King John’s Testament and the Last Days of his Reign* · in a hand unique to the collection of transcriptions in the volume. It is headed ‘ex archivis Wigorn’ and ‘18 J[ohannis]

English Historical Review © The Author [2010]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

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King John’s Testament and the Last Days of his Reign*

The text of King John’s last testament1 survives as a single-sheet original in the archives of Worcester Cathedral.2 Its survival in the Cathedral muniments is remarkable indeed. Presumably left with the monastic community when John’s body was deposited in its sepulchre before the altar of St Wulfstan in October 1216 (around the 23rd of the month), John’s testament is the first to survive in its original form into modern times. The wills3 of King Alfred (d. 899),4 and of King Eadred (d. 955) survive only in later copies.5 The text of Henry II’s testament, made in 1182, is preserved in a large number of known copies, though not in the original.6 Richard, it seems, made a divisio, according to Roger of Howden, but a written form, if it were ever made, has not survived.7 On 22 July 1202, Eleanor of Aquitaine was given licence ‘to make a reasonable testament’ disposing ‘of the income she was to receive at Michaelmas [29 September] 1202’, yet no text has come to light.8 King

*I would like to thank David Carpenter, John Gillingham, Ian Short and Nicholas Vincent for the comments that they made on a draft of this article and Bill Aird, Julie Barrau, Peter Coss, Anne Crawford, Chris Guy, Tom Licence, David Morrison and Dan Power for various kindnesses and insights generously given. Needless to say, the narrative of this article is my creation alone. 1. Following the lead given by the team that produced the Calendar of Fine Rolls of the Reign of Henry III Preserved in The National Archives, ed. P. Dryburgh and B. Hartland (Woodbridge, 2007), xl, I have translated testamentum as testament because it is closer to the original Latin. The subtle legal differences between the testamentum and the ultima voluntas, which were to emerge in the later middle ages, seem not to have been relevant at the time John’s testament was drawn up (for a discussion of the difference between the two, see the classic study in The Register of Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury 1414–1443, vol 2: Wills Proved Before the Archbishop or His Commissaries, ed. E.F. Jacob and H.C. Johnson, Canterbury and York Society, xlii (1937), xix. 2. Worcester Cathedral Muniments, B1693. 3. Following the lead given by generations of Anglo-Saxonists, the word ‘will’ is employed when referring to Anglo-Saxon documents which record the intention of the maker regarding the disposition of certain of his or her property rights after death (M.M. Sheehan, The Will in Medieval England (Toronto, 1963), 19–21), though H.D. Hazeltine preferred to call these documents the ‘predecessor of the will’, arguing that the lack of a dispositive nature debarred these documents from this modern appellation (D. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills (Cambridge, 1930), vii, xvi, xxi, xxiii, xxxv). 4. P.H. Sawyer, ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography (London, 1968) and updated by S. Miller at http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/sdk13/chartwww/NewRegReg.html, no. 1507 [henceforth S]). The earliest copy comes from the Liber Vitae of the New Minster, Winchester, and dates from 1031 (S. Miller, ed., Charters of the New Minster, Winchester, Anglo-Saxon Charters IX (2001), no. 1). 5. S 1515. The earliest copy comes from the Liber Abbatiae, a fifteenth-century manuscript from Hyde Abbey (the new name of the New Minster after its change of location under Abbot Geoffrey, 1106–25), Miller, ed., Charters of New Minster, no. 17 and xxxvi, xl. 6. N. Vincent et al., eds. The Acta of Henry II (Oxford, forthcoming), no. 1260. 7. W. Stubbs, ed., Chronica Magistri Rogeri de Hovedene (Rolls Series, 4 vols., London, 1868–71), iv, 83. 8. T.D. Hardy, ed. Rot[uli] Litt[erarum] Pat[entium in Turri Londinensi Asservati] (London, 1835), 14b–15.

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2 KING JOHN’S TESTAMENT

John’s testament is, therefore, the earliest English royal single-sheet original testament or will surviving to modern times.9

The story of the survival of King John’s testament is remarkable for other reasons. There is no evidence for why the testament was deposited at Worcester. It was not enrolled on the chancery rolls, despite the fact that the chancery clerks continued to enrol documents up to the point of John’s death and perhaps even beyond.10 It may well have been that royal testaments were not supposed to have been enrolled. Before the enrolment of royal documents became normal practice in the reign of King John,11 Henry II had his testament (a document he called a divisio, though Gervase of Canterbury recognised it as a testamentum) made up in three parts (presumably a chirograph), one of which was destined for the king’s court, another for the treasury at Winchester and a third for Canterbury.12 King Henry III’s testament, made in 1253 before he went to Gascony, also remained unenrolled, despite the fact that, by his time, enrolment had become part of the routine of royal administration. Henry III’s testament only survives in a fifteenth-century compilation attributed to William of Worcester.13 The text of the testament declares that it was drawn up in the form of a chirograph, though it does not say where the copies were to have been lodged.14 It might be supposed that one copy would have gone to Westminster, where the testament directs that his mortal remains were to lie. Certainly this is where an original charter granting Henry’s defunct body to Westminster Abbey, given at Westminster on 23 October 1246, is still to be found.15

9. Just like charters, testaments were not in themselves dispositive, but records of an oral act, undertaken in a formal manner, in which the testator, before witnesses, made arrangements that certain items would be transferred to the beneficiaries of the testament on the death of the testator. The transaction is therefore made complete by the death of the testator. The written document is not an instrument of execution, but a record of an agreement. Usually, this agreement involved the beneficiary in returning to the testator a benefit, for example, prayers for his or her soul. 10. See below, 19. 11. N. Vincent, ‘Why 1199? Bureaucracy and Enrolment under John and his Contemporaries’, in A. Jobson, ed., English Government in the Thirteenth Century (Woodbridge, 2004), 17–48. 12. W. Stubbs, ed. The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury (Rolls Series, 2 vols., London, 1879–80), i, 298–300. It is worth mentioning that two of the three locations were in England while the third was wherever the king was staying. 13. College of Arms, MS Arundel 48, fo. 139; [W.H. Black, ed.] Catalogue of the Arundel Manuscripts in the Library of the College of Arms (printed for private circulation, 1829), 79 is uninformative about the origins of William of Worcester’s copy. 14. The text of the testament is most easily found in T. Rymer et al., eds., Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae et cuiuscunque Generis Acta Publica inter Reges Angliae et alios quosquis Imperatores, Reges, Pontifices, Principes, vel Communitates Habita aut Tracta (22 vols., London, 1816), I i. 496. The testament left the custody of Edward and all his inheritance to Eleanor in the event of Henry III’s death. Matthew Paris thought that Earl Richard of Cornwall was to have been associated with Queen Eleanor were that event to have occurred (H.R. Luