Jersey, Guernsey and English Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction under Henry VII

Abstract

Papal bulls transferring jurisdiction over the Channel Islands from the bishopric of Coutances (Normandy) first to the diocese of Salisbury and then to Winchester have an important place in the historiography of the allegedly centripetal forces of royal and ecclesiastical authority under Henry VII. This article corrects the chronology, and questions the disruptive impact of international tensions and the role of English bishops’ or governors’ ambitions. Instead, it points to the influence of Breton clergy. Further, that Henry abandoned the initiative for a financial contribution from the islanders sheds light on his policy towards his rights over the Church and beyond.

The transfer of the Channel Islands from their traditional place in the diocese of Coutances first to be under the authority of the diocese of Salisbury in 1496 and then of Winchester in 1500 has attained a position of some significance in the jurisdictional histories of the Tudor Church. The islands being the only remaining portion of the duchy of Normandy still under the control of the English king after John's loss of continental Normandy in 1204, a continuing obedience to a French diocese appears to modern eyes to be a weak point in what is assumed to be the increasingly assertive alignment of the English king's territorial holdings with a consistent set of English legal, administrative and political structures. Henry vii's initiative to place the islands under the authority of an English diocese and bishop addressed this apparent discrepancy.¹ The episode also allows us to explore the complexities in Henry vii's engagement with the Church's liberties and its spiritual welfare. Recent studies have suggested, for example, the king's concern about simony in the face of its extensive practice by him, and his regime's willingness to use devices such as praemunire to undermine ecclesiastical jurisdiction.² The episode also potentially represents an instance in which Henry was prepared to test his rights (both regarding the Church and in other fields) and then clarify, vary or even waive them in return for sufficiently large financial contributions.³ Further, this passage in the history of the Channel Islands allows for better understanding of the close engagement of Bretons, Islanders and the Islands’ governors at Henry's court, where they were prominent both around the king and around his son Arthur.⁴

Despite the apparently clear ambition behind the bulls of 1496 and 1500, the initiative itself is not well understood and has for some time been known to have been abortive in effect. The extensive consideration of the issue by G. E. Lee in the first decade of the twentieth century, which put the two papal bulls that provided for the changes into print, also demonstrated that in spite of their promulgation jurisdiction in practice remained with Coutances.⁵

The bull of 28 October 1496 was in favour of Salisbury. The grounds for the grant, requested by Henry vii, were stated as ‘propter dissensiones que inter Anglos et Gallos sepenumero vigent’; it referenced dangers in the administration of the diocese; and it stated that Salisbury was ‘uicine’ and therefore most convenient to have authority in the islands. The bull also referred to the precedent of Calais being moved in 1379 from the authority of the archdiocese of Tournai to that of Canterbury.⁶ The bull of 20 January 1500 used terms exactly similar to the grant of 1496, other than in stating that Winchester was ‘uicine’ and hence convenient for the islands.⁷ The lack of records at the Vatican (and, perhaps less surprisingly, at Coutances), has raised questions about the authenticity of the bulls.⁸

Both bulls therefore invite us first to consider the threat and disruption in the islands represented by Anglo-French conflict. Henry vii's motivation in both the bull of 1496 and that of 1500, and especially the latter transferring the islands to Winchester, is further evidenced in a letter of 25 October 1500, dated at Langley in Oxfordshire, at the time a royal hunting lodge at the heart of the forest of Wychwood which Henry visited briefly during a period spent mainly at Woodstock.⁹ The letter indicated that the move to Salisbury had been due to the ‘verray tendre mynde and right herty affection’ which the king bore to the ‘honour of this our Reame’, as well as to the ‘saufgard and suretie’ of the islands of Jersey and Guernsey.¹⁰ Henry's language therefore aligns closely to the statement of the bulls themselves, focused on the threat to the islands, presented as part of the king's realm. At the point of the grant of the bulls, the bishop of Coutances was Geoffroy Herbert, whose episcopate extended from 1478 to his death in 1510. An activist bishop with a strong record of work in his diocese, Herbert became president of the parlement of Normandy in 1499.¹¹ There was therefore the potential for assertive authority directed from Coutances to cause disruption, especially if the region was also affected by sustained military and naval activity. In Henry vii's reign, conflict with France was initially focused on the contest over the fate of the duchy of Brittany, and, given their position in the Bay of St Malo, the islands’ strategic location in this struggle was obvious. English forces intervened to support the independence of the duchy, for example a force of volunteers under Sir Edward Woodville in 1488, and then expeditions led by Robert Willoughby, Lord Willoughby de Broke, in 1489 and 1490. There were further raids in Brittany in 1491.¹² 1492 had seen a full-scale invasion of France and the siege of Boulogne, but Henry had accepted the peace treaty of Étaples and a generous payment from Charles viii.¹³ Although it has rightly been observed that Henry's attitude to this peace was ambiguous, and at times of French weakness he was tempted to consider further intervention, in practice the Treaty of Étaples established peace between England and France for the rest of Henry's reign, as when Charles was succeeded by his cousin (and brother-in-law) Louis xii in 1498 the treaty was renewed.¹⁴ Further confirmation of Henry's lack of serious aggressive intent towards the French is seen in the embassy of 1502, led, as it happened, by Matthew Baker, who knew very well the implications of war for the islands and especially Jersey from his time as governor there a decade earlier.¹⁵

