Sophie Ambler writes:

Members of the project team attended a colloquium on 14 May celebrating the third edition of Michael Clanchy’s seminal book, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307. Organised by Julia Crick (King’s), the colloquium was held at King’s Maughan Library. The Maughan is the former home of the Public Record Office, where Michael undertook his doctoral work editing the Berkshire eyre of 1248 that inspired From Memory. In this new edition, Michael has rewritten the first chapter ‘Memories and Myths of the Norman Conquest’ to present a ‘maximum view’ of Anglo-Saxon literacy, on which Bruce O’ Brien (Mary Washington University) reflected in his talk ‘From Memory to Written Record in scholarship on Medieval England’. Speakers also included Anna Adamska (Universiteit Utrecht), who spoke on ‘Continental excursions into pragmatic literacy, literate mentalities and beyond’, as well as Hilde de Weerdt (King’s) who gave ‘reflections on From Memory from the perspective of Song dynasty history’, and Filippo de Vivo (Birkbeck) who talked about ‘Michael Clanchy and the archive: considerations form early modern Italy’. Stephen Baxter (King’s) also brought news, hot off the press, of an exciting discovery recently made about Exon Domesday, in which a stain has been found that indicates a spear placed across two leaves, apparently in a symbolic act. This relates to Michael’s work on the symbolic use of knives in land transactions in From Memory. Research is underway to date the stain, so no doubt we will hear more in due course.

Photo, left to right:
Alice Taylor (King’s), Hilde de Weerdt (King’s), Filippo de Vivo (Birkbeck), Stephen Baxter (King’s), Michael Clanchy (IHR), Bruce O’Brien (Mary Washington University), Anna Adamska (Universiteit Utrecht), Julia Crick (King’s).

William Heron, sheriff of Northumberland from 1246 to 1258, was a wicked sheriff to rival the sheriff of Nottingham of legend – greedy, arbitrary and dishonest. This of course made him great fun to write about, in an article which has just been published in Northern History.

The fine rolls provided several helpful pieces of information, particularly about the way in which Heron’s son, also William, succeeded to his father’s estates, and his debts (CFR 1257-58, 340-2). William senior died in office, owing the Exchequer over £1,100. This is an enormous sum, at a time when an income of £15 a year was enough for a knight. It appears that Heron had either failed to collect sums due to the government, such as amercements from the eyre of 1256, or, more likely, had collected them and failed to deliver them to the Exchequer. There is at least one case where this definitely happened: the earl of Strathearn owed £100 for having custody of his daughters; he paid this to Heron, as Heron’s receiver acknowledged, but the cash was not passed on.

William junior was under age – he was 18 when his father died – but was allowed to succeed to his estates, on paying (or promising to pay) a 100 mark fine. This debt was rolled in with the sheriff’s debts, and William junior undertook to repay the total £1,200 – at the rate of £40 a year. This may seem generous compared to the size of the debt, but it is hard to see how William junior could seriously have expected to find the money from the estates he had inherited, which were valued at just £37 a year. Unsurprisingly, it took many years for him to begin repayments. Thirty years later, in 1288, when he should have finished paying off the debt, he still owed £315, although he did make a further £40 payment that year.

William Heron senior not only exploited the county by imposing arbitrary penalties and inventing new obligations, but also defrauded the government, as much of the money he collected evidently stayed in his own pocket. The fine rolls added useful detail about the way in which his son dealt with the financial burden left to him by his father the wicked sheriff.

The article is available online to subscribers and via Athens or Shibboleth: Northern History, Volume 50, No. 1, March 2013.

Richard Cassidy

On a very wet and chilly day in March, a group of KCL PhD students and friends visited Rochester. Beginning at the cathedral:

where we saw the remaining part of a thirteenth century wall painting in the Quire, showing the Wheel of Fortune:

After lunch, to the castle, with expert commentary from Marc Morris, author of Castle: A History of the Buildings that Shaped Medieval Britain, who explained the architecture and history, particularly the famous siege by king John in 1215:

Marc Morris (right) with a damp but fascinated audience

Thanks to Marc, to Sophie Ambler for the photos, and to Ian Stone, who organized the visit.

MA students from KCL at The National Archives

On Wednesday 27 March a group of students from KCL’s MA in Medieval History visited The National Archives. They were taken round by Dr Jessica Nelson (centre in group photo) who herself studied for her MA and doctorate at King’s. Illustrated below are some of the documents the group looked at.

