaign in Ireland in 1228: W. Rösener, ‘Abbot Stephen Lexington and his Efforts for Reform of the Cistercian Order in the Thirteenth Century’, in Goad and Nail, ed. E. R. Elder, Studies in Medieval Cistercian History 10 (Kalamazoo, 1985), pp. 46–55.  9 Les Ecclesiastica officia cisterciens du XIIe siècle, ed. D. Choisselet and P. Vernet (Reiningue, 1989), p. 312. 10 Ailred of Rievaulx was permitted a separate abbatial house near the infirmary on account of his poor health: Walter Daniel, The Life of Ailred of Rievaulx, ed. and trans. F. M. Powicke, introduction by M. Dutton (Kalamazoo, 1994), p. 39. 11 For a popular introduction to the history of the design of the monastic precinct, which also discusses the development of abbatial houses in Benedictine, Cistercian, Augustinian and other reformed orders, using evidence from the British Isles, see M. Thompson, Cloister Abbot and Precinct (Stroud, 2007), pp. 65–92.

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Cistercian Abbots: Between the Cloister and the World sites, but because they were located outside the core cloister range, they are never given the same prominence in the analysis as the buildings with liturgical significance. Abbots’ houses are also much less likely to be excavated than the liturgically important parts of the precinct. Although an abbot’s residence could take various forms, this building was usually located to the east of the claustral range, near the monk’s dormitory. Abbots’ houses were sometimes converted infirmaries, new structures attached to one side of the monk’s dormitory, or free-standing buildings.12 In some cases, the abbot’s house stood within its own enclosure forming a smaller claustral range with connected buildings. This provided a self-contained space for the abbot’s business, meeting guests, conducting negotiations and providing hospitality without any contact with the rest of the monastic community. This appears to be the case in the oldest Cistercian abbey in Pomerania – Kołbacz Abbey where a ‘little abbey’ was located to the south-east of the main cloister, containing, apart from the abbot’s house, also service buildings forming a quadrangle, with galleries on the south elevation of the service building and the western elevation of the abbot’s house. The residence of Kołbacz’s abbots was rebuilt several times with a large extension to the south added in the fifteenth century.13 The aggrandizement of the abbatial office is particularly striking in the phenomenon of abbatial residences that not only projected the status of the office, but also became key hospitality spaces. As the shift of prestigious hospitality spaces from the guest-house in the western part of the precinct to the abbot’s house occurred in the fifteenth century, it encouraged many architectural changes to abbatial residences.14 This also meant that the visual messages contained in their design were aimed at a nonconventual audience and by the turn of fifteenth century abbatial residences started to incorporate distinctive Renaissance decorative features typical of high-status domestic residences in the lay world.15 12

J. Hall, ‘East of the Cloister: Infirmaries, Abbots’ Lodgings, and other Chambers’, in Perspectives for an Architecture of Solitude. Essays on Cistercians, Art and Architecture in Honour of Peter Fergusson, ed. T. N. Kinder (Turnhout, 2004), pp.  199–211; D.  H. Williams, ‘Cistercian Abbots’ Houses in Medieval Britain’, Cistercium Mater Nostra 4 (2010), 37–49; B. Kwiatkowska-Kopka and M. Zdenek, ‘Domy opackie w klasztorach cysterskich w Małopolsce. Stan badań i zagadnienia architektoniczno-konserwatorskie’, Cistercium Mater Nostra 4 (2010), 65–91. 13 J. Jarzewicz and E. Rymar, ‘Kołbacz’, in Monasticon Cisterciense Poloniae, ed. A. Wyrwa, J. Strzelczyk and K. Kaczmarek, vol. 2 (Poznań, 1999), p. 147. 14 R. Thomason, ‘Spaces of Monastic Hospitality’, paper presented at the ‘Medieval Group’ seminar, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds, 13 May 2013. 15 A good example of such a transformation of the abbot’s house is Villers Abbey (Brabant), discussed in T. Kinder, Cistercian Europe: Architecture of Contemplation (Kalamazoo, 2002), p. 358.

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Emilia Jamroziak It was not uncommon to convert existing buildings in the eastern part of the precinct, as in Maulbronn Abbey (Baden-Württemberg). During the abbacy of Albrecht IV von Ötisheim (1402–28) the old infirmary was converted into an abbatial residence. It was a three-storey building with a large hall used for the reception of guests. The abbots who succeeded Albrecht left their own marks by adding their own coats of arms.16 Similarly, several Cistercian abbeys in Bohemia – Velehrad, Osek, Vyšší Brod, Zlatá Koruna, Zbraslav and Sedlec – seem also to have had their abbatial houses constructed out of old infirmaries. It is not an accident that old infirmaries were frequently converted into abbatial residences. Situated in the right location within the precinct and constructed as large buildings of two or even three stories, they provided an opportunity to remodel the space to fit both representational aspects of the abbatial office and to meet the need for comfort and privacy prevalent in late medieval domestic and, increasingly, monastic spaces too.17 Moreover, the late-medieval residences were also equipped with comforts typical for high-status domestic architecture, such as heating. A  document issued in 1517 in the Jȩdrzejów Abbey (Lesser Poland) states that it was made in the ‘heated room on the lower floor of the abbot’s house’.18

Abbots as benefactors The abbot’s house was not the only structure in which abbatial status and identity separate from the monastic community were displayed. The growing role of abbots as benefactors of their own monasteries became visible through a number of building projects and liturgical objects bearing inscriptions identifying the abbot as the initiator and sometimes also depicting him in the typical pose of a benefactor. In fact, many of these projects, especially large buildings, could not have been paid for by

16

H. Diruf, ‘Zwischen Infirmerie und Schloss: Baugeschichtliche Beobachtungen im östlichen Bereich der Klosterlange’, in Maulbronn. Zur 850jährigen Geschichte des Zisterzienserklosters, ed. D. Planck (Stuttgart, 1997), pp. 395–423 (pp. 401–5). 17 The parallel process of creating more private spaces for monks is examined in G. Coppack, ‘The Planning of Cistercian Monasteries in the Later Middle Ages: the Evidence from Fountains, Rievaulx, Sawley and Rushen’, in The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England, ed. J. G. Clark (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. ­197–209; D. N. Bell, ‘Chambers, Cells, and Cubicles: the Cistercian General Chapter and the Development of the Private Rooms’, in Perspectives for an Architecture of Solitude, ed. Kinder, pp. 187–98. 18 Unpublished document from Archiwum Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków, dok. perg. nr 369, cited in Kwiatkowska-Kopka and Zdenek, ‘Domy opackie w klasztorach’, p. 73.

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Cistercian Abbots: Between the Cloister and the World the abbots, yet they are identified as initiators of such endeavours to the monastic community, posterity and possibly wider audiences too, as the research of Michael Carter on Yorkshire monasteries has shown.19 In central Europe, surviving evidence shows a large number of depictions of abbots as donors of devotional images for the monastic churches in which they were commemorated, both as leaders of their communities and as individuals of particular piety and standing: for example, an early fifteenth century fresco in the abbey church of Bebenhausen depicts Abbot Peter von Gosmaringen presenting to the Virgin Mary a large model of the bell tower that was erected during his time in office. The abbot-donor is identified by his coat of arms.20 I have discussed elsewhere the case of Abbot Henry Kresse of Bukowo Morskie (Pomerania) depicted on the altar-wing as a donor, with the coat of arms and inscription urging the viewers to pray for him.21 Such images, due to their location, were aimed at monks and, of course, had a strong eschatological dimension for the abbots in question. Although the abbot’s stall in the choir had always been differentiated from those of the monks, being located on the south side of the presbytery, by the later Middle Ages it had become a prominent throne, sometimes equipped with a baldachin.22 A good example of such an arrangement comes also from Bukowo Morskie Abbey. The wooden, baldachined and polychromed abbatial throne was made by the monk Borchardt in 1476 for the monastic church. The author and date are recorded on the carved, minuscule inscription at the back on the seat (see figure 1).23 Although an abbot’s seating was always different from 19

M. Carter, ‘Abbot William Marshall (1509–28) and the Architectural Development of Kirkstall Abbey, Yorkshire, in the Late Middle Ages’, Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies 1 (2012), 117–44; M. Carter, ‘The Tower of Abbot Marmaduke Huby of Fountains Abbey: Hubris or Piety?’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 82 (2010), 269–86; M. Carter, ‘The Breviary of Abbot Marmaduke Huby: Renaissance Design and Religious Change in Early Sixteenth-Century Yorkshire’, Bodleian Library Record 22 (2009), 17–34; and his essay in the present volume. 20 Die Zisterzienser in Bebenhausen, ed. U. Schwitalla and W. Setzler (Tübingen, 1998), p. 17; A. Laabs, Malerei und Plastik im Zisterzienserorden (Petersberg, 2000), p. 88. 21 E. Jamroziak, ‘The Self-Representation of the Late Medieval Cistercian Abbot: the Case of Henry Kresse of Bukowo Morskie’, in Images and Objects in Ritual Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Northern and Central Europe, ed. K. Kodres and A. Mänd (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 227–38. 22 P. Stróżyk, ‘Symbole władzy opata w przestrzeni klasztoru cysterskiego’, in Ingenio et Humilitate: Studia z dziejów zakonu cystersów i kościoŀa na ziemiach polskich, ed. A. Wyrwa (Katowice, 2007), pp. 46–8. 23 The object is now known only from the drawings and late nineteenth century photographs as it disappeared after 1945. For the images and description, see A. Stubenrauch, ‘Der Abtsuhl von See-Buckow’, Monatsblätter der Gesellschaft für Pommersche Geschichte und Altertumskunde 16 (1902), 165–71 (pp. 168–9).

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Fig.1a  The abbatial throne of Bukowo Morskie Abbey (Pomerania). Photo taken from A. Stubenrauch, ‘Der Abtsuhl von See-Buckow’, Monatsblätter der Gesellschaft für Pommersche Geschichte und Altertumskunde 16 (1902), 165–71 (p. 168).

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Fig. 1b  Rear view of the abbatial throne of Bukowo Morskie Abbey (Pomerania). Provenance as for Fig. 1a.

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Emilia Jamroziak that of the choir monks both in the chapter house and in the presbytery, these abbatial thrones emphasized the superior position of the abbot in relation to the rest of the community. Such late medieval abbots’ seats were also an allusion to the bishop’s throne in his cathedral, which embodied his auctoritas.24 The privilege of the pontificalia and its importance has been discussed elsewhere in the present volume.25 The visual and symbolic aspect of the privilege was encompassed by the vestments worn by an abbot, and the image of the mitre was always incorporated in the coats of arms of such abbots. Moreover, the privilege also gave Cistercian abbots many of the rights of the bishops, thus further changing the nature of abbatial office. Such abbots were able to consecrate altars and churches and consecrate nuns.26 The ability to perform such an act was particularly important for the abbots whose houses had Cistercian nunneries under their care and possessed incorporated parish churches. These seemingly external functions – especially overseeing parish churches – became an important part of many Cistercian abbots’ role in the later Middle Ages. The evidence from central Europe – especially southern Germany, Bohemia, Silesia and Little Poland – shows abundantly that frequently bishops granted parish churches to Cistercian abbeys not just to give material advantages to the monasteries, but in order that they provide spiritual care to the parishioners. This was usually done through the appointing of a secular priest by the abbot, but there were also special cases where Cistercian monks were directly involved in the cura animarum of the laity. This was, for example, the case in Inchenhofen chapel in the parish of Hollenbach, given as a part of Fürstenfeld Abbey’s endowment in 1266 and incorporated in 1283. Inchenhofen was not an ordinary chapel, though, but a centre of very active pilgrimage to St Leonard, with the first miracle recorded in 1346. Soon after 1300, a number of Cistercian monks were delegated to the chapel headed by a provost in order to preach, hear ­confessions, perform masses, and oversee the pilgrimage traffic.27 24

For a late medieval example of a bishop’s throne, see C. Tracy, ‘The St David’s Cathedral Bishop’s Throne and its Relationship to Contemporary FourteenthCentury Ecclesiastical Furniture in England’, Archaeologia Cambrensis: Journal of the Cambrian Archaeological Association 137 (1989), 113–18. 25 See pp. 11–12, 234–5, 261–3. 26 Liturgical books made for the abbots with the privilege of the pontificalia reflect these powers and hence contain texts of such rites. The volumes themselves were often costly and commissioned alongside liturgical vestments. See, for example, the fifteenth-century volume from Aldersbach Abbey: Staatsbibliothek München, Clm 2760, Pontificale Abbatis infulati. 27 B. Klemenz, ‘Die Zisterzienserniederlassung (Superiorat) St. Leonhard’, in Inchenhofen: Wallfahrt, Zisterzienser und Markt, ed. W. Liebhart (Sigmaringen,

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Commemoration of abbots Late medieval abbots were often remembered by their monasteries in ways that emphasized their status and separateness from the rest of the community. The tombs traditionally located in the chapter house evolved from simple flat slabs with minimal decoration (often just a simple depiction of an abbatial staff) in the twelfth century to more elaborate tombs with individualized images of abbots and detailed inscriptions. Many late medieval abbots were also buried in front of the high altar and other prestigious places in the monastic church. A group of fourteenth-century abbot’s slabs from the monastic church in Dargun Abbey (Mecklenburg) contains a very typical example: the slab of Abbot Johann von Rostock (d. 1336), depicting the standing abbot, identified by habit and tonsure as a monk and with a crosier in his right hand indicating his abbatial status. An inscription in majuscule encircles the image. More unusual is a double slab of two consecutive heads of the same monastery: Abbot von Attendorne (first name unknown, 1362–7) and Abbot Herman III von Riga (1367–9). These two abbots have identical poses and surrounding decorations, but their faces are individualized. Finally, the grave-slab of Abbot Johann Billerback (d. 1349) contained a very unusual iconographic motif: a twice-broken crosier in the hand of the abbot. The meaning of it must have been known to the contemporaries, linked to events in the abbot’s life, but is completely obscure now: it may indicate either resignation or even deposition from the office.28 The commemoration of abbots was always part of each house’s remembrance of the institutional past. Monastic chronicles, including those of the Cistercians, always noted events associated with their leaders. Sometimes, the abbots’ histories were the leading theme of such texts. The Cronica domus Sarensis of the Žd’ár Abbey in western Bohemia charts events from the house’s foundation to 1300 using the chronology of its eleven abbots. Their model lives and achievements form the narrative framework.29 Another important genre of commemorative text in 1992), pp. 107–25 (pp. 107–14); S. Sargent, ‘Religion and Society in Late Medieval Bavaria: the Cult of Saint Leonard, 1258–1500’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1982), p. 103. 28 Ch. Kratzke, ‘Die mittelalterliche Ausstattung der Zisterzienserklosterkirche Dargun’, in Sachkultur und Religiöse Praxis, ed. D. Schumann (Berlin, 2007), pp. 206–10. 29 ‘Cronica domus Sarensis’ in Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores 30 (part i), ed. O. Holder-Egger (Hannover, 1896), pp. 678–707; F. Machilek, ‘Stiftergedächtnis und Klosterbau in der Chronik des Heinrich von Saar’, in In Tal und Einsamkeit. 725 Jahre Kloster Fürstenfeld ed. K. Wollenberg, vol. 3 (Fürstenfeldbruck, 1990), pp. 185–208.

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Emilia Jamroziak which the names of abbots were always noted was necrologies. This tradition pre-dates Cistercian monasticism and was shared by all religious communities, but also evolved in the later Middle Ages and tended to include more people from outside the monastic community, especially important benefactors and supporters. What is very striking about the late medieval necrologies is the way in which the abbots were listed in contrast to the rest of the community. Not only do abbots’ names tend to be highlighted by red capitals, underlining or other visual pointers but they are easily identifiable by surnames or a nickname, whilst the monks are far more anonymous and listed by first name only: they form a homogenous group, whilst abbots are distinctive individuals. This is very much the case in the Necrologia Aldersbacensia (fifteenth century with later additions) where abbots are identified by number (first, second, third abbot of Aldersbach).30 Necrologies in the form of calendars were an important aid in fulfilling the obligation to pray for the departed brethren. Whilst such prayers were a part of every daily chapter meeting, the manner in which abbots’ deaths were recorded suggests additional and more individualized commemoration – a parallel to the individualized tombs of the abbots, in contrast to the anonymous graves of the monks in the cemetery west of the monastic church.

Abbots as reformers The concept of reform, central to the late medieval history of traditional monasticism, influenced many aspects of Cistercian life. The efforts of the Chapter General to improve observance and many similar regional initiatives created a group of abbots whose role went beyond the confines of their own abbey and its immediate filiation (daughter houses). This is a very important facet of the late medieval abbatial office. Whilst it directly involved a small number of monastic leaders across the order, this development influenced a very large number of communities.31 The reforming abbots can be divided into two groups: the first were those who were given authority by the Chapter General for their reforming mission and the second type were reforming abbots who operated regionally, often associated with specific movements. Their efforts were often not related to the tradition filiation networks but rather to new groupings of Cistercian houses within a particular region or regions. 30

‘Necrologia Aldersbacensia’, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Necrologia Germaniae, vol. 4, ed. M. Fastlinger (Berlin, 1920), pp. 4–8. 31 For a discussion of late medieval monastic reform and further literature on the subject, see Jamroziak, The Cistercian Order, pp. 239–48.

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Cistercian Abbots: Between the Cloister and the World The range of issues with which reforming abbots were concerned is fairly typical and broadly involved, to start with, the questions of observance and its strictness. After all, it was this observance which was at the core of Cistercian identity, hence the concerns over its upholding which run throughout the history of the order in the Middle Ages and beyond. The reformers or commissioners authorized to inspect and ‘correct’ monasteries in specific areas had fairly extensive powers including those of deposing abbots, supervising elections, and others typical for visitations, such as the assessment of the condition of the monastic sacristy and library. Although there was a long-established practice of delegating specific abbots – usually more than one – to investigate and interfere in the internal problems of another house, these late-medieval commissioners had a much wider scope of activities and were not restricted to one filiation, but covered wide geographical areas. Their existence is closely linked to the attempts by the Chapter General to maintain control and to implement specific reform projects. The commissioners were abbots whose careers differed from those of the ‘ordinary’ leaders of monastic houses and their activities were usually linked to the implementation of a specific idea of what the Cistercian life should be like. This can be exemplified by the case of Arnold von Monnikendam. During his studies at the university of Rostock between 1427 and 1435 he became a Cistercian monk and a year later received the title of magister in Cologne, followed by a doctorate in theology in 1445. Having returned to his home community of Heisterbach (Rhineland), he was appointed there as a novice master. His organizational talent was already recognized and the Chapter General began to send him on various missions. Between 1451 and 1456 Arnold had the role of treasurer of the Cistercian St Jacob College, attached to the university of Heidelberg. He was then the abbot of Lehnin (Brandenburg) for eleven years until 1467, when he resigned after serious conflicts with the community. Arnold’s next appointment was a great success and the pinnacle of his career. In 1467 he was promoted to the abbacy of Altenberg (Rhineland), one of the largest and most important Cistercian houses in the region. During his time in the office Arnold reformed the abbey, along with several male and female monasteries belonging to its filiation. His focus was on the strictness of observance, reducing contact of the community with the outside world in order to uphold the proper horarium. Very significantly, Arnold expanded the library, renovated the winter refectory and procured a new tabernacle (Eucharistic reservation). The abbot’s reforming zeal was much supported by Altenberg’s patron, Duchess Sophia of Berg. Abbot Arnold’s internal reforming role was matched by his activities performed at the request of the Chapter General outside Altenberg. He conducted 251

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Emilia Jamroziak reforming missions and visitations, and investigated conflicts and abbatial usurpations in German Cistercian houses. At the height of his career, in 1471, Arnold was appointed by Pope Sixtus IV as a ‘Defender’ of the Cistercian monasteries totius Germaniae as a special legate to the Holy See, with a mandate concerning the detrimental practice of commendatory abbots. Arnold was clearly not a typical Cistercian abbot of his era, but he exemplifies how higher education could accelerate a ‘monastic career’, the spread of the reforms and the development of new abbatial roles beyond a single monastery.32 His reforming activities were conducted through the filiation line of Morimond, but also territorially, and what is important to stress is that he was clearly seen by the Cistercian authorities as particularly capable. His activities were not an individual initiative and although he surely shared belief in the necessity of reform and upholding the standards of observance, the scale and scope of his activities were the result of his being appointed and delegated by the Chapter General.

Learned abbots Many of the academically trained abbots in the late fifteenth and first decades of the sixteenth century singled themselves out as defenders of monastic life against the growing tide of voices calling for its radical change or even abolition and the financial demands of secular authorities. It is not an accident that new histories of monastic communities were authored by abbots, who were university educated and in many cases also adherents of humanism. Reflection on institutional history was an old monastic and especially Cistercian tradition, the foundation narrative being an important genre of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.33 A good example of such a late medieval abbot is Wolfgang 32

K. Elm, ‘Propugnator et defensor totius ordinis. Arnold van Monnickendam, Abt von Lehnin (1456–67) und Altenberg (1467–90)’, in Vera lex historiae: Studien zu Mittelalterlichen Quellen: Festschrift für Dietrich Kurze zu seinem 65. Geburtstag am 1. Januar 1993, ed. S. Jenks, J. Sarnowsky and M.-L. Laudage (Köln, 1993), pp. 1–38 (pp. 1–21); S. Warnatsch, ‘Abt Arnold von Monnikendam – eine Zisterziensische Ordenskarriere’, in Spiritualität und Herrschaft, ed. O. H. Schmidt, H. Frenzel, D. Pötschke (Berlin, 1998), pp. 132–62. 33 E. Freeman, Narratives of a New Order: Cistercian History Writing in England, 1150– 1220 (Turnhout, 2002), pp.  24–6; J. France, ‘Cistercian Foundation Narratives in Scandinavia in their Wider Context’, Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses 43 (1992), 119–60 (p. 125); J. Burton, ‘Constructing a Corporate Identity: the Historia Fundationis of the Cistercian Abbeys of Byland and Jervaulx’, in Self-Representation of Medieval Religious Communities: the British Isles in Context, ed. A. Müller and K. Stöber (Berlin, 2009), pp. 327–40 (p. 331).

