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The Bishops and the Deposition of Edward II
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 May 2020
Abstract
The deposition of Edward II was a watershed in the legal history of later medieval England. However, the significance of the church in its accomplishment has remained controversial. This article offers a reassessment by providing a brief narrative of the episcopate's involvement in events; analysing the importance of their contribution, with particular reference to the quasi-legal aspect of proceedings; considering whether this participation reflected their own initiative or was something about which they had no choice; and questioning why so many bishops turned to oppose Edward II. It becomes evident that prelates played a key part in Edward II's downfall, and that they became involved as a consequence of the oppressive treatment which he had meted out to them, to their families and to political society more broadly.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2020
Footnotes
I should like to thank Rowena E. Archer, who read an earlier version of this article, and the anonymous reviewers, for their helpful comments and suggestions.
References
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10 CCR 1323–7, 655; R. E. Latham, ed., Calendar of Memoranda Rolls (Exchequer), 1326–27 (London, 1968), 110–11.
11 Haines, ‘Episcopate’, 688; Phillips, Edward II, 521.
12 Precisely which two bishops journeyed to Kenilworth is unclear: the Lanercost Chronicle states it was Adam Orleton, bishop of Hereford, and John Stratford (The Chronicle of Lanercost, 1272–1346, ed. Herbert Maxwell [Glasgow, 1913], 254), while the Pipewell Chronicle prefers Orleton and Stephen Gravesend, bishop of London: Harry Rothwell, ed., English Historical Documents, 1189–1327 (London, 1975), 278. That a delegation of two bishops was sent to Edward II at this point is confirmed by a letter from Henry Eastry, prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, to Walter Reynolds, archbishop of Canterbury, but unfortunately this does not name the bishops in question: Literae Cantuarienses: The Letter Books of the Monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury, ed. Joseph Brigstocke Sheppard, 3 vols, RS 85 (London, 1887–9), 2: 204–5.
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16 Geoffrey le Baker, ed. Barber and Preest, 26–7.
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34 Anglia Sacra, ed. Wharton, 1: 39–40.
35 Nicholas Pronay and John Taylor, eds, Parliamentary Texts of the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1980), 91.
36 CCR 1318–23, 543.
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41 Nicholas Bennett, ‘Burghersh, Henry (c.1290–1340)’, ODNB, 23 September 2004, online at: <https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-4007>, last accessed 12 September 2019; Mortimer, Greatest Traitor, 70.
42 Roy Martin Haines, The Church and Politics in Fourteenth-Century England: The Career of Adam Orleton, c.1275–1345 (Cambridge, 1978), 3, 135–6.
43 Roy Martin Haines, ‘Stratford, John (c.1275–1348)’, ODNB, 28 September 2006, online at: <https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-26645>, last accessed 12 September 2019.
44 CCR 1323–27, 655.
45 Haines, Edward II, 187; Phillips, Edward II, 522–4.
46 Geoffrey le Baker, ed. Barber and Preest, 25–6.
47 CCR 1327–30, 24; Calendar of Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, 1216–1509, 54 vols (London, 1891–1916; hereafter: CPR), 1327–30, 6, 65; Roy Martin Haines, Archbishop John Stratford (Toronto, ON, 1986), 42, 104, 188–9.
48 CPR 1327–30, 103; CCR 1327–30, 4, 44–5; Haines, Church and Politics, 167, 177.
49 CPR 1327–30, 58, 166; CCR 1327–30, 33–4, 171–2, 188.
50 CCR 1318–23, 543; The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1307 to 1334: From Brotherton Collection MS 29, ed. Wendy Childs and John Taylor, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series 147 (Leeds, 1991), 100–1; Vita Edwardi Secundi: The Life of Edward the Second, ed. Wendy R. Childs, OMT (Oxford, 2005), 192–3.
51 Lanercost Chronicle, ed. Maxwell, 230.
52 Pronay and Taylor, eds, Parliamentary Texts, 168–9.
53 Chronicles, ed. Stubbs, 1: 315.
54 Haines, ‘Episcopate’, 687–8, 705–6.
55 Anglia Sacra, ed. Wharton, 1: 367; Haines, ‘Episcopate’, 689.
56 Anglia Sacra, ed. Wharton, 1: 367. The fourteen bishops were those of Dublin, Llandaff and every English see apart from Exeter (whose bishop-elect, as noted above, had not yet been consecrated) and Durham (whose bishop, Lewis Beaumont, was presumably occupied in the north): Thomas and Jones, eds, Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls, 1: 12–13.
57 Anglia Sacra, ed. Wharton, 1: 367–8; Chronicles, ed. Stubbs, 1: 324–5; CCR 1327–30, 100. Whether Ross was present at Edward III's coronation is unclear. Many historians suggest that he was absent (e.g. Phillips, Edward II, 539 n. 108), because he is not mentioned in the official record of the coronation or the chronicle accounts. However, R. K. Rose has suggested that he was probably present, for he is recorded as being in Westminster on 1 February to consecrate Simon Wedale as bishop of Whithorn: ‘The Bishops and Diocese of Carlisle: Church and Society on the Anglo-Scottish Border, 1292–1395' (PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1983), 59.
