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The Council of London of 1342

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Brenda Bolton
Brenda Bolton*
Affiliation:
North-Western Polytechnic, London
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Extract

Now that the statutes formerly ascribed to Winchelsey and Reynolds have been shown to derive from other sources, those of John Stratford, issued after the Second Council of London (1342), are seen to stand out as the most significant body of provincial legislation in the later Middle Ages. Their relative importance is enhanced by the paucity of such legislation in this period in comparison with the considerable volume produced in the course of the thirteenth century.

On investigation, Stratford’s constitutions appear significant in the corpus of medieval ‘administrative’ canon law. Not only do they show signs of the friction existing between the lay and ecclesiastical jurisdictions and experienced both by Pecham and Winchelsey, but also of the recurring clerical concerns, frailties of conduct, and malpractices of church courts and officials alike. Provincial legislation springs partly from local imperfections, and partly from more general circumstances. Political considerations may have been critical in the decision to issue constitutions. There is justification, therefore, for first examining the political context in which these constitutions arose.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 7: Councils and Assemblies , 1971 , pp. 147 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1971

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References

Page No 147 Note 1 Cheney, C. R., ‘The So-Called Statutes of John Pecham and Robert Winchel sey’, JEH, xii (1961), 21-5Google Scholar; Cheney, C. R., ‘The Legislation of the Medieval English Church’, EHR, cxcix (1935), 193–224, 385-417CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Councils and Synods 1205-1313, ed. Powicke, F. M. and Cheney, C. R., 2 vols. Oxford 1964,1382-93Google Scholar. This is the basic printed collection of national and provincial legislation up to the fourteenth century and is henceforth quoted as C & S.

Page No 147 Note 2 Wilkins (1737) 11, 675 et seq., 696-702, 702-9; Lyndwood, Wm, Provinciale, Oxford 1679, 43–54 Google Scholar.

Page No 147 Note 3 Stratford held the chancellorship of England three times between 1330 and 1340, and in 1339 was dux regis in the king’s absence although he failed to convince parliament of the need to grant adequate supplies for the war with France. See Emden, A. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, Oxford 1957-9, 1796-8Google Scholar; M. McKisack, The Fourteenth Century, Oxford 1959, chapter vi, ‘Edward III and Archbishop Stratford 1330-43’, 152-181; Lapsley, G. T., ‘Archbishop Stratford and the Parliamentary Crisis of 1341’, EHR, xxx (1915), 6–18, 193-215CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wilkinson, B., ‘The Protest of the Earls of Arundel and Surrey in the Crisis of 1341’, EHR, XLVI (1931), 177–193 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

Page No 148 Note 1 Winchester Cathedral Chartulary, ed. A. W. Goodman (1927), 221. On clerical subsidies see D. B. Weske, The Convocation of the Clergy (1937), 67. An indication of the tremendous financial pressure placed by Edward III on the country may be obtained from Fryde, E. B., ‘Edward III’s Wool Monopoly of 1337’, History, New Series, 37 (1952), 8–24 Google Scholar. For the effects of the war on the diocese of Worcester see R. M. Haines, A Calendar of the Register of Wolstan de Bransford (1966), 1-li. Subsequently referred to as Cal. Reg. Brans.

Page No 148 Note 2 Cal. Reg. Brans., 511-12.

Page No 148 Note 3 The most recent study of clerical grievances appears in Jones, W. R., ‘Bishops, Politics and the Two Laws: the Gravamina of the English Clergy 1237-1399’, Speculum, 41 (1966), 209-45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

Page No 148 Note 4 Rottili Parliamentorum, 11, 129a-130b.

Page No 149 Note 1 Foedera, 11, ii, 1147-8; Anglia Sacra: Sive Collectio Historiarum, Partim Antiqiiitus, Partim Recenter Scriptarum, de Archiepiscopis et Episccpis Angliae, A Prima Fidei Christianae Susceptione ad Annum MDXL, ed. H. Wharton (1691), 1, 23-7.

Page No 149 Note 2 For clarification on this point see Ullmann, W., ‘ A decision of the Rota Romana on the benefit of clergy in England’, Studia Gratiana, xiii (1967), Collectanea Stephan Kuttner 111, 458-62Google Scholar; Gabel, L. C., Benefit of Clergy in England in the Later Middle Ages (Smith College Studies in History), (Northampton, Mass. 1929)Google Scholar; Génestal, R., Le privilegium fori en France du Décret de Gratiën à la fin du XIV’ siècle, 2 vols (Paris 1921-4)Google Scholar. For the excuse to the Libellus Famosus see Anglia Sacra, ed. Wharton, 1, 28, 32.

Page No 149 Note 3 Stratford was Archbishop of Canterbury (1333-48) but his archiepiscopal register has not survived, and this is a major void in the study of fourteenth-century ecclesiastical history.

Page No 149 Note 4 Lateran iv cap. 6. Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, Herder (1962), 212-13.

