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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 March 2016
This article demonstrates that from the mid- to late fourteenth century the English clergy pursued a sustained campaign to protect episcopal temporalities from royal seizure by asserting the right of bishops to be judged by their peers in parliament. The most important stage of this movement came in the parliament of January 1352 when the clergy made a case for episcopal exceptionalism in English law. The legal identity of bishops in England underwent a seismic shift and it was conceded that in certain cases a bishop should be judged in accordance with his temporalities rather than his spiritual office.
1 PROME, Oct. 1383, item 23.
2 Davies, R. G., ‘Richard ii and the Church in the years of “tyranny”’, Journal of Medieval History i (1975), 329–62Google Scholar, and ‘The episcopate and the political crisis in England of 1386–1388’, Speculum li (1976), 659–93Google Scholar; Dahmus, J. W., ‘Henry iv of England: an example of royal control of the Church in the fifteenth century’, Journal of Church & State xxiii (1981), 35–46 Google Scholar; R. M. Haines, ‘Conflict in government: archbishops versus kings, 1279–1348’, in J. G. Rowe (ed.), Aspects of late medieval government and society: essays presented to J. R. Lander, Toronto 1986, 213–45, and ‘The episcopate during the reign of Edward ii and the regency of Mortimer and Isabella’, this Journal lvi (2005), 657–709; Peter Heath, Church and realm, 1272–1461: conflict and collaboration in an age of crises, London 1988, passim; R. N. Swanson, Church and society in late medieval England, Oxford 1989, 89–139; R. G. Davies, ‘Richard ii and the Church’, in Anthony Goodman and James L. Gillespie (eds), Richard II: the art of kingship, Oxford 1999, 83–106; W. M. Ormrod, Edward III, Stroud 2005, 135–59. For the involvement of the episcopate in political crisis during the thirteenth century see Marion Gibbs and Jane Lang, Bishops and reform, 1215–1272: with special reference to the Lateran Council of 1215, London 1934, and Ambler, Sophie, ‘The Montfortian bishops and the justification of conciliar government in 1264’, Historical Research lxxxv (2012), 193–209 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 The most comprehensive coverage is provided in L. W. Vernon Harcourt, His grace the steward and trial of peers: a novel inquiry into a special branch of constitutional government, London 1907, 205–415. See also A. F. Pollard, The evolution of parliament, London 1938, 81–106, 299–315; B. C. Keeney, Judgment by peers, Cambridge, Ma 1949; Lovell, Colin Rhys, ‘The trial of peers in Great Britain’, American Historical Review lv (1949), 69–81 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; William Holdsworth, A history of English law, i, London 1966, 357–8, 385–90; and J. R. Maddicott, The origins of the English parliament, 924–1327, Oxford 2010, 117.
4 Holdsworth, A history of English law, 357–8; Lovell, ‘Trial of peers’, 72.
5 Harcourt, His grace the steward, 303; SR i. 171–4; CPR, 1313–1317, 607. See also Denton, J. H., ‘The making of the “Articuli cleri” of 1316’, EHR ci (1986), 564–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 G. Wrottesley, ‘The pleas of the forest, Staffordshire, temp. Henry iii and Edward i’, Collections for a history of Staffordshire, v, London 1884, 167; Harcourt, His grace the steward, 282–3.
7 For extended discussion of the crisis in 1341 see W. M. Ormrod, Edward III, London 2011, 229–46; R. M. Haines, Archbishop John Stratford: political revolutionary and champion of the liberties of the English Church, ca. 1275/80–1348, Leiden 1986, 278–327; Fryde, N. M., ‘Edward iii's removal of his ministers and judges, 1340–1’, BIHR xlii (1975), 149–61Google Scholar; Wilkinson, B., ‘The protest of the earls of Arundel and Surrey in the crisis of 1341’, EHR xlvi (1931), 177–193 Google Scholar; Dorothy Hughes, A study of social and constitutional tendencies in the early years of Edward III, London 1915, 120–52; and Lapsley, G. T., ‘Archbishop Stratford and the parliamentary crisis of 1341’, EHR xxx (1915), 6–18 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 SR i. 295–6.
