Andrew Spencer - Thirteenth Century England XVII

THIRTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND XVII

PROCEEDINGS OF THE CAMBRIDGE CONFERENCE, 2017

Edited by

Andrew Spencer

Carl Watkins

THE BOYDELL PRESS

Contributors 2017, 2021

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First published 2021

The Boydell Press, Woodbridge

ISBN 978 1 78327 570 0 hardback

ISBN 978 1 80010 114 2 ePub

ISSN 0269-6967

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Cross references refer to page numbers in the print edition

Cover illustration: The creation of Edward of Caernarfon as Prince of Wales by Edward I, Lincoln Parliament, February 1301. Chronica Roffense, British Library Cotton Nero D ii f.191v

Illustrations and tables

Antonia Shacklock, Henry III and the Native Saints

Figure 1: The House of Savoy 24

Figure 2: Henry III and his family 25

Andrew M. Spencer,A Vineyard Without a Wall: The Savoyards, John de Warenne and the Failure of Henry IIIs personal rule

Table 1: Lay Witnesses to over 100 royal charters between 1236 and 1257

Table 2: Witnessing by earls and Henry IIIs lay foreign relatives, 12361257

Amicie Plissi du Rausas, Ad Partes Transmarinas: The Reconfiguration of Plantagenet Power in Gascony, 12421243

Map 1: Itinerary of King Henry III in Gascony (August 1242September 1243)

Contributors

Rodolphe Billaud, Institut Catholique de Vende

Lars Kjr, New College of the Humanities, London

Philippa Mesiano, University of Kent

Amicie Plissi du Rausas, Universit de Poitiers

Antonia Shacklock, University of Cambridge

Thomas W. Smith, Rugby School

Andrew M. Spencer, University of Cambridge

Rebecca Springer, University of Oxford

Ian Stone, Kings College, London

Anas Waag, University of Lincoln

Abbreviations

Ann. Mon.

Annales Monastici, ed. H.R. Luard, 5 vols. (Rolls Series, 18649)

BL

British Library, London

BN

Bibliothque Nationale, Paris

CChR

Calendar of Charter Rolls, 6 vols. (PRO Texts and Calendars, 190327)

CCR

Calendar of Close Rolls, 43 vols. (PRO Texts and Calendars, 1892 onwards)

CFR

Calendar of Fine Rolls 22 vols. (PRO Texts and Calendars, 191162)

CIM

Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, 7 vols. (PRO Texts and Calendars, 191668)

CLR

Calendar of Liberate Rolls, 6 vols. (PRO Texts and Calendars, 191664)

Chron. Maj.

Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. H.R. Luard, 7 vols. (Rolls Series, 187283)

Complete Peerage

G.E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, ed. V. Gibbs and others, 12 vols. (191059)

CPR

Calendar of Patent Rolls, 59 vols. (PRO Texts and Calendars, 18911966)

CR

Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, 14 vols. (PRO Texts and Calendars, 190238)

CRR

Curia Regis Rolls of the Reigns of Richard I, John and Henry III Preserved in the Public Record Office, 17 vols. (PRO Texts and Calendars, 192291)

DBM

Documents of the Baronial Movement of Reform and Rebellion 125867, selected by R.F. Treharne, ed. I.J. Sanders (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973)

Dunstable

Annals of Dunstable, Ann. Mon., III, pp. 3408

Foedera

Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae, et Acta Publica, ed. T. Rymer, amended edition by C.A. Clarke and F. Holbrooke, 4 vols. in 7 (Record Commission, 181669)

HA

Matthew Paris, Historia Anglorum, ed. F. Madden, 3 vols. (RS, 18669)

ODNB

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C. Matthews and C. Harrison, 60 vols. (Oxford University Press, 2004)

PL

Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 217 vols. (Paris: Hamman, Adalbert G., 184455)

PR

Pipe Rolls, published by the Pipe Roll Society

PRO

Public Record Office

RG

Rles Gascons transcrits et publis, i, ed. F. Michel (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1885).

RLC

Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum in Turri Londinensi Asservati, 2 vols. (183344)

Royal Letters

Royal and Other Historical Letters Illustrative of the Reign of Henry III, 2 vols., ed. W.W. Shirley (Rolls Series, 18626)

Tewkesbury

Annals of Tewkesbury, Ann. Mon., I, pp. 43182

TNA

The National Archives

Waverley

Waverley Annals, Ann. Mon., II, pp. 129412

Winchester

Winchester Annals, Ann. Mon., II, pp. 3128

Worcester

Worcester Annals, Ann. Mon., IV, pp. 355562

Introduction

The seventeenth Thirteenth Century England conference, held at Selwyn College, Cambridge in September 2017, explored England in Europe, and the essays in the present volume, the fruit of the conference, respond to its theme in a variety of ways, ranging over politics, religion and culture. Englands role in the politics of Europe was, of course, profoundly reshaped at the start of the thirteenth century by the disintegration of so much of the Angevin Empire. In hindsight, it is easy to view the reign of John as a watershed, marking the start of a turn towards a more insular focus in politics and society, especially when one thinks of the internal political crises of Henry IIIs reign and Edward Is attempts to subject Wales and Scotland to English rule. These essays complicate, in different ways, such an impression. For while some demonstrate the importance of ongoing political entanglements and memories of past connections, others examine how England was absorbed in trends that operated on a European, or at least a western European, scale. The ambitions and policies of both Henry III and Edward I did not stop at the English Channel, while in the other direction flowed ideas, clerics, ambassadors, refugees, mercenaries and occasionally threats.

Henry III himself looms in a number of the contributions as a king playing on the European stage, even though he was now forced back on Englands resources. Antonia Shacklocks essay shows one way in which the king sought to respond (imaginatively, but with limited eventual success) to his predicament by mobilizing Englands holy men, not only the well-known figure of Edward the Confessor but also a larger communion, including other saintly figures from the Anglo-Saxon past. As Henry looked to insular saints to bolster his standing, he was also importing foreign-born relatives and establishing them in England, and Shacklock shows how he sought to enlist his new men in patriotic devotions. In so doing, the king tried to respond to the problem posed by a baronage whose interests were becoming more Anglocentric and whose instincts put them at odds with the kings policies, including his penchant for introducing aliens to Englands court. Andrew Spencers essay explores the problem of Henrys alien relatives from a different angle, focusing on the role of the Queens continental kinsmen, the Savoyards, and adumbrating a subplot of factionalized court politics. Henry probably conceived of the integration of the Savoyards as a means to re-engineer the upper echelons of political society, and, given the familys transnational network, he also surely saw them as a valuable tool of diplomacy too. But this proved a high-risk strategy in which the risk did not pay off, for although the Savoyards were less disruptive of domestic politics than the next wave of alien entrants, the Lusignans, Spencer suggests ways in which the Queens relations were nonetheless storing up trouble for the king even at an earlier stage of his personal rule. Far from being Henrys instruments, they ended up manipulating the king, further undermining his political credibility in England and further afield.