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Cistercian Abbots: Between the Cloister and the World Marius of Aldersbach Abbey (Bavaria). Before his appointment to the abbatial office in 1514 he was a preacher in one of the abbey’s incorporated parishes, in Rotthalmünster. His chronicle of Aldersbach Abbey, which he wrote between 1514 and 1544, comprised documents from the archive of his own monastery, but also its daughter house of Fürstenfeld. The text, strongly defensive of Aldersbach’s property and rights against lay interference, was matched by Abbot Wolfgang’s actions as a reformer of the Bavarian Cistercian houses, to which role he was appointed in 1522 in order to improve observance and monastic discipline. Typical for this type of abbot, he was also successful in various building projects within the Aldersbach precinct. None of these activities – and he was also author of many other texts reflecting on the monastic past and present (including a commentary on the Rule of St Benedict) – should be seen in isolation: they all form a programme of monastic renewal which was based on tradition and observance and was supported by ­intellectual capital gained through education and the wealth of ­monastic libraries.34

Bernard of Clairvaux: the ideal abbot Although his contemporaries seemed to have little to say about Bernard in his role as abbot of Clairvaux, it became an element of Bernard’s cult as a saint and part of his iconography.35 James France emphasizes that the ‘few examples of iconographic portrayal of the way Bernard functioned as abbot match the scantiness of the literary material’.36 Nevertheless, his iconography always contained elements that identify him as an abbot – especially the crosier. Many of such depictions are to be found in liturgical books, where they symbolize the essence of both Cistercian history and tradition, but also portray an ideal abbot. In the fifteenth-century missal from Altenberg (probably made in its daughter house, Haina), the first folio of the text ‘In vigilis natalis domini ad missa(m) Introitus’ is decorated with an elaborate border; and the first capital contains a very detailed image of a Cistercian saint holding a staff and a book, his head encircled by a halo, walking on a road

34

M. K. Hauschild (O. Cist), ‘Abt Wolfgang Marius von Aldersbach (1514–44). Ein Niederbayerischer Klosterhumanist und Monastischer Apologet’ (unpublished Diplomarbeit, Theologischen Fakultät der Ludwig Maximilian Universität, München, 2001), pp.  1–37; D. Frioli, Lo scriptorium e la biblioteca del monastero Cisterciense di Aldersbach (Spoleto, 1990), p. 25, n. 75. 35 J. France, Medieval Images of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (Kalamazoo, 2006), pp. 84–9. 36 Ibid., p. 89.

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Emilia Jamroziak with a mountain landscape in the background and a monastery with white walls and red roofs, in the distance amongst trees (see figure 2).37 The same abbey was also the location of one of the most monumental programmes depicting the life of St Bernard – the stained glass in the cloister galleries of Altenberg with around seventy panels, based not only on Vita Prima and Exordium Magnum, but also the Legenda Aurea.38 As Bernard became synonymous with the patron of the Cistercian order he was very frequently depicted in monastic churches, often in the company of St Benedict (depicted as a Benedictine monk or abbot holding the Rule). A beautiful example of such imagery is the ends of the stalls in Zinna Abbey (Brandenburg), with Bernard as a holy abbot with crosier and a book (see figure 3).39

Conclusions Late medieval Cistercian abbots have tended to be dismissed by the traditional historiography as synonymous with the ‘decline’ of monasticism, far from twelfth-century ideals and the precursors of CounterReformation prelates in their Baroque splendour. As David Bell has said very aptly about pre-Dissolution English Cistercian monasticism, ‘adaptation is not necessarily decadence, though if the prurient wish to hunt for examples of decadence, they will undoubtedly find them’.40 Whilst Cistercian abbots lived very different lives in the fifteenth century from those that they lived in the twelfth, this cannot be viewed in isolation from the changes in lay society during these three centuries. The separation of the abbot from the community should also be seen in the context of the attention given to proper observance and liturgical duties, while the abbot shielded the monks from the outside world through the expansion of his own office. The role of ideas of reform and their implementation within individual abbeys and regionally is crucial in any assessment of late medieval abbots. The combination of tradition as a source of strength, architectural projects, ‘investments’ in liturgy by donations of liturgical and devotional objects and the enforcement of observance within the community always featured in the programmes 37

Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf, Altenberger Missale, D 5, fol. 1r. France, Medieval Images of Saint Bernard, p. 137; K. Eckert, S. Bernard von Clairvaux: Glasmalereien aus dem Kreuzgang von Altenberg bei Köln (Wuppertal, 1953). 39 P. Knüvener, ‘Zur Kunst des Klosters Zinna und Anderer Märkischer Zisterzienserklöster im Spätmittelalter’, in Sachkultur und Religiöse Praxis, ed. Schumann, pp. 273–4. 40 D. N. Bell, ‘Printed Books in English Cistercian Monasteries’, Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses 53 (2002), 127–62 (p. 138). 38

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Fig. 2  Fifteenth-century missal of Altenberg (Rhineland): Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf, Altenberger Missale, D 5, fol. 1r. Reproduced by permission of Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf.

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Fig. 3  The stalls in Zinna Abbey (Brandenburg) depicting Bernard as abbot. Photo taken from P. Knüvener, ‘Zur Kunst des Klosters Zinna und Anderer Märkischer Zisterzienserklöster im Spätmittelalter’, in Sachkultur und Religiöse Praxis, ed. D. Schumann (Lukas Verlag, 2007), p. 274; reproduced by permission of Lukas Verlag für Kunst- und Geistesgeschichte.

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Cistercian Abbots: Between the Cloister and the World conducted by Cistercian abbot-commissioners. The individualized depictions of late medieval Cistercian abbots on their tombs reflect the shift towards the greater splendour attached to this position, while the distance between living abbots and their communities was reflected in the development of abbatial thrones. Many of these themes came together in the cult of St Bernard of Clairvaux as the protector and defender of the Cistercian order. This figure, and especially its iconography, encapsulated the idea of a holy abbot, a perfect version that any monastic leader should follow.

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Part IV Attitudes towards Prelacy

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Monastic Attitudes to Abbatial Magnificence in Late Medieval England Martin Heale

Abbatial display in late medieval England In his chronicle on the early history of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, written c. 1400, Thomas Elmham contrasted the first seven saintly heads of his monastery with the superiors of his own day. These early abbots, he considers, observed the Benedictine Rule wholeheartedly and, unlike modern-day superiors, ‘did not seek chief salutations in the marketplace, chief places at feasts, and chief seats in assemblies, things suitable only to the dignity of pontiffs, to the mitre, the ring and the staff’. Not only were contemporary abbots preoccupied with their own dignity and status, Elmham complains, but they had also distanced themselves from their communities and from the everyday rigours and basic precepts of the monastic life: From their subjects they exact the rule severely, while they themselves, glorying in riches and luxuries and honours, supply but a miserable pittance of victuals to those who bear the burden and heat of the day, putting on the shoulders of those subject to them burdens impossible to bear, but unwilling to touch them with their own fingers. Such, without doubt, are the majority of those who govern the territory of the monastic religion, which, for their shortcomings, lies untilled, choked with the thorns and brambles of their vices . . . To their harshness and to their slackness can be put down the fact that the mortar of the wall of religion is loosened, so that scarce one stone is left upon another.1  1

Historia Monasterii S. Augustini Cantuariensis by Thomas of Elmham, ed. C. Hardwick, Rolls Series 8 (London, 1858), pp. 199–201: ‘A subditis severe ordinem exigunt, et inter haec ipsi, in divitiis, deliciis, et honoribus gloriantes, eis, qui portant pondus diei et aestus, miserabiliter in victualibus administrant; imponentes onera importabilia humeris subditorum, digito tamen suo nolentes ea movere. Tales sine dubio jam sunt plures, qui terram monasticae religionis gubernant, paene ob illorum defectum incultam, et vitiorum spinis ac vepribus ­suffocatam . . . Horum enim

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Martin Heale For Thomas Elmham, therefore, the central problem facing the religious orders in late medieval England was poor leadership as heads of houses, taking pleasure in the trappings of high office, lost sight of the true monastic ideal. It is hard to know how seriously to take this broadside as a guide to conventual attitudes towards heads of houses. It is not inconceivable that Thomas Elmham’s views on this matter evolved after he himself was elevated to the headship of the Cluniac priory of Lenton in 1414, where he achieved some public prominence through his connections to Henry V, whom he served as royal chaplain.2 Nevertheless, Elmham’s critique undoubtedly reflects a number of potential concerns about abbatial rule in late medieval England. The heads of great Benedictine monasteries like St Augustine’s Canterbury did occupy positions of public dignity, most obviously in Parliament but also on occasion in the king’s council, on embassies and on other prestigious royal commissions.3 They dined regularly with the local aristocracy and clerical dignitaries, both as hosts and guests. Abbots also had ready access to ‘riches and luxuries’ in the residences they occupied in the monastic precinct and on their abbey’s estates, served by sizeable troupes of personal attendants. Furthermore, as Thomas Elmham observes, late medieval superiors regularly sought to associate themselves with the figure of the bishop, acquiring grants of pontificalia (‘the mitre, the ring and the staff’), and associated episcopal privileges such as the ability to consecrate churchyards or issue indulgences.4 Indeed, there is every sign that the emphasis placed on these marks of abbatial dignity intensified over the period between the Black Death and the Dissolution. These years saw the constant renovation and expansion of abbots’ houses, reaching a crescendo with a series of highly impressive and ornate constructions in the early sixteenth century in monasteries as diverse as (the Cistercian) Forde and Thame,

austeritati et pigritiae imputatur, quod caementum muri religionis monasticae, ita quod vix relinquatur lapis super lapidem, dissipatur.’ The translation here is taken from William Thorne’s Chronicle of Saint Augustine’s Abbey Canterbury, ed. A. H. Davis (Oxford, 1934), pp. xxxvii–xxxviii.  2 S. Kelly, ‘Elmham, Thomas (b. 1364, d. in or after 1427)’, ODNB.  3 See M. Heale, ‘The Abbot and Public Life in Late Medieval England’, in Churchmen and Urban Government in Late Medieval Italy, c.1200–c.1450, ed. F. Andrews with M. Pincelli (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 331–47.  4 See above, pp. 11–12; M. Heale, ‘Mitres and Arms. Aspects of the Self-Representation of the Monastic Superior in Late Medieval England’, in Self-Representation of Medieval Religious Communities. The British Isles in Context, ed. A.  Müller and K. Stöber, Vita Regularis Abhandlungen 40 (Berlin, 2009), pp. 99–122.

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Monastic Attitudes to Abbatial Magnificence (the Cluniac) Castle Acre and (the Benedictine) St Mary’s York.5 There also seems to have been a gradual upward trend in the number of servants retained to staff abbatial households in this period. The number of attendants of the abbots of Whalley rose from eleven in the 1480s to eighteen or nineteen in the 1520s, and those maintained by the abbots of Peterborough from around fifty in the mid fifteenth century to 114 in the early 1500s.6 Other manifestations of this growing emphasis on abbatial dignity over the course of the later Middle Ages include the growing propensity of abbots to stamp buildings with their own personal insignia (including their initials, rebuses and coats of arms), and the increasingly generous pensions granted to retiring abbots.7 The later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries also saw enhanced abbatial engagement in public life, with a notable increase in the numbers of monastic superiors promoted as bishops or suffragans, the regular employment of abbots as Justices of the Peace and (as far as we can tell) fuller attendance of superiors in Parliament.8 By the early sixteenth century, it was common even for heads of modest houses, like the priories of Wenlock or Bodmin, to provide themselves with sizeable and comfortable residences, attain notable public offices and acquire marks of honour such as the mitre or their own coats of arms.9 Monastic superiors were not unique in this growing magnificence, and we find a similar emphasis on episcopal display in the later Middle Ages. Bishops’ building projects seem to have reached a similar crescendo in the decades preceding the Reformation, with the period 1470–1535 witnessing a ‘staggering amount of new building of a more domestic kind’ by the English episcopate.10 Indeed, as has recently been highlighted, Cardinal Wolsey’s lavish expenditure on his residences was rather less exceptional than has often been thought. Other early  5

A. Emery, Greater Medieval Houses of England and Wales 1300–1500, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1996–2006), III, 180–3, 560–5, II, 74–7, I, 375–6.  6 Manchester Central Library, Farrer MSS L1/47/5; Account Rolls of the Obedientiaries of Peterborough, ed. J. Greatrex, Northamptonshire Record Society 33 (Northampton, 1984), pp. 127, 169–70, 197.  7 Cf. the Cistercian examples of this trend, cited above in the essay by Michael Carter. Changing provision for retired superiors will be discussed in my forthcoming book on the monastic superior in late medieval and Reformation England.  8 Heale, ‘Abbot and Public Life’.  9 R. Graham, ‘Roland Gosenell, Prior of Wenlock, 1521–6’, in Graham, English Ecclesiastical Studies (London, 1929), pp.  125–45; N. Orme, ‘Monasteries in Medieval Cornwall: Mediocrity or Merit?’, in Monasteries and Society in the British Isles in the Later Middle Ages, ed. J. Burton and K. Stöber (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 213–28 (pp. 219–20). 10 P. Hembry, ‘Episcopal Palaces, 1535–1660’, in Wealth and Power in Tudor England, ed. E. Ives, R. Knecht and J. Scarisbrick (London, 1978), pp. 146–66 (p. 152).

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Martin Heale Tudor bishops, such as John Morton, Richard Fox and William Warham, all invested large sums in impressive and lavish building projects, with Warham claiming to have spent £30,000 on his manors and houses alone.11 There occurred a similar rise in clerical grandeur in Renaissance Italy, where (as Hans Baron argued) attitudes towards church wealth gradually evolved from ambivalence in the fourteenth century to the acceptance and even celebration of ecclesiastical riches as instruments of virtue by the later fifteenth century. Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century cardinals were noted for their conspicuous consumption, and indeed could be rebuked by the papacy for failing to conduct themselves in a manner appropriate to their station, or criticized by contemporaries for their meanness in not maintaining sufficiently large a household.12 The deportment of late medieval bishops and cardinals, therefore, reflected contemporary expectations that ecclesiastical dignitaries – as princes of the Church – should display their status in a fitting manner. This emphasis on splendour, however, might also provoke disquiet;13 and especially so when it was applied to a monastic setting, where the contrast with traditional cenobitic ideals of simplicity and renunciation could appear particularly stark. It was this disjuncture that particularly offended Thomas Elmham, who considered that in their concern for display and honour the abbots of his day had departed a long way from the strict observance practised by the (idealized) first heads of his house. The abbot of the Benedictine Rule, after all, was expected to follow the simple life of his brethren, with no suggestion that he might have his own separate residence, servants, or external marks of dignity. Historians of late medieval monasticism have not infrequently drawn similar conclusions to Thomas Elmham in this regard. To modern commentators, the lifestyles, houses and households of late medieval abbots have often seemed markers of the worldliness and weakness of preReformation religious life. David Knowles judged that the large proportion of monastic income dedicated to the superior’s household was 11

G. Bernard, The Late Medieval English Church. Vitality and Vulnerability before the Break with Rome (New Haven, 2012), p. 55; S. Gunn and P. Lindley, ‘Introduction’, in Cardinal Wolsey. Church, State and Art, ed. Gunn and Lindley (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 1–53 (pp. 36–7); Wills from Doctors’ Commons: a Selection from the Wills of Eminent Persons, Proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 1495–1694, ed. J. G. Nichols and J. Bruce, Camden Society o.s. 83 (London, 1863), p. 22. 12 H. Baron, ‘Franciscan Poverty and Civic Wealth as Factors in the Rise of Humanistic Thought’, Speculum 13 (1938), 1–37; K. Lowe, ‘Questions of Income and Expenditure in Renaissance Rome: a Case Study of Cardinal Francesco Armellini’, in The Church and Wealth, ed. W. Sheils and D. Wood, Studies in Church History 24 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 175–88; Gunn and Lindley, ‘Introduction’, p. 6. 13 See the introduction to this volume and the essay by Anne Hudson, below.

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Monastic Attitudes to Abbatial Magnificence ‘the radical vice of the system’, with the majority of abbatial ­spending – including on houses, households and vestments – ‘economically useless’. Nicola Coldstream viewed Cistercian abbots’ lodgings as a sign of the order’s ‘acceptance of secular values’ in the later Middle Ages; and George Bernard has recently concluded that, although social pressures required abbots to ‘keep rank with secular lords’ in their lodgings and hospitality, ‘yet the worldliness remained . . . as did the corrosion of the highest ideals of poverty professed by monks’.14 With such appraisals in mind, the aim of this chapter is to explore contemporary monastic attitudes to the question of abbatial display. Was Thomas Elmham typical among late medieval monks in considering this a serious abuse? Was the growing emphasis on the dignity of the abbatial office in late medieval England a source of conflict between abbots and their communities? Our answers to these questions can help us to understand better late medieval conceptions of the monastic life, and also the expectations placed on monastic superiors in exercising their office.

Conventual criticisms of abbatial spending Late medieval conventual attitudes to abbatial rule – and specifically to abbatial spending and display – can potentially be accessed from a range of sources. Visitation records, which survive in large numbers for the later Middle Ages, detail individual monks’ concerns about their superior and the management of their house. Monastic chronicles and Gesta Abbatum, less numerous than in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries but still relatively plentiful for the later Middle Ages, also shed light on conventual views towards heads of houses, as do abbatial attempts to appeal to ‘public opinion’ in their community. All these genres of evidence, of course, have limitations in what they can reveal about monastic attitudes. The responses given during visitations were inevitably shaped by the questionnaires used by the visitors, which were in turn largely based on the particular prescriptions of monastic legislation and canon law. Moreover, it is often only the visitor’s injunctions which survive, rather than the verbatim responses of the monks or canons themselves. Extant late medieval chronicles and Gesta Abbatum come mainly from larger and wealthier abbeys, and particularly the great Benedictine houses, and so do not necessarily reveal the full spectrum of monastic attitudes. They 14

Knowles, RO, III, 257; N. Coldstream, ‘Cistercian Architecture from Beaulieu to the Dissolution’, in Cistercian Art and Architecture in the British Isles, ed. C. Norton and D. Park (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 139–59 (p. 155); Bernard, Late Medieval English Church, p. 180.

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Martin Heale may also largely reflect ‘official’ views within the monastery, rather than those of the convent at large. Nor should we think of conventual opinion as uniform or static. It is clear from monastic chronicles that there was often heated internal debate and disagreement about the way in which the house was ruled.15 Nevertheless, a number of recurring approaches and attitudes to the question of abbatial splendour can be found in these sources, which allow some insight into monastic views on this issue. Indeed, three principal lines of monastic criticism of abbatial spending and display emerge from these records. The first and most common critique was that superiors’ over-spending and extravagance was jeopardising the solvency of the house. Conventual concerns of this kind feature regularly in visitation records, since one of the main aims of these periodic inspections was to monitor the financial well-being of the monastery. The questionnaires used by both bishops and general chapters in their visitations included a number of items about the abbot’s management of his house’s resources. It was routinely enquired whether the superior was dilapidating the monastery, alienating property, accumulating debts, or burdening the house through the sale of corrodies or liveries.16 This emphasis is reflected in the regular complaints found in late medieval visitation records that heads of houses were risking the financial security of the monastery by selling corrodies, pawning the house’s valuables, cutting down trees or unduly favouring their friends and relations.17 Alongside these common complaints about mismanagement and dilapidation, visitation reports also include concerns about the costly lifestyle of monastic superiors. These responses, too, were conditioned by the questions asked during visitations. Among the enquiries included in the late fourteenth century articles of the chapter of the Augustinian canons was ‘whether the prelate has an excessive household or useless servants’: an enquiry based on chapter seventeen of Benedict XII’s 1339 15

E.g., Jocelin of Brakelond, Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, ed. D.  Greenway and J. Sayers (Oxford, 1989), passim; Annales Monasterii S. Albani a Johanne Amundesham, monacho, ut videtur, conscripti (A.D. 1421–1440), ed. H. T. Riley, 2 vols., Rolls Series 28.5 (London, 1970–1), II, 203–12; Registrum Abbathiae Johannis Whethamstede, Abbatis Monasterii Sancti Albani, ed. H. T. Riley, 2 vols., Rolls Series 28.6 (London, 1872–3), I, 5–9. 16 E.g., The Register of Thomas Langley, Bishop of Durham, 1406–1437, ed. R. Storey, 6 vols., Surtees Society 164, 166, 169–70, 177, 182 (Durham, 1956–70), I, 66–76; Documents Illustrating the Activities of the General and Provincial Chapters of the English Black Monks 1215–1540, ed. W. Pantin, 3 vols., Camden Society 3rd s. 45, 47, 54 (London, 1931–7; hereafter CBM), II, 83–9; Chapters of the Augustinian Canons, ed. H. Salter, Canterbury and York Society 29 (London, 1922), pp. 200–13. 17 For lucid summaries of the abuses emerging from late medieval visitation records, see Knowles, RO, I, 78–112, II, 204–18, III, 39–51, 62–86.