9 Although see Keeney, Judgment by peers, 95.
10 Virginia Davis, William Wykeham: a life, London, 2007, 63–70. See also G. A. Holmes, The Good Parliament, Oxford 1975, 179; Gwilym Dodd, ‘The clerical chancellors of late medieval England’, in Martin Heale (ed.), The prelate in England and Europe, c. 1300–c. 1560, Woodbridge 2014, 17–49.
11 Aston, Margaret, ‘The impeachment of Bishop Despenser’, BIHR xxxviii (1965), 127–48Google Scholar.
12 Robert C. Palmer, English law in the age of the Black Death, Chapel Hill, NC 1993, 48–52. See also Thompson, A. Hamilton, ‘William Bateman, bishop of Norwich, 1344–1355’, Norfolk Archaeology xxv (1933), 123–4Google Scholar; W. M. Ormrod, The reign of Edward III, London 1990, 56, 221–2.
13 CPR, 1350–1354, 312–13.
14 John Aberth, Criminal churchmen in the age of Edward III: the case of Bishop Thomas de Lisle, University Park, Pa 1996, 117–42.
15 R. M. Haines, The Church and politics in fourteenth century England: the career of Adam Orleton, c. 1275–1345, Cambridge 1978, 140–5; Seymour Phillips, Edward II, London 2010, 452–3.
16 Grassi, J. L., ‘William Airmyn and the bishopric of Norwich’, EHR lxx (1955), 550–61Google Scholar.
17 Margaret Aston, Thomas Arundel: a study of church life in the reign of Richard II, Oxford 1967, 368–73.
18 Davies, R. G., ‘Alexander Neville, archbishop of York’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal xlvii (1975), 87–101 Google Scholar.
19 For the over-exploitation of episcopal estates see Matthew Phillips, ‘Church, crown and complaint: petitions from bishops to the English crown in the fourteenth century’, unpubl. PhD diss. Nottingham 2013, 143–4.
20 The Welsh bishops and the bishop of Carlisle held of the king in chief by free alms rather than by military service, and the bishop of Rochester held his lands of the archbishop of Canterbury: J. H. Denton, ‘The clergy and parliament in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’, in R. G. Davies and J. H. Denton (eds), The English parliament in the Middle Ages, Manchester, 1981, 90–1.
21 French Chronicle: Chroniques de London, ed. G. J. Aungier (Camden Society xxviii, 1844), 68.
22 PROME, Jan. 1352, item 66.
23 R. H. Helmholz, The ius commune in England: four studies, Oxford 2001, 189; L. C. Gabel, Benefit of clergy in England in the Later Middle Ages, Northampton, Ma 1929.
24 Anglia sacra, i, ed. H. Wharton, London 1691, 34.
25 Stratford succeeded in gaining the support of the commons at the assembly. See Phillips, ‘Church, crown and complaint’, 219–20.
26 PROME, Jan. 1352, item 66; TNA, KB 27/359, 25–25d. The bishop was convicted for refusing to act on a writ of quare non admisit. This was a rare measure: Gray, J. W., ‘The Ius praesentandi in England from the Constitutions of Clarendon to Bracton’, EHR lxvii (1952), 505 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and n. 3.
27 CPR, 1350–1354, 188–90.
28 For a comprehensive overview of the clerical gravamina in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries see Jones, W. R., ‘Bishops, politics, and the two laws: the gravamina of the English clergy, 1237–1399’, Speculum xli (1966), 209–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Gwilym Dodd, Justice and grace: private petitioning and the English parliament in the late Middle Ages, Oxford 2007, 243–54.
29 Jones, W. R., ‘Relations of the two jurisdictions: conflict and cooperation in England during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History vii (1970), 122 Google Scholar; Cheyette, F., ‘Kings, courts, cures, and sinecures: the Statute of Provisors and the common law’, Traditio xix (1963), 305 Google Scholar.
30 PROME, Jan. 1352, introduction.
31 Ibid. item 66.
32 Despite Stratford's appeal to the jurisdiction of parliament, no article of gravamina relating to trial by peers was raised in 1341: PROME, Apr. 1341, items 18–25; Phillips, ‘Church, crown and complaint’, 231–42.
33 PROME, Jan. 1352, item 60.
34 I would like to thank Margaret McGlynn for allowing me to read, in advance of publication, her article ‘From charter to common law: the rights and liberties of the pre-Reformation Church’, in Robin Griffith-Jones and Mark Hill (eds), Magna Carta, religion and rule of law, Cambridge 2015, 53–69. See also Common lawyers on the Church: readings from the pre-Reformation inns of court, ed. Margaret McGlynn (Selden Society cxxix, 2012).
35 Keeney, Judgment by peers, 95.
36 See n. 12 above.
37 J. G. Bellamy, The law of treason in England in the later Middle Ages, Cambridge 1970, 67–82; SR i. 319–20.
38 Anthony Musson and W. M. Ormrod, The evolution of English justice: law, politics and society in the fourteenth century, London 1999, 27.
39 PROME, June 1344, item 23.
40 Ibid. Feb. 1351, item 46; SR i. 316–18. For discussion of the statute see England, R. D., ‘The Statute of Provisors’, Studies in Medieval Culture iv (1974), 353–8Google Scholar; Cheyette, ‘Kings, courts, cures and sinecures’, 295–349; and Davies, C., ‘The Statute of Provisors of 1351’, History xxxviii (1953), 116–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
41 Ormrod, Edward III, 368.
42 PROME, Jan.1352, items 60, 68.
43 Chris Given-Wilson, The English nobility in the Late Middle Ages, London 1999, 65.
44 See Selected readings and commentaries on Magna Carta, 1400–1604, ed. J. H. Baker (Selden Society cxxxii, 2015).
45 SR i. 234.
46 Concilia Magna Britanniae et Hiberniae, ed. D. Wilkins, iii, London 1737, 24; PROME, 1352, introduction.
47 Aberth, Criminal churchmen, 117–42.
48 B. Wilkinson, ‘A letter of Edward iii to his chancellor and treasurer’, EHR xlii (1927), 250–1.
49 SR i. 294.
50 For discussion of the bishop's contemporary biography see Aberth, Criminal churchmen, p. xxiii.
51 Ibid. 136–9.
52 Davis, William Wykeham, 63–70.
53 PROME, Jan. 1377, item 85.
54 The St Albans chronicle I, 1376–1394: the Chronica maiora of Thomas Walsingham, ed. John Taylor, Wendy R. Childs and Leslie Watkiss, Oxford 2003, 61; The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1333–1381, ed. V. H. Galbraith, Manchester 1927, 96–8.
55 St Albans chronicle, 93; P. Partner, ‘William Wykeham and the historians’, in R. Custance (ed.), Winchester College, sixth-centenary essays, Oxford 1982, 10.
56 CCR, 1377–81, 36.
57 Nigel Saul, Richard II, London 1999, 27.
58 Aston, ‘The impeachment of Bishop Despenser’, 127–48.
59 Ibid. 130.
60 PROME, Oct. 1383, item 22.
61 Aston, Thomas Arundel, 368–73.
62 PROME, Sept. 1397, item 16.
63 The chronicle of Adam Usk, ed. and trans. C. Given-Wilson, Oxford 1997, 25.
64 For the success of the Commons in this area see Dodd, Justice and grace, 133–55.
65 P. A. Bromhead, The House of Lords and contemporary politics, 1911–1957, London 1958, 256–7; A. K. R. Kiralfy, Potter's historical introduction to English law and its institutions, London 1958, 180.
66 Holdsworth, A history of English law, 357–8.
67 Lovell, Trial by peers, 73. See also William R. Anson, The law and custom of the constitution, i, London 1910, 227.
