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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
Dislike of foreigners is an important feature of thirteenth-century English history, and nowhere more so than in the delicate question of ecclesiastical appointments. Feelings frequently ran high and hostile demonstrations, in which both clergy and laity took part, were not uncommon. Among the more violent of these demonstrations were those led by Robert Tweng against foreign clergy in Yorkshire in 1231 and by Roger Clifford against the then bishop of Hereford and his so-called hangers-on in 1263. It is about the object of the latter demonstration that this article is concerned, in an attempt to re-evaluate this bishop's contribution to the English Church and to defend him against the onslaught of some previous critics.
1 page 303 note 1 See Powicke, F. M., The Thirteenth Century, 2nd ed., Oxford 1962, 45–6Google Scholar.
2 page 303 note 2 See Mugnier, F., Les Savoyards en Angleterre au treizieme siècle et Pierre d’Aigueblanche, Eveque d’Hereford, Chambéry 1890Google Scholar, for the only full discussion of Aquablanca and his protégés. Aquablanca belonged to a junior branch of the great Savoyard house of Briançon, whose chiefs were viscounts of the Tarentaise. He was born at Aquabella where he later founded the collegiate church of St. Catherine; he returned there at regular intervals between his arrival in England and his death at Hereford, thirty-two years later. He was popularly believed to have been buried at Aquabella, but was, in fact, buried at Hereford, as the recent excavations of his splendid tomb in the north transept of the cathedral have proved. Aquablanca’s first English benefice appears to have been the church of St. Michael on Wyre in the archdeaconry of Richmond, to which he was presented on 6 March 1238: see Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1232–1247, 211.
3 page 303 note 3 Hereford in 1240 and Durham in 1241. He was later a candidate for Lincoln in 1254 and Bordeaux in 1256. See Moorman, J. R. H., Church Life in England in the Thirteenth Century, Cambridge 1945, 167Google Scholar. For Henry III’s letter to the Hereford chapter, see Close Rolls, 1231–1242, 211, 222.
1 page 304 note 1 For Aquablanca’s administrative career, see Tout, T. F., Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England, Manchester 1920–33, i. 261–2Google Scholar.
2 page 304 note 2 Matthei Parisiensis Chronica Majora, ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls Series, 1872–84, v. 510.
3 page 304 note 3 E.g. Treharne, R. F., The Baronial Plan of Reform, 1258–1263, Manchester 1932Google Scholar.
4 page 304 note 4 C. E. Woodruff, The Will of Peter Aquablanca, Camden Society, 3rd Series, xxxvii (1926), 150–74
5 page 304 note 5 See Walker, D., ‘The Hereford Cathedral Charters’, National Library of Wales Journal, ix (1956), 401–12Google Scholar.
1 page 305 note 1 See Vaughan, R., Matthew Paris, Cambridge 1958, especially 131Google Scholar.
2 page 305 note 2 Chronica Majora, v. 510; cf. Moorman, op. cit, 167 n.5.
3 page 305 note 3 Ibid., v. 510.
4 page 305 note 4 Ibid., v. 622, 647, 679.
5 page 305 note 5 Ibid., v. 587.
6 page 305 note 6 E.g. Willis, B., A Survey of the Cathedrals, London 1742, ii. 514–16Google Scholar; Duncumb, J., Collections towards the History and Antiquities of the County of Hereford, Hereford 1804–12, i. 460Google Scholar; Havergal, F. T., Fasti Herefordenses, Edinburgh 1869, 16–17Google Scholar; Capes, W. W., Charters and Records of Hereford Cathedral, Hereford 1908, xix–xxiGoogle Scholar; Bannister, A. T., The Cathedral Church of Hereford, London 1924, 47–56Google Scholar.
7 page 305 note 7 E.g. J. R. H. Moorman, loc. cit., and (for a slightly modified view) Powicke, F. M., King Henry III and the Lord Edward, Oxford, 1947, i. 264, 265Google Scholar.
8 page 305 note 8 J. R. H. Moorman, loc. cit.
1 page 306 note 1 R. F. Treharne, op. cit., 60.
2 page 306 note 2 Ibid., 301–4.
1 page 307 note 1 Especially R. F. Treharne, op. cit., and T. F. Tout, op. cit.
2 page 307 note 2 C. E. Woodruff, op. cit., seems to be the only exception so far.
1 page 308 note 1 For the history of Holme Lacy see Colvin, H. M., ‘Holme Lacy: An Episcopal Manor and its Tenants in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, Medieval Studies presented to Rose Graham, ed. Ruffer, V. and Taylor, A. J., Oxford 1950, 15–40Google Scholar; Gibson, M., A View of the Ancient and Present State of the Churches of Door, Holme Lacy and Hempstead, London 1727, 119–20Google Scholar; Robinson, C. J., A History of the Mansions and Manors of Herefordshire, London 1873, 138–41Google Scholar. For the grant of 1256, see Registrum Thome de Cantilupo, ed. R. G. Griffiths and W. W. Capes, Canterbury and York Society 1907, 128.