The record of ecclesiastical business from the Channel Islands at Coutances itself suggests there may have been short-lived disruption during some of the most acute conflict of the late 1480s and early 1490s. For example, while there is evidence of business in the spring and summer of 1487, there is then no sign of Jersey or Guernsey activity until October 1489, and that is a relative isolated passage, with further business only in July and December 1490. But from the beginning of 1491 there is regular activity, as there is in the first half of 1492. There is then a further hiatus in the latter half of that year (as Henry vii was invading France) and through most of 1493, but in 1494 there was business in every month from February to August (except June), and again in October. 1495 saw islanders recorded in the diocesan registers in March and September, and then in 1496 there was again business from February through to September in every month but June.¹⁶ Therefore, by 1496 it was hard to argue that there was current or even recent experience of the negative impact of conflict on the islands. This was even clearer in 1500, since 1497 was again busy with Channel Island business at Coutances and the bishop's suffragan conducted ordinations in the islands themselves during the month of June, and 1498 saw activity in every month from March to October, and again in December. The months before the issue of the bull of 1500 also saw activity.¹⁷ The wider context of religious belief and practice in the islands fully supported this: for example, just months before the first bull, in his will of July 1495, Jean le Pipet, alias Jambart, of St Clement in Jersey left bequests to the religious houses of Coutances.¹⁸

It is also important to consider the possible interests of bishops of the two English dioceses and their administrations in the new role for Salisbury and Winchester. Here, the impact of local initiative appears most likely in the case of Winchester in 1500 and not in that of Salisbury in 1496, so it is unlikely to have initiated the move to transfer authority away from Coutances. In the case of Salisbury, there is no indication of any effect in the islands or at Salisbury itself in or after 1496. The diocesan bishop, since 1493, was John Blyth, who although he had been prominent in royal administration as Master of the Rolls appears to have given little attention to his diocese itself. It is, therefore, unlikely that the decision to move the islands to Salisbury from Coutances was due to him, in spite of the influence and royal favour he possessed, including the patronage of his uncle, Thomas Rotherham, archbishop of York from 1480 to 1500.¹⁹ This initiative of 1496 may have aligned with the shift of the islands’ economic connections towards Poole, on the diocese's Channel coast, as well as to Exeter and Dartmouth, which was seen in the second half of the fifteenth century. The subsequent initiative to transfer the islands to Winchester is, however, more easily explicable as reflecting the strong connections between the islands and that diocese's major port at Southampton (albeit perhaps with a sense of the recent decline of those links in favour of Poole), and the considerable wealth and power of the bishop, Thomas Langton, who was both very well experienced in international diplomacy, including a mission to the papacy for Richard iii, and distinctively focused on diocesan administration.²⁰ Before his arrival in Winchester in 1493, Langton had been bishop of Salisbury from 1485, and it could be that he observed the abortive move to his former diocese in the years from 1496. Langton was to be promoted further, to Canterbury, early in 1501. His replacement, Richard Fox, was translated to Winchester from Durham in August 1501.²¹ Although Fox cannot therefore be seen as directly interested in the grant of the bull of 1500, he was a powerful force in Henry's Church and politics, with the authority and influence to impact on a matter such as the new jurisdictional arrangements for the islands. And yet there is no sign of this being the case.

