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Henry II and the Papacy, 1170–11891

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

H. Mayr-Harting
H. Mayr-Harting
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Medieval History, University of Liverpool
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Extract

‘Who won the Becket controversy?’ is not an unusual kind of question to appear in examination papers. The general idea of the answer has been, and still is in many quarters, to assign Thomas Becket to that large elysium for historical figures who by their death have won the victory for which they struggled in life. Those scholars, however, who have studied closely how some of the issues raised in the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164) worked themselves out in practice after Becket's martyrdom, have show that things were not so simple. In the day-to-day relations of the secular and ecclesiastical courts a spirit of compromise and co-operation is constantly evident, and the developing complexity of legal problems and procedures favoured now one jurisdiction, now the other. In the relations of the English Church and the papacy ‘ecclesia Anglicana libera sit’ might sound very well as a battle-cry, but the English Church was far from agreed about how much it wanted to be free from the king in order to obey the pope. There were men in the decades after 1170 who would even have considered ‘compromise’ the wrong word to use about the situation. Gerald of Wales tells us that as Richard of Ilchester, bishop of Winchester, sat talking one day, he declared that the pusillanimity of the martyr's successor, Richard of Dover, had lost for the Church every point for which Becket had fought. This is an unlikely story for various reasons, but Gerald's anecdotal style often serves to reflect the thoughts of some of his contemporaries.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , April 1965 , pp. 39 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1965

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References

page 39 note 2 See, for instance, Cheney, Mary, ‘The Compromise of Avranches of 117a and the Spread of Canon Law in England’, Eng. Hist. Rev., lvi (1941), 177–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J. W. Gray, ‘The Ius Praesentandi in England from the Constitutions of Clarendon to Bracton’, ibid., lxii (1952), 481–508; Cheney, C. R., From Becket to Langton: English Church Government 1170–1213, Manchester 1956, chs. 3 and 4.Google Scholar

page 39 note 3 Giraldi Cambrensis Opera (Vita S. Remigii), ed. Dimock, J. F., R.S., (1877), vii, 69–70.Google Scholar

page 40 note 1 Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, ed. Stubbs, W., R.S., (1867), i, 18–19.Google Scholar

page 40 note 2 Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, ed. Robertson, J. C., R.S., (1885), vii, 519.Google Scholar

page 40 note 3 Gessta Regis Henrici Secundi, i, 32.

page 40 note 4 Stubbs's Select Charters, ninth ed. (H. W. C. Davis), 165.

page 40 note 5 For further light on this see Flahiff, G. B., ‘The Writ of Prohibition to Court Christian in the Thirteenth Century’, Medieval Studies, vii (1945), 232–8Google Scholar. Henry II positively encouraged Gilbert Foliot's appeals against Becket, which are discussed by C. N. L. Brooke and A. Morey in their forthcoming book on Foliot.

page 41 note 1 These letters, together with other documents connected with the same case, were printed by Professor Knowles at the end of his article, ‘The Revolt of the Lay Brothers of Sempringham’, Eng. Hist. Rev., 1 (1935), 479, 483–5.Google Scholar

page 41 note 2 Printed by C. R. Cheney, From Becket to Langton, 188–9; see also, 89–90.

page 42 note 1 B.M. Egerton MS. 3031 (Reading Cartulary), fob. 53v–54r, 50v–51r. Since this paper was originally written I have found these documents discussed from a slightly different angle by Richardson, H. G. and Sayles, G. O., The Governance of Medieval England, Edinburgh 1963, 316–17Google Scholar. For the background to this case see Brooke, C. N. L. in Celt and Saxon, ed. Chadwick, Nora K., Cambridge 1963, 280–2 and 282 n.i.Google Scholar

page 42 note 2 The Cartulary of Newnham Priory, Part I, ed. Godber, Joyce, Beds. Hist. Rec. Soc., xliii (1963), 58–9Google Scholar. For the case at Warwick, the previous week, see B.M. Cotton MS. Faust. A. iv, fob. 44v–45r.

page 42 note 3 Morey, Adrian, Bartholomew of Exeter, Cambridge 1937, 140–1Google Scholar (part of the same process as Reading v. Bristol in 1175).

page 42 note 4 Ibid., 119–20.

page 42 note 5 The Cartulary of Newnham Priory, Part I, 31.

page 43 note 1 Duggan, Charles, Twelfth-Century Decretal Collections and their Importance in English History, London 1963, 149–50.Google Scholar

page 43 note 2 The Acta of the Bishops of Ckichester 1075–1207, ed. Mayr-Harting, H., Canterbury and York Society 1965, 119–21.Google Scholar

page 44 note 1 C. R. Cheney, From Becket to Langton, 22–3, 107; and the letter is printed in Becket Materials, vii, 156–64.

page 44 note 2 For the question of murderers of clerks in the canon law during this period and the previous decades, see Foreville, Raymonde, L'Église et la Royauté en Angleterre sous Henri II, Paris 1943, 426–7.Google Scholar

page 44 note 3 Chron. de Bello, ed. Brewer, J. S., London 1846, 170–1Google Scholar. The difficulties, however, which the monks experienced in finding an advocate because of the general fear excited by the displeasure of Richard de Lucy, royal justiciar and Godfrey's brother, should be noted.