A marginal head from a close roll

A Basset charter

On the following day David Carpenter was back at TNA to photo the authorised version of Magna Carta in the Red Book of the Exchequer. While there he took the images illustrated of Henry II on his death bed (from the text of his will in the Black Book of the Exchequer):

and the image of Edward I legislating in the cartulary of Malmesbury Abbey:

The indexes for the roll 1242-1248 are now live on the Fine Rolls website (http://frh3.org.uk/content/indexes/indexes.html). These years should be included in the ‘Advanced Search’ in the near future. Steam is gathering to bring various loose ends to a tidy conclusion, so watch out for some updates to the website over the next month or so.

Louise Wilkinson

The project team – Beth Hartland, Paul Caton, David Carpenter, Sean Cunningham and Louise Wilkinson all met at King’s College London on 4 December 2012 to discuss the completion of volume 4 of the printed edition of the Henry III Fine Rolls (1242-48), which will be published by Boydell and Brewer. The team are pleased to report that excellent progress has been made on this volume – it is 95% complete – and that we are now ready to create the print files and indexes in the New Year.

Louise Wilkinson

King Henry remained at Guildford until around 26 November and then returned to Westminster, where he was to remain till early January. Henry had intended during this time to visit his castle at Marlborough, and then to celebrate Christmas at Winchester, as he often did.  Urgent business, however, as he explained, kept him instead at Westminster. He was anxiously awaiting the return of envoys sent to the pope. Would they bring news that the Holy Father had modified the terms of the Sicilian business so that it could be pursued with some hope of success?  Henry was also arranging the despatch of a high powered delegation (including Simon de Montfort) to the king of France in the hope of advancing the peace negotiations and thus making it all the more possible to concentrate on Sicily. And then too  Henry was becoming  worried about events in Scotland, where  the young King Alexander was married to his daughter.  Would Henry have to go north, as he had in 1255, to rescue the royal couple from their enemies?

It must have been a relief for Henry to turn from these great matters to the comforting business of the fine rolls. During these two week, around twenty four people came to court to purchase the writs to initiate or further common law legal actions. Henry’s justice remained in demand.  One item on the rolls particularly stands out and will be commented on here. It bears on both the administrative processes and rituals of Henry’s kingship. It also shows how difficult it can be to capture the sense of an entry when translating it from Latin into English.

The entry is no.105 in the translation (forty-four entries down in the image) and appears as follows.

105

6 Dec. Westminster. For the burgesses of Bridgnorth. On Tuesday next after St. Andrew the Apostle in the forty-second year, the burgesses of Bridgnorth paid 25 m. in the king’s Wardrobe to Peter de Rivallis, keeper of the same Wardrobe, which remained to be rendered of the fine of 50 m. which they made with him a short while ago for having liberties, and, on the aforesaid day, they paid into the same Wardrobe the 10 m. which they had promised for their good coming to the king when he had last been at Bridgnorth. Order to the sheriff of Shropshire to cause the same burgesses to be quit from the aforesaid 35 m.

This entry is not in the originalia roll.

The feast of Andrew the Apostle was 30 November and the following Tuesday in 1258, when the payment was made into the wardrobe, was 4 December. The 6 December date at the head of the translation is that of the writ to the sheriff of Shropshire referred to at the end of the entry. Throughout the fine rolls it is these writs to  officials which actually give the dates to the entries.   The fine of 50 marks, which the burgesses made with the king, is not recorded on the fine rolls. It may be that the full way it was now recorded  was to make up for that lack. The fine was evidently made on 21-22 September 1257 when Henry passed through Bridgnorth on his way home from his campaign in Wales.  A couple of days later, now at Worcester, Henry issued a letter patent granting the ‘bailiffs and good men’ of Bridgnorth the right to take ‘murage’ for another three years, ‘murage’ being a toll whose revenues were devoted to works on the walls of the town. Perhaps this was the concession for which the men offered the king 50 marks, or  perhaps there were other ‘liberties’, building on an earlier charter of 1227, of which there seem to be no record.

