King Henry spent all this week at Merton priory.  It was a week in which he made a momentous decision, namely to continue with the Sicilian affair. We have seen that a couple of weeks earlier, Henry had been entertaining serious doubts about whether it should proceed, not surprisingly given the opposition in parliament. Now, however, on 10 May, he wrote to the pope saying that he had made effective arrangements for sending out to him ‘a noble and vigorous captain’ and a messenger equipped with a great sum of money. He had done this in the presence of the archbishop of  Messina, who was now returning to Rome, and would be able to tell the pope all about it.   The intention presumably was for the captain to head an army composed of mercenaries hired by the  money.  Yet  of the ‘effective’ arrangements,  there is no sign.   Perhaps Henry was buoyed up  be hearing  that Richard of Cornwall  had arrived safely in Germany.  He gave a robe to the messenger who brought the news on 9 May. Perhaps he was also thinking of the £52,000 offered by an ecclesiastical council, which had  met in London in early May, on condition that the pope ended all future Sicilian taxation.   But this was money controlled by the pope not the king.  It was not using these resources that Henry was supposed to sustain  the  captain and the army  which  was to conquer Sicily.  Henry was not uncounselled at this time.  With him at Merton on 12 May were Simon de Montfort, Richard de Clare earl of Glouceser, Peter of Savoy, William de Valence and John Mansel. Whether they all agreed with the decision we may doubt. Montfort was in any case  preoccupied with his own affairs and on 13 May extracted £200 from the king, this to be followed by another £500 a week later.  One cannot help thinking that,  forced to make up  his mind by the departure of the archbishop of Messina, Henry had taken a decision as impulsive as it was irrational.  The dangers of proceeding were underlined on 10 May itself, for it was on this very day that Henry was giving support to  captain who really did exist. This was John de Grey appointed by the Lord Edward to head an army against  Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in Wales.

The fine rolls in this week continue to underline the unpopularity of Henry’s drive to force men to take up knighthood.  Although he was in Holy Orders,  Baldwin de Kalna still had to offer the king half a mark of gold (which he paid later into the wardrobe) in order to avoid the honour.  The rolls also show, however, how the king could help those of small account.  On 12 May, Robert de Haya, who owed the king 6s 8d for writ, was allowed to pay the debt of at 40d a year ‘on account of his poverty’.

Next week, Henry returned to Westminster.        

For the membrane covering this week, click here.

Dr Rhoda Bucknill, whose doctoral thesis was about Wherwell abbey, writes as follows about the fine, mentioned in last week’s blog, of the prioress and nuns of Wherwell to have custody of their abbey during the vacancy caused by the death or resignation of their Abbess Euphemia.  

Euphemia  died on 26 April 1257. The fine  is undated but occurs between entries belonging  to  27 and 29 April.  Since the fine was clearly made while Euphemia was thought to be still alive, the nuns presumably set off shorly before 26 April, which would fit with the time needed to travel the fifty or so miles from Wherwell to Merton priory.   Henry knew Wherwell well as it was conveniently placed to stop off at when visiting Winchester, just a few miles to the south, thus many gifts of wine and deer by the king are recorded over the forty-four years in which Euphemia was abbess, probably in return for the hospitality he received.  He was well acquainted with the ambitious building projects that Euphemia had initiated in the abbey precinct and beyond, and contributed timber from Chute Forest to assist her. His last visit was in December 1256, just four months before her death.

For Henry III and Queen Eleanor, this was a week of tragedy. Around 3 May, their daughter Katherine died. She had been born in 1254 and was, so Matthew Paris tells us, ‘mute and incapable but very beautiful in face’. Henry was deeply attached to this his last child.  He had ordered a silver image of her to be put up on the shrine of Edward the Confessor at Westminster, when she was ill in 1256. A few days later he gave a present of  ‘a good robe’  to the queen’s  messenger  who arrived with the ‘good news’ of her recovery.  It is highly likely that Katherine died at Windsor, for there the queen had always been based with her children. If so, Henry was probably present since on or shortly before 29 April he had arrived at Windsor from Merton priory.  Curiously enough, he seems to have left immediately after Katherine’s demise for on 3 May he was at Chertsey and on 5 May back at Merton. He stayed there till 14 May, when he returned to Westminster both for Katherine’s burial in the Abbey, and the feast of Pentecost.  Whether the queen accompanied Henry to Merton is doubtful. According to Matthew Paris, she was utterly devastated by her daughter’s death, and wasted away in bed at Windsor, seemingly beyond the help of doctors.  Absence, however, did not weaken the bond between king and queen. When Henry himself fell ill towards the end of the month, worry over the queen and grief over his daughter were, according to Paris, contributory factors. When a decade later, Henry commissioned the splendid retable for the High Altar of Westminster abbey, one of the miracles depicted was Christ raising the daughter of Jairus from the dead.  Included in the scene, standing over his daughter, is Jairus himself, and behind Jairus, with her arms around him, is Jairus’s wife (the figure now largely lost). Is this how Henry and Eleanor stood grieving over Katherine? The scene on the Retable was deeply personal. Christ had not raised their daughter from the dead, but he could certainly raise her now into the life hereafter.

