5 - Charity and Almsgiving

Summary

Charity and aid for the poor are aspects of royal religion for which King John's son, Henry III, is rightly renowned. Under Henry, ‘a new chapter opens in the history of almsgiving’. The king regularly fed thousands of paupers, honouring the saints or the souls of his relatives. His largesse took the form both of lavish, one-off events, such as feeding 102,000 individuals for the soul of his sister Isabella in 1242, and of daily giving, as with the distributions to several hundred paupers that occurred at various times during the reign.

There are precursors for Henry's activity in his father's actions. Evidence is at times patchy, but suggests that John displayed charitable instincts across his reign. Writers and preachers active in this period highlighted the difficulties facing the rich man who hoped to gain entry to Heaven and the value of giving alms. It seems likely that royal charity responded to such a message, reflecting the contemporary notion that just as water extinguishes fire, so almsgiving counteracted sin.

Charity and almsgiving is one area of John's religious activity that has attracted attention from historians. Hilda Johnstone highlights that for elite households ‘almsgiving was as much a part of daily ceremonial as sleeping or eating’. In John's case, ‘the compensatory aspect of almsgiving was what he chiefly dealt in’. This ‘was almost entirely on the principle of a debit and credit account with Heaven’. Charles Young argues that, whilst ‘there is little about King John's gifts to charity to suggest that spontaneous generosity or voluntary piety were characteristic of the man’, he nonetheless accepted contemporary expectations and made appropriate responses. Most recently, Sally Dixon-Smith's seminal study of Henry III's almsgiving observes that John's reputation conformed to the stereotype of ‘a leader who did not fulfil the age-old duty of generosity and rightful reward’. Whilst this is indisputable in the political sphere, it does not reflect the picture presented by the evidence to be discussed here. The king's almsgiving was an important element of his religious activity. He did more than go through the motions.

Before examining John's giving itself, it is important to consider how the twelfth- and thirteenth-century elite was encouraged to view charity to the poor.