From the administrative point of view, what is interesting is the way the whole business of the Bridgnorth debt was controlled by the wardrobe and chancery, travelling with the king, rather than, as would have been normal,  by the exchequer at Westminster.  At the end of the entry there is the statement,  provided by the editors of the fine roll,  ‘This entry is not in the originalia roll’. This means that no information about the fine and its payment was  sent to the exchequer, the originalia roll being the copy of the fine  roll despatched to the exchequer so that it knew what money to collect. As a result there is no entry for this debt on the pipe roll, the exchequer’s annual audit of  the money it was demanding for the  crown.  Instead, the only record of the existence  of the debt (apart from that on the wardrobe receipt roll) was that given here on the fine roll.   It is likewise the chancery writ, not the exchequer, which tells the sheriff that the burgesses are quit. The handling of the Bridgnorth debt was typical of many other debts at this time. Large numbers of fines between 1255 and 1257 – for  example for town liberties (as here)  and exemption from knighthood – were treated in the same way. There was no ‘constitutional’ reason for Henry bypassing the exchequer. Under its treasurer, Philip Lovel,  it was never less than under his  control.  The point was that Henry just got his money in more quickly and simply if he had such fines paid in directly to his wardrobe. Nonetheless the reformers in 1258 thought the king’s finances would be run  more responsibly if all the revenues were routed through the exchequer, a subject discussed in Richard Cassidy’s fine of the month .

The great majority of the fines paid into the wardrobe were in gold, or were in silver earmarked to buy gold, and were thus part of Henry’s campaign to build up a gold treasure to fund his Sicilian army. Another reason for making this a wardrobe treasure was that Henry could see the gold accumulating  before his eyes.  What a joy it must have been. By the autumn of 1257, however, as we have seen in previous blogs, the enterprise was beginning  to falter. Henry was having to spend his gold treasure, minting his wonderful gold penny in order to do so. The fact that the Bridgnorth fine was not in gold, or in silver earmarked to buy gold, may reflect this situation.  Henry had not quite given up, however, and these two weeks see two more fines of gold (nos.97, 102).

During the king’s visit in September 1257, the burgesses of Bridgnorth did not merely offer 50 mark for liberties. They also promised 10 marks ‘for their good coming to the king’. The Latin here, as one can see from the image, is ‘pro bono adventuo suo’. When the final checked and corrected version of the translation is put up, this passage will be altered since the ‘good coming’ is that of the king, not the burgesses. They are offering 10 marks ‘for his good coming’.  But does ‘good coming’, or ‘good arrival’ or ‘good advent’ quite capture the sense of what is happening?  At the very least, it sounds odd in modern English, and is another reason why we hope to provide the project with glossary.   What, of course, the burgesses were  giving, or in this case, promising Henry was a welcome present, one which demonstrated their loyalty, affection, and joy at his arrival. The present was designed to make his arrival ‘good’ for him, and also (in the benefits which might flow) ‘good’ for them.  In some circumstances, for example when the king was returning from overseas, there might also, wrapped up in the ‘good’, be joy at the king’s ‘safe’ arrival, and perhaps there was an element of that here too, given the hazards of the recent campaign in Wales.  Normally, we have no record of such gifts, because they were paid cash down into the wardrobe. It is only here, because the burgesses had exhausted (or so they must have said), their ready money in coming up with the initial 25 marks for their liberties, that we know about it. Such gifts, of course, in cash or precious  objects, were integral to Henry’s kingship, as they were to that of other kings. They were made, as here, by individual towns and, on a much grander and more organized scale, by the assembled great and good of the realm, on the king’s arrival back in his kingdom. They were also accompanied by other rituals, notably welcome processions of a town’s clergy and people. When the king rode up from Windsor to Westminster,  the custom was for the mayor and citizens of London to go out and meet him at Knightsbridge. They knew they were out of favour when he refused to meet them.

In such arrivals, the giving was not all one way. Quite the reverse. Henry himself might mark his coming by feeding paupers over and above his standard 100 a day, or 150 a day if the queen was with him, as she was at Bridgnorth.  He would also visit the religious establishments of the town and shower them with gifts.  At Bridgnorth, Henry  gave nine  ‘good oaks’ for work on the churches of the  Franciscan friars and  the hospital of Saint John, and another five good oaks to the canons of Bridgnorth chapel for the  repair of their chancel and stalls. His visit also brought other work to the town. On 21 September, probably the day of his arrival, he ordered  his chamber in the castle and that of the queen to be wainscoted, while the queen’s chamber was also to have  new windows and a fireplace.  On 25 September, having left Bridgnorth and arrived at Worcester, Henry ordered ten oaks to be sent to ‘the upstanding men of Bridgnorth’, as a ‘gift of the king’, to help with repairing the town gates. The visit, therefore,  had been a success. Henry’s ‘good oaks’, he doubtless hoped, would  be a perpetual memory to his piety and generosity in Bridgnorth and his concern for the security of this royal town.