 For the retable, although not alas with a detailed shot of the miracle in question, click here.

After this tragedy, one scarcely has the heart to turn to fine rolls business, yet again this is an interesting week.   When he arrived at Windsor, Henry conceded easier terms on which the master and brethren of the hospital of Dover could repay their debts.  He did this ‘moved by charity’ and to sustain their work. Was this pious act a way of seeking God’s favour in Katherine’s illness?  Henry also took steps to see the queen got her financial cut from the money offered him in fines. The rolls continue to reveal the consequences of the campaign to get those with incomes of £15 a year and upwards either to take up knighthood, or, which was more the aim, to make fines in gold to be exempted from doing so.  In this week, the ex sheriff of Warwickshire-Leicestershire, William Mansel, had to make two fines of half a mark of gold because inquiries, paid for by the victims, had shown he  had wrongly returned two men as liable for knighthood,  when their incomes from land were actually  worth  only £5 and £7 10s. One cannot help feeling the sheriffs were being damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. On the one hand, they were being punished for carrying out the measure too rigorously and on the other for not doing it rigorously enough!

For the image of the membrane covering this week, click here. For Henry back at Merton, read next week’s blog.

King Henry spent all this week at Merton priory, which was both an honour and a burden for the monks.  The fine rolls  have a fascinating variety of business. The king  issued twelve writs to initiate or further common law legal actions.   He also accepted  six fines of gold, and another of 50 marks of silver, which he earmarked for the purchase of gold. The silver was offered by the prioress and nuns of Wherwell abbey in Hampshire for custody of their abbey during the vacancy which would be caused by the imminent resignation of their abbess Euphemia.  Amongst the fines of gold, were two, of  one mark of gold apiece, from Gerard de Evinton and Henry of Pembridge to secure their appointments  as respectively sheriffs of Surrey/Sussex and Hereford.  The amounts involved were hardly large (a mark of gold was the equivalent of ten marks of silver) and reflect how little financial gain could be made from the office of sheriff now that the king was taking so large a slice of the profits for himself.  Two fines of gold were from Lincolnshire men seeking inquiries into the value of their lands. This was because they maintained they were being forced by the sheriff to take up knighthood as having an income of £15 a year whereas in fact, so they said, their income was less. Next week we shall see the results of such inquiries.  The whole policy  of enforcing knighthood in this way was tremendously unpopular.  Designed as it was to help fund the army Henry III was to supposed to send to conquer Sicily, it meant gentry lords throughout the country suffered from the madness of this policy.  In fact, after his failure to secure funds for Sicily at the recent parliament, Henry was at last beginning to have doubts about the enterprise, not before time.  On 24 April from Merton, ‘because he is not sure whether the business of Sicily is to proceed or not’, he ordered Master Rostand, who was collecting the Sicilian taxation from the church, not to make any further payments to anyone on pain of losing all he possessed in the realm. What this meant was that Rostand was no longer to pass the proceeds of the tax to the numerous Italian merchants, who had loaned money to Henry and the papacy,  or not until, as Henry said,  it was clear the business could proceed ‘with some effect’. Since the tax had been authorised by the papacy, Henry hardly had the authority to issue an order of this kind, and its effects are unfair. The Sicilian farce still had a long way to run. Next week Henry moved to Windsor castle.

The Wherwell fine is seventeen from the top on the membrane covering this week.

Members of the project team – David Carpenter and Louise Wilkinson – gave lectures at a one-day conference to commemorate the Battle of Lewes on Saturday 14 April 2012. The conference, which was sponsored by the Heritage Lottery Fund and hosted by Baroness Andrews, chair of English Heritage, and the Sussex Archaeological Society at the Lewes Assembly Rooms, attracted 300 delegates. Other speakers included Dr Adrian Jobson, Dr John Maddicott, Dr Huw Ridgeway, Dr Andrew Spencer and Dr Tim Sutherland.

During this week, Henry III left Westminster to spend some time at Merton priory in Surrey. From there he was to move on to Windsor, before returning to Merton,  arriving back at Westminster in the middle of May. These kind of trips out and around the capital, taking in Windsor, and either  Merton  to the south, or St Albans to the north, were characteristic of Henry’s itinerary.  Westminster, with its palace, patron saint and abbey, was his favourite residence, quite apart from being, or perhaps in spite of being, the seat of government.  But Henry also delighted in Windsor. He had made it  into a luxurious palace where his queen and children were based. A visit to Windsor fitted well with a stay at Merton or St Albans where Henry could be sustained both by the prayers of the monks and their food and drink.  How one wishes, there was a Merton chronicle to match the picture  of Henry’s visits to St Albans given by Matthew Paris.  At least the witness lists to royal charters show who was with Henry at Merton, and they included both his brother in law, Simon de Montfort, and his half brother, William de Valence.