2 page 308 note 2 For the history of the Bockleton advowson, see Victoria County History: Worcestershire, iv (1924)Google Scholar, ed. W. Page and J. W. Willis-Bund, 245–6. For the most accurate assessment of the treasurer’s income see Registrum Ricardi de Swinfield, ed. W. W. Capes, Canterbury and York Society 1909, 305; the individual endowments are listed in Valor Ecclesiasticus temp. Henrici VIII, auctoritate regis institutus, ed. J. Caley and J. Hunter, Record Commission, 1810–34, iii. 8, though some of these had been created after 1261.
3 page 308 note 3 Dugdale, W., Monasticon Anglicanum, London 1846, vi. 1216Google Scholar.
4 page 308 note 4 An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Herefordshire, Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, London 1931–4, i. 90.
5 page 308 note 5 Printed in Bradshaw, H. and Wordsworth, C., Statutes of Lincoln Cathedral, Cambridge 1892–7, ii. 36–89Google Scholar.
1 page 309 note 1 These included the customary assize of bread and beer paid to the chapter by the citizens, the use of the citizens’ ducking-stool and pillory by the chapter for the punishment of its own tenants, and the respective obligations of the chapter and the citizens in the maintenance of the city walls. The agreement of 1262 was broken from time to time, and had to be renewed in 1275, 1285 and 1316, but the essential conditions remained unchanged. See Registrum Cantilupo, 5, 91–3, and Registrum Swinfield, 510–12.
2 page 309 note 2 See Yates, W. N., ‘The Attempts to Establish a Dominican Priory at Hereford, 1246–1342’, Downside Review, lxxxvii (1969), 254–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 page 309 note 3 This church is referred to as Baysham in all the Hereford archives for this period; nowadays it is usually called Sellack.
4 page 309 note 4 The Hereford chapter successfully resisted episcopal visitation until the late seventeenth century; for local reaction to archbishop Pecham’s proposed visitation sede vacante in 1282, see Douie, D. L., Archbishop Pecham, Oxford 1952, 144Google Scholar.
5 page 309 note 5 All these churches were exempt from episcopal visitation except when the dean and chapter neglected to fulfil their obligations to visit them and correct faults therein. The decanal peculiar, from the administration of which even the chapter was excluded, survived intact until the end of the eighteenth century; it consisted of eighteen parishes in and near the city of Hereford in which the dean exercised all forms of jurisdiction normally reserved to the archdeacon, and maintained a court presided over by the subdean. Aquablanca claimed an automatic right of visitation in both the decanal peculiar and churches appropriated to the chapter.
1 page 310 note 1 Aquablanca wanted all the income from these mills to remain in the bishop’s hands, instead of part being automatically alienated to the chapter; this accounted for something like eight pounds in 1290–1, see ‘Hereford Cathedral Accounts’, Roll, nos. 26, 27.
2 page 310 note 2 The appointment of vicars in this way was in England a unique feature of the Hereford cathedral system, though it had some parallels in Northern France, e.g. Bayeux and Rouen. Elsewhere vicars were appointed by the canons for whom they deputised; see generally Edwards, K., The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. Manchester 1968, 252–303Google Scholar. Aquablanca claimed that unless vicars were appointed by the canons personally, they should be appointed by the bishop and not by the dean and chapter.
3 page 310 note 3 For the history of the Baysham case see ‘Hereford Cathedral Archives’, nos. 1406, 1408, 2281, 2282 and 2284; also W. W. ‘Capes, Charters and Records of Hereford Cathedral’, 93–103, although the transcription is unreliable in a number of places.
4 page 310 note 4 Canon Capes writes ‘a swarm of kinsmen and fellow-countrymen had followed (Aquablanca) to Hereford, and with his help were quartered in the dignities and benefices of the See’; Registrum Cantilupo, xxiii.
1 page 311 note 1 There may have been others, apart from the foreign dignitaries, but there is no evidence for Capes’s statement that ‘the chapter was well packed with Bishop Peter’s countrymen and partisans’: Registrum Cantilupo, xxvi. J-P. Chapuisat (‘Le Chapitre Savoyard de Hereford au XIIIe Siècle’, Sociétés Savantes de Savoie, Congrès de Moutiers, 1966, 43–51) identifies a total of 25 foreign canons at Hereford during the second half of the thirteenth century, six of whom do not appear until some time after the bishop’s death in 1268. In 1255, during the height of Aquablanca’s episcopate, only nine out of 28 prebendaries were known to have been Savoyards. Chapuisat notes ten Savoyard canons in 1275 but his figures will have to be adjusted; for instance, he includes John de Aquablanca and Peter de Langona, both of whom had by then been deprived, Martin de Gaye, who died in that year, and Humbert of Genoa, who never managed to secure possession of the Hereford prebend to which he aspired. I am most grateful to Miss P. E. Morgan, librarian at Hereford cathedral, for bringing to my attention an offprint of Chapuisat’s article, which I should otherwise have missed, but which, luckily, confirms my own independent estimate of the number of foreigners in the Hereford chapter at this time.