The kind of ‘good arrival’, we glimpse here at Bridgnorth, must have been repeated thousands of times over during Henry’s reign. Such reciprocal rituals could  bind king and realm together.  But it did not always work like that.  Accounts in chroniclers make very plain that donors sometimes resented having to give such presents, just as the king resented it if he deemed the presents inadequate. The ritual could set apart as well as bring together. Were the men of Bridgnorth themselves disappointed that they had to pay for their ‘liberties’, especially if these were simply for the right to levy ‘murage’,  which they might have expected anyway, given  the threat from Llywelyn.  Did they also look askance at what they saw of Henry’ court?  The keeper of the wardrobe to whom they gave their money, both at Bridgnorth and Westminster, was Peter des Rivallis, one of Henry’s most notorious Poitevin servants, who was to be dismissed by the reformers in 1258.

King Henry spent all this week at Guildford castle. There was no great press of business and he  had time to plan  extensive improvements  to what had become one of his favourite residences.  On 25 November he ordered the sheriff of Surrey to carry out a whole series of works, works which, as he said,  he  had explained in more detail to ‘Master John the mason’. The John here was of Beverley who was also the master mason at Westminster abbey. We can imagine the two men walking over the castle together and discussing what needed to be done.

The works commissioned were as follows:

A door and a fireplace.

A saucer and a larder under one roof

A building to store brushwood.

The paving of the chapels and chambers of king and queen.

A stable between the hall and kitchen.

The blocking of the outer and inner doors of the chamber under the gallery and the making of a new door to enter it under the gallery from the wardrobe.

A small building for  warming the queen’s food.

A passage from the chamber of Edward, the king’s son, to the kitchens and another from the chaplains’ chamber to the kitchens.

Repair of the almonry.

One notes, of course, Henry’s concern for Queen Eleanor and Edward and his son and heir.

In terms of fine roll business, one item this week (no.80 in the translation) shows Henry carefully establishing the status of an heiress’s inheritance so that (although this is not stated explicitly) he  could observe the stipulations of Magna Carta. The Charter had laid down that  the ‘relief’  (that is inheritance tax) for anyone entering a barony should be £100 whereas that for a knight’s fee should only be £5.  On 21 November Henry took the homage of Thomas of Aldham. Thomas had married an heiress, Isabella, but the nature of her inheritance was unclear. Henry, therefore, ordered the exchequer to inquire, by examining its rolls, whether the inheritance  was held by barony or by knight service.  The exchequer was then to levy a relief accordingly.

Richard Cassidy writes:

The names of Thomas of Aldham and Isabella should have rung a bell with the Chancery clerks. Only a few years before, they had featured in the fine rolls and the close rolls: Isabella’s first husband was Ralph de Haya, who died in 1254; early in 1255, Isabella had married Thomas without licence, despite having taken an oath not to marry without the king’s consent, and the lands of both Isabella and Thomas were taken into the king’s hand (Close Rolls 1254-56, 40). In April 1255, Isabella fined 200 marks for licence to marry whomever she chose. The fine was assigned to Geoffrey de Lusignan, and when Isabella paid the first instalment, the sheriffs of Sussex, Lincolnshire, Somerset and Kent were ordered to restore Thomas and Isabella’s lands. Thomas and Isabella had paid the full fine by January 1256 (CFR 1254-55, no. 332; Close Rolls 1254-56, 67-8, 263).

The clerks could also have checked the inquisitions post mortem. The query in 1257 concerned lands which Isabella had inherited from her sister Margery, who had been married to William of Etchingham. William had died in 1253, and the inquisition then recorded that William held half the manor of Chiselborough, near Yeovil. He held this half as part of Margery’s inheritance, and it was held of the king in chief by barony. The other half of the manor was held by Ralph de Haya, by reason of his wife, Isabella (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, I, no. 287). So the inquisition showed that the sisters shared a manor held as a barony. After Margery’s death Isabella was to hold the whole manor (among many other properties).

Margery’s executors, Robert le Poher and Osbert Huse, were given administration of her estate, and undertook to pay her debts to the king (E 368/33 m. 5d). The fine roll records that the sheriff and escheator of Somerset were ordered to give Thomas and Isabella full seisin of Margery’s lands. They seem to have exceeded their orders, by ejecting Robert le Poher from land in Chiselborough with which Margery had enfeoffed him (Close Rolls 1256-59, 213-4).

In the long run, Thomas and Isabella’s status as holders of a barony must have become plain. When Thomas died in 1275, the inquisition noted that he had held Chiselborough through Isabella, as her inheritance, and that she now held it of the king in chief by barony (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, II, no. 193).