The islands’ governors were also a possible influence on the decision. In Jersey, Henry vii had appointed Matthew Baker and David Phillips to be joint governors in February 1486, as part of his response to the resistance of Governor Richard Harliston, who held out in Mont Orgueil Castle against the new English king's forces for some weeks. Phillips seems unlikely to have taken any direct interest in the role, but Baker, who had been a very close and trusted servant of Henry during his exile in Brittany and Normandy, became sole governor in 1488, and was resident, active and apparently much disliked in the island until 1494.²² He was succeeded in 1496 by Thomas Overay, a merchant and several times mayor of Southampton, who served as governor until 1500. Overay's appointment in December 1496 makes extremely unlikely any influence in the 1496 bull, although he was potentially a factor in that of 1500, given the island's connections to Southampton and therefore to Winchester. But any influence ended with his death in 11 December 1500.²³ His successor was John Lemprière of Rosel, a local man;²⁴ and this succession makes it very unlikely that Jersey's governor was a force in the decisions on jurisdiction of 1496 and 1500. In 1502, however, Hugh Vaughan was appointed governor of the island. Hugh had risen from humble origins in Wales through Henry's service to a position of some influence and a prestigious marriage to Anne Percy, daughter of Henry Percy, 3rd earl of Northumberland, and he was to remain as Jersey's governor until 1531. His active involvement in local affairs was highly controversial, especially given his feuding with leading local families such as the de Carterets of St Ouen.²⁵ Vaughan's influence on the papal grants could only be retrospective, but it will be considered later in this article.

In Guernsey, Henry had seen reasons to act very swiftly after Bosworth, replacing Richard iii's governor Thomas Rydley (who had succeeded Edward Brampton in January 1484). Edmund Weston and Thomas Saintmartin were sent urgently to Guernsey on 6 September 1485 and became joint governors in November.²⁶ Weston had first come to the islands as one of the leaders of the expedition which retook Jersey and Mont Orgueil Castle for Edward iv in 1468, and Saintmartin, from the prominent local family, had not many years before returned from an exile in France consequent on his role in surrendering the island to the French in 1461. Weston soon took on the sole governorship, in February 1486, and survived until 1509, at which point the governorship of the island passed to his son Richard.²⁷ Weston's position was therefore much more stable than his opposite numbers’ in Jersey, but it is none the less not immediately clear what from the governor's perspective might have motivated the change in ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

The detail of the grant and transmission of the papal bulls does, however, add perspective to ostensible motivations stated in the bulls and by the king in his letter, and what can be inferred from the interests of others involved. On 24 January 1500, Ralph Leonardi, a Dominican friar, received a royal grant of the priory of Lihou, which was described as lying in Guernsey (‘infra Insulam nostrum de Guernesey’), but with no indication of a diocese. Leonardi evidently had concerns about the effectiveness of this grant.²⁸ It may not be a coincidence that it was made just four days after the bull of 20 January 1500 was issued. The first indication of a practical implication of the change of jurisdiction to Winchester came a few months later, on 17 November 1500, when John Brebanh (also spelt Brehanh, and known in other sources as Brehault) received papal command for commendation to the priory of l'Islet, which the papal instruction noted as formerly in Coutances and now Winchester diocese. Brehanh/Brehault was a Cistercian monk of the abbey of Notre-Dame de Boquen in the diocese of St-Brieuc (situated not far from St-Brieuc itself and Lamballe). It was there indicated that Brehanh/Brehault had already had possession for two years or thereabouts.²⁹ In fact, he had first received the priory by royal grant on 1 February 1496.³⁰ Then, a little later, Richard le Hagueys was presented to the Jersey parish of St Brelade, the grant by the crown being dated 2 January 1501, specifying Winchester diocese, and this being recorded (as the first islands transaction there) in the Winchester registers against the date 9 January 1501.³¹ And on 7 May 1502, more than two years after his initial royal grant, Ralph Leonardi received papal confirmation of the priory of Lihou, now stated specifically to be in Winchester diocese, and indicating that he feared earlier provision via Mont-Saint-Michel would not hold good.³²

Further light can be shed on these transactions thanks to the record of the king's financial transactions for 1500: ‘Me[moran]^d[um] that the king[es] g[ra]ce hath deliu[er]ed the bull for the vnyon of Jersey & Garnesay to the bushoprich of Winch[este]r vnto a freer of Brutayn which is p[ri]our in Garnesay for to be deliu[er]ed to the bushop of Winch[este]r forto be executed &c[etera] deliu[er]ed at Wodestok this xxviij^ti day of Octob[e]r Anno xv^mo [recte xvj^mo].’³³ This aligns with the king's letter of 25 October, dated at nearby Langley, accompanying the bull itself. It therefore appears that the man who carried the bull and letter for the king was a Breton friar who was a prior in Guernsey. The priories of the islands were no longer conventual in the full sense, but they were important local centres for the administration of the rights and property of Norman and other French monasteries.³⁴ Amongst the most important in Jersey was St Helier (or l'Islet)³⁵ and in Guernsey were those of Vale and of Lihou,³⁶ where although documentary evidence from the late fifteenth century is thinner than in earlier centuries, in the latter case at least archaeological evidence suggests a degree of activity and prosperity.³⁷ The influence of Bretons in the islands’ churches was strong in this period. In Jersey, in January 1486, Henry vii had granted the priory of St Helier to Michel Diacony, a Norman who had been with Henry at Bosworth Field and went on to be Henry's confessor and then bishop of St Asaph.³⁸ After Diacony's promotion to St Asaph, the priory was held by the Breton John Brehanh/Brehault. In spite of a challenge from a man who claimed to be an islander, John Vasse, Brehanh/Brehault continued to hold the priory until he eventually resigned and was succeeded in 1517 by John Carvanell, a royal chaplain first to Margaret, Henry viii's sister and queen of Scotland, and then to Henry himself.³⁹ Meanwhile, Pierre le Pennec, another Breton, was appointed dean of Jersey in September 1495; he already had a record of involvement in Breton politics, notably the so-called Breton Plot of 1492 which was intended to undermine the French position in the duchy.⁴⁰

Although we cannot identify for certain the Breton friar indicated by the record of Henry's payments, the association with a Guernsey priory suggests it may have been Ralph Leonardi, given the importance of the Lihou priory for Mont-Saint-Michel.⁴¹ While this remains speculative, the evidence suggests that the activists in the transactions with the papacy are likely to have been men like Leonardi and Brehanh/Brehault, from a Breton background but seeing an advantage to their own position in the islands in establishing a connection to English bishoprics and breaking a connection with a Norman/French one during years in which the independent duchy of Brittany was under serious challenge.

Further light on the transactions of 1496 and 1500, and particularly on their very limited consequences, is shed by an entry in the king's book of payments for 1503. Thanks to Lee's work, it has for some time been known that the papal bulls were of limited effect. Le Hagueys, in spite of his presentation under the authority of Winchester, also took the precaution of having the transaction recorded at Coutances, on 20 January 1501.⁴² The Coutances registers continued to record transactions relating to Channel Islands benefices until the end of Henry viii's reign; meanwhile, in Winchester, there is no further record of an island transaction for several decades. It is therefore significant that on or around 20 April 1503, it was noted that the inhabitants of Jersey owed the king £50 for the right to be subject to the diocese and bishop of Coutances, and that £50 had already been paid by Hugh Vaughan: ‘The Inhabitantes of Jersay owe L li to be vndre the Duches of the B[ushop] of Quotance ou[er] L li payd by Hugh Vaghan L li {in margin: ad ma[nus] R[egis] in corum p[er] manus Hugon[is] Vaugh[a]m}.’⁴³

By early in 1503, therefore, it appears that Jersey's community paid a significant sum to the king to return to the obedience of the bishop of Coutances. The involvement in the transaction of Hugh Vaughan, governor of the island since 1502, suggests strongly that he was supportive of the move, if not its initiator. Vaughan's likely role reminds us of the unusually close relationships between the islands’ governors and the king himself during Henry's reign. Unlike in previous reigns, the men who represented the crown in the islands – and the islands to the crown – were both relatively humble in background and personally closely connected to Henry. By comparison, the governors under Edward iv (notably Richard Harliston) and Henry vi (such as John Nanfan) were less closely involved at court.⁴⁴ One context for this appears to be Henry vii's unusual preference for Normans and Bretons at his court, reflecting his extended time in Brittany in the decade and more before his successful invasion in 1485. This included the servants of his eldest son Arthur, such as the Islanders Thomas de St Martin and Edward de Carteret, and the (very well rewarded) dean of his chapel, John Neele.⁴⁵ It has been speculated that this preference had practical foundations, for example in Henry's likely confidence with the French language as spoken in the regions of his exile and the ongoing implications of his activity there, even to the extent of the rumoured status of the prominent Roland de Veleville as an illegitimate son by a Breton mistress.⁴⁶ What is worthy of particular note, however, is that in this instance the involvement of one of Henry's ‘new men’ was associated not with a challenge to existing patterns of rights for the king's benefit, as is undoubtedly the case elsewhere,⁴⁷ but the reassertion of traditional privileges.

Henry's somewhat mercenary character has often attracted comment,⁴⁸ but this transaction sheds important light on his interest in jurisdictional changes in the Church. It provides a very distinctive example of the king's willingness to test his rights and extend them in ways his predecessors chose not to, but then effectively to waive them almost completely, in this case into the hands of a French prelate over whom he was unlikely to exert any control or influence, in exchange for money. The bulls and then Henry's withdrawal from this issue highlight too that Henry's ambitions to exert control over the Church (and those of his close associates) were complex and often equivocal. Whatever Henry's ostensible concern for the security of the Channel Islands and the honour of his realm, he was in the end content to return the islands to the control of the bishop of Coutances in return for a relatively small sum.