4 - ROYAL FREE CHAPELS

Summary

Definition of the status of the two collegiate churches of Bosham in the diocese of Chichester and St Buryan's in Cornwall became the most contentious aspect of episcopal jurisdiction during Stapeldon's episcopate. Both colleges were claimed as royal free chapels by the Crown. As such they would be entitled to exemption from the jurisdiction of the ordinary. It was Stapeldon's misfortune to have to defend this exemption in the case of Bosham while denying it in that of St Buryan's.

The royal free chapels have their somewhat indistinct origins in the pre-Hildebrandine era of proprietary churches. Bosham was an Anglo-Saxon minster, well endowed with land rated at 147 hides. It was given by Edward the Confessor to his Norman chaplain who, in 1072, succeeded to the recently constituted bishopric of Exeter. Under the Confessor there appears to have been some dispersal of the endowment, all but 50 hides' worth of which was recovered after the Conquest. This was then rated at 7½ knights' fees, and not held in free alms. It was only in 1121 that bishop William Warelwast, having obtained a grant of the lordship of Bosham from Henry I, founded there a collegiate church. He reserved to himself patronage of and jurisdiction over the college.

The burgeoning of papal power following the pontificate of Gregory VII heralded a period of rigorous definition in the sphere of ecclesiastical versus lay jurisdiction, which coincided, by the late twelfth century, with the rapid expansion and development of diocesan administration.