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Monastic Attitudes to Abbatial Magnificence statutes for the order, which cautioned superiors against incurring immoderate or undue costs in their hospitality or maintaining an ‘indecent or excessive multitude’ of household servants.18 Chapter twentyone of Benedict XII’s 1336 statutes for the black monks included the same prohibition, and extant Benedictine chapter articles of c.  1400 accordingly enquired whether the superior was over-burdening the monastery with an excessive household.19 These constitutions and visitation articles therefore encouraged convents to evaluate their superior’s spending on his own lifestyle and household, and to consider whether this expenditure was proportionate and in the best interests of the monastery. As a result, we find recurring visitation complaints about the size and cost of the superior’s household. For example, in 1437 Abbot John Deeping of Peterborough was criticized for accumulating debts and for his ‘excessive and burdensome’ household. During the 1518 visitation of Tutbury, the subprior of the monastery reported that the household of Prior Thomas Rolleston was ‘too costly on many occasions’, and similar charges were made by several canons of the house against Rolleston’s successor six years later.20 Members of their convents also criticized Abbot William Merton of Norton in 1522 and Abbot Richard Pexall of Leicester in 1528 for maintaining burdensome or excessive households.21 More specific complaints about the allegedly extravagant living of monastic superiors are also occasionally found in late medieval visitation records. In a visitation of 1492, one of the monks of Hyde Abbey in Winchester reported that the abbot, Richard Hall, had begun to build a new parlour for himself, which it was anticipated would take a long time to complete. And among the injunctions issued against Prior Roland Gosenell of Wenlock in 1523 was a requirement that he should be moderate in entertaining, ‘so that he may not seem to waste the goods of the monastery imprudently on the pretext of hospitality, and also that he may not incur the stigma of luxurious living by an excessive retinue of servants and ceremony at his table’.22 18

Chapters of the Augustinian Canons, pp. 207, 244–5. Concilia Magnae Brittaniae et Hiberniae, AD 446–1716, ed. D. Wilkins, 4 vols. (London, 1737), II, 605–6; CBM, II, 88. 20 Visitations of Religious Houses in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1420–1449, ed. A. H. Thompson, 3 vols., Canterbury and York Society 17, 24, 33 (London, 1915–27; hereafter VRH), III, 275, 277; Bishop Geoffrey Blythe’s Visitations, c. 1515–1525, ed. P. Heath, Staffordshire Record Society 7 (Stafford, 1973), pp. 20, 156–7. 21 Blythe’s Visitations, p. 94; Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln 1517–1531, ed. A. H. Thompson, 3 vols., Lincoln Record Society 33, 35, 37 (1940–7), II, 191–2. 22 The Register of John Morton Archbishop of Canterbury 1486–1500, ed. C. Harper-Bill, 3 vols., Canterbury and York Society 75, 78, 89 (Leeds, 1987–2000), II, 34; Graham, ‘Roland Gosenell’, p. 136. 19

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Martin Heale Complaints of this kind are not confined to visitation records, but also appear in monastic chronicles. For example, William of Scarborough, abbot of Meaux (1372–96), was criticized by his successor, Thomas Burton, for over-spending in ‘entertaining, ostentation and certain excesses’; and John of Reading attacked Abbot Simon de Bercheston of Westminster (1344–9) for his ‘superfluity’ in expenditure, which – together with the fraudulence of his household servants and the wastefulness of his relations – had brought the abbey into debt.23 Even more revealing is the St Albans chronicler’s description of conventual views concerning Abbot John de la Moote’s renovation of his residence at Tittenhanger in the years around 1400, a project on which the abbot was said to have spent more than £360 and left half finished on his death. The abbey chronicle asserts that various opinions were held within the St Albans community about the improvements to Tittenhanger, but proceeds to list only a range of criticisms. Some of the monks feared that the beauty and advantages of the site would result in continual visits from the king and lords, which would be burdensome to the monastery and its tenants. Others complained that the provision of such a lavish residence for the abbot would draw him and his brethren there in excessive numbers, to the harm of religion, hospitality and almsgiving in the monastery. It was also objected that the monastery possessed several cells, in which the abbot could stay at any time with a moderate household, and which would be more convenient and honourable locations for this purpose than the manor of Tittenhanger. De la Moote was further criticized by the abbey chronicler for maintaining an over-sized household and for devoting too much time and attention to the ‘unpropitious work’ at Tittenhanger, to the detriment of the monastery’s wider welfare and solvency.24 A second, and linked, critique of abbatial display found in late medieval monastic records attacked superiors for devoting too much of the house’s income to their own needs and not enough to those of the convent. This line of criticism was pursued most vigorously in those larger Benedictine monasteries where there existed separate establishments (mensae) for the abbot and the convent. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there developed in several such houses socalled ‘democratic movements’ which sought to uphold the right of the 23

Chronica monasterii de Melsa: a fundatione usque ad annum 1396, auctore Thoma de Burton, abbate; accedit continuatio ad annum 1406 a monacho quodam ipsius domus, ed. E. A. Bond, 3 vols., Rolls Series 43 (1866–8), III, 228–9; Chronica Johannis de Reading et Anonymi Cantuariensis 1346–1367, ed. J. Tait (Manchester, 1914), pp. 108–9. 24 Chronica Monasterii Sancti Albani: Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani, ed. H. T. Riley, 3 vols., Rolls Series 28.4 (London, 1867–9; hereafter GASA), III, 448–50.

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Monastic Attitudes to Abbatial Magnificence convent to manage its own share of the house’s income with minimal abbatial interference and to require the superior to take major decisions in consultation with his community.25 As can be seen from the disputes which raged at Bury during the rule of Abbot Samson, so vividly described by Jocelin of Brakelond, the relations between abbots and convents at that time could be acrimonious.26 Internal conflicts of this kind between abbot and convent recurred at Bury and several other large Benedictine abbeys during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, but became rather less common thereafter.27 But although these movements lost much of their momentum over the later Middle Ages, there remained a tradition of conventual suspicion towards superiors in several of the great Benedictine monasteries throughout this period. Indeed, a number of late medieval monastic chronicles assess the rule of their house’s abbots very much from a ‘conventual’ perspective. The chroniclers of the abbeys of Evesham, Glastonbury and Westminster, for example, evaluate successive heads of their houses to a significant extent according to their respect for and generosity towards the convent’s rights and revenues. Individual superiors are therefore strongly praised for augmenting the endowments of conventual obedientiaries and for making provision for additional payments or pittances to the brethren.28 It was also common for lists of abbatial benefactions in late medieval Gesta Abbatum to begin with works and acquisitions carried out for the benefit of the community as a whole, before detailing those pertaining specifically to the abbot’s own establishment. This ordering may well have been intended to send a message about priorities to future superiors. Judging from the self-justifying lists of their achievements produced by heads like Abbot John Wheathampstead of St Albans (1420–40, 1452–65) and Prior John Wessington of Durham (1416– 46) – which cite their improvements to the monastic church and communal buildings, and their wider contribution to conventual welfare, 25

A. Gransden, ‘A Democratic Movement in the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds in the Late Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries’, JEH 26 (1975), 25–39; D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England. A History of its Development from the Times of St Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council 940–1216, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1966), pp. 415–16. 26 E.g., Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, pp. 17–18, 26, 32, 64–7, 70–2, 78–81, 103–6, 120. 27 See Knowles, RO, I, 275–6, II, 253–4. 28 E.g., Chronicon Abbatiae de Evesham ad Annum 1418, ed. W. D. Macray, Rolls Series 29 (1863), pp. 288, 291, 297–8, 302–3; John of Glastonbury Chronica, ed. J. Carley, 2 parts, British Archaeological Reports 47 (1978), II, 331, 334–5; Johannis, Confratris et Monachi, Glastoniensis, Chronica, ed. T. Hearne, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1726), I, 272–3, 277–9; The History of Westminster Abbey by John Flete, ed. J. A. Robinson (Cambridge, 1909), pp. 116–17, 121–2, 127, 130–1.

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Martin Heale before going on to detail expenditure on their own residences, estates, vestments and plate – this message was accepted and internalized by at least some heads of houses.29 Conversely, abbots who were considered to have put their own interests ahead of those of their monks were liable to criticism. According to Thomas Walsingham, Abbot Richard of Wallingford (1327–36) attracted the unanimous disapproval of the St Albans convent for carrying out costly building work on his own residences in the monastery and at Tittenhanger before he had paid off the monastery’s debts and restocked its manors.30 Superiors might also incur conventual hostility for using the house’s income or assets for what was perceived to be their own private advantage. Prior William More of Worcester (1518–36) was accused by one of his monks of selling plate to the value of £80 to pay for his new mitre and crosier; and Abbot John Paslew of Whalley (1507–37) was likewise criticized by members of his convent for selling abbey plate over a period of six or seven years, ‘especially since he took upon him to be a mitred abbot’.31 Complaints were also made against Prior Gosenell of Wenlock (1521–c. 1526) that he had appropriated treasures of his monastery to be set into his mitre and – even more controversially – that he had taken the ivory cross believed to have belonged to St Milburgh (whose shrine was housed in the priory church) and ornamented it with jewels, apparently to serve as his pastoral staff.32 The third and final recurring conventual criticism concerning abbatial spending and splendour was the charge that an abbot was pursuing his own short-term agenda rather than promoting the long-term good of the monastery. Indeed, this misgiving is implied in the Wenlock monks’ complaints about Prior Gosenell, since the right that he had acquired to wear the pontificalia would lapse at the end of his priorate.33 The sale of corrodies and the cutting down of trees, regularly lambasted in visitation records, were common means of raising short-term funds, regardless of the future financial problems thereby created. Abbatial building could also lead to complaints that short-term concerns were being pursued ahead of the longer-term welfare of the house. In his account of the deeds of the abbots of St Albans, Thomas Walsingham twice bemoaned the widespread tendency of monastic superiors – ‘this evil befalls almost every monastery’ – to initiate their own building 29

Annales Monasterii S. Albani a Johanne Amundesham, II, 196–202; Historiae Dunelmensis Scriptores Tres, ed. J. Raine, Surtees Society 9 (London, 1839), pp. cclxviii–lxxvi. 30 GASA, II, 283. 31 LP, X, 75–6, XII(i), 280. 32 Ibid., IV(i), 413–14. 33 Graham, ‘Roland Gosenell’, p. 130.

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Monastic Attitudes to Abbatial Magnificence projects rather than maintaining the works of their predecessors.34 This gratified individual superiors’ desire to adorn their favourite residences and to emphasize their personal legacy to the abbey, but could lead to conventual disquiet about wastefulness and inefficiency. Concerns of this kind were also articulated in the visitation of Durham Cathedral Priory in 1442, when it was petitioned ‘that the construction of new buildings should be postponed until old and necessary buildings which have become ruined and derelict shall be duly repaired’.35 The potential for abbots to put their own personal legacy ahead of the wider needs of the monastery was also acknowledged by the Cistercian general chapter, which legislated in 1290 that resigning abbots of the order should be rewarded not only for the additions they made to the endowment of their house, but also for clearing the debts of their predecessors.36 Indeed, it is clear that one important way in which major abbatial outlays could be justified was their potential for generating longerterm benefits to the monastery. In a highly competitive environment for attracting external patronage, it was hoped that demonstrations of the house’s grandeur and vitality would serve to impress and attract benefactors.37 Similarly, the fostering of good relations with influential neighbours through abbatial spending on hospitality could prove valuable when a monastery found its rights and privileges challenged. Such expenditure was therefore viewed as an investment, and abbots explicitly judged on the ‘fruitfulness’ of their rule. Thomas Walsingham accordingly praised Abbot Richard of Wallingford for the popularity he acquired on account of his saintly reputation, his learning, and his upright judgement and acts, which proved ‘fruitful to him and to his monastery in many ways’. By contrast, Richard’s predecessor as abbot of St Albans, Hugh of Eversden (1309–27), was denigrated by Walsingham for wasteful spending, including his frequent entertainment of women and his grant of a lifetime pension to the baby son of a local gentleman, with the chronicler bemoaning how ‘his prodigal hand many times brought about fruitless munificence’.38 Similarly, Prior John Nantwich of Canons Ashby was criticized by his convent during a 1442 visitation for his regular and expensive journeys to neighbouring

34

GASA, II, 283, 370–1. R. B. Dobson, Mynistres of Saynt Cuthbert: the Monks of Durham in the Fifteenth Century (Durham, 1974), p. 30. 36 Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Cisterciensis (1116–1786), ed. J. M. Canivez, 8 vols. (Louvain, 1933–41), III, 245. 37 See J. Luxford, The Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries, 1300– 1540. A Patronage History (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 63, 117, 207–8. 38 GASA, II, 207–8, 177–8. 35

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Martin Heale towns ‘even when it is neither expedient nor profitable’.39 Such spending could only be justified if it brought a clear benefit to the monastery, and abbots were expected to keep these longer-term institutional imperatives firmly in mind.

Monastic attitudes to abbatial magnificence There were, therefore, persistent conventual concerns about abbatial expenditure and display in late medieval England, which could become a cause of internal disquiet and dispute. However, we should note that none of these complaints criticized the notion of abbatial splendour and magnificence in itself. This was instead a question of proportion and end-product. Would the monastery be made insolvent by excessive spending? Were the convent’s needs perceived to be recognized or neglected? Were particular initiatives considered likely to cause future problems for the monastery or bring long-term benefits? Indeed, providing these concerns were properly addressed, abbatial spending on building and display was generally presented as wholly praiseworthy in monastic writings. Most late medieval monastic chronicles record their abbots’ acquisition of the right to wear the pontificalia, and the purchase of splendid mitres and crosiers, in highly positive terms.40 Expenditure by abbots on plate and vestments for their own chapels was generally regarded as a bequest to the monastery as a whole, and not simply a means of enhancing the personal dignity of the superior. John Flete writes of Abbot Nicholas Litlington’s purchase of an expensive new mitre (at a cost of 100 marks) and pastoral staff (£15) as gifts to the church of Westminster, and characterizes that superior’s acquisition of plate for his household as a grant to his successors to be ‘reserved for future abbots in perpetuity’. John of Glastonbury likewise describes Abbot Adam of Sodbury’s purchases of plate for abbatial use as a provision ‘for his and his successors’ chapel’.41 Chroniclers also routinely included abbots’ expenditure on their own residences in lists of their benefactions to the monastery without equivocation. John Flete lauded Abbot William de Curtlyngton (1315–33) for re-building his manor house at Islip and for constructing another residence at Sutton; and John of Glastonbury similarly praised Abbot 39

VRH, II, 45. E.g., Historia et Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestriae, ed. W. Hart, 3 vols., Rolls Series 33 (London, 1863–7), I, 56; GASA, III, 383–4; BL Arundel MS 68, fols. 58r–58v. 41 History of Westminster Abbey by John Flete, pp. 135–6; John of Glastonbury, II, 328. 40

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Monastic Attitudes to Abbatial Magnificence John de Breynton (1334–42) for his work on the abbatial residence in the monastic precinct, which included ‘happily’ completing the abbot’s great hall at a cost of £1,000, commencing work on a new chapel, and building from its foundations the abbot’s long chamber.42 It is also clear from monastic writings that abbatial purchases and building work of good quality were highly valued by communities, at least in the larger monasteries of the realm. The widespread description in late medieval chronicles of an abbot’s additions to the monastery’s fabric or possessions as ‘costly’ or ‘sumptuous’ was generally intended as a wholehearted statement of praise;43 and similar language might also be used as an approving description of abbatial feasts.44 It was also common for chroniclers to describe the expensive purchases and outlays of monastic superiors as ‘becoming’, with the adverb ‘decenter’ frequently applied to the ornamentation of abbatial buildings and vestments.45 A similar attitude is articulated in the post-dissolution ‘Rites of Durham’ in its description of the prior’s household as comprising ‘gentlemen and yeomen of the best in the countrie as the honorable service of his house deserved no less’; a statement which echoes the Durham chronicler’s praise of the large retinue of attendants which ‘honourably’ served the last head of the house, Hugh Whitehead.46 It was evidently considered fitting that the heads of such prestigious monasteries should reflect and project the status of their houses. Indeed, late medieval abbots might even face criticism from their convents for insufficient spending, just as sixteenth-century cardinals could be rebuked for their meanness. Thus while Thomas Walsingham attacked Abbot Eversden for his ‘fruitless munificence’, he also expressed disapproval of the initial frugality of Eversden’s successor, Richard of Wallingford, who neglected, on his election, to make the customary gifts to obedientaries, receive guests or to show what was described as ‘the accustomed honour’ of an abbot-elect.47 These evaluations reflected Aristotelian notions of ethics, which were widespread in late medieval England: i.e. that virtues consisted

42

History of Westminster Abbey by John Flete, pp. 122–3, 135; John of Glastonbury, II, 334. 43 E.g., Chronicon Abbatiae de Evesham, pp. 286, 304–5; John of Glastonbury, II, 330–1, 334; History of Westminster Abbey by John Flete, pp. 122–3. 44 Historia et Cartularium . . . Gloucestriae, p. 38. 45 E.g., GASA, III, 383–4; Chronicon Abbatiae de Evesham, pp. 304–5; Chronica Monasterii de Melsa, III, 242; BL Add. MS 35295, fol. 256r; BL Arundel MS 68, fols. 4r, 66r. 46 The Rites of Durham, ed. J. Fowler, Surtees Society 107 (Durham, 1903), p.  90; Historiae Dunelmensis Scriptores Tres, pp. 154–5. 47 GASA, II, 177–8, 186.

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Martin Heale of a middle ground between two equally harmful vices.48 Thus the Aristotelian virtue of liberality was the correct balance between prodigality and avarice, and the virtue of magnificence that between ostentation and paltriness. It is striking that criticisms of abbatial expenditure or display were almost invariably made on the grounds that it was excessive, either in relation to the monastery’s available income or to the sums spent on the community as a whole. Thus it was the ‘superfluity’ of Abbot Bercheston of Westminster’s expenditure that was considered problematic, and the ‘excessive retinue of servants and ceremony at his table’ for which Prior Gosenell of Wenlock was rebuked. Similarly, Prior Nantwich of Canons Ashby was criticized for riding ‘too often’ to neighbouring towns ‘at great and excessive cost to the house’; and Benedict XII’s statutes inveighed against an ‘excessive multitude’ of household servants.49 Monastic praise for ‘fitting’ and ‘becoming’ abbatial expenditure also reflects the Aristotelian understanding of magnificence and liberality, which stressed that an appropriate level of expenditure and display was one that was proportionate to the dignity and resources of the spender and to the value of the work. We might also note that the principal kinds of honourable and virtuous spending outlined by Aristotle and Aquinas correspond closely to forms of abbatial expenditure praised in late medieval monastic writings: namely, building temples for the worship of God; sumptuous outlays made for the common good; works benefiting individuals worthy of honour; special occasions such as great banquets; and the provision of a decent residence and long-lasting buildings.50 The influence of Aristotelian moral philosophy on monastic attitudes to the role of the abbot can also be seen in the language by which superiors were lauded – and criticized – in late medieval chronicles and Gesta Abbatum. Abbots were regularly praised for being ­‘mansuetus’ (gentle), ‘affabilis’ (affable), and for their ‘iocunditas’ (taking reasonable enjoyment in leisure), and ‘dapsilitas’ (being sumptuous and plentiful): all Aristotelian virtues, none of which were ever applied to the abbot in the Benedictine Rule.51 Thus Abbot Thomas de la Mare of 48

For a helpful overview of late medieval applications of Aristotelian ethics (with particular reference to Giles of Rome), see S. Rigby, Wisdom and Chivalry. Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale and Medieval Political Theory (Leiden, 2009), pp. 30–80. 49 Chronica Johannis de Reading, pp. 108–9; Graham, ‘Roland Gosenell’, p. 136; VRH, II, 45; Chapters of the Augustinian Canons, pp. 244–5; Concilia Magnae Brittaniae et Hiberniae, II, 605–6. 50 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Nichomachean Ethics, trans. C. Litzinger, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1964), Book IV, Lectures 6–7, accessed at http://dhspriory.org/ thomas/Ethics.htm. 51 E.g., BL Add. MS 35295, fols. 256v, 262v–263r; Chronica Monasterii de Melsa, III, 3; The Crowland Chronicle Continuations: 1459–1486, ed. N. Pronay and J. Cox

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Monastic Attitudes to Abbatial Magnificence St Albans ­(1349–96) was described as ‘cheerful, bountiful and c­ ourteous’ at the dining table, ‘gentle and pious’ to the humble and penitent, and ‘sociable and affable’ among his fellows.52 Conversely, late medieval superiors might also be criticized in Aristotelian terms, such as for their prodigality (a critique applied by the chronicler John Strecche to Prior Robert Salle of Kenilworth, as well as to Hugh of Eversden by Thomas Walsingham) or ostentation (as in Thomas Burton’s denigration of William of Scarborough).53 We also find abbots praised in late medieval monastic writings for being ‘liberalis’ and ‘magnficus’, or for their liberal and magnificent deeds. Prior Thomas Merston of Kenilworth (1385–1400) was lauded by John Strecche for his ‘bountiful, pleasing, liberal’ hospitality to all; while William Albon’s reputation as ‘liberal and plentiful’ was instrumental in his attracting the support of the St Albans community for his election as abbot in 1465.54 A summation of the qualities of Thomas de la Mare, apparently written by his monk-chaplain, asserted that he was ‘munificent in giving, moderate in taking and magnificent and ingenious in his deeds’.55 A fifteenth-century chronicle of Christ Church Canterbury praises Prior Robert Hathbrande (1338–70) for ruling ‘the priory honourably and splendidly, living in all honour and magnificence’; and a similar outlook is found in the Christ Church martyrology, which describes the construction and adornment of the ‘New Lodging’ adjacent to the old superior’s residence in the precinct as carried out ‘appropriately, magnificently and laudably’ by Prior Thomas Goldston II (1495–1517).56 Abbatial magnificence – defined as a level of expenditure and display which fittingly expressed the status and dignity of the monastery – was therefore quite widely praised in late medieval monastic writings. Thomas Walsingham struck a rare note of concern when he criticized Abbot Eversden because he ‘greatly pursued magnificence . . . so that he might appear to be what he desired to be thought to be’. However, Walsingham’s complaint here seems to have been that Eversden was concerned to project his magnificence in order to (London, 1986), pp. 166–7; GASA, II, 375; Chronicon Abbatiae de Evesham, p. 293; The Stoneleigh Leger Book, ed. R. Hilton, Dugdale Society (Oxford, 1960), p.  253; Historia et Cartularium . . . Gloucestriae, p. 46. 52 GASA, III, 402, 409. 53 BL Add. MS 35295, fol. 254v; GASA, II, 177–8; Chronica Monasterii de Melsa, III, 228–9. 54 BL Add. MS 35295, fol. 262v; Registrum Abbathiae Johannis Whethamstede, I, 5–6. 55 GASA, III, 409. 56 ‘A Monastic Chronicle Lately Discovered at Christ Church, Canterbury’, ed. C. Woodruff, Archaeologia Cantiana 29 (1911), 47–84 (pp. 56–9); BL Arundel 68, fol. 66r.

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Martin Heale enhance his own reputation, and had therefore fallen into what Aristotle describes as ‘vulgar display’.57 Late medieval monastic superiors (like other prelates) were evidently expected by their communities to project the dignity of their office, providing that this was done in a way that was conducive to their institution’s wider interests. It is in this context that the bulk of conventual criticism of abbatial splendour should be understood: not as the castigation of an inherent abuse, reflecting the worldliness of superiors and their abandonment of the monastic ideal – as Thomas Elmham’s critique, and some modern scholarship, would suggest – but rather as a perceived failure to achieve the correct balance between the excesses of ostentation and paltriness. The volume of conventual complaints against their heads suggests that this was not always an easy balance to strike. But the celebration of abbatial splendour and display found in monastic chronicles and Gesta Abbatum must have done much to shape the ways in which late medieval abbots and priors understood and sought to exercise their office. This conception of monastic wealth and splendour, of course, was not universally shared in fifteenth and early sixteenth century England, and left monasteries open to criticism from those outside the cloister who favoured alternative models of the religious life based on apostolic poverty or the more austere and simple practices of earlier eras. It was this clash of ideals, rather than declining standards, that was the central – and ultimately unresolved – challenge faced by late medieval and early Tudor monasteries.

57

GASA, II, 177–8. Cf. Aquinas, Commentary on the Nichomachean Ethics, Book IV, Lectures 6–7.