1 page 312 note 1 ‘Hereford Cathedral Archives’, no. 1408.
2 page 312 note 2 Calendar of Papal Letters, i. 293, 390.
1 page 313 note 1 Registrum Epistolarum Johannis Peckkam, ed. C. T. Martin, Rolls Series, 1882–6, iii. 1077.
2 page 313 note 2 Registrum Swinfield, 318–26.
3 page 313 note 3 This cannot, however, be proved; he may have been under pressure to do so, although again I think this is unlikely.
1 page 314 note 1 Registmm Cantilupo, 2, 30, 112–16, 118.
2 page 314 note 2 Ibid., 234.
3 page 314 note 3 Ibid., 249: ‘Arborem enim peregrinam vel non fructificantem non libenter in orto nostro, nisi inviti, sicut nee condecet, plantaremus’.
4 page 314 note 4 For Filby’s career, see Emden, A. B., Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, Oxford 1957–9, ii. 684Google Scholar. Filby was not without his enemies, for example archbishop Pecham and the anonymous writer of a letter in archbishop Giffard’s register, who asserts that Filby holds at least ten benefices, and is rumoured to hold thirty ‘without dispensation being unfit for them’: see Registrum Peckham, i. 279, 286, 310, 372; ii. 526–7, 535, 560, 603, and Register of Walter Giffard, ed. W. Brown, Surtees Society 1904, 10 n.1.
5 page 314 note 5 Richard de Swinfield had been Cantilupe’s chaplain before he succeeded him as bishop of Hereford, and was the prime mover of the successful campaign to canonise his predecessor.
1 page 315 note 1 Registrant Cantilupo, xxvi, 125–6, 160, 168, 245.
2 page 315 note 2 Statutes of Lincoln Cathedral, ii. 47: ‘Si oriatur discordia inter canonicum et canonicum, quod per simplicem querimoniam non conveniet unus alterum, nisi coram decano et capitulo; quibus justiciam non exhibentibus poterit per appellacionem ad superioris examen convolare’.
3 page 315 note 3 Registrum Swinfield, 70, 258–68; see also Roll of the Household Expenses of Richard de Swinfield, Bishop of Hereford, during part of the years 1289 and 1290, ed. J. Webb, Camden Society, 1854–5, i. clxxix–clxxxii.
4 page 315 note 4 A. T. Bannister, op. cit., 142.
5 page 315 note 5 According to Peter de Aquablanca’s will, dated the day before his death, his nephews Aymon and Emeric were respectively precentor and chancellor of Hereford. Yet, during the dispute with Godfrey Giffard over the church of Walford, between 1256 and 1258 (see below), the precentor of Hereford was one Emeric de Aquablanca, whom Bannister identifies with the chancellor of Hereford under John le Breton; however, since Emeric certainly held the chancellorship before his uncle’s death in 1268, he could not have been demoted by his successor. What Bannister did not realise was that bishop Peter’s brother was also called Emeric, and he was probably the precentor involved in the Walford dispute; but see also F. Mugnier, op. cit., 375 and Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1232–1247, 395, and ibid., 1258–1266, 332.
1 page 316 note 1 ‘Hereford Cathedral Archives’, nos. 1946–1970, 2917–2922. Thomas, lord of the manor and patron of Walford, had promised that the living should be appropriated to the precentorship when a suitable vacancy occurred, but had died soon afterwards leaving a minor, Richard, as his heir. When the living fell vacant, Richard’s guardian, William of Aston, presented Godfrey Giffard and not the precentor of Hereford, whom bishop Peter had already inducted. After an appeal to the Court of the Arches, and a somewhat acrimonious campaign against Giffard, William of Aston changed his mind and allowed the church with its dependent chapel of Ruarden to be appropriated to the precentorship, and to form in future the major endowment of that dignity.
2 page 316 note 2 Registrum Swinfield, 68, 457–8. John was chaplain to both William, cardinal of St. Pudentiana’s and Amadeus, count of Savoy, and seemed to prefer these chaplaincy duties to residing at Hereford.
3 page 316 note 3 Registrum Swinfield, 238, 244, 248. Ponicus was installed at Hereford by John de Ponte, without the knowledge of either the bishop or the dean and chapter. Having been seated in his stall in choir, he then entered the chapter house and (somewhat ironically) took the customary oath to keep the statutes of the cathedral. He then visited his prebendal estate, which was near the cathedral, and extracted the customary oaths of homage and fealty from his tenants. After a strong protest from all the wronged parties, Poncius submitted himself unreservedly to the bishop, surrendering his glove as a token of his humility. This voluntary action on his part was well rewarded by the bishop, who collated him to the prebend at the next vacancy in 1291.
4 page 316 note 4 See D. L. Douie, op. cit., 148–9.
5 page 316 note 5 See J. R. H. Moorman, op. cit., 9.
1 page 317 note 1 I am most grateful to the Revd. Professor Colin Morris who has read and commented upon a draft of this article; the remaining faults and the opinions expressed are my own.