page 45 note 1 Knowles, M. D., ‘Essays in Monastic History: IV, the Growth of Exemption’, Downside Review, 1 (1932), 401–15.Google Scholar

page 45 note 2 Ibid., esp. 403, 408.

page 45 note 3 For instances see Epistolae Canluarienses, ed. Stubbs, W., R.S., (1865), 87Google Scholar, 95, 221, 295; Gervasii Cantuariensis Opera Hislorica, ed. Stubbs, W., R.S., (1879), i, 382.Google Scholar

page 45 note 4 Epistolae Cantuarienses, 66, 106, 134, 161, 202, 221, 295. At Richard I's instance, Baldwin agreed in November 1189 to demolish the chapel.

page 45 note 5 Ibid., 106.

page 46 note 1 Epistolae Cantuarienses, 90, 161. One might say that the king could make no real issue because he claimed control of appeals only in civil cases and this was an ecclesiastical case. But what was or was not a civil case was always open to the king's interpretation. His order to Ranulph Glanvill, for instance, he tried to justify on the grounds that Hackington was built on land held of him in chief.

page 46 note 2 During the course of the actual controversy the scheme is mentioned only in the letters which the Canterbury monks wrote to their prior, Honorius, in Rome (Ep. Cant., 117). Here the monks were clearly trying to give the prior ammunition for talk which could have a disturbing effect at the papal court. For they were elaborating on the fantastic speculation that the archbishop and bishops would form a court from which there could be no appeal to the pope. Their tune when writing to the pope or speaking to the king, however, was always that the prebends of Hackington were being endowed with churches and manors which were rightly theirs (Ep. Cant., 48, 116, 282; Gervase, i, 415). The whole question was closely connected with the property disputes between archbishop and monks. There can be little doubt that, as with the king, Baldwin's real interest was to provide prebends for his clerks.

page 45 note 3 E.g., Hubert Walter and probably Richard FitzNeal, Epistolae Cantuarienses, 259.

page 47 note 1 Hugh the Chantor's History of the Church of York 1066–1127, ed. Johnson, C. (Nelson's Medieval Texts), London/Edinburgh 1961, 3.Google Scholar

page 47 note 2 Gesta Henrici Secundi, i, 104–5. For the legate's visit, see also Tillmann, Helena, Die pāpstlichen Legaten in England, Bonn 1926, 74–5.Google Scholar

page 47 note 3 Victoria County History, Gloucestershire, ii, 84. For the earlier history of the connexion between the see of York and St. Oswald's Priory, Gloucester, see Thompson, A. Hamilton in Trans, of Bristol and Gloucs. Arch. Soc., xliii (1921), 86–98.Google Scholar

page 47 note 4 Gervase of Canterbury, i, 258–9.

page 48 note 1 Gesta Henrici Secundi, i, 119.

page 48 note 2 Radulphi de Diceto Opera Historica, ed. Stubbs, W., R.S., (1876), i, 410.Google Scholar

page 48 note 3 Gesta Henrici Secundi, i, 105.

page 48 note 4 Ibid., 94, 99.

page 48 note 5 By the 1170s there were clearly rolls of various kinds in the Exchequer subsidiary to the pipe rolls; see, for instance, Round's introduction to the Rotuli de Dominabus, Pipe Roll Society xxxv (1913), xviii.

page 49 note 1 Regalian Right in Medieval England, London 1962, 32–44.Google Scholar

page 49 note 2 Ibid., 34.

page 49 note 3 Gesta Henrici Secundi, i, 134–6, 173–4.

page 49 note 4 Ibid., 180–1, 190–1.

page 49 note 5 Ibid., 311.

page 50 note 1 For the earlier history of the suffragans' part in these elections, see R. Foreville, L'Église et la Royauté, 376 n.7.

page 50 note 2 Ibid., 374–8.

page 50 note 3 Epistolat Gilberti Foliot, ed. Giles, J. A., Oxford 1845, no. 269Google Scholar: ‘Bonum est itaque si placet ut rigorem monachorum quem totiens de humilitate vestra concipiunt ea qua scitis modestia et sapientia temperetis, et ad aliquam si placet regni vestri personam ipsorum consilium revocetis’. I am grateful to Professor C. N. L. Brooke for drawing my attention to the significance of this letter.

page 50 note 4 Gervase of Canterbury, i, 240.

page 51 note 1 Ibid., 243–4.

page 51 note 2 Ralph of Diceto, i, 369.

page 51 note 3 Gesta Henrici Secundi, i, 315–16.

page 51 note 4 Ibid., 318

page 51 note 5 For Roger of Howden's authorship of this work see Stenton, Doris M., ‘Roger of Howden and Benedict’, Eng. Hist. Rev., lxviii (1953), 574–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 51 note 6 Gervase of Canterbury, i, 313. Prior Alan's closeness to Becket may have been one reason for the king's dislike of him.

page 52 note 1 Gesta Henrici Secundi, i, 319–20.

page 52 note 2 Gervase of Canterbury, i, 308–25, esp. 323–4.

page 52 note 3 In 1186 the king and Baldwin ‘promoted’ prior Alan to the abbacy of Tewkesbury ‘quasi in poenam suae constantiae’ (ibid., 335).

page 51 note 4 For the debate in the papal consistory see Ralph of Diceto, i, 388. When the pope made his decision the battle was literally won, for the younger Henry's rebellion had failed.