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Lollard Views on Prelates Anne Hudson

Whoeuere desiriþ prelacie in erþe shal fynde shenshipe in heuene, and he þat treetiþ of prelacie, þat is bisieþ hym to gete prelacie, shal not be rikenid among þe seruauntis of Crist.1 [B]y þis sentence may men se hou þis prelacye is perelous for it is not fully groundid in Crist ne in oþer of his lawis.2

Lollard opinion on ‘prelates’ was overwhelmingly governed by one fact: the term prelatus and its related noun prelatio are not to be found in the Vulgate text of the Bible. Terms that can be found in that text, and whose meaning might be thought close to those, are episcopus and episcopatum.3 Whatever the obscurity in detail of Wyclif’s own conception of the ideals for which the Church in this world should aim, and from which the contemporary Church had so largely fallen away, it is clear that the basis of his conception and that of his followers was the model of the early Church set out in the gospels and the epistles.4 It is worth pausing on this linguistic point at the start of this discussion. The etymology of prelatus is transparent and unequivocal: it is the past ­participle of classical Latin praeferre, itself meaning simply ‘to bring forward’ in both material and  1

From the text known as the 37 Conclusions of the Lollards, here BL, Titus D.1, fols. 77b–78r; the only printed edition is that by J. Forshall, Remonstrance against Romish Corruptions (London, 1851), p.  141. The statement is attributed correctly in the text to pseudo-Chrysostom (PG 56, 876) and canon law (D. 40 c. 12) with more detailed references in the margin.  2 De officio pastorali in The English Works of Wyclif hitherto unprinted, ed. F. D. Matthew, EETS OS 74, revised edn (London, 1902; hereafter English Works), p. 455/26. In all quotations from printed works line numbers are shown following an oblique slash, ignoring all headings.  3 The biblical instances are for the first II Esdras 11. 22, Acts 20. 28, Philippians 1. 1, I Timothy 3. 2, Titus 1. 7, and for the second Psalm 108. 8, Acts 1. 20, I Timothy 3. 1.  4 For recent analysis of these ideas see I. C. Levy, ‘John Wyclif and the Primitive Papacy’, Viator 38 (2007), 159–89, and the same author’s ‘John Wyclif on Papal Election, Correction and Deposition’, Mediaeval Studies 69 (2007), 141–85.

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Anne Hudson abstract senses; the past participle as a noun can be traced from a date well before Wyclif in the sense of someone who has been advanced.5 Usage in reference to a secular person advanced, for instance, by a king is found, but increasingly a limitation to those advanced within the Church became the commonest sense.6 To Wyclif and his followers that limitation approached a contradiction in terms: since Christ, head of the Church, came in the form of a servant, those who aspired to live as Christ did should look to no advancement in this world.7 The Vulgate terms episcopus and episcopatum are regularly translated as bischop and bishopriche (or in OE biscophad); these vernacular terms appear in translations that may date from before Wyclif, and they are without exception found in Lollard versions.8 In Middle English prelate normally denotes an ecclesiastic of high rank, and only rarely is neutrally ‘a superior’, whether lay or ­clerical; prelacie seems to refer exclusively to ecclesiastical rank.9 As a consequence both of etymology and, more significantly, of the absence of the term from scripture, Lollard usage is overwhelmingly that prelat and the much less frequent prelacie are words that carry a heavy weight of condemnation and rejection; prelat is effectively a class term, denoting a group rather than an individual – it is rare to find it used neutrally, almost never in a context of acceptance. The terms bischop and bishopriche are much less easily placed on the spectrum of Lollard approval: being scriptural, they might be expected to be (and often are) terms of respect if not clearly of praise, but most frequently the terms are neutral although, especially with the addition of an adjective or clause of definition, they could be used in condemnation. Two further matters of definition are here relevant. First that in Lollard texts there is little interest in the category of ‘deacon’ (Vulg. decanus) and its  5

See Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, ed. D. R. Howlett et al (Oxford, 1975–2013; hereafter DML), XII, 2402; the senses underlying the present discussion are listed under praeferre 7, not under praelatus.  6 Bede, for example, is cited by DML for the first, and this remained a possible but uncommon usage.  7 See notably Philippians 2. 5–11 and cf. Matthew 20. 25–8.  8 The Wycliffite translation in all its forms has without variation bischop and bishopriche: see The Holy Bible . . . in the Earliest English Versions made . . . by John Wycliffe and his Followers, ed. J. Forshall and F. Madden, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1850). The latter is also found in, for instance, Richard Rolle’s English Psalter commentary: The Psalter or Psalms of David, and Certain Canticles, with a translation and exposition by R. Rolle, ed. H. R. Bramley (Oxford, 1884). Since Rolle died in 1349, this rendering cannot be associated with Wyclif. Unfortunately Phillip Pulsiano’s posthumously published Old English Glossed Psalters: Psalms 1–50 (Toronto, 2001) does not cover the one instance where Old English can offer evidence.  9 See MED, prelat(e, senses 1–2; prelacie is recorded from the late fourteenth century on, but only in ecclesiastical terms.

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Lollard Views on Prelates Pauline distinction from episcopus: the term is accepted but the function is not explored.10 Secondly, since abbas and abbatum equally do not appear in scripture, and are part of a system of ‘private religion’ of which Wyclif and his disciples categorically disapproved, it is rarely clear whether prelat and prelacie cover the heads of religious houses, or whether the terms are limited to diocesan bishops and their authority. Where details of the office are described, it is clear that they relate to the latter; the insufficiencies of such clerics are, as will emerge, enough to keep the writer busy whilst condemnation of the former is subsumed in the larger rejection of their whole way of life, its founders and their ideals.11 For clear expression of these ideas, see a radical commentary on the seven deadly sins: the clergy schulde be al of one religione, as prestis and dekyns lyvyng clerkes lif; bot þo fende hafs chaungid þis part in mony coloures, as seculers and religiouse; and bothe have mony partis, as popes and cardinalis and bischops and archdekens, munkes and chanouns, hospiteleres and freris.

Interestingly here even bishops are unacceptable.12 The sense of the terms episcopus and episcopatum in scriptural use is also central to Lollard thinking; the second term can be absorbed into the first, since it is only once explained and then as the office held by the first.13 Twice in Paul’s pastoral epistles the characteristics of an episcopus, a bischop, are set out with some detail; the two passages, I Timothy 3. 1–7 and Titus 1. 7–9, are closely similar: the following gives the Later Version text for Titus, as more succinct: For it bihoueth a bischop to be without cryme, a dispendour of God, not proud, not wrathful, not drunkelew, not smytere, not coueytouse of foul wynnyng; but holdinge hospitalite, benygne, prudent, sobre, iust, hooli, contynent, takinge that trewe word that is aftir doctryn: 10

See Philippians 1. 1; I Timothy 3. 8–13; see, for instance, Of mynystris in þe chirche in English Wycliffite Sermons, ed. P. Gradon and A. Hudson, 5 vols., (Oxford, 1983– 96; hereafter EWS), II, 363/961: ‘Prestus and deknes weren ynowe ȝif þei wolden mekely do þer office, and holdon hem payed wiþ Cristus pouert’. This echoes Wyclif in Trialogus, ed. G. Lechler (Oxford, 1869), p. 296/24: ‘in primitiva ecclesia ut tempore Pauli suffecerunt duo ordines clericorum scilicet sacerdos atque diaconus’. 11 But compare the first text to be analysed below p. 60/29: ‘a prelat as an abbott or a priour’. 12 Printed in T. Arnold, Select English Works of John Wyclif, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1869–71; hereafter Select English Works), III, 130/30. 13 In Psalm 108. 8 and Acts 1. 20 the force is not clear; in I Timothy 3. 1 the sense of episcopus is defined in the ensuing six verses.

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Anne Hudson that he be miȝti to amoneste in hoolsum techyng, and to repreue hem that aȝenseien.

It will be noticed that, though the first part of this defines the righteous man, any righteous person, the final clause acknowledges the bishop’s duty to instruct in doctrine and in moral matters. In the longer description in I Timothy 3 it is added that the bishop should be married to a single wife. Though this indicates a social standing, nowhere is there a definition of any source for the bishop’s authority beyond his moral uprightness. Equally his rank in society is only indicated by the fact that in Timothy the obligations of dekenes follow those of bishopis (I Timothy 3. 12–13). Wyclif’s own usage follows the distinction outlined above: thus in De potestate pape he outlines a number of defects in the contemporary prelati, describing them as ‘antichristi . . . instrumenta impii et pseudo’;14 the last term is picked up in another text ‘per p ­ seudoprelatos’15 – l­ ogically surely a contradiction in terms. But, as in his followers, episcopus is by no means always neutral, let alone approbatory.16 Turning to the first of the two texts through which I hope to illustrate Lollard thinking about ‘prelates’, the somewhat random impression given by the Pauline admonitions is carried through into the vernacular text. The text is accurately described in its penultimate sentence as containing ‘þre and fourty errouris and heresies’ of prelates: in both of the two manuscripts in which it survives the text is divided into fortythree chapters.17 The two manuscripts, now Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 296 and Trinity College Dublin MS 244, are anthologies of mostly somewhat shorter texts,18 many of them much less focussed 14

Johannis Wyclif Tractatus de potestate pape, ed. J. Loserth, Wyclif Society (London, 1907), p. 210/4ff. 15 Super Matthei 24 in Johannis Wyclif Opera minora, ed. J. Loserth, Wyclif Society (London, 1913), p. 370/19; MED does not record an English pseudoprelat. 16 For instance in the last text, Opera minora, p. 382/4: ‘quis episcopus eciam papa ab isto scelere est immunis?’ 17 English Works, pp. 55–107 (subsequent page/line numbers to this edition will be given in parentheses in the text). The structure of this and similar Lollard texts is surveyed in M. Peikola, ‘The Catalogue: A Late Middle English Lollard Genre?’, in Discourse Perspectives on English, ed. R. Hiltunen and J. Skaffari (Amsterdam, 2003), pp. 105–35. 18 The contents of the first are listed in K. A. Rand, The Index of Middle English Prose. Handlist XX: Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (Cambridge, 2009), pp.  55–66, the present item being no. 6. Of the second, the most recent is A. J. Fletcher, ‘The Criteria for Scribal Attribution: Dublin, Trinity College, MS 244 . . .’, Review of English Studies n.s. 58 (2007), 597–632 (pp. 629–30), though note that item 28 only overlaps with the specified printed text to fol. 211v, but thereafter to fol. 212v is unique and unpublished. The main argument in Fletcher’s paper, and the ensuing discussion by S. Horobin and Fletcher in

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Lollard Views on Prelates on a single topic than this, but for the most part of clearly Lollard sympathies. The script of both the manuscripts can be assigned to the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century; their contents overlap to a considerable extent, though it would seem that their shared material derived from independent copying of a third, now lost, text and that neither was copied from the other.19 How much earlier the present text ‘Of prelates’ was written than the two manuscripts were compiled is not clear: the indications are less precise than could be desired. But a reference seems to imply that the more drastic restrictions of the Arundel Constitutions of 1407, reinforced in 1409, are already in place. It is asserted that ‘prelatis letten and forbeden prestis to preche þe gospel in here iurdiccion of bischoperiche, but ȝif þei han leue and letteris of hem’ (p. 57/27); this assertion, with its reference to the requirement of written authorization for preaching, is repeated more than once, and in addition to being more specific than allusions that could refer to the imposition of De heretico comburendo in 1401,20 seems to reflect a situation which the writer perceives to have recently become more pressing.21 Such a date could also the same periodical, is hardly relevant to the discussion here, save in so far as Fletcher makes claims about the date of the Trinity manuscript (for which see further below): S. Horobin, ‘The Criteria for Scribal Attribution: Dublin, Trinity College MS 244 Reconsidered’, Review of English Studies n.s. 60 (2009), 371–81; A. J. Fletcher, ‘What did Adam Pynkhurst (Not) Write?: A Reply to Dr Horobin’, Review of English Studies n.s. 61 (2010), 690–710. 19 See the paper by R. Hanna, ‘Two Lollard Codices and Lollard Book Production’, Studies in Bibliography 43 (1990), 49–62, reprinted in his Pursuing History: Middle English Manuscripts and Their Texts (Stanford, 1996), pp. 48–59 and notes pp. 290–1. 20 For the possible reference to the 1401 legislation see English Works, p.  88/26–8: this latter is less useful since there is clear evidence that the imposition of the death penalty for heresy was anticipated by Lollard friends and foes, including Wyclif himself, in the late fourteenth century (see my comments in The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988); hereafter Hudson, PR), pp. 14–16. The reference to fighting bishops (English Works, p. 99/27) could be to the crusade of Henry Despenser, bishop of Norwich, in 1383, an event which was recalled for long after its disastrous conclusion: see EWS, IV, 146–51, and recently and more generally the material in A. K. McHardy, The Reign of Richard II from Minority to Tyranny 1377–97 (Manchester, 2012), pp. 96–112. 21 See English Works, p. 105/20, and also p. 85/6. For the additional restrictions on preaching that the Constitutions introduced see H. L. Spencer, English Preaching in the Late Middle Ages (Oxford, 1993), pp. 171–4. Fletcher, ‘The Criteria for Scribal Attribution’ in his argument concerning the identity of the scribe of the Trinity manuscript, suggests (pp.  619, 627–9) on palaeographical and orthographical grounds a date in the 1380s, and this is implied in Fletcher, ‘What did Adam Pynkhurst (Not) Write?’, pp. 709–10. The content of some of the items included might suggest that to be difficult, if not out of the question. The comments here relate solely to the text on prelates, and it is acknowledged that some items in both manuscripts derive from a date before the turn of the century.

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Anne Hudson be confirmed by the comment (p.  102/16) ‘prelatis disceyuen cristene men in feiþ, hope and charite in here nouelerie of massis at Rome, at Scala celi, and newe pardouns and pilgrimages’; this might refer to the 1412 indulgence granted by the anti-pope John XXIII, which, despite its origin, seems to have had considerable publicity, but the renown of the indulgences attached to Scala celi had spread to England by the end of the fourteenth century.22 Concerning the author, even less can be determined: the text lacks perceptible shape beyond the simple enumeration of the heresies of the contemporary prelacy, and comes to no climax or conclusion. It does not cite authorities as frequently as many Lollard works, but one named author is ‘þe grete doctour Lyncolne Robert Grosted’, mentioned several times but never as bischop, let alone as prelate.23 But citation is not this writer’s mode of attack: his address is more direct and uncompromising. Two complaints dominate the text: that prelatis do not preach, and that they put every obstacle in the way of any other who does wish to preach – sometimes the two are linked, as (p.  70/20) ‘þei preisen and techyn mannus lawis and here owen tradiciouns to gete þe peny by, but þei leuen and dispisen þe gospel and letten it to be prechid’: ‘mannus lawis and here owen tradiciouns’ cover two areas of constant reproach in the text. Repeatedly the author comes back to these charges. And many of the recurrences reveal the other charge: þei wollen not suffre trewe men teche frely Cristis gospel wiþouten here leue and lettris, þouȝ trewe men ben neuere so mochil charged and stired of God to preche his gospel. But þei don þis for þei wolden haue money for here lettris and swerynge þat men not preche aȝenst here synnes (p. 105/22).

Indulgences also come in for considerable criticism: in exchange for money, in effect they license repeated and recurrent sin since they are constantly on sale for those who can afford to pay.24 22

N. Morgan, ‘The Scala Coeli Indulgence and the Royal Chapels’, in The Reign of Henry VII: Proceedings of the 1993 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. B. Thompson (Stamford 1995), pp. 82–103 quotes the passage in the text here at p. 85 (with the unlikely date of c. 1380 and attribution to Wyclif himself) as an early reference to the establishment of the cult in England. He refers to the 1412 indulgence on p. 86, but also mentions a reference in the Stacyons of Rome found in the Vernon manuscript which almost certainly antedates that here. 23 See English Works, pp. 56/27, 61/27, 92/14; other authorities are mentioned (for instance p.  58/9ff), and the Dublin manuscript amplifies some of these marginally (e.g., fols. 56v–57r, 61r), but does not further specify the location of the Grosseteste quotations. 24 See for instance pp.  62/28, 66/32, 72/14, 74/21, etc. For a summary of Lollard views on indulgences see my own paper ‘Dangerous Fictions: Indulgences in the

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Lollard Views on Prelates The imbrication of all that contemporary prelates do and say with their cupidity is the second charge – the last complaint quoted goes on to point out that they allow ‘veyn religiouse’ to preach fablis, cronyclis and lesyngis forto robbe þe pore peple aftirward bi clamouse beggynge, dampnyd bi Goddis lawe; and þus þei ȝyuen leue to Sathanas preschours forto preche fablis and flaterynge and lesyngis, and to disceyue þe peple in feiþ and good lif and robbe hem of here worldly goodis, and to putte blasphemye vpon Crist bi here opyn beggynge and letten Cristis prechours to preche frely þe gospel (p. 105/30).

Even licenses to preach have to be bought: ȝif prestis wolen seie here masse and techen þe gospel in a bischopis diocise, anoon he schal be forboden but ȝif he haue leue of þat bischop, and he schal paie comunly for þat leue myche money, or ellis swere þat he schal not speke aȝenst grete synnes of þat bischop and oþere prestis and here falsnesse (p. 85/6).

Ceremonies which offer an opportunity to gain money, such as the consecration of churches and their acoutrements are valued more than celebration of the eucharist, and they are reserved to bishops (p. 69/4). The varied kinds of perceived extravagance are spelled out: in their ‘worldly aray and wast meyne and grete corseris and cloþis of gold and worldly armure’ prelates exceed earls, and ‘atteynen to kyngis aray in bataile to slee cristen men’ (p. 88/5). Though jurisdictional charges are less in evidence, they are not absent: prelates demand that all men acknowledge that ‘þe bischop of Rome be heuyd of holy chirche’ (p. 84/6); they claim that they are not subject to secular lords, should not pay taxes as secular men and should not be corrected save by the pope (p.  86/7). Prelates rob the land of much treasure, sending it abroad ‘to aliens and enemys of oure rewme’ (p. 92/18); they buy exemptions and privileges for gold sent out of our land and used in ‘longe pledynge at Rome’ (p.  93/4). Using clerics ‘in worldly offices’ to the exclusion of their effort in their cure is a ‘poynt of tresoun’; in such office the clerk is the equal to the lord ‘in gay cloþinge, in grete festis, gret archerie or ony oþere veyn iapis’ (p. 65/9).25 Presentation to livings is legitimate as a means of bringing Thought of Wyclif and his Followers’, in Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe, ed. R. N. Swanson (Leiden, 2006), pp. 197–214, and, more generally, Swanson’s Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise? (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 278–348. 25 For this charge more generally, see my paper ‘Hermofodrita or ambidexter: Wycliffite Views on Clerks in Secular Office’, in Lollardy and the Gentry in the Later Middle Ages, ed. M. Aston and C. Richmond (Stroud, 1997), pp. 41–51.

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Anne Hudson preachers to maintain God’s law – but that is far from the way in which it is used at present. Although the audience that seems to be addressed here is perhaps less academic than that of my next text, its horizons are not confined to parish matters even though its terms are sometimes vivid, even lurid.26 If the text described above lacks a clear organization beyond enumeration, the second to be discussed is much more clearly focussed. This is a work that has never been printed and hence is little known. It occurs as the first item in a single anthology, now British Library MS Additional 24202, along with other items most but not all of which are radical though not declaredly Lollard.27 The text is headed ‘Þe bischopis othe þat he sweris to þe pope’: this is followed by a formal oath, divided into twenty-three numbered sections of unequal length; each section is then expounded in turn with a final summary at the end. The oath is printed at the close of this paper. The title is somewhat inaccurate: as the oath and, even more, its analysis make clear, this is the oath of an archbishop, not a bishop – in any case, a bishop on taking office swore an oath of allegiance to the archbishop, and only an archbishop swore directly to the pope.28 Despite this initial slip, the text that follows is, apart from its language, entirely faithful to a specific model. Its dating is clear: two popes are mentioned, Urban VI in the first item, Clement VII in the last: since Urban died on 15 October 1389 and Clement on 16 September 1394, the oath itself, if ever sworn, must have occurred after the outbreak of the papal schism in 1378 and before the death of 26

See, for instance, p. 82/30 concerning the purchase of an indulgence: ‘ypocritis seyn þat þei taken noþing for pardon, but for þe bulle þat is selid: certis a litel deed leed costiþ many þousand pond bi ȝere to oure pore lond; sikire þei disceyuen þe peple and iapen hem, for þei sillen a faat goos for litel or nouȝt but þe garlek costiþ many shillyngis’. 27 BL MS Additional 24202, fols. 1r–13v; subsequent references to this document are given in parentheses in the text. No modern description of the manuscript seems to have been published. The longest text in it (fols. 14r–21r) to have been printed is the Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge, most recently ed. C. Davidson (Kalamazoo, 1993), but without a full account of the manuscript. The sympathies of the author of this tract are not transparent: the paper by L. Clopper, ‘Is the Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge a Lollard Tract against Devotional Drama?’, Viator 34 (2003), 229–71, gives references to earlier discussion. Apparently orthodox items (e.g., fols. 25r–26r beginning ‘Dere sister in Crist’) are juxtaposed with texts of clear Lollard sympathies (e.g., fols. 26r–28v beginning ‘Almyȝty God saue þi puple fro erryng in ymagis’. 28 For the bishop’s oath in Canterbury registers see printed examples in I. J. Churchill, Canterbury Administration, 2 vols. (London, 1933), II, 131–40; The Register of Henry Chichele Archbishop of Canterbury 1414–1443, ed. E. F. Jacob, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1938–47), I, 80, 91, 92 etc. and see the editor’s comments I, xxxii–xxxiii; and Canterbury Professions, ed. M. Richter and T. J. Brown, Canterbury and York Society 67 (Torquay, 1973) especially p. xix and listing nos. 294–9.

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Lollard Views on Prelates Urban in 1389. The situation discussed is declaredly an English one, and during that period only a single change occurred in the tenure of the Canterbury archdiocese, namely when William Courtenay succeeded Simon Sudbury after the latter’s murder by the rebels on Tower Hill in London on 14 June 1381.29 Courtenay’s oath is preserved, in Latin, at the start of his Canterbury register: comparison makes it clear that the English text is a very close translation of that Latin oath with almost all its details preserved intact.30 The oaths of Courtenay’s immediate successors, Thomas Arundel (1399–1414) and Henry Chichele (1414–43) diverge in numerous ways from that here.31 Whether the ensuing rebuttal of that oath’s legitimacy derives also from the period between 1381 and 1389 is not absolutely clear, though nothing would contradict this inference and it would seem most probable from the precision of its retained terms – why not take these out if they are no longer appropriate, since they would seem to weaken, rather than strengthen, the case unless they relate to the immediate contemporary situation?32 Urban’s commands are said to be contrary to those of Peter (fol. 2r): this could point to a date later than Wyclif’s early optimism about Urbanus noster.33 There are a number of parallels to the format of this rebuttal of the oath amongst Wycliffite texts, where an official document forms the basis for a polemical attack. Wyclif, in a short text usually known as De iuramento Arnaldi, used the oath taken by the papal tax-collector on his arrival in England as the basis for an 29

For the events see, amongst many accounts, the material in R. B. Dobson, The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, 2nd edn (London, 1983), pp. 153–230 and supplementary texts in McHardy, Reign of Richard II, pp. 62–90. 30 London, Lambeth Palace Library, Registers of the Archbishops of Canterbury, Reg. Courtenay, I, fols. 1v–2r; the oath has no heading beyond the marginal Forma iuramenti. The Latin oath is printed by D. Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 4 vols. (London, 1737), III, 154–5, and translated in J. Dahmus, William Courtenay Archbishop of Canterbury 1381–1396 (University Park PA, 1966), pp. 239–40. Dahmus summarized the delays in the process of Courtenay’s appointment, pp. 68–77. 31 See London, Lambeth Palace Library, Registers of the Archbishops of Canterbury, Reg. Arundel, I, fol. 3r and The Register of Henry Chichele, I, 17. 32 The manuscript itself dates from the early fifteenth century; in A Linguistic Atlas of Late Middle English, ed. A. McIntosh, M. Samuels and M. Benskin, 4 vols. (Aberdeen, 1986), I, 100–1 its language (not, importantly, its hands) is divided into four sections, three of which are analysed and located but the first, that involved here, is not. The orthography of this first section is variable in a number of ways, but for the most part would have been possible in London: the 3sg. pres. ind. -is in red titles here and fols. 14r, 28v does not recur in the text itself, suggesting possibly that the titles could have been supplied by someone other than the writer of the remainder or from a different exemplar. 33 See Hudson, PR, p. 333 and references there.