58 Rosalind Hill, ‘Melton, William (d. 1340)’, ODNB, 23 September 2004, online at: <https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-18538>, last accessed 12 September 2019.
59 Roy Martin Haines, ‘Bishops and Politics in the Reign of Edward II: Hamo de Hethe, Henry Wharton, and the “Historia Roffensis”’, JEH 44 (1993), 586–609, at 598.
60 Rose, ‘Bishops and Diocese’, 11.
61 Hill, ‘Melton, William’.
62 Kathleen Edwards, ‘The Personnel and Political Activities of the English Episcopate during the Reign of Edward II’ (MA thesis, University of London, 1937), 331.
63 CPR 1324–27, 302–3; see also Haines, Archbishop Stratford, 166–70.
64 Christopher Given-Wilson, Edward II (London, 2016), 67–75.
65 Rothwell, ed., English Historical Documents, 1189–1327, 547–8.
66 Froissart's Chronicles, ed. John Jolliffe (London, 1967), 7; Scalachronica, ed. Hebert Maxwell (Glasgow, 1907), 70; Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. Childs, 230–1.
67 Given-Wilson, Edward II, 76–7.
68 G. A. Holmes, ‘Judgement on the Younger Despenser, 1326’, EHR 70 (1955), 261–7, at 265; see also Fryde, Tyranny, 110–18. However, some doubt has been cast on this tale: Kathryn Warner, Edward II: The Unconventional King (Stroud, 2014), 161–2.
69 Flores Historiarum, ed. H. R. Luard, 3 vols, RS 95 (London, 1890), 3: 214. For historiographical comment on Edward's ‘tyranny’, see, for example, Phillips, Edward II, 530–1; Warner, Unconventional King, 161; Spencer, ‘Inadequate Kingship’, 95.
70 Peters, Shadow King, 241.
71 Spencer, ‘Inadequate Kingship’, 85.
72 Siegfried Wenzel, ed., Preaching in the Age of Chaucer: Selected Sermons in Translation, Medieval Texts in Translation (London, 2008), 245.
73 Haines, ‘Episcopate’, 697.
74 Adae Murimuth Continuatio Chronicarum, ed. Edward Maunde Thompson, RS 93 (London, 1889), 46; Geoffrey le Baker, ed. Barber and Preest, 21. They were certainly all with Isabella in Bristol by October 1326, to witness the election of Prince Edward as custos of the realm: CCR 1323–27, 655. These were by no means the only prelates whom Edward had treated poorly who turned to support Isabella; for instance, see also J. L. Grassi, ‘William Airmyn and the Bishopric of Norwich’, EHR 70 (1955), 550–61, at 558–61 (for Airmyn, bishop of Norwich); Edwards, ‘Political Importance’, 340–1 (for Archbishop Reynolds); Haines, Archbishop Stratford, 147–9, 164.
75 J. R. S. Phillips, ‘Bicknor, Alexander (d. 1349)’, ODNB, 23 September 2004, online at: <https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-2359>, last accessed 12 September 2019.
76 James F. Lydon, ‘The Case against Alexander Bicknor, Archbishop and Peculator’, in Brendan Smith, ed., Ireland and the English World in the Late Middle Ages (Basingstoke, 2009), 103–11, at 103–7.
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78 Lydon, ‘Bicknor’, 107.
79 M. C. Buck, ‘Hotham, John (d. 1337)’, ODNB, 3 January 2008, online at: <https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-13851>, last accessed 12 September 2019.
80 Anonimalle Chronicle, ed. Childs and Taylor, 98–9; Benjamin Thompson, ‘The Fourteenth Century’, in Peter Meadows, ed., Ely: Bishops and Diocese, 1109–2009 (Woodbridge, 2010), 70–121, at 114.
81 CCR 1318–21, 211; Buck, ‘Hotham, John’.
82 Chronicles, ed. Stubbs, 2: 73; CCR 1323–27, 325; Buck, ‘Hotham, John’.
83 Holmes, ‘Younger Despenser’, 265.
84 Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. Childs, 178–181; Phillips, Edward II, 385.
85 Chronicles, ed. Stubbs, 1: 299; Brut, ed. Brie, 1: 221, 224.
86 Haines, Church and Politics, 137–8; Bennett, ‘Burghersh, Henry’; CPReg, 2: 468–75.
87 Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, ed. J. S. Brewer, J. F. Dimock and G. F. Warner, 8 vols (London, 1861–91), 7: 215.
88 Haines, Church and Politics, 16; John Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, 1307–1322: A Study in the Reign of Edward II (Oxford, 1970), 199.
89 Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. Childs, 202–3; Johnannis de Trokelowe et Henrici de Blaneforde, Chronica et Annales, ed. H. T. Riley, RS 28/3 (London, 1866), 140–2; Holmes, ‘Younger Despenser’, 265.
90 Henrici de Blaneforde, ed. Riley, 141–2; Haines, Church and Politics, 144–50.
91 CCR 1327–30, 44–5; Haines, Church and Politics, 144–6.
92 Haines, Church and Politics, 51.
93 Myers, A. R., ed., English Historical Documents, 1327–1485 (London, 1996), 71–2Google Scholar.
94 Ibid.