Page No 150 Note 1 I am indebted to Dr Roy M. Haines for abstracting material from the unpublished register of Bishop Adam Orleton of Winchester. This indicates the national importance of the reforms under discussion among the clergy of the Winchester diocese before the Council of 1341. Three points emerge. First, the liberties granted to churches and ecclesiastical persons should not be diminished. Secondly, since the king had alienated so many of his goods, he could not support those burdens incumbent upon him without imposing ‘ tallias et alia... onera importabilia’ on the clergy and people of the realm. It should, therefore, be laid down by the Council that such alienated goods be recovered and no more distributed ‘et quod omnes huiusmodi bona decetero recipientes excommunicentur nisi sit cum consensu tocius parliamenti’. Lastly, the king was to be asked not to burden with royal commissions, abbots, priors and other religious who held their temporalities in free alms, or other ecclesiastical persons whose benefices consisted in spiritualities. Such persons should not be forced by commissions of this kind to become involved in secular business contrary to church teaching, Reg. Orleton, 1, fol. 107 recto.

Page No 150 Note 2 Weske, Convocation, 250-2. In practice only three provincial councils were held in the 1340s: 1341, 1342 and 1347.

Page No 150 Note 3 Wilkins, 11, 680.

Page No 151 Note 1 Winchester Cathedral Chartulary, p. 222. Wilkins, n, 675, 680. For the usual procedure of summons see Weske, Convocation, 119-24. Bishop Orleton’s mandate for the execution of the archbishop’s summons was addressed to the prior and chapter of Winchester and dated Waltham 13 September 1341, Reg. Orleton, 1, fol. 107 recto.

Page No 151 Note 2 CCR, 1341-43, p. 335. Wilkins, n, 680.

Page No 151 Note 3 The Bishops of London, Chichester, Salisbury, Ely, Bath, Coventry, St David’s and Bangor. Continuatio Chronicarum, ed. E. M. Thompson, RS (1889). Adam Orleton being corporali molestia prepediti appointed Master John de Usk, his officiai, and Master John de Trilleck to act as his proctors, Reg. Orleton, 1, fol. 107 v. For a general study of the bishops see Highfield, j. R. L., ‘The English Hierarchy in the reign of Edward III’, TRHS, 5th Series, vi (1956), 115-38Google Scholar.

Page No 151 Note 4 Winchester Cathedral Chartulary, p. 219.

Page No 152 Note 1 Cal. Reg. Brans., pp. 205-6. In 1341 and 1342, Stratford observed the prescriptions of canon law far more carefully than in previous councils, E. W. Kemp, Counsel and Consent (1961), 104-5.

Page No 152 Note 2 Register of Ralph of Shrewsbury, ed. Holmes, T. S., 2 vols, Somerset Record Society (1896), 11, 454 Google Scholar.

Page No 152 Note 3 Wilkins, 11, 710.

Page No 152 Note 4 Register of John Grandisson, ed. F. C. Hingeston-Randolph (1899), 968-9.

Page No 152 Note 5 Reg. Orleton, 1, fol. 114r.

Page No 152 Note 6 Cal. Reg. Brans., p. 206. Bishop Orleton sent the names of the religious houses which had been duly summoned ‘Nomina premunitorum’, Reg. Orleton, 1, fol. 107r.

Page No 152 Note 7 Ralph of London and the Bishops of Coventry and Lichfield, Salisbury, Chi chester, Bath and Wells, Ely, and Bangor. The Bishops of Exeter, Worcester, Lincoln, and Hereford were newcomers.

Page No 152 Note 8 Cal. Reg. Brans., p. 94. His visitation of the Worcester diocese lasted from 5 to 11 November 1342.

Page No 152 Note 9 Reg. Grandisson, 11, 968-9.

Page No 152 Note 10 Cheney, C. R., JEH, xii, 415-17Google Scholar.

Page No 153 Note 1 Reg. Ralph of Shrewsbury, 11, 454.

Page No 153 Note 2 William Lyndwood (c. 1375-1446), the principal authority on English canon law, was chancellor to the Archbishop of Canterbury (1414-17) and an official of the court of Canterbury (1417-31). He was created Bishop of St David’s in 1422 and by 1430 had collected the synodal constitutions of fourteen arch bishops of Canterbury from Langton to Chichele which he glossed elaborately. See Emden, Register, 1191-2.

Page No 153 Note 3 Wilkins, 11, 680.

Page No 153 Note 4 Stratford produced a long series of statutes for the Court of Arches, Wilkins, 11, 681-95.

Page No 153 Note 5 On church courts see Churchill, I.J., Canterbury Administration, 2 vols (1933), 380–499 Google Scholar.

Page No 154 Note 1 Wilkins, 11, 696 c. 1; Lyndwood, Provinciale, 233.

Page No 154 Note 2 Wilkins, 11, 698 c. 6; Lyndwood, Provinciale, 170. This injunction gives rise to a well-known gloss on the English consuetudo. See p. 181.

Page No 154 Note 3 Wilkins, 11, 698 c. 7; Lyndwood, Provinciale, 223.

Page No 155 Note 1 Wilkins, 11, 700 c. 10; Lyndwood, Provinciale, 323. For a note on the injunction excussis, by which the costs of courts and chapters were to be defrayed by the principals, see R. M. Haines, The Administration of the diocese of Worcester (1965), 108. Also Lyndwood, Provinciale, 99.