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Anne Hudson attack on the legality of sending money abroad and on the claims by the papacy to its right to collect without reference to the king.34 The taxcollector in question is declaredly Arnold Guarnier, and since the king is described as in the flower of his youth, the occasion can be identified as towards the end of Guarnier’s second visit, in 1377–8.35 Similarly a Latin text surviving in three Bohemian copies uses the terms of Richard II’s coronation oath to prove that a king is entitled, indeed obliged, to punish erring clerics.36 That text had similar access to a formal legal undertaking as that here, though it used the terms less precisely in its argument. The other and more important difference is that the text here, both oath and discussion being in English not Latin, would be accessible potentially to a much wider audience.37 The relevance of the archbishop’s oath to certain central concerns of Wyclif and his followers had been mentioned by Wyclif himself in his De officio regis, a text dating from c.  1378 and perhaps at least in part intended as a speculum regis for the young Richard II.38 The vernacular text here certainly follows and expands on Wyclif’s brief indications of the oath’s incompatibility with scriptural admonitions. All the indications are that its author was himself clerical, even if the text’s vernacular idiom points to his desire that his argument should be accessible to a secular as well as to an academic audience. Four passages of canon law are cited, with marginal references in the usual medieval fashion; the citations follow Wyclif’s frequent practice of identifying the patristic 34

See W. R. Thomson, The Latin Writings of John Wyclyf (Toronto, 1983), no. 397; the text survives only in four Bohemian copies, though it appears in the Syon catalogue (N.28 at item l – see Syon Abbey, ed. V. Gillespie, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 9 (London, 2001), pp.  275–6). It was edited by G. Lechler, Johann Wiclif und die Vorgeschichte der Reformation, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1873), II, 575–9. 35 See the notes to Thomson, Latin Writings of John Wyclyf, nos. 397 and 398. 36 I edited and discussed this text in a paper ‘The King and Erring Clergy: a Wycliffite Contribution’, in The Church and Sovereignty c.  590–1918: Essays in Honour of Michael Wilks, ed. D. Wood, Studies in Church History Subsidia 9 (1991), pp. 269–78, reprinted in A. Hudson, Studies in the Transmission of Wyclif’s Writings (Aldershot, 2008; hereafter STWW) as no. xii. 37 A more distant parallel to the usage here is the Lollard translation of the Rule and Testament of Francis, followed immediately by a demonstration that the contemporary practices of the Franciscans violate the terms of their founding documents: see English Works, pp. 39–51 – it appears in the two manuscripts of the first text discussed here, plus one other copy. This text has some anticipation in chapter 15 of Wyclif’s De blasphemia (ed. M. H. Dziewicki, Wyclif Society (London, 1893), pp. 232/29–238/25). 38 Iohannis Wyclif Tractatus de officio regis, ed. A. W. Pollard and C. Sayle, Wyclif Society (London, 1887), pp. 69/24, 217/22; the Guarnier case is mentioned again here p. 108/7. For the date of the work see the editors’ comments pp. xxvii–xxviii, and mine in STWW, no. iv, pp. 206–8.

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Lollard Views on Prelates originator of the extract quoted.39 The last of these is the most interesting since its second paragraph from D. 40 c. 12 is attributed to Chrysostom on Matthew homily 28; but the final sentence quoted does not appear in canon law – the English author has apparently gone back to the source and found it there, where it indeed follows immediately on from the canonistic passage.40 That the author was extensively familiar with the pseudo-Chrysostom homilies on Matthew is clear from nine other passages quoted and marginally referenced from that source: all are readily traceable in the complete text.41 Biblical quotations, unsurprisingly, are frequent; interestingly, many of them are very close to the rendering of the so-called Later Version of the Wycliffite Bible.42 Since that version is usually now dated to c.  1390,43 the possible anticipation of its readings here could point to the origins of the two texts from the same environment – since that is likely to have been Oxford, there would in place at least be no surprise.44 The terms of the oath to a large extent govern the objections to the prelacy that the text puts forward. The focus throughout is on the relationship between king, prelate and pope stated or implied by the oath. Lollard objections familiar from other texts are for the most part not pursued: thus, for instance, the oath’s promise (clause twenty-one) to endeavour to visit the holy places in Rome unless dispensed by the 39

For the passages here see BL MS Add. 24202, fols. 2r, 7r, 9r and 10v; the citation of the originating source does not appear in any index to canon law that I have encountered, but is regular in Wyclif and in the more academic writings of his followers. Apart from the last passage (for which see below), the other references are to Corpus iuris canonici, ed. E. Friedberg, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1879–81) I, 350–1, 856 and 351 respectively, all accurately translated, though in two cases abbreviated. 40 See Corpus iuris canonici, I, 148, where the source is pseudo-Chrysostom: PG 56, 830. 41 Citations (all to columns in PG 56) are BL MS Add. 24202, fols. 1v (698), 5r (677), 6r (831), 6v-7r three references (883–5), 7v (814), 10v (830), 13v (692); the homily numbers given are those of the normal medieval text in England: see J. van Banning, Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 87B (Turnhout, 1988), passim. 42 For example, Matthew 23. 16–19 quoted at BL MS Add. 24202, fol. 6v, 2 John 10–11 at fol. 8r or Acts 7. 51 at fol. 10r: the last reads ‘ȝee wiþ hard nollis and vncircumcidid in hertis and eeris, ȝe han euermore wiþstonde þe Holy Gost, þat as ȝoure fadris so ȝe: whome of þe prophetis ȝoure fadris han not pursued?’, almost exactly as the Later Version. 43 See the evidence presented by M. Dove, The First English Bible: The Text and Context of the Wycliffite Versions (Cambridge, 2007), passim and especially pp. 79, 150. 44 See my paper ‘Five Problems in Wycliffite Texts and a Suggestion’, Medium Aevum 80 (2011), 301–24.

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Anne Hudson pope produces the objection that the king’s permission for such a journey is the prime requisite; the more basic Lollard argument about the legitimacy of regarding some places as more holy than others, and of pilgrimage to such shrines, is not mentioned.45 Similarly, the regular Lollard objection to the sending abroad of money in payment of traditional papal dues, Peter’s pence, first fruits or annates, is hardly heard, but the oath’s specification (clause nine) of the bishop’s duty to assist the pope’s legates produces a less frequently voiced condemnation of such messengers.46 Even the reproach that bishops prevent the teaching of the gospel and persecute those who persist in doing so may be implied, but is not foregrounded.47 All this may be the result of the probable early date of the text’s composition, between 1378 and 1389, when the full implications of episcopal hostility to Wyclif and his followers had not yet been practically apprehended. The core of the objections expressed lies in the claim implicit throughout the oath that the pope’s authority overrides that of the king, and that the swearer is primarily committed to unquestioning loyalty to papal allegiance. Thus the objection to the first clause concludes that the bishop in swearing commits treason against his king: he is ‘boþe vntrewe, forsworn and traytour to Crist and to his chirche and to þe kyng and to his rewme’ (fol. 2v, a charge reiterated fol. 13r). The gradual encroachment of ecclesiastical dominion on the secular domain is plainly the issue of greatest concern to the writer: the king’s regaly is being diminished by the bishops’ claims to summon and imprison men, and to make laws that demand universal obedience (fol. 3v). Regaly, a word of considerable force to the author, evidently covers authority both over temporal possessions and over legal administration. The term occurs in the oath itself (clause 4) where ‘þe popehede of Rome’ is equated with ‘þe regalye of seynt Petre’ (Latin: ‘papatum Romanum et regalia sancti Petri’). The English text takes up an analysis of its meaning and implications in a long rebuttal of the legitimacy of the clause (fols. 4r–6r). The Latin term seems to be applied normally to the secular ruler, save sig-

45

Text here BL MS Add. 24202, fols. 12v–13r; for the usual Lollard view see Hudson, PR, pp.  307–9 and references there, and also M. Aston, England’s Iconoclasts I (Oxford, 1988), especially pp. 104–43. 46 Text here BL MS Add.  24202, fols. 8r–v; see Wyclif, Opera minora, pp.  424/24– 430/5, and Select English Works, III, 320/3ff. and English Works, p. 66/23 (the first text here). 47 See BL MS Add. 24202, fols. 3v–4r, but the language suggests an ongoing rather than an urgent contemporary situation such as my other text emphasizes: ‘þe pursuyng of false bischopis and pristis aȝenus pore pristis þat prechen aȝenus hore opyn synnes . . .’

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Lollard Views on Prelates nificantly in this one application to the pope.48 Wyclif in De blasphemia speaks of ‘regalia Deo propria’.49 Central to the author’s thinking is the command by Christ to render to God and to Caesar.50 The contradiction of the dictates of Christ in the gospels, and of the apostles in the early Church, by the papacy and its subordinate bishops, is the unifying theme throughout: the contradiction is seen sometimes as overt, sometimes only implicit, but as so pervasive as to invalidate all actions and decrees deriving from the papal court. The oath acknowledges that the pope’s power is greater than the king’s, so the bishop in swearing it demonstrates his own treason. Pope, cardinals and the bishop plot to destroy the realm and to increase their own wealth; they encroach on secular jurisdiction by summoning men, by imprisoning them and by making laws that are contrary to the king’s; they strive to gain the mastery of the king and of secular governance. The responsibility for the current situation, where Christ’s command is disregarded, is placed firmly on the ecclesiastical side; only rarely is the imprudence of the king mentioned, as when in the rebuttal of the eighteenth clause the king is said to have been unwise to admit to his privy counsel those who have accepted the papal oath.51 Bishops are said to encourage strife between the king and other kings and lords. Near the end the objection is succinctly summarized: Þis bischop by his oþe seiþ in dede “ȝildiþ þat þat is of God, as ben þe counseylis of Crist, to þe deuul and þat þat is of Cesar, þat is þat þat is of his kyng (as ben possessiouns and temperel godis), not to hym but to his most enmyse, þat is to þe pope and his cardynalis and to his bischopis and here clerkis” (fol. 13r against the twenty-second clause; cf. Matthew 22. 21, Mark 12. 17, Luke 20. 25).

48

DML, regalia and regalis: the secular reference of the first is attested from the thirteenth century on; the nominal use of the second (at a similar date) is defined as ‘regal right, privileges or prerogatives inherent in or associated with temporal dominion or lordship of papacy’ (in quotations from oaths taken by an archbishop or abbot). MED, regali(e (noun) records only one instance of the word in reference to an ecclesiastic (sense d), from the late fifteenth century. 49 De blasphemia p. 96/25; elsewhere in the text (e.g., 78/25, 264/7 etc. the reference is to a secular ruler. 50 Matthew 22. 21, Mark 12. 17, Luke 20. 25 referred to, with marginally the first biblical location noted, BL MS Add. 24202, fols. 3v, 13r. 51 For instance BL MS Add. 24202, fol. 11r on article 18: ‘ȝif lordis wolden wisely encerchen, perauentour þei shulden fynde þat þe kyngis counseyl wiþ his lordis is most discouerd by his owne clerkis, þat coueyten to ben auaunsid by an straunge lord contrarious to hym. And so in effect þes bischopis by here oþis bysien hem to forsake here kyndeliche kyng and drawen hem to þe pope, enmy of all kyngis . . .’

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Anne Hudson The terms are sometimes less specific than might be expected: the example of the Despenser crusade, deplored in Lollard texts as it was by Wyclif himself, would seem an obvious and pre-eminent instance of much that the writer castigates, but is not mentioned.52 The simple explanation would be that the text was written before 1383, the date of that disastrous event. Other evidence perhaps in favour of such timing is the verbal usage. The oath itself uses the term bischop, following the Latin episcopus, and all the criticisms that follow are levelled at þe bischop, whether this refers to the individual involved at the start or to the more generalized role later in the text. Inevitably it follows from this that bischop in this text is a neutral term; the differentiation, common in later Lollard texts, between prelat as a term of condemnation contrasted with the neutral bischop, is apparently not available to the author. Only once is the Latinate term used: for ‘þe profite of holy chirch . . . euery man and specialy hyest prelatis is iholde to putte his lif’ (fol. 11v), where denigration is not at issue. The abstract noun prelacy, for which the normal bischop had no equivalent, occurs twice but in neither case is condemnation of the office paramount.53 Most strikingly ‘þe bischop of Rome’ occurs in the oath itself, translating ‘Romano pontifice’ (clause 22, fol. 1r), but the typically Lollard distinction between the legitimate office of the diocesan see of Rome and the illegitimate papal demand for universal obedience and allegiance is not followed through in the rebuttal (fol. 13r). Yet, especially towards the end of the text, strong language is used, and much of the biblical vocabulary of condemnation is drawn on: bishops are scribes and pharisees, the synagogue of Satan, and the pope is the modern embodiment of Caiaphas, ‘prynse of pristis’.54 Both texts here considered present a coherent picture of Wycliffite objections to the contemporary ecclesiastical hierarchy; the second, perhaps the more academic of the two, is more concerned with the status of bishop, pope and king, while the first gathers together a summary in more random fashion. Analysis of other texts would add new details to the case against the bishops, but would not, I think, shift the focus. Rather than pursue those details, it seems legitimate to ask further questions about the implications of the case. Most importantly, is the Lollard 52

See above n. 20; for Wyclif’s comments see, for instance, Iohannis Wyclif Sermones, ed. J. Loserth, 4 vols., Wyclif Society (London, 1887–90), IV, 117/34, 135/30 and notably the text known as Cruciata in John Wiclif’s Polemical Works in Latin, ed. R. Buddensieg, 2 vols., Wyclif Society (London, 1883), II, 588–632. 53 ‘as anentis gostlych liuyng þe kyng is not more for he is a kyng, ne pope ne bischop lasse for here prelacy’ (BL MS Add. 24202, fol. 7r), and ‘suffryng of no peer in gostly prelasie is þe moste enuye þat may be’ (ibid., fols. 13r–v). 54 See for the first ibid., fols. 3r–v, 12v, for the second ibid., fols. 8r, 10v and for the third ibid., fol. 2r.

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Lollard Views on Prelates objection to the office of bishop, abbot, pope? or is it to the current abuses of an office which was in its origin legitimate and fulfilled a necessary function? Recently there has been a move to argue that the second is the case.55 Certainly the discussions of Wyclif himself and of his followers place considerable stress on the abuses, but they leave little space for the legitimate use of human primacy in the Church: Christ is the only true and lasting pope – if he has a living representative it must be the most perfect man alive – and only God knows whether such a perfect man lives and, if so, who that is.56 Equally the functions of the priesthood that are regarded as legitimate are few and not exclusive: they are to preach the gospel, a duty imposed by Christ on all his followers; to pray, likewise a function for the laity as well as the clergy; and to live a life in imitation of Christ and his early apostles. The traditional clerical prerogative regarding the celebration of the eucharist is, even in Wyclif, severely curtailed: the sacrament is not seen as the centre of the Christian life, and the question is raised – even if not fully resolved – as to whether the layman can take over from the usual celebrant in time of need just as he can in the baptism of an infant unlikely to survive.57 There is little room here, surely, for a prelat. Certainly, the organization of the fourteenth-century Church envisaged by Wyclif and his followers is very difficult to outline, let alone to define. Equally, as indeed these two texts here show, opinion that could be called ‘Wycliffite’ varied in its emphases on many issues. To point to the reality that can be discerned in Lollard society of the later fifteenth century is not a realistic answer to the problem: even ‘house-church’ is probably too precise a term for the variable groups that assembled in each others’ houses, taking advantage of the literacy of an individual, of the peripatetic teacher who might leave a copy of his address for later discussion and questions, and apparently fairly well informed of the whereabouts of other similar groups. But this, even if it can be called ‘organization’, was a form of existence imposed by necessity – imposed, indeed, by the prelates whose authority they did not recognize. But on prelates there was a fair degree of consensus. To quote two formulations: ‘ȝif prelatys faylyn in þis [sc. preaching], Crist seyde þat stonys schulde cry, and secler lordys schuld in defawte of prelatys lerne and 55

See the arguments of J. P. Hornbeck II, What is a Lollard? Dissent and Belief in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 2010), pp. 142–95, some of which were outlined in his earlier paper ‘Of Captains and Antichrists: the Papacy in Wycliffite Thought’, Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique 103 (2008), 806–38. He does not seem to mention the two studies by Levy (above, n. 4). 56 See references in EWS, IV, 93–101. 57 See references in ibid., IV, 111–20; for the priesthood of all believers, see Hudson, PR, pp. 325–7.

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Anne Hudson preche þe law of God in here modyr tonge’;58 the Leicester Lollard John Belgrave in 1414 set out his view of the matter less diplomatically: he derided and ridiculed every religious position in the Church militant, those of priests and the episcopal dignity, saying about a modern bishop that he contradicted the sermons he made earlier, because, if he acted in accordance with what he had once preached in his younger days, he would have gone round the country on foot and would have preached as the apostles did. And this he taught publicly and asserted in taverns amongst the laity, and in other places, public as well as private.

Clearly Belgrave thought that the bishop he knew was one of the prelati – in 1414 the bishop of the Lincoln diocese was Philip Repingdon.59 Appendix: British Library MS Additional 2420260 (fol. 1r) Here bigynnis þe bischopis othe þat he sweris to þe pope. I A. de B. Byschop behote and swer þat fro þys howr forward as long as I shal lyue I shal be trewe and obeyschaunt to blisful Petre, and to holy apostelis chirche, and to my lord þe lord Vrbane þe sixt pope þoru Goddis prouidense and to his successours þat after þe canoun commen in, (2) ne I shal not be in counsel, consent oþer in dede þat þei lesen lif oþer leme, or þat þei ben taken yuell takyng. (3) And þe counsayl for soþe þat þei shall to me by hemsilf or by here letteris oþer by messagers to no man I shal open to here harme, me weting. (4) I shall be an helper to hem to holden, to defenden and to recoueren þe popehede of Rome and þe regalye of seynt Petre aȝenus alle men safed myn order. (5) And þe worschip and þe state of hem in as myche as in me were I  schal kepen. (6) And to heme I shal drawe to, (7) and by my power I shal faueren. (8) Þe legatis and þe messagers of þe aposteyle see I shal benyng-liche reseyuen, leden and defenden in þe londis of þe chirche. (9) And I shal ȝyue an sauecundit to þe same, (10) and in goyng and aȝencomyng I shal treten hem worschipfulliche (11) and here nedis I shal help; (12) and in þat þat in me were I shal not suffure be ido oyþer 58

Select English Works, III, 114/10; cf. Luke 19. 40. Lincoln Diocesan Records Vj/0, fol. 10r, printed by J. Crompton, ‘Leicestershire Lollards’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society 44 (1968–9), 11–44 (p. 40). 60 See above n. 29 for references to the Latin original, and to a modern English translation of this. In the transcription punctuation is modern. The first five clause numbers appear in the margin only, and their intended insertion in the text is thus not certain; the remaining numbers appear in both margins and text. 59

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Lollard Views on Prelates iȝyue any wrong to hem. (13) And to who þat euere wull enforsen hem to asay ony þing aȝenus þe forseyd þingis oþere aȝenus ony of hem, as myche as I may I shal putt me forþ aȝenus hem [14] and by my power Y shal letten hem. (15) Þe offencions and þe harmes of þe forseyd lord oure pope and of þe forseyd Romes chirche as myche as I may I shal schunnun, (16) and I shal not be in counseyl, consent oþer dede oþer trete in þe whiche aȝenus hym and þe same Romes chirche ony wrongful or preiudiciale þingis beþe icast. (17) And ȝif ony siche þingis of whosoeuere it be iknowe, iprocurid oþer tretide I shal letten it by my powere, (18) and as sone as I godeliche may I shal signyfye to anoþer bi whom it may comme to here knowlychyng. (19) Iclepid for whateuere cause it be to þe synode oþer to hem I shal come, but ȝif I be ilattide ȝoru bifore lawful lettyng, (20) and to hem I shal ȝife and donne dewe obeyschaunce. (21) þe apostelis liggyng places I shal visite eche oþer ȝere, oþer be me or by my messagere, but ȝef I be asoylide þorowe þe aposteyl leue. (22) Þe possessions forsoþe þat perteneþ to my chirche I shal not sellen, ne ȝyuen, ne legge to wedde nore none enfeffen oþer ony oþer maner wyse alyen wiþouten conseyl of þe bischop of Rome. (23) Also to Robert, sumtyme of þe chirche of þe twelfe apostelis seyd Gibbonensis, now antipope, þe whiche nemniþ hymsilf Clement þe seuenþ, to Ioon sumtym of þe title of seynt Marcyle iseyd Ambyonensis to Gerard sumtyme of þe tytle of seynt Clement iseid, of þe More Mynstre,61 prestis of þe forseyd chyrche, cardynalis þe sons of perdicion idampnyde þoru þe riȝtwesse dome of God of þe aposteyl autorite, and to here folowers and ȝyuers to hem oþer to ony of hem help, counseyl or fauour of whateuere hyenes, order, religioun, condicion oþer of what state he be, (fol. 1v) ȝhe, ȝif he be byfore oþer shynyng in bischops, kyngis or qwenus oþer in ony oþer dignite, ȝhe, ȝif þei ben cardinalis of Rome chirche, oþer to ony oþer by þe chirche shewid worþi conficion, oþer hereafterward þat shall be ischwide as long as þei shulen dwelle oute of þe grace and þe comounnyng of þe forseyd see, I shal not ȝyue ony maner wyse by me or by ony oþer euenliche or vneuenliche, opynliche or priuelich help, counseyl or fauour, ne I shal not suffere be ȝouen of oþer as myche as in me were and mowe letten, but hem aftir my power to þe tyme þei ben iturnyd I shal pursue aftur þe aposteyl prosesse as it were riȝtwesse. So me God help and þes holy euangelies of God!

61

Here the scribe rendered the name Maiorismonasterii by the translation More Mynstre (Dahmus, William Courtenay, p.  240 translates Marmoutier); the subject and main verb of this long sentence comes towards the end: ‘I shal not ȝyue ony . . . help, counseyl or fauour’.

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INDEX OF PEOPLE AND PLACES

Aberdeen, bishop of see Elphinstone Abergavenny, Henry of, bishop of St David’s 203 Abergavenny Priory 54n, 60, 61 prior of see Bromwich Abingdon Abbey 111 abbot of see Ashendon, Rowland Abingdon, Edmund of, archbishop of Canterbury 186 Abingdon, Henry, warden of Merton College, Oxford 103n Adam, abbot of Valle Crucis 233 Adrian VI, pope 92n, 94 Aethelwald, bishop of East Anglia 192 Ailred, abbot of Rievaulx 242 Alberbury Priory 56, 68n Albert of Austria, cardinal 78 Albi (France) 84, 92, 96 bishop of see Robertet (bis) Albon, William, abbot of St Albans 275 Alcock, John, bishop of Ely 9, 73n, 103, 104n, 117, 149–51, 154 Aldersbach Abbey (Germany) 8, 248n, 250, 253 abbot of see Marius Alexander, bishop of Lincoln 200n Alexander VI, pope 222 Alfonzo of Portugal, cardinal 78 Alley, William, bishop of Exeter 168 Alnwick, William, bishop of Lincoln 67, 71n Altenberg Abbey (Germany) 251, 253–5 abbot of see Monnikendam

Amboise, Georges d’, cardinal 1, 78 Amboise, Georges II d’, cardinal 79, 81, 84 Amboise, Louis d’, cardinal 79, 84, 92, 96 Amboise, Louis II d’, bishop of Albi 96 Amiens (France) 83n, 86 Andrew of Austria, cardinal 78 Andrewe, Richard, warden of All Souls 70 Angers, abbey of SS Serge and Bacchus (France) 54n, 87 Anjou, Margaret of, queen of England 56 Anketil, goldsmith 197 Annebault, Claude d’, admiral of France 79, 82, 87 Annebault, Jacques d’, cardinal 76, 79, 83–4, 87–8, 92 Anselm of Bec, archbishop of Canterbury 123–4, 192 Antwerp (Belgium) 154 Apostolic See 4n, 92, 94 Aquinas, Thomas 274 Aristotle 10, 159, 273–6 Armagnac, Georges d’, cardinal 79 Arnulf, bishop of Lisieux 202 Arundel Priory 66 Arundel, Thomas, archbishop of York, bishop of St Andrews, archbishop of Canterbury 19n, 28–9, 33, 34n, 37–9, 41–2, 48, 64, 102, 104, 184n, 281, 285 Ashendon, William, abbot of Abingdon 111n

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Index of People and Places Ashford College 72n Ashton, Robert, royal treasurer 41n Askerne, Peter de 183 Askew, Anne 157 Astley Priory 71 Attendorne, [name unknown] von, abbot of Dargun 249 Auch (France) 92–3, 94n Augustine of Canterbury 143 Augustine of Hippo 10 see also Monastic rules (Index of Subjects) Auxerre (France) 85 Avignon (France) 77, 87, 92–4 Axholm Priory 53n Ayscough, William, bishop of Salisbury 68, 70 Aysgarth 224–5, 235 Baines, Richard, of Leeds 220 Baldock, Ralph, bishop of London 186, 188 Baldock, Robert, bishop of Norwich 35 Bale, John 125n, 149n Ball, John 25 Balsham, Hugh of, bishop of Ely 196n Bardney Abbey, abbot of see Multon Bardney, Richard, abbot of Crowland 111n Bardsey, John, abbot of Kirkstall 223 Barlings Abbey 52n Barnoldswick 229 Barnstaple Priory 58 Barwe, William, monk of Bury St Edmunds 118 Basle, Council of (1434) 56, 65, 67n, 124n Basyng, William (al. Kingsmill), prior of Winchester 124n Bath, bishop of see Robert, Wells Bath and Wells bishop of 59, 61, 180 see also Bekynton, Bubwith, Burnell, Droxford, Harewell, Stafford see of 103n

Bathampton 195n Battle Abbey, abbot of see Newton Beauchamp, family 71 Beaufort, Henry, cardinal, bishop of Lincoln, bishop of Winchester 48–9, 63, 65, 67–8, 70 Beaufort, Lady Margaret 150 Beaufort, Thomas, duke of Exeter 38, 48, 67 Beaulieu Abbey 220n Bebenhausen Abbey (Germany) 245 abbot of see Gosmaringen Bec(-Hellouin) Abbey (France) 54, 57, 58, 60n, 63, 67–8, 72n, 87 Becket, Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury 187, 212 feast of 28 Becon, Thomas 157 Bede 278n Bedford, John, duke of 63, 67, 117 Bekynton, Thomas, bishop of Bath and Wells 67, 70–1, 103n Belgrave, John, Lollard 292 Bellay, Jean du, cardinal 76–7, 79, 81–2, 89–90, 91n, 96 Belvoir Priory, prior of 111 Bembo, Pietro, cardinal 77 Benedict of Nursia see Monastic rules (Index of Subjects) Benedict XII, pope 3, 218, 266–7, 274 Bercheston, Simon de, abbot of Westminster 268, 274 Bere, Richard, abbot of Glastonbury 119 Berg, Duchess Sophia of 251 Berthelet, Thomas, printer 156–8 Bewerley 228, 236 Billerback, Johann, abbot of Dargun 249 Bintworth, Robert, bishop of Lincoln 47 Bishops Stortford 160n, 161 Bisley, Joan 187 Bisshbury, Thomas, rector of Ashbury 181 see also Busshebury

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Index of People and Places Bitton, Thomas, bishop of Exeter 177, 178n, 179–80, 185–7 Blancheland Abbey 52n Blois (France) 91, 92n, 94n Blois, William of, bishop of Worcester 128 Blyth, William de, archdeacon of Norfolk 182 Bodmin Priory 180, 263 Bohemia 244, 248–9, 286 Bohier, Antoine, cardinal 79, 84 Bohun, Jocelin de, bishop of Salisbury 199–202 Bologna (Italy) 90, 96 concordat of 91–2 Bonner, Edmund, bishop of London 157, 161, 164, 166–7 Bonport Abbey (France) 87 Bon Repos Abbey (France) 59n Booth, Lawrence, bishop of Durham 72n, 103 Booth, Thomas, abbot of St Mary’s York 122 Borchardt, monk of Bukowo Morskie Abbey 245 Boston, guild of St Mary 148 Boteler, Ralph, Lord Sudeley 117–18 Bottlesham, William, bishop of Rochester 180 Boulogne (France) 95 Bourbon, Charles de, cardinal 78 Bourbon, Louis de, cardinal 78, 83–4 Bourchier, Sir Robert, chancellor 34, 47 Bourchier, Thomas, bishop of Worcester, archbishop of Canterbury 39, 49, 62, 67, 68n, 69n, 71n Bozoun, Simon, prior of Norwich 114 Bracey, John, abbot of Muchelney 122 Bradwardine, Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury 27, 101n

Brakelond, Jocelin de, chronicler 269 Brandeston, Henry, bishop of Salisbury 180 Braybrooke, Robert, bishop of London 29, 48, 62–3, 66, 180, 187n, 188 Breynton, John de, abbot of Glastonbury 273 Bricett Priory 61n Briçonnet, Guillaume, cardinal 81 Brimham 228 Brinkley, John, abbot of Bury St Edmunds 118, 122 Brinton, Thomas, bishop of Rochester 6, 9, 105n Bristol All Saints’ church 127, 131 Kalendars’ Library 103n, 127–8, 131–4, 135n, 138, 140 St Augustine’s Abbey 111 abbot of see Newberry Britanny, Anne of 79 Broad Clyst 186 Bromfeld, William, carver 224n Bromwich, Richard, monk of Worcester, prior of Abergavenny 136 Bromyard, John, preacher 6, 9, 174, 183 Brooks, James, printer 166 Brouns, Thomas, bishop of Norwich 68 Brun, Michael, abbot of Meaux 231 Bruton Abbey 52, 103n Bruynyng, Robet, abbot of Sherborne 111n Bubwith 229 Bubwith, Nicholas, bishop of Bath and Wells 103n Bucer, Martin 159 Bukowo Morskie Abbey (Poland) 245–7 abbot of see Kresse monk of see Borchardt Bullinger, Heinrich 146, 159, 166

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Index of People and Places Burghersh, Henry, bishop of Lincoln 28, 29n, 47 Burghill, John, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield 63n, 187 Burgundy 85 Burnell, Robert, bishop of Bath and Wells 180 Burton Abbey, abbot of see Edys Burton, Henry, abbot of Rievaulx 229 Burton, John, abbot of Rievaulx 222 Burton, Thomas, abbot of Meaux 230–1, 233, 268, 275 Burwell Priory 62n Bury, Richard (de), bishop of Durham 47, 213 Bury, William, mercer 129, 138 Bury St Edmunds Abbey 108, 117, 119, 197, 269 abbot of see Brinkley, Curteys, Samson monk of see Barwe Bury St Edmunds, Hugo of, artist 197 Busshebury, Thomas de 182 see also Bisshbury Butler, John, abbot of Newminster 229 Byddell, John, printer 156–7 Byland Abbey 217, 229 abbot of 229 Bynneman, Henry, printer 145 Caen (France), abbey of St Stephen 53n, 55n, 67, 68n Calais (France) 27 Calder Abbey 217 Calveley, Sir Hugh 67 Calvin, John 146, 165–6 Caly, Robert, printer 152n, 165, 166n Cambridge, University of 72n, 103, 154 King’s College 7, 70–1, 72n, 73 Cammeringham Priory 52n Camoys, Isabel, abbess of Romsey 184

Canons Ashby Priory, prior of see Nantwich Canterbury archbishop of 19n, 26n, 29, 30, 40, 46, 143, 145, 147, 185–7 see also Abingdon, Anselm, Arundel, Augustine, Becket, Bourchier, Bradwardine, Chichele, Courtenay, Cranmer, d’Escures, Langham, Meopham, Morton, Parker, Pecham, Pole, Reynolds, Stafford, Stratford, Sudbury, Walden, Walter, Warham, Winchelsey cathedral priory (Christ Church) 67, 109, 120, 124, 187, 202, 212, 275 prior of 185 see also Chillenden, Goldston, Hathbrande, Sellyng diocese of 145, 160–2, 285 province of 27, 33 see of 143, 166–7, 182 St Augustine’s Abbey 108, 261–2 Cantilupe, Thomas, bishop of Hereford 173, 184, 186, 208 Cantilupe, Walter (de), bishop of Worcester 128, 186 Carlisle bishop of 62n see also Merks Carpenter, John, bishop of Worcester 8, 68, 71, 103n, 127–41 Carpenter, John, common clerk of London 128, 130n, 138–41 Carpenter, John, mercer 130 Carpentras, bishop of see Sadolet Castelnau, Antoine de, cardinal 87 Castelnau de Clermont-Lodève, François-Guillaume de, cardinal 78–9, 92–4 Castle Acre Priory 61n, 263 Cawood, John, printer 145, 166n Caxton, William 146, 148–9 Cecil, William, Lord Burghley 140, 143, 145, 167–8

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Index of People and Places Cervini, Marcello, papal legate 89 Chabot, Philippe, admiral of France 79, 85–6, 88–9 Chabot de Brion, Philippe, governor of Burgundy 85 Chalon, abbey of St-Pierre de (France) 85 Chamber, Robert, abbot of Holm Cultram 220, 223–4, 229–30, 234, 239 Channel Islands 164 Chard, Thomas, abbot of Forde 215, 222 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 82–3, 85, 92n, 94n Charlton, Lewis, bishop of Hereford 181–2, 184, 187 Charlton, Thomas, bishop of Hereford 181 Châtillon, Odet de, cardinal 76, 83, 84, 86–7, 95n Châtillon-sur-Loing (France) 86 Chaucer, Geoffrey 139–40 Chepstow Priory 62 Chertsey Abbey, abbot of see Wroughton Cheshunt 139 Chester Abbey abbot of see Clerks prior of see Ley Chichele, Henry, bishop of St David’s, archbishop of Canterbury 45, 66, 68–70, 72n, 102–3, 105, 108, 285 Chichester bishop of see Langton, Lenn, Moleyns, Patrington, Pecock, Stratford cathedral 197 Chillenden, Thomas, prior of Christ Church Canterbury 105n, 106n Chrysostom, John, theologian 277n, 287 Cicero 114, 156 Cisneros, Francisco Ximénez de, cardinal 1

Cîteaux Abbey (France) 56, 73n abbot of 232 Clairvaux Abbey (France) 52 abbot of 232, 253 see also Lexington Clairvaux, Bernard of 112n, 113, 232, 240, 253–4, 256–7 Clement IV, pope 213n Clement VII, antipope 284, 293 Clement VII, pope 79–80, 85–6, 90, 92, 188 Cleobury, Thomas, abbot of Dore 118 Clerke, Thomas, abbot of Chester 110n Clifton, Walter, abbot of Warden 226, 239 Clovis, king of the Franks 91 Clown, William, abbot of Leicester 106 Cluny Abbey (France) 54–6, 63, 67, 71n abbot of 53, 55, 57 Cole, Dr Henry 167 Coligny, Gaspard de, marshall of France 86 Coligny, Odet de, cardinal 79 Colne Priory, prior of 180 Cologne (Germany) 122, 154, 159, 251 Colombe, Michel, sculptor 96 Colop, John 140 Conches Abbey (France) 54, 57n, 62–3 Constance 80n, 103n Contarini, Gasparo, cardinal 77 Cormeilles Abbey (France) 52n Cornewaile, Sir John 68n Cornwall, earl of, Edmund of Almain 187 Coullon, Jean Le 91n Courtenay, Richard, bishop of Norwich 66, 102, 104n Courtenay, William, bishop of London, archbishop of Canterbury 29, 43, 48, 63, 183, 285

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Index of People and Places Day, John, printer 142–3, 145, 159, 161, 164–9 Deeping, John, abbot of Peterborough 267 Deerhurst Priory 54n, 57n, 61, 68 Despenser, Henry, bishop of Norwich 281n, 290 Devereux, Walter, earl of Essex 168n Dijon (France), St-Étienne Abbey 85 Dodsworth, Roger, antiquarian 229 Dore Abbey, abbot of see Cleobury Dover Priory 109–10 Driffield, Roger of, abbot of Meaux 231 Driffield, William of, abbot of Meaux 231–2 Droxford, John, bishop of Bath and Wells 185 Dudley, John, duke of Northumberland 164 Dunstable, Thomas 130 Dunton Waylet 63 Duprat, Antoine, cardinal 76, 78, 81–2, 95 Durham bishop of see Booth, Bury, Hatfield, Langley, Pilkington, Skirlaw, Tunstall cathedral priory 113, 183, 213, 236, 271, 273 priors of see Wessington, Whitehead rites of 273

Coutances (France) bishop of 84 see also Gouffier cathedral 52n Coventry cathedral priory, prior of see Crosby charterhouse of 53n, 66n, 149 Holy Trinity church 124n Coventry and Lichfield bishop of see Burghill, Langton, Lee, Northburgh diocese of 157 see of 59 Coverdale, Miles, bishop of Exeter 166 Cowfield 106n Cowick Priory 54n, 59n, 63, 68 Cranmer, Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury 160–1, 164–5 Crécy, battle of 52 Crokesle, Richard de, abbot of Westminster 108, 110 Cromwell, Sir Ralph 71n Cromwell, Thomas 148, 156–8, 164 Crosby, Richard, prior of Coventry 124n Crosthwaite 229 Crowland Abbey, abbot of see Bardney, Wellys Croydon 29n, 183 Curteys, William, abbot of Bury St Edmunds 117 Curtlyngton, William de, abbot of Westminster 272 Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne 213, 237 Dalton, William, abbot of Furness 226 Dargun Abbey (Germany) 249 abbot of see Attendorne, Billerback, Riga, Rostock Darley Abbey, abbot of see Newton Darnton, John, abbot of Fountains 222, 228, 235 Davies, Richard, preacher 168n

Easton, Adam, cardinal 105n, 114 Eccles, John, abbot of Whalley 224 Ecclesfield Priory 59, 66n Edington, William, bishop of Winchester 31–2, 48, 184 Edward I, king of England 184 Edward II, king of England 35 Edward III, king of England 6, 17, 21n, 22, 26, 27, 30–2, 33n, 34–5, 38, 40, 42, 46–7, 183 Edward IV, king of England 66, 67–8, 72–3, 149

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Index of People and Places Edward V, king of England 149 Edward VI, king of England 146n, 159, 164 Edward, the Black Prince 52 Edward the Confessor, king of England 55, 110 Edys, William, abbot of Burton 114–15 Elias of Dereham, mason 202 Elizabeth I, queen of England 142, 143n, 163, 168 Elmham, Thomas, prior of Lenton, chronicler 261–2, 264–5, 276 Elphinstone, William, bishop of Aberdeen 147n Ely bishop of 59n see also Alcock, Balsham, Fordham, Goodrich, Hervey, Hotham, Langham, Lisle, Morgan, Northwold cathedral priory 110, 195n, 196n, 210 prior of see Steward clergy of 149 see of 183 Erasmus, Desiderius 155, 166 Erpingham, Sir Thomas 67 Escures, Ralph d’, archbishop of Canterbury 200n Este, Hippolyte d’, cardinal 82, 88, 96 Étampes, duchess of 79, 84, 87n, 88 Eton College 7, 57n, 68, 70–3 Eugenius III, pope 113n Eugenius IV, pope 66n Eversden, Hugh of, abbot of St Albans 271, 273, 275 Evesham Abbey 269 abbot of see Marlborough, Wickham, Wykwon Evreux, St Taurin’s Abbey (France) 71, 87 Exeter archdeacon of 180 bishop of 177n see also Alley, Bitton, Coverdale, Grandisson, Lacy, Neville, Osbern, Stapledon, Stafford

cathedral 195n, 206 dean of see Kilkenny St James’ Priory 58, 60n Eynsham Abbey, abbot of see Walwayn Farnese, Alessandro, cardinal 86, 89n Faversham Abbey 103n Fécamp Abbey (France) 57, 58, 67n, 68n Feckenham, John, abbot of Westminster 165 Fen Drayton 59n Ferdinand, archduke of Austria 168n Ferrara, cardinal of 95n Ferrara, duke of, Ercole II d’Este 83n, 84n, 87n, 88, 89n Field, John 169n Fiennes, James, esquire 70n Fisher, John, bishop of Rochester 150, 152–4, 158–9, 165 Fitzjames, Richard, bishop of Rochester, bishop of London 103, 150n Flaxley Abbey, abbot of 120n Fleming, Richard, bishop of Lincoln 66n, 104n Flete, John, chronicler 272 Fleury Abbey (France) 59 Fontainebleau (France) 95 Fontevrault Abbey (France) 63 Forde Abbey 201, 215, 262 abbot of see Chard Fordham, John, bishop of Ely 63n, 183 Forster, Thomas, prior of Wombridge 120 Fouke, Henry, monk of Worcester 136 Fountains Abbey 217, 221–3, 228–9, 232–3, 235–7, 239 abbot of 219, 221, 228, 235–6 see also Darnton, Greenwell, Huby, Kent, Murdac, Ripon, Swynton Fox, Edward, bishop of Hereford 156, 188

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Index of People and Places Fox, Richard, bishop of Winchester 73n, 103, 104n, 117, 147, 179, 264 Foxe, John, martyrologist 142, 145, 157n Frampton Priory 60n France 5, 25, 50, 52n, 76–97, 187n, 192 Francis I, king of France 5, 6, 76, 78–86, 87n, 88n, 90–5, 97 Fulbourn 59n Fulke, William 169n Fuller, Robert, abbot of Waltham 120 Furness Abbey 217, 226 abbot of see Dalton monk of see Stell Fürstenfeld Abbey (Germany) 248, 253 Gardiner, Stephen, bishop of Winchester 156, 159, 164–5, 188 Gaunt, John of, duke of Lancaster 17, 20, 21n, 29n Germany 77, 89, 147, 248, 252 Ghent (Belgium), St Peter’s Abbey 57, 65 abbot of 56 Gigli, Giovanni de, papal collector, bishop of Worcester 103n, 148 Gigli, Silvestro de, bishop of Worcester 103n, 130, 132–4 Giles of Rome 274n Giso, bishop of Wells 197 Givry (France) 84, 86 Givry, Claude de, cardinal 76, 88 Glastonbury Abbey 119, 122n, 269 abbot of see Bere, Breynton, Selwood, Sodbury, Sully, Whiting Glastonbury, John of, chronicler 272 Glaswryth, Geoffrey le, glazer 220n Gloucester abbey (St Peter’s) 43, 120n abbot of 120n Humphrey, duke of 69–70, 117

Llanthony Secunda Priory, prior of see Hayward Goldcliff Priory 54n, 60n, 68 Goldston, Thomas, prior of Christ Church Canterbury 115, 275 Gonzaga, Francesco, cardinal 78 Goodrich, Thomas, bishop of Ely 164 Gosenell, Roland, prior of Wenlock 267, 270, 274 Gosmaringen, Peter von, abbot of Bebenhausen 245 Gouffier, Adrien, cardinal, bishop of Coutances 76, 79, 83, 84 Gouffier, Artus 79, 88 Gouffier, Guillaume, admiral of France 85 Gough, John, printer 152 Gower, Henry, bishop of St David’s 202–5 Gower, John 9n, 139 Gower, Robert, abbot of Jervaulx 234–5 Grafton, Richard, printer 158, 160, 164 Gramont, Gabriel de, cardinal 78–80, 82, 90 Grandisson, John, bishop of Exeter 52, 58, 60n, 68, 181, 186 Grandmont Abbey (France) 56, 68n Gravesend, Richard, bishop of London 177, 183–5 Gravesend, Stephen, bishop of London 182, 186 Gray, Walter de, archbishop of York 210n Gray, William, bishop of Lincoln 66, 104n Grede, John, clerk 183 Greenwell, John, abbot of Fountains 232, 235, 237 Greenwich Priory 56 Grestain Abbey (France) 52 Grey, Sir John, of Rotherfield 18, 23 Grindal, Edmund, bishop of London, archbishop of York 161, 163, 168n

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Index of People and Places Grosseteste, Robert, bishop of Lincoln 59, 60, 212, 282 Guarnier, Arnold, papal collector 286 Guibé, Robert, cardinal 79 Guines Abbey (France) 69n Guise, Charles de, cardinal 79, 87n, 95n Gunwyn, Thomas, clerk 119 Gybson, Thomas, printer 158 Hailes Abbey, abbot of see Sagar Haina Abbey (Germany) 253 Halberstadt (Germany) 238 Hales, Robert, royal treasurer 41n Hall, Richard, abbot of Hyde 267 Hallum, Robert, bishop of Salisbury 63, 104n Hamble Priory 59n Hampton, John, esquire 70n Harewell, John, bishop of Bath and Wells 184 Harlow, John, chaplain 140 Harmondsworth Priory 53 Harpsfield, John, archdeacon of London 166 Hatfield, Thomas, bishop of Durham 213 Hathbrande, Robert, prior of Christ Church Canterbury 275 Hawardyne, John 148 Hayward, John, prior of Llanthony Secunda 130, 131n Heidelberg (Germany) 251 Heisterbach Abbey (Germany) 251 Helmesley, William, abbot of Rievaulx 232–3 Hémard de Denonville, Charles, cardinal 76, 79, 82, 86, 93n Henry I, king of England 51 Henry II, king of France 80, 84, 86, 87n, 90–1 Henry III, king of England 35 Henry IV, king of England 19n, 38–9, 41, 48n, 54, 55, 57, 63–5 Henry V, king of England 38, 40–2, 55–7, 65–7, 68n, 70–1, 74, 262

Henry VI, king of England 38–41, 44, 66, 69–70, 74, 102, 117, 128 Henry VII, king of England 40, 73, 114, 148n, 152–3 Henry VIII, king of England 83, 95, 148, 154–5, 160 Henry of Portugal, cardinal 78 Hereford arms of 185 bishop of 68n see also Cantilupe, Charlton (bis), Orleton, Swinfield, Trefnant, Trillek, Fox bishopric of 156 cathedral 208–9 prebendary of 182, 208 shrine of 184 use of 181 Herte, Edmund, abbot of Pershore 106n Hervey, bishop of Ely 200n Heslington, William, abbot of Jervaulx 224 Higham Ferrers College 69 Hilsey, John, bishop of Rochester 158 Hobbes, Robert, abbot of Woburn 113 Hollenbach (Germany) 248 Holm, William, valet of Lady Wake 30 Holm Cultram Abbey 217, 222–4, 229–30, 234, 239 abbot of see Chamber, York Hooper, John, bishop of Gloucester 160n, 165 Horne, Robert, bishop of Winchester 161, 165, 168 Horsley Priory 52 Hotham, John, bishop of Ely 47 Houghton, Adam, bishop of St David’s 42–3, 48, 187n Huby, Marmaduke, abbot of Fountains 11, 110–11, 221, 223, 226–8, 232, 233n, 235–7, 238n, 239 Humphrey, Laurence, biographer 168

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Index of People and Places King, Robert, abbot of Thame 222 Kingswood Abbey 218n Kirkstall Abbey 217, 220, 222, 229 abbot of see Bardsey, Killingbeck, Marshall Kirkthorpe 223 Knewstubb, John 169n Knoyle 52n Knyvet, John, chancellor 41n, 48 Kołbacz Abbey (Poland) 243 Kresse, Henry, abbot of Bukowo Morskie 245

Ilchester, Richard of, bishop of Winchester 52n, 200n Inkberrow, Robert, registrar 133–8, 141 Inkeley, John, abbot of Rievaulx 226 Innocent IV, pope 113 Ireland 242n Isabella of Hainault, queen of France 213n Islip 272 Islip, John, abbot of Westminster 106n, 110, 115–16, 121 Italy 77–8, 94, 113, 264 Jagiellon, Fryderyk, cardinal 1 James V, king of Scotland 84 Je˛drzejów Abbey (Poland) 244 Jervaulx Abbey 217, 224–6 abbot of 224–5, 235 see also Gower, Heslington, Sedbar, Thornton Jewel, John, bishop of Salisbury 163, 167–8 Johanna, queen of Navarre 66–7, 69 John, king of England 51–2 John XXIII, antipope 235, 282 Josselin, John, chaplain of Archbishop Parker 143 Jugge, Richard, printer 145 Julius II, pope 76 Jumièges Abbey (France) 56 Kemp, John, cardinal, bishop of Chichester, archbishop of York, archbishop of Canterbury 39, 49, 66, 67, 69n, 70 Kenilworth Priory, prior of see Merston, Salle Kent, John of, abbot of Fountains 232 Kidderminster, Richard, abbot of Winchcombe 106n, 123–4 Kilkenny, Andrew de, dean of Exeter 179n Killingbeck, Robert, abbot of Kirkstall 229 Kilsby, William, keeper of the privy seal 47n

Lacy, Edmund, bishop of Exeter 67–8, 104n Lambeth 143 Lang, Matthew, cardinal 1 Langham, Simon, abbot of Westminster, bishop of Ely, archbishop of Canterbury 27n, 32–3, 42, 48, 105n Lamphey 203 Langley, Thomas, dean of York, bishop of Durham 19n, 39n, 48–9, 63, 66–7 Langres (France) 85–6 Langton, John, bishop of Chichester 180 Langton, Thomas, bishop of Salisbury 73n Langton, Walter, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield 184 Latimer, Hugh, bishop of Worcester 158, 165–6 La Tremoille, Jean-François de, cardinal 79 Lavaur (France) 92–3 Ledbury, William, prior of Worcester 118 Lee, Edward, archbishop of York 157 Lee, Rowland, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield 157, 160 Leeds 220, 229 Lehnin Abbey (Germany), abbot of see Monnikendam Leicester 292

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Index of People and Places abbey, abbot of see Clown, Pexall, Repingdon Le Mans, abbey of St Victor (France) 54n Le Moiturier, Antoine, sculptor 96 Lenn, William, bishop of Chichester, bishop of Worcester 188, 197, 198n Lenoncourt, Robert de, cardinal 79 Lenton Priory 262 prior of see Elmham Leo X, pope 94 Lessay Abbey (France) 52n Lettou, John, printer 148 Leven, Hugh of, abbot of Meaux 231, 233, 238 Lewes Priory, prior of 53 see also Nelond Lewis, Henry 133–4 Lewisham Priory 56 Lexington, Stephen (of), abbot of Clairvaux 242n Ley, John, prior of Chester 110n Lichfield, Richard, monk of Worcester 136 Lichfield, William, preacher 140 Lilly, John, abbot of Rufford 120 Lincoln 155 bishop of see Alexander, Alnwick, Beaufort, Bintworth, Burghersh, Fleming, Gray, Grosseteste, Longland, Repingdon, Russell, Smith, Taylor, Watson dean of see Offord diocese of 29, 149, 156, 160, 292 Lindley, John, abbot of Whalley 234 Linton Priory 61n Lire Abbey (France) 54n, 57 Lisle, Thomas (de), bishop of Ely 7, 30, 31–2, 211 Litlington, Nicholas, abbot of Westminster 111n, 272 Llanthony Secunda Priory see under Gloucester

London 27, 38, 67, 115, 127, 129, 134, 140, 145, 154, 157–9, 161, 164, 166, 184, 285 aldermen of 141 bishop of 66n see also Baldock, Bonner, Braybrooke, Courtenay, Gravesend (bis), Grindal, Ridley, Stokesley bishopric of 39n cathedral (St Paul’s) 27, 182 charterhouse 73n churches of 164 St Andrew Hubbard, Eastcheap 161 St Benet’s, Gracechurch 161n, 163n St Margaret Moses, Friday St 163n St Mary at Hill 161 citizens of 128 clergy of 128 diocese of 29, 157, 160–1, 163 Guildhall 128–9, 138–41 hospitals St Anthony 71, 128, 139–40 St Benet Fink 139 St-Katherine-by-the-Tower Hospital 71 mayor of 138, 141 see also Walleworth, Whittington Newgate gaol 35 Longland, John, bishop of Lincoln 104n, 117, 148–9, 154–6, 158, 160 Longpont Abbey (France) 90 Longueville Priory (France) 71 Longwy, Claude de, cardinal 79, 83–6 Longwy, Jacqueline de 85n Longwy, Jeanne de 85 Lonlay Abbey (France) 59, 61 Lorraine, Antoine, duke of 79 Lorraine, Jean de, cardinal 79, 82, 84, 89, 90n, 91, 95 Louvain (Belgium) 154, 159, 167 Lowe, John, bishop of St Asaph 68, 70 Ludolphus of Saxony 238

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Index of People and Places Luther, Martin 146, 152, 155 Luxembourg, Philibert of 85 Lydgate, John, monk-poet 117 Lyhert, Walter, bishop of Norwich 103n Mâcon (France) 85–6 Madelaine, daughter of Francis I 84 Malling Abbey, abbess of 182 Malvern, John (de), prior of Worcester 105n Mantua (Italy) 87n, 88n, 89 Mare, Thomas de la, abbot of St Albans 274–5 Marguerite de Navarre, sister of Francis I 79 Marius, Wolfgang, abbot of Aldersbach 8, 252–3 Marlborough, Thomas, abbot of Evesham 114 Marmoutier Abbey (France) 56n, 73n, 293n Marseilles (France) 80, 86 Marshall, Christopher 220 Marshall, William, abbot of Kirkstall 220, 223 Martin V, pope 66, 235 Mary I, queen of England 159, 164–6, 233, 238 Maulbronn Abbey (Germany) 244 abbot of see Ötisheim Meaux Abbey 217, 219, 230–1 abbot of 230 see also Brun, Burton, Driffield (bis), Leven, Scarborough, Skyrne Medici, Catherine de 80 Medici, Ferdinando de, cardinal 78n Melton, William, archbishop of York 52, 69n Meopham, Simon, archbishop of Canterbury 182 Merino, Esteban Gabriel, cardinal 80n Merks, Thomas, bishop of Carlisle 39n Mersey 69 Merston, Thomas, prior of Kenilworth 275

Merton, William, abbot of Norton 267 Metz (France) 91n Milan (Italy) 92n, 94 Milton Abbey 52n Minting Priory 59–60 Mitford, Richard, bishop of Salisbury 63n, 182, 187 Modbury Priory 54, 59n, 60n Moleyns, Adam, bishop of Chichester 70 Monk Sherborne Priory 60n, 73n Monks Kirby Priory 60n Monluc, Jean de, cleric 93 Monnikendam, Arnold van, abbot of Lehnin, abbot of Altenberg 8n, 251–2 Mont St Michel Abbey (France) 51, 87 Montiérender Abbey (France) 85 Montmorency, Anne de, Grand Master of France 79, 82–3, 85–8, 93, 94n Montmorency, Louise de 86 Montpensier, duke of, Louis II 85n Moote, John de la, abbot of St Albans 268 Morcock, John, prior of Robertsbridge 113 More, Sir Thomas 38 More, William, prior of Worcester 106n, 109, 111, 115, 122, 270 Morgan, Philip, bishop of Ely 66 Morimond Abbey (France) 252 Mortain Abbey (France) 63n Morton, John, cardinal, archbishop of Canterbury 73, 147, 264 Mount Grace Priory 53n Muchelney Abbey 111 abbot of see Bracey Multon, Gilbert, abbot of Bardney 105n Murdac, Henry, abbot of Fountains, archbishop of York 236 Nantwich, John, prior of Canons Ashby 271, 274 Navarre 66, 84

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Index of People and Places Neckham, Roger, chaplain 130 Nelond, Thomas, prior of Lewes 106n Netley Abbey 51 Neville, Alexander, archbishop of York 183 Neville, George, bishop of Exeter, archbishop of York 39, 49, 72n Neville, Richard, earl of Salisbury 38, 49 Newberry, Walter, abbot of St Augustine’s Bristol 111n Newcastle-upon-Tyne 31 Newminster Abbey 217, 229 abbot of see Butler Newton, John, abbot of Battle 120 Newton, Roger (de), abbot of Darley 112n Newton Longueville Priory 71 Nicholas V, pope 57 Nix, Richard, bishop of Norwich 73 Nobiliac Abbey (France) 61n Northburgh, Roger, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield 46 Northwold, Hugh of, bishop of Ely 210 Norton Abbey, abbot of see Merton Norwich 103n bishop of 61n, 66n see also Baldock, Brouns, Courtenay, Despenser, Lyhert, Nix, Parkhurst, Percy, Tottington cathedral priory 112n, 125n, 185 prior of see Bozoun, Worstede diocese of 160–1 Nunnykirk 229 Odo, bishop of Bayeux 192 Offord, John, dean of Lincoln 26, 48 Ogbourne St George Priory 58, 62–3, 67, 71, 73n Old Sarum 199 Old Warden 226 Orchard, William, architect 233n Orléans, duke of, Charles 88 Orléans, Jean d’, de Longueville, cardinal 78–80, 83

Orleton, Adam, bishop of Hereford 60 Orme, Philibert de l’, architect 96 Orvieto (Italy) 188 Osbern, bishop of Exeter 192 Osbern, Maud 187 Osek Abbey (Bohemia) 244 Osmund, bishop of Salisbury 199 Oswald, king of Northumbria 236–7 Oswen, John, printer 160n Ötisheim, Albrecht IV von, abbot of Maulbronn 244 Ottery St Mary College 52, 68, 181 Oxford, University of 71, 103, 105, 114, 124, 127, 159, 181, 287 colleges of All Souls 56, 68n, 69, 71 Balliol 233n Cardinal 155 Corpus Christi 179 Magdalen 69, 233n New 53, 69, 71–2 Oriel 128 Queen’s 73n St Bernard’s 232, 233n Council of (1222) 2 Pace, Richard, humanist 154 Palmes, Brian, serjeant-at-law 220 Panfield and Well Hall Priory 67, 69 Paris 66, 79n, 80n, 82, 84n, 87n, 88, 92, 154, 159, 166 university of 91 Paris, Matthew 110, 117, 143, 212 Parker, Matthew, archbishop of Canterbury 142–5, 159, 161, 163, 168–9, 178n, 189 Parkhurst, John, bishop of Norwich 159, 161, 167, 168n Parning, Robert, knight 48 Paslew, John, abbot of Whalley 221–2, 235, 270 Patrington, Stephen, bishop of Chichester 102 Paul III, pope 76, 90 Pavia, battle of 83

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Index of People and Places Pecham, John, archbishop of Canterbury 178, 182, 189, 198 Pecke, William, vicar of Ripon 110n Pecock, Reginald, bishop of Chichester 10, 140 Pembroke Priory 72n Percy, Thomas, bishop of Norwich 182 Perkins, William 169n Pershore Abbey, abbot of see Herte Peterborough Abbey 120n, 195n abbot of 120n, 263 see also Deeping Petyt, Thomas, printer 158 Pexall, Richard, abbot of Leicester 267 Pilkington, James, bishop of Durham 168 Pisa, Council of 85 (1512), 235 (1409) Pius II, pope 78 Plympton Priory, prior of 180 Poer, Roger le, bishop of Salisbury 199–200 Poland 244, 248 Pole, Reginald, cardinal, archbishop of Canterbury 162, 166 Pole, de la, family 52 Pole, Michael de la, earl of Suffolk 36, 41n, 46, 48 Pole, William de la, earl and duke of Suffolk 38, 70n Poleyn, Robert 130 Pomerania 243, 245–7 Ponet, William, bishop of Winchester 161n Pont l’Évêque, Roger de, archbishop of York 177 Pontoise, John of, bishop of Winchester 177, 178n Porter, William, esquire of Henry IV 55, 67 Portugal 77 Povington 71 Préaulx Abbey (France) 87 Prie, René de 79 Provence 92, 94 Pucci, Antonio, cardinal 80n

Pygot, Robert, artist 117 Pynson, Richard, printer 147–50, 154–5 Pyrton 160n Raby Cote 220 Ralegh, Henry de 180 Ramridge, Thomas, abbot of St Albans 111, 121 Ramsey Abbey 112n abbot of see Wardboys Reading, John of, chronicler 268 Redman, Robert, printer 155 Reims (France) 87n, 188 Repingdon, Philip, abbot of Leicester, bishop of Lincoln 102, 104n, 106n, 292 Reynolds, Walter, archbishop of Canterbury 182 Rhodes 148 Richard I, king of England 202 Richard II, king of England 19n, 22, 36–8, 42, 43, 46, 48n, 53, 63, 66, 67, 183, 286 Rickmansworth 148 Ridley, Nicholas, bishop of London 160, 163 Rievaulx Abbey 217, 222, 226, 229 abbot of 232 see also Ailred, Burton (bis), Helmesley, Inkeley Riga, Herman III von, abbot of Dargun 249 Ripon 110n, 224n, 237 Ripon, John, abbot of Fountains 235 Rippe, Albert de, lutenist 95 Robert, bishop of Bath 200n Robertet, Charles, bishop of Albi 92 Robertet, Jacques, bishop of Albi 92–3 Robertsbridge Abbey 113 abbot of see Taylor prior of see Morcock Roche Abbey 217 Roches, Peter des, bishop of Winchester 51 Rochester archdeacon of 152

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Index of People and Places bishop of 66n see also Bottlesham, Brinton, Fisher, Fitzjames, Hilsey, Sheppey, Trillek see of 150n, 158 Rochford, Sir Ralph 67 Rolle, Richard 115n, 278n Rolleston, Thomas, prior of Tutbury 267 Romans College (France) 93 Rome 77, 78, 79, 82, 86, 90, 91n, 93n, 94n, 111, 282–3, 287–8, 290, 292–3 Romsey Abbey, abbess of see Camoys Ross-on-Wye 106n Rostock (Germany) 251 Rostock, Johann von, abbot of Dargun 249 Rotherham 52 Rothley 229 Rotthalmünster (Germany) 253 Rouen (France) 165 cathedral 52, 68, 69n St Katherine’s Abbey 53 Rowland, Thomas, abbot of Abingdon 111, 121 Rufford Abbey 52, 217 abbot of see Lilly Russell, John, bishop of Lincoln 42n, 73n Ryhale, John (de), abbot of Swineshead 114 Sadington, Robert, knight 48 Sadolet, Jacques, cardinal, bishop of Carpentras 78 Sagar, Stephen, abbot of Hailes 122 Salisbury 157 bishop of see Ayscough, Bohun, Brandeston, Hallum, Jewel, Mitford, Osmund, Poer, Shaxton, Waltham, Wyvil cathedral 186, 195n, 199 diocese of 167 earl of see Neville use of (Sarum) 147, 181 Salle, Robert, prior of Kenilworth 275

Samson, abbot of Bury St Edmunds 269 Sandale, John de, bishop of Winchester 174, 180, 186, 187n Sandys, Edwin, bishop of Worcester 161 Sanguin, Antoine, cardinal de Meudon 76, 79, 83–4, 88–9 Saumur, abbey of St Flaurent (France) 56n, 61n, 69, 73n Savage, Thomas, archbishop of York 237 Savoy, Louise of 85, 93 Sawley Abbey 217, 219 Scarborough Priory 56 Scarborough, William de, abbot of Meaux 231, 268, 275 Scarle, John, chancellor 39, 48 Scrope, Richard, archbishop of York 39n Scrope, Richard, Lord Scrope of Bolton 36, 41n, 48 Sedbar, Adam, abbot of Jervaulx 224 Sedlec Abbey (Bohemia) 244 Segrave, Hugh, chancellor 29, 41n, 48n Selborne Priory 51 Selby Abbey 105n Sele Priory 53n, 56n, 69 Sellyng, William, prior of Christ Church Canterbury 106n Selve, Georges de, cardinal 87, 92–3 Selve, Jehan de 92 Selwood, John, abbot of Glastonbury 123 Serlio, Sebastiano, architect 96 Sharpe, John, suspected Lollard 5n Shaxton, Nicholas, bishop of Salisbury 157 Sheen Priory 55–8, 70 prior of 57 Sheppey, John, bishop of Rochester 182, 184, 190, 198 Sherborne Abbey 111 Siberch, Johann, printer 154 Sibton Abbey 220n

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Index of People and Places Sicily 202 Silesia 248 Silksted(e), Thomas, prior of St Swithun’s Winchester 107n Sixtus IV, pope 76, 78, 148, 252 Sixtus V, pope 76 Skipworth, Sir William, justice of common bench 19 Skirlaw, Walter, bishop of Durham 102 Skryvener, William (al. Hurley), librarian 130, 141 Skyrne, Adam de, abbot of Meaux 231, 233 Smith, William, bishop of Lincoln 149 Sodbury, Adam of, abbot of Glastonbury 272 Somerset, John, physician 70n South Cerney 238 Spofforth, Thomas, abbot of St Mary’s York 106n, 118, 122 Sporle Priory 61n, 62 St Albans Abbey 72n, 108–10, 113, 183, 268, 270, 275 abbot of see Albon, Eversden, de la Mare, de la Moote, Ramridge, Stoke, Wallingford (bis), Wheathampstead St Asaph, bishop of see Lowe St David’s bishop of see Abergavenny, Chichele, Gower, Houghton, Thoresby cathedral 203–5 St Denis Abbey (France) 54n, 57n, 61 St Evroul Abbey (France) 54n, 55, 58 abbot of 56 St Martin-des-Champs Priory (France) 58 prior of 55 St Maur Abbey (France) 96 St Michael’s Mount Priory 68, 73n St Ouen Abbey (France) 69 St-Pierre-sur Dives Abbey (France) 54 St Pol, count of, Francis de Bourbon 83–4, 88

St Wandrille Abbey (France) 59 Stafford, Edmund, bishop of Exeter 48, 186, 205–7 Stafford, John, bishop of Bath and Wells, archbishop of Canterbury 39, 44, 49, 66–8, 70 Stafford, Thomas 186 Stapeldon, Walter, bishop of Exeter 177, 178n, 184–5 Stayngreve, Thomas de, abbot of St Mary’s York 122 Stell, John, monk of Furness 226 Steventon Priory 67 Steward, Robert, prior of Ely 110, 115n Stogursey Priory 59–61, 71 Stoke, John, abbot of St Albans 117 Stoke-by-Clare Priory 66 Stokesley, John, bishop of London 156, 158 Stone Priory 112 Stoneleigh Abbey 108 Stow, John 129, 143 Stratford, John, bishop of Winchester, archbishop of Canterbury 6, 26–8, 30–1, 46, 47, 62, 178–80, 184n, 190 Stratford, Robert, bishop of Chichester 46, 47 Stratford Saye Priory 60n Strecche, John, chronicler 275 Sudbury, Simon, archbishop of Canterbury 25, 29n, 30, 48, 101n, 184, 285 Sully, Henry of, abbot of Glastonbury 108n Sutton 272 Sutton, Sir Ralph, constable of Winchester Castle 101n Swansea, hospital of St David 203 Swavesey Priory 61n Swineshead Abbey, abbot of see Ryhale Swinfield, Richard, bishop of Hereford 208

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Index of People and Places Switzerland 159 Swynton, Thomas, abbot of Fountains 119 Syon Abbey 67, 68, 73n, 286n Takeley Priory 53n Tancarville, lord of, Jehan de Melun 52 Tarragona (Spain) 94 Tattershall College 71n Tavistock Abbey 68 Taylor, John, bishop of Lincoln 160–1, 163 Taylor, Thomas, abbot of Robertsbridge 113 Tewkesbury Abbey 68 Thame Abbey 262 abbot of see King Thoresby, John, bishop of St David’s, archbishop of York 27, 30–2, 48, 59 Thorney Abbey 61n Thornton, Robert, abbot of Jervaulx 220, 222, 226 Thorp, Robert 48 Thorp, William, justice 27 Tickford Priory 56n, 60n, 73n Tilbury, Gervase of 176 Tittenhanger 268, 270 Tottington, Alexander, prior and bishop of Norwich 183, 185 Tournon, François de, cardinal 76–8, 81–3, 87, 89–90, 93, 94n Tournus Abbey (France) 85 Trefnant, John, bishop of Hereford 182 Trent (Italy), Council of 90, 91 Tresham, Sir William 70n Trillek, John, bishop of Hereford 208–10 Trillek, Thomas, bishop of Rochester 181 Trillow, Henry, bishop of Annaghdown 63n Trittenheim, Johann, abbot of Sponheim 125 Troarn Abbey (France) 52

Troyes, treaty of 69 Tunstall, Cuthbert, bishop of Durham 158–9 Tutbury Priory 267 prior of see Rolleston Tyndale, William 12, 142 Tywardreath Priory 54n Urban V, pope 33 Urban VI, pope 284–5, 292 Usk, Adam of, chronicler 102 Valle Crucis Abbey 233–4 abbot of see Adam Valmont Abbey (France) 57n, 60n Velehrad Abbey (Bohemia) 244 Vendôme, Charles de Bourbon, cardinal 78, 95n Vendôme, Louis de Bourbon, cardinal 88, 95n Veneur, Jean Le, cardinal 76, 78, 96 Vermigli, Peter Martyr 159, 167 Villers Abbey (Belgium) 243n Virgilis, Polidoro, chronicler, archdeacon of Wells 103n Vyšší Brod Abbey (Bohemia) 244 Wake, Lady Blanche 30 Wakefield, Henry, bishop of Worcester 128 Waldby, Robert, archbishop of York 63n Walden, Roger, archbishop of Canterbury 67, 101–2, 187 Walleworth, William de, mayor of London 183 Wallingford, Richard of, abbot of St Albans 270–1, 273 Wallingford, William, abbot of St Albans 106 Walsingham, Thomas, chronicler 17, 20, 21n, 25, 101n, 143, 270–1, 273, 275 Walter, Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury 175, 195, 202 Waltham Abbey, abbot of see Fuller

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Index of People and Places Waltham, John, bishop of Salisbury 63n, 67 Walwayn, William, abbot of Eynsham 125n Wardboys, John, abbot of Ramsey 114n Warden Abbey 226 abbot of see Clifton Ware Priory 54n, 55 Warham, William, archbishop of Canterbury 73, 155, 264 Watson, Thomas, bishop of Lincoln 165 Waylande, John, printer 158 Waynflete, William, bishop of Winchester 49, 69–72, 105n Wednesbury, John, prior of Worcester 111 Wells bishop of see Giso canon of 180 cathedral of 103n, 197, 202 Wells, Jocelin, bishop of Bath 194, 197, 202 Wellys, John, abbot of Crowland 106n Wenlock Priory 263, 270 prior of see Gosenell Wessington, John, prior of Durham 8n, 106, 113, 269 West Dereham Abbey, abbot of see Wygenhall West Ritton 229 Westbury-on-Trym College 71 Westminster Abbey 67, 108–9, 111, 119, 149, 185, 195n, 269, 272 abbot of see Bercheston, Crokesle, Curtlyngton, Feckenham, Islip, Langham, Litlington monk of 61n, 62 prior of 109 Whalley Abbey 217, 219, 221–2, 224, 235 abbot of 263 see also Eccles, Lindley, Paslew, Whalley Whalley, William of, abbot of Whalley 224

Wheathampstead, John, abbot of St Albans 3, 105n, 106n, 114–17, 269 Whitaker, William, translator 168 Whitchurch, Edward, printer 159, 164 Whitehead, Hugh, prior of Durham 273 Whiting, Richard, abbot of Glastonbury 109, 121 Whittington, Richard, mayor of London 129, 138–9 Wickham, John, abbot of Evesham 117 Wilfrid of Ripon 236–7, 238n William I, king of England 55 Wilmington Priory 58 Wimbledon, Thomas, preacher 9 Winchcombe Abbey 103n abbot of see Kidderminster Winchcombe, Robert Tideman of, bishop of Worcester 63n, 180 Winchelsey, Robert, archbishop of Canterbury 64, 178–80, 182, 186, 190 Winchester bishop of see Edington, Fox, Gardiner, Horne, Ilchester, Ponet, Pontoise, Roche, Sandale, Stratford, Waynflete, Woodlock, Wykeham castle 101n college 53, 69, 71 diocese of 147n Hyde Abbey 267 abbot of see Hall see of 179 St Swithun’s Priory 107n prior of Basyng Windsor 101 St George’s Chapel 72 Winksley 237–8 Winterbourne Strickland 52n Woburn Abbey, abbot of see Hobbes Wolf, Hans, translator 167

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Index of People and Places Wolfe, Reyner, printer 143, 145, 160, 164–5, 167–9 Wollore, David 184 Wolsey, Thomas, cardinal, legate 1, 148, 152, 155, 263 Wombridge Priory, prior of see Forster Woodlock, Henry, bishop of Winchester 180 Wootton Wawen Priory 57n, 60, 62, 71 prior of 54, 63 Worcester bishop of 60n, 130, 132–3 see also Blois, Bourchier, Cantilupe, Carpenter, de Gigli (bis), Latimer, Lenn, Sandys, Wakefield, Winchcombe Carnary Library 8, 127–41 cathedral priory 8, 128–32, 135–8, 198n monk of 61, 132 prior of see Ledbury, Malvern, More, Wednesbury diocese of 160n St Swithun’s church 134n Worde, Wynkyn de, printer 149–50, 152 Worstede, William, prior of Norwich 124n Wroughton, William, abbot of Chertsey 105n Wyclif, John 1, 4, 9, 25, 28, 45, 105, 277–80, 281n, 282n, 285–91 Wye College 69n Wygenhall, John, abbot of West Dereham 107n

Wykeham, William (of), bishop of Winchester 7, 17–21, 23, 25, 36, 48, 53, 59n, 60n, 63n, 68, 101, 184 Wykes, Henry, printer 165, 167 Wykwon, John, abbot of Evesham 121–2 Wyvil, Robert, bishop of Salisbury 184 Young, Thomas, archbishop of York 161 York archbishop of 30, 59, 212n see also Arundel, Gray, Grindal, Kemp, Lee, Melton, Murdac, Neville (bis), Pont l’Évêque, Savage, Scrope, Thoresby, Waldby, Young, Zouche cathedral 210n dean of see Langley diocese of 28 duke of, Richard 38 Holy Trinity Priory, prior of 56n province of 163, 232, 237 St Mary’s Abbey 109n, 263 abbot of see Booth, Spofford, Stayngreve York, Thomas, abbot of Holm Cultram 223 Zbraslav Abbey (Bohemia) 244 Žd’ár Abbey (Bohemia) 249 Zinna Abbey (Germany) 254, 256 Zlatá Koruna Abbey (Bohemia) 244 Zouche, William, archbishop of York 210n

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Index of Subjects Cardinals 1–2, 4–6, 9, 12, 76–97, 105, 147–8, 152, 155, 162, 166, 263–4, 273, 279, 289, 293 Carthusians 53, 55, 66, 149, 238 General chapter 57 Cartularies 120–1, 226 Celestines 66 Chancellors (royal) 5–6, 17–49, 59n, 68–70, 72n, 73, 82 Chancery 5, 18–19, 23, 26, 32, 36, 40–1, 44, 121 Chantries 67, 69, 128–9 Chronicles 3, 7–8, 218–19, 230–1, 233, 238, 249, 253, 261, 265–6, 268–9, 271–6, 283 Church councils 2, 27, 56, 65, 66n, 85, 90, 103, 124, 235 Cistercians 3, 11, 69, 113, 201, 215–39, 240–57, 262, 263n, 265 General Chapter 216n, 218, 221, 231–2, 237, 240, 242n, 271 Cluniacs 50n, 58, 69, 262–3 Coats of arms 12, 115, 117n, 143, 147, 150n, 152, 181, 185–7, 203, 208, 218, 221–3, 226, 229, 234, 236, 239, 241, 244–5, 248, 263 Commemoration 10–11, 106n, 181, 185, 193, 195, 197, 198n, 200–2, 203n, 208–9, 233–8, 245, 249–50 see also Funerals; Obits Commendam 87, 106, 241n, 252 Convocation 4n, 21, 27, 63–5, 66n, 103, 158 Corrodies 61, 266, 270 Council (royal) 17, 20, 26–8, 31, 76, 78, 81–3, 84n, 85, 88–9, 92, 94, 97, 102, 143, 262, 289n

Dissolution (of the monasteries) 109, 121, 125, 140, 215, 224, 228, 262, 273 Education 4–5, 8, 12, 23, 72, 74, 101n, 127–8, 202, 252–3 see also Schools Equity 5, 23, 44n Exchequer 23, 32, 40–1, 185 Friars 136, 173–4, 178–9, 189, 279, 286n Funerals 152, 168n Gesta abbatum 7, 110, 232, 265, 269, 274, 276 Guilds 131, 148 Heraldry see under Coats of arms Hospitality 86, 88, 95, 145, 242–4, 262, 265, 267–8, 271, 273–5, 279 Hospitaller, Knights 148, 279 Hospitals 23, 71, 128, 139, 203 Household 2, 10–11, 34, 41, 112, 173–4, 176, 178–80, 183–5, 189, 198, 208, 218, 221, 262–8, 272–4 Humanism 78, 104, 155, 252 Hundred Years War 25, 50, 52–3, 55, 59, 61, 65–6, 183 Identity 10, 43, 125, 158, 168, 192, 193n, 196, 210, 216, 241, 244, 251 Indulgences 12, 24, 68n, 121, 123, 148, 262, 282, 284n Jewels 173, 175–6, 184, 190, 194, 202, 235, 270 Justices of the Peace 5, 263 Keeper of the Privy Seal 28, 47n

Deans 19n, 26, 48, 132, 179n Debt 179–81, 190, 216, 219, 266–8, 270–2 Diet 9, 60, 88n, 174, 228 Diplomacy 5, 56n, 66n, 77, 81–4, 88–9, 91–2, 94–5, 97, 262

Legates 12, 83–4, 87, 89, 92–4, 152, 155, 252, 288, 292 Libraries 8, 103, 105, 109, 114–15, 118–19, 121, 123, 125–6, 127–41, 233, 251, 253

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Index of Subjects Liturgy 8, 10, 108–9, 111–12, 116, 118, 122, 147, 150n, 174–6, 178, 181–3, 187, 189, 219, 223, 226, 236–7, 240, 243–4, 248n, 253–4 see also Books; Vestments Loans 86n, 87, 173, 179–80, 182, 189, 218 Lollardy/Wycliffism 4, 6, 9, 12, 30, 40, 47, 277–93 Magnificence 203, 215n, 261–76 Martyrology see Necrology Mass 11, 55, 84, 112, 126, 128, 131, 135, 156, 174, 183, 191, 248, 282–3 Monastic orders see Augustinians; Benedictines; Carthusians; Celestines; Cistercians; Cluniacs; Hospitaller; Premonstratensians Monastic rules Augustine 3, 112n Basil 112n Benedict 3, 107, 111, 112n, 147, 218, 240, 242, 253–4, 261, 264, 274 Master, of the 107n Music 95 see also Liturgy Necrology 111, 250, 275 Novices 113, 251 Nunneries 147, 149, 216, 248, 251 Oaths 6, 36, 90–1, 165, 284–90, 292–3 Obits 67, 118, 183 Parish churches 58, 59n, 61–2, 65, 69n, 106n, 122, 124, 134n, 139, 145–6, 157, 160n, 161, 163, 166, 223–4, 226, 229, 248, 253 Parliament 4n, 5, 21, 25–6, 28, 29n, 31n, 32–3, 42–3, 45, 55, 57, 62–3, 91–2, 104, 241, 262–3 Good Parliament 17 Merciless Parliament 37 Peasants’ Revolt 25, 29n, 30, 101n, 285

Pilgrimage 237n, 248, 282, 288 Pluralism 32–3 Poetry 7, 139–40, 159, 168n see also Chaucer; Lydgate Pontificalia 11–12, 193, 212n, 214, 222, 235, 248, 262, 270, 272 crosier 11, 107–8, 115n, 120n, 182, 191, 193, 200, 202, 206, 208, 210–12, 214, 234–5, 249, 253–4, 261, 270, 272 mitre 11, 108, 182–3, 191, 193, 200, 205–6, 208, 212, 214, 222, 234–5, 248, 261–3, 270, 272 ring 108, 174, 177, 184–6, 212, 214, 234, 261–2 Pope 4n, 6. 9, 11–12, 29n, 32–3, 39n, 42, 48n, 57, 60, 66, 69, 72, 76–80, 86–7, 89–90, 92–4, 108, 113n, 121, 123, 148, 152, 156, 188, 213n, 218, 222, 235, 252, 264, 279, 280n, 282–93 Poverty 9, 11, 62, 173, 178, 189, 264–5, 276, 283 Prayer 55, 58, 65, 72, 74, 93, 107, 111, 145–6, 148, 164, 166, 181–2, 184, 189, 211, 229, 233, 238–9, 241, 245, 250, 291 Preaching/sermons 1, 5–6, 8–9, 25, 28, 42–3, 101, 104, 115, 123–6, 128, 131, 135, 138, 149–58, 160, 165–9, 174, 240, 248, 253, 281–4, 288n, 291–2 Premonstratensians 69 Printing 91, 104, 107, 111, 115n, 118, 123, 126, 142–69, 236 Protestantism 142, 159, 165–7 see also Reformation Provision (papal) 29n, 33–4, 39n, 42, 85n Purgatory 55, 193 Reform 11, 50, 75, 76–8, 80, 102, 104, 112, 131, 146–7, 150, 158, 165–6, 215, 232, 236, 242, 250–4 Reformation 1, 146, 160, 215

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Index of Subjects Saint cults 117, 176, 186–7, 208, 212, 236–7, 253–4, 257, 282n see also Pilgrimage; Shrines Schools 102–3, 114, 126, 139 Seals 10, 19, 28, 29n, 35, 47n-48n, 107, 120, 184, 188, 191–214, 219, 234–5, 237, 241 Sermons see under Preaching Shrines 125, 184–5, 197, 208, 213, 270, 288 Statutes 21n, 31, 55, 66, 69–70 Carlisle 219 Praemunire 32–3 Provisors 33–4 Taxation 4n, 9, 21, 42, 89, 95, 166, 283, 285–6, 288 Thrones 245–8, 257 Tithes 58, 59n, 64, 90 Tombs 10, 96, 106n, 191–214, 229–30, 249–50, 257 Translation 104n, 147, 154–5, 158, 164–8, 278, 285, 286n, 287n, 290, 292–3 Treasure 10, 173–90, 270, 283

Treasurer (royal) 19, 23, 26, 28, 31, 34–5, 36n, 40–1, 46 University 8, 44, 91, 102–3, 105, 108, 114, 124, 127, 131, 141, 146, 193, 242, 251–2, 284, 286, 290 Vestments 11–12, 176, 181–3, 187, 189, 191–2, 200, 212, 214, 216, 226, 232, 239, 248, 265, 270, 272–3 see also Pontificalia Visitations 59–60, 113, 121, 123, 126, 149, 155, 157, 160–1, 163–4, 240–1, 251–2, 265–8, 270–1 articles and injunctions 9, 112, 145, 160–4, 266–7 Wealth 6, 9–10, 19, 83, 84n, 173, 175–6, 178–80, 189, 195, 220–1, 234, 241, 261–2, 264–5, 276, 289 Wills 67, 70, 134, 137, 139–40, 181–2, 184, 186–8, 190, 197–8, 220 Woodcuts 150, 152 Wycliffism see under Lollardy

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YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS

God’s Words, Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of LateMedieval Women Visionaries, Rosalynn Voaden (1999) Pilgrimage Explored, ed. J. Stopford (1999) Piety, Fraternity and Power: Religious Gilds in Late Medieval Yorkshire ­1389–1547, † David J. F. Crouch (2000) Courts and Regions in Medieval Europe, ed. Sarah Rees Jones, Richard Marks and A. J. Minnis (2000) Treasure in the Medieval West, ed. Elizabeth M. Tyler (2000) Nunneries, Learning and Spirituality in Late Medieval English Society: The Dominican Priory of Dartford, Paul Lee (2000) Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England, Lesley A. Coote (2000) The Problem of Labour in Fourteenth-Century England, ed. James Bothwell, P. J. P. Goldberg and W. M. Ormrod (2000) New Directions in Later Medieval Manuscript Studies: Essays from the 1998 Harvard Conference, ed. Derek Pearsall (2000) Cistercians, Heresy and Crusade in Occitania, 1145–1229: Preaching in the Lord’s Vineyard, Beverly Mayne Kienzle (2001) Guilds and the Parish Community in Late Medieval East Anglia, c. 1470–1550, Ken Farnhill (2001) The Age of Edward III, ed. J. S. Bothwell (2001) Time in the Medieval World, ed. Chris Humphrey and W. M. Ormrod (2001) The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD ­300–1300, ed. Martin Carver (2002) Henry IV: The Establishment of the Regime, 1399–1406, ed. Gwilym Dodd and Douglas Biggs (2003) Youth in the Middle Ages, ed. P. J. P Goldberg and Felicity Riddy (2004) The Idea of the Castle in Medieval England, Abigail Wheatley (2004) Rites of Passage: Cultures of Transition in the Fourteenth Century, ed. Nicola F. McDonald and W. M. Ormrod (2004) Creating the Monastic Past in Medieval Flanders, Karine Ugé (2005) St William of York, Christopher Norton (2006) Medieval Obscenities, ed. Nicola F. McDonald (2006) The Reign of Edward II: New Perspectives, ed. Gwilym Dodd and Anthony Musson (2006) Old English Poetics: The Aesthetics of the Familiar in Anglo-Saxon England, Elizabeth M. Tyler (2006)

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The Late Medieval Interlude: The Drama of Youth and Aristocratic Masculinity, Fiona S. Dunlop (2007) The Late Medieval English College and its Context, ed. Clive Burgess and Martin Heale (2008) The Reign of Henry IV: Rebellion and Survival, 1403–1413, ed. Gwilym Dodd and Douglas Biggs (2008) Medieval Petitions: Grace and Grievance, ed. W. Mark Ormrod, Gwilym Dodd and Anthony Musson (2009) St Edmund, King and Martyr: Changing Images of a Medieval Saint, ed. Anthony Bale (2009) Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England c.1100-c.1500, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al. (2009) The Royal Pardon: Access to Mercy in Fourteenth-Century England, Helen Lacey (2009) Texts and Traditions of Medieval Pastoral Care: Essays in Honour of Bella Millett, ed. Cate Gunn and Catherine Innes-Parker (2009) The Anglo-Norman Language and its Contexts, ed. Richard Ingham (2010) Parliament and Political Pamphleteering in Fourteenth-Century England, Clementine Oliver (2010) The Saints’ Lives of Jocelin of Furness: Hagiography, Patronage and Ecclesiastical Politics, Helen Birkett (2010) The York Mystery Plays: Performance in the City, ed. Margaret Rogerson (2011) Wills and Will-Making in Anglo-Saxon England, Linda Tollerton (2011) The Songs and Travels of a Tudor Minstrel: Richard Sheale of Tamworth, Andrew Taylor (2012) Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, ed. Richard G. Newhauser and Susan J. Ridyard (2012) Socialising the Child in Late Medieval England, c. 1400–1600, Merridee L. Bailey (2012) Barking Abbey and Medieval Literary Culture: Authorship and Authority in a Female Community, ed. Jennifer N. Brown and Donna Alfano Bussell (2012) Christians and Jews in Angevin England: The York Massacre of 1190, Narratives and Contexts, ed. Sarah Rees Jones and Sethina Watson (2013) Reimagining History in Anglo-Norman Prose Chronicles, John Spence (2013) Henry V: New Interpretations, ed. Gwilym Dodd (2013) Rethinking Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, Carolyn P. Collette (2014)

York Studies in Medieval Theology I    Medieval Theology and the Natural Body, ed. Peter Biller and A. J. Minnis (1997) II   Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages, ed. Peter Biller and A. J. Minnis (1998)

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III  Religion and Medicine in the Middle Ages, ed. Peter Biller and Joseph Ziegler (2001) IV  Texts and the Repression of Medieval Heresy, ed. Caterina Bruschi and Peter Biller (2002)

York Manuscripts Conference Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England: The Literary Implications of Manuscript Study, ed. Derek Pearsall (1983) [Proceedings of the 1981 York Manuscripts Conference] Manuscripts and Texts: Editorial Problems in Later Middle English Literature, ed. Derek Pearsall (1987) [Proceedings of the 1985 York Manuscripts Conference] Latin and Vernacular: Studies in Late-Medieval Texts and Manuscripts, ed. A. J. Minnis (1989) [Proceedings of the 1987 York Manuscripts Conference] Regionalism in Late-Medieval Manuscripts and Texts: Essays celebrating the publication of ‘A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English’, ed. Felicity Riddy (1991) [Proceedings of the 1989 York Manuscripts Conference] Late-Medieval Religious Texts and their Transmission: Essays in Honour of A.  I.  Doyle, ed. A. J. Minnis (1994) [Proceedings of the 1991 York Manuscripts Conference] Prestige, Authority and Power in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts, ed. Felicity Riddy (2000) [Proceedings of the 1994 York Manuscripts Conference] Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions. Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall, ed. A. J. Minnis (2001) [Proceedings of the 1996 York Manuscripts Conference]

Manuscript Culture in the British Isles I   Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England, ed. Margaret Connolly and Linne R. Mooney (2008) II  Women and Writing, c.1340-c.1650: The Domestication of Print Culture, ed. Anne Lawrence-Mathers and Phillipa Hardman (2010) III  The Wollaton Medieval Manuscripts: Texts, Owners and Readers, ed. Ralph Hanna and Thorlac Turville-Petre (2010) IV Scribes and the City: London Guildhall Clerks and the Dissemination of Middle English Literature, 1375–1425, Linne R. Mooney and Estelle Stubbs (2013) V  Robert Thornton and his Books: Essays on the Lincoln and London Thornton Manuscripts, ed. Susanna Fein and Michael Johnston (2014) VI  Middle English Texts in Transition: A Festschrift dedicated to Toshiyuki Takamiya on his 70th birthday, ed. Simon Horobin and Linne R. Mooney (2014)

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Heresy and Inquisition in the Middle Ages Heresy and Heretics in the Thirteenth Century: The Textual Representations, L. J. Sackville (2011) Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition in Medieval Quercy, Claire Taylor (2011) Heresy, Inquisition and Life-Cycle in Medieval Languedoc, Chris Sparks (2014)

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