King Henry spent the first part of this week at Windsor, and then moved to Guildford before returning to Westminster at the end of the month.   In this week,  there is an entry on the fine rolls which foreshadows the terrible famine which was to sweep England in the summer of 1258.  By November, the failure of the 1257 harvest had long been clear. Grain prices were already more than double their normal level, and everyone knew that worse was to come.   The three serjeants in the garrison of  Windsor castle evidently complained to the king about the difficulties this was causing  them, all the more so because at this time a block had been placed on their wages.  This emerges in the concession the king made to them on Thursday 15 November after he arrived at  Guildford (no.60 in the translation and three from the bottom).

The concession was made on account of the ‘caritudo’ of the current year,  ‘caritudo’ here meaning  ‘dearth’, and hence ‘dearness’ in the sense of  high prices.  Because of this,  Henry said he would allow the serjeants a delay till the following Michalemas (or longer if he thought it expedient) in repaying a debt which they owed the exchequer. The debt was for 150s owed for a prest, that is a loan, made to the serjeants in advance of their wages when the king was in Gascony in 1253-1254.  The exchequer was also now to pay them the arrears of their wages which had been withheld because they had not paid the debt.  Each of the serjeants received a wage of 6d a day, where 1.5 pennies a day was the pay at this time of a labourer working on Westminster abbey.  Provided they could unlock their wages, the serjeants  would probably be alright in the famine.  Many people were much less well off.  By the spring of 1258, thousands who had flocked to London in search of food were dying of starvation.  In the counties the same situation prevailed. Indeed, so many were dying that the government allowed bodies to be buried without view of the coroners. The great famine provided the context for the political revolution of 1258.

The fine roll entry for Peter de Maulay’s 60m. fine includes a marginal note that he had paid the first half into the Wardrobe. This payment is also noted in the 1258 pipe roll. This shows that Maulay accounted for a fine of 60m. of silver , for having the King’s grace for the contempt of neither coming nor sending his service for the King’s expedition to Wales, and had paid 30m. to Peter de Rivallis, the keeper of the Wardrobe (E 372/102 rot. 20d). This first instalment was due on 5 January 1258; the remainder at Easter 1258. Maulay’s failure to carry out his duty in Wales may have been compounded by the fact that, just a few months before the fine was made, in July 1257, he had been given permission to let the manor of Doncaster at farm for five years, specifically in order to do the service due to the King for the expedition to Wales (CPR 1247-58, 572).

The remaining 30m., or £20, was actually paid, but fell behind the schedule set out in the fine roll. That was not unusual; more significantly, the payments were made, not to the Wardrobe, but to the Treasury. The receipt rolls show that Maulay paid £10 on 30 October 1259, and £10 on 14 May 1260, ‘because he did not send his service to Wales’ (E 401/41 m. 4 and E 401/42 m. 6). The first of these payments was made in time to be recorded in the 1259 pipe roll (E 372/103 rot. 17). These payments were made after the baronial seizure of power in 1258, and thus after the reforms intended to establish tighter controls over royal finances, by directing payments to the Treasury rather than allowing Wardrobe autonomy.

The fine roll also mentions Maulay’s liability for scutage, the payment of £2 per knight’s fee for the Welsh expedition. This too appears in the 1258 pipe roll, which shows that Maulay was liable for £63 scutage for the 31½ fees of the Fossard barony, and that he had paid £21 (E 372/102 rot. 20). He paid a further £10 on 30 October 1259 (E 401/41 m. 4, E 372/103 rot. 17d). The threat in the fine roll of having his lands confiscated no doubt helped to concentrate his mind on paying his debts.

But Maulay’s troubles were not over, for the Exchequer began to pursue some old debts contracted by his father, one of King John’s ‘evil counsellors’, who had died in 1241. The 1261 pipe roll notes that Maulay owed 10m. for a prest from the Wardrobe, made by Brother Geoffrey, the keeper of the Wardrobe, in 1236-37. That prest is indeed recorded in the 1237 accounts, where a note has been added that Maulay answered for the debt in 1261 (E 372/105 rot. 2; E 372/81 rot. 13d). The 1262 pipe roll revived another 10m. prest, this one made by Brother Geoffrey in 1238/39. After more than 20 years’ neglect, this appears among the new debts incurred in 1262, and was still being pursued in the 1264 roll (E 372/106 rot. 2; E 372/108 rot. 1; original debt in Wardrobe account, E 372/83 rot. 7). What must have made this pursuit still more galling for Maulay was that his father had actually been pardoned the first of these debts, back in April 1238 (Close Rolls 1237-42, 44).

RJC/11.11.12