Page No 155 Note 2 Wilkins, 11, 700 c. 9. Lyndwood, Provinciale, 225. On apparitors see B. L. Woodcock, Medieval Ecclesiastical Courts in the diocese of Canterbury (1952), 45-9.

Page No 155 Note 3 Wilkins, 11, 700 c. 11; Lyndwood, Provinciale, 313.

Page No 155 Note 4 Wilkins, 11, 701-2 c. 12; Lyndwood, Provinciale, 143. Ottobon’s constitution de intrusts, C & S, 759.

Page No 156 Note 1 For a detailed study of the writs of quare impedit and quare non admisit see Cheyette, F., ‘Kings, Courts, Cures and Sinecures: The Statute of Provisors and the Common Law’, Traditio, xix (1963), 295–349 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Royal ‘recoveries’ of benefices continued despite the severe measures promulgated by Stratford in 1342, Hemingby’s Register, ed. Chew, H. M., Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, xviii (1962), 31, 173-4Google Scholar, 185-6.

Page No 156 Note 2 Wilkins, 11, 703; Lyndwood, Provinciale, 16. This injunction repeated those of Ottobon, Council of London (1268), c. 5, C & S, 752 and Pecham, Council of Lambeth (1281), c. 22, C & S, 914.

Page No 156 Note 3 Wilkins, 11, 704 c. 5; Lyndwood, Provinciale, 189-90. This nomenclature, always used by the tithe owner claiming for payment of tithe, became subsequently linked with the legal definition of what wood could be tithed. The tithe from wood provided a valuable source of income for parish churches and this was not neglected by the clergy. In 1343, the Commons complained that unprecedented tithes of hautboys and suboys were being taken, Rot. Parl. 11,142. A distinction was finally drawn between great wood which yielded no annual increase and underbrush or non-timber trees, and after 1371 no wood of 20 years or more was titheable, Rot. Parl. 11, 319a. The struggle over the tithing of wood led not only to ill-feeling between clerics and laity but brought the whole vexed question of jurisdiction over tithes into the king’s court. The plaintiff would describe all wood indiscriminately as sylua caedua on the grounds that this was a generic term covering all young, and therefore titheable, trees. The defendant in turn would claim that it was not coppice wood at all, but wood of mature growth, and thus exempt by the act of Edward III. Sylva caedua is dealt with by Adams, N., ‘The Judicial Conflict over Tithes’, EHR, lii (1937), 1–22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J. Seiden, A Historie of Tithes (1618), 236-40; S. Degge, The Parson’s Counsellor with the law of tithes or tithing (1681), 237-45.I am most grateful to David Gransby for allowing me to see the relevant chapter in his unpublished M.Phil, thesis on Tithe Disputes in the Diocese of York 1540-1640 (1968).

Page No 157 Note 1 Wilkins, 111, 113.

Page No 157 Note 2 Wilkins, 11, 703 c. 3; Lyndwood, Provinciale, 154.

Page No 157 Note 3 Wilkins, 11, 707 c. 11. See also Haines, R. M. ‘Bishop Carpenter’s Injunctions to the Diocese of Worcester in 1451’, BIHR, 40 (1967), 203-7Google Scholar; Lyndwood, Provinciale, 275.

Page No 157 Note 4 Wilkins, 11, 709 c. 14; Lyndwood, Provinciale, 267. This also appears as one of the so-called statutes of Pecham, C & S, c. 8, 1123; Cheney, JEH, xii, 19.

Page No 157 Note 5 Wilkins, 11, 705 c. 6; Lyndwood, Provinciale, 191; Cal. Reg. Brans., p. 104.

Page No 158 Note 1 Wilkins, 11, 705 c. 7; Lyndwood, Provinciale, 171; Boniface, Council of Lambeth (1261), C & S, 681; Pecham, Council of Lambeth (1281), C & S, 913.

Page No 158 Note 2 Wilkins, 11, 706 c. 8; Lyndwood, Provinciale, 179.

Page No 158 Note 3 Ottobon, Council of London (1268), C & S, 771. In practice, bishops regularly claimed this right.

Page No 158 Note 4 Wilkins, n, 706 c. 9; Lyndwood, Provinciale, 161. The statutes of George Neville, Archbishop of York, refer to this injunction of Stratford in 1466, Wilkins, 111, 601.

Page No 158 Note 5 Wilkins, 11, 709 c. 16; Lyndwood, Provinciale, 97.

Page No 158 Note 6 Wilkins, 11, 707-8 c. 12; Lyndwood, Provinciale, 261. This gloss deals with canonical opinion on the use of pecuniary penance and its limitation to ex officio cases.

Page No 159 Note 1 Wilkins, 11, 708 c. 13. The most recent study of excommunication is Logan, F. D., Excommunication and the Secular Arm in Medieval England, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Studies and Texts, 15 (1968), 75-6Google Scholar.

Page No 159 Note 2 On pastoral manuals see W. A. Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (1955), 207-8; Boyle, L. E., ‘The Oculus Sacerdotis and some other works of William of Pagula’, TRHS, 5th Series, v (1955), 81–110 Google Scholar.