The week has a fascinating variety of material on the fine rolls.  On 18 April at Merton, the twenty-four jurors of Romney marsh (the men elected to keep the marsh) fined in one mark of gold for having the judge, Henry of Bath, hear and determine the disputes between them and the men of the marsh about the repair of the marsh’s embankments and drains. (No. 554 in the calendar).   As Hasted puts it in his History of Kent, this led to  ‘the ordinances of Henry de Bathe, from which laws the whole realm of England take directions in relation to the sewers’:  ’Romney Marsh’, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent: Volume 8 (1799), pp. 465-473. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=63514&strquery=jurors  Date accessed: 15 April 2012.

The king’s financial needs led to further measures for the selling of his woods in order to raise 3000 to 4000 marks. The treasurer of the exchequer, Philip Lovel, was too busy to attend to this, and so Adam de Grenville was appointed in his place. (No.565).

The next entries (nos.566-7), dated to 20 April at Merton, concerned the appointment of the  Yorkshire magnate, John de Eyville, as chief justice of the royal forest north of the Trent, which meant the northern forests were under his control.  John fined in two marks of gold for the office and agreed to pay 10 marks more a year for it than his predecessor,  terms which hardly seem extortionate.  John was to be a leading rebel in the civil war, but clearly he had not been excluded from office and favour beforehand.

Finally, to return to lampreys. In entry no.557, the exchequer was ordered to allow the king’s bailiffs of Gloucester £25 10d which they had spent buying  and transporting lampreys and other things for the king and queen during Lent.  This entry was cancelled, the reason (not stated) being that it should  have been placed on the liberate rolls. There more detail was given. The writ to the exchequer was issued on 19 April from Merton. 191 lampreys and 6 shad had been sent to the king and 55 lampreys and 2 shad  to the queen. Taking no account of the shad, this suggests a lamprey cost around 2 shillings or 24 pence. Given that a penny was enough to supply a pauper with food for one day, lampreys were evidently  expensive fish.

The cancelled entry about lampreys is seventeen from the bottom on the membrane covering this week; that about Romney marsh twenty from the bottom.

It is with great sorrow that we announce the recent death, on Palm Sunday 1 April 2012, at the age of 54, of our former colleague Aidan Hyland Lawes.  He never fully recovered from a dangerous operation undergone at Harefield Hospital on 25 January.  Aidan was for several years a valuable and valued member of the Fine Rolls project team as a representative of The National Archives.   He was a great advocate and supporter of the publication of historical records of all periods, and was in charge of publications at The National Archives for a number of years, before he had to take early retirement at the end of 2008 because of ill-health.  He attended the project events held in the Rolls Chapel building at the Chancery Lane building of the former Public Record Office, now the Maugham Library of King’s College, which features in his publication Chancery Lane, 1377-1977: ‘The Strong Box of the Empire’ (PRO Publications, 1996).  In the volume he printed the poem Goodbye Chancery Lane by a former colleague, Alan Jensen.  One verse reads: ‘The Rolls Chapel is empty too, But for the brooding tombs, Whose occupants keep a watchful eye, On the abandoned reading rooms’.  Aidan loved the building and its history, and was delighted that it eventually found such a suitable use as a King’s College library, overcoming the gloom occasioned by the departure of the records and staff in 1996 and encapsulated in Alan’s poem.  He will be sadly missed by all who knew him and shared his enthusiasms.

Aidan (centre), with David Crook and David Carpenter

King Henry III celebrated Sunday 8 April, Easter Sunday, at Westminster amidst feasting, religious ceremony and almsgiving.  The week before, on Maundy Thursday, he had distributed 272 pairs of shoes to the poor, and quite probably had washed their feet. Later accounts show that a great silver bowl was kept in the wardrobe for such a  ceremony.  Perhaps some of those benefitting from these royally administered ablutions were lepers. At any rate,  the king of France, Louis IX, commended Henry for washing the feet of lepers and kissing them. 

After the Easter ceremony, the king’s brother, Richard of Cornwall, left London for Yarmouth, where he was to take ship for Germany and his royal coronation. The archbishop of Cologne took a different route  and sailed home in a great galley he had brought up the Thames. One can imagine it moored opposite the Tower, where doubtless it impressed the Londoners. Richard had given the archbishop  500 marks and a mitre decorated with precious stones.  The archbishop gracefully declared (according to Matthew Paris) ‘he has mitred me, I will crown him’,  referring to his role in the German coronation.

This week eight individuals bought writs to initiate or further common law legal actions. There were five fines of gold, two for respite of knighthood.  This was a respectable level of business but it was not going to transform the king’s financial position and enable him to pursue  his Sicilian schemes. He had also just failed to secure taxation from parliament for the same purpose. This may be part of the background to this week’s ambitious scheme to put the king’s finances on an entirely new footing. On Monday, 9 April, the king ‘provided and ordained’ that henceforth the expenses of the king’s household were to be paid for ‘day by day’. To that end, the exchequer was to set aside 20,000 marks (£13,333) each year, 10,000 marks coming from the first monies reaching it at Easter, and 10,000 marks from the first monies at Michaelmas. The king issued this ordinance in the presence of Edward, his son and heir, his half brothers, Guy de Lusignan and William de Valence,  the queen’s uncle, Peter of Savoy, and the ministers John Mansel and Robert Walerand. The presence here of the king’s foreign relatives, and the absence of a single English magnate, confirms the isolation of the king which we saw at the parliament, an isolation enhanced by the departure for Germany of the long suffering and supportive, Richard of Cornwall. On the other hand,  the ordinance does show the foreign relatives involved in  a sensible attempt at  financial reform, which probably  responded to complaints made about the king’s government at the parliament. The first aim was to see that the king paid for his food, drink, clothes and everything else promptly instead of  running up debts to merchants, tradesmen and others.  The second aim, at least by implication, was that the wardrobe, the chief spending department travelling with the king, was essentially to be funded by the exchequer. Although not stated explicitly, it was  the wardrobe which was to receive the 20,000 marks and since this was the rough equivalent of its total annual expenditure at this time (clearly the king had been well informed on that), it would  no longer need in a disorderly way to seek revenue from other sources. The implication was that the bulk of the king’s revenue could be paid into the exchequer instead of being siphoned off to the wardrobe. This was precisely what the reformers demanded and attempted to achieve after the revolution of 1258.

In all this, the king had not forgotten Westminster abbey, for another £1000 was to be reserved every year for the work on its fabric. Would the scheme work? It clearly depended on the revenue reaching the exchequer and the king refraining from either diverting it before it got there, or ordering the exchequer to spend it on other things before the 20,000 marks had been raised.  To that end, the king strictly ordered the exchequer to make no payments until the money had been set aside, even though commanded to do so by his writs and his own verbal orders! If they disobeyed, they would be liable to pay back the money from their own goods. This type of attempt to get  officials to act as a barrier against his own weakness was characteristic of Henry III, and does not show him in a very kingly light.  Having said that, is it much different from the way modern politicians have sought to guard against their own weakness by making the Bank of England independent in the setting of interest rates? Would Henry’s scheme work this time? Read future blogs to find out!

The acclaimed TV historian Michael Wood met with David Carpenter on a trip to the National Archives earlier this year. Here they are pictured with some fine rolls.

Henry III spent all this week at Westminster, preparing to celebrate Easter at the Abbey and the palace. The end of the parliament, which had reached its climax the week before (see last week’s blog), is reflected in the dearth of fine rolls business. There were only four judicial writs purchased and three fines of gold made. None of the latter were from lords seeking exemptions from knighthood or jury service. We will have to see in future blogs whether this revenue stream picks up. The fine rolls, however, do illustrate various aspects of contemporary life, some of it jarring. Thus Frederick Orland, a citizen and merchant of Sienna, fined in 50 marks of silver for being let off prosecution by the king for the rape of Alice la Franceis of which he stood accused. In the fine above, the abbot of Coggeshall fined in 55 marks (earmarked for the purchase of gold) for a charter allowing him to enclose with a ditch and a hedge his heath and woodland in Tolleshunt Major, Tolleshunt Tregoz, Inworth, Childerditch and Little Warley. The ditch was to be a small one, and deer and fawns were to enter and exit the enclosed area without difficulty. The way in which Henry III brought country and continent together (not always harmoniously) is shown by the fact that this charter, which the abbot must have taken proudly home to Coggeshall and broadcast locally was witnessed by Henry’s two Poitevin half brothers, Guy de Lusignan and William de Valence, his wife’s uncle, Peter of Savoy, and his Savoyard steward, Imbert Pugeis, as well as by the earl of Gloucester and some English officials. Coggeshall itself is well worth a visit to see the brick remains of the monastery and its grange barn. The places where the abbot enclosed heath and woods are just to the south. This was a quiet week for Henry. Next week will be very different.
For Coggeshall and its grange barn see

http://www.visitessex.com/what-to-do/Colchester-Coggeshall-Grange-Barn/details/?dms=13&venue=0223377

The two fines mentioned above are nos.529 and 530 in the 1256-1257 calendar.
For them on the roll, see, 27, 28 down http://www.finerollshenry3.org.uk/content/fimages/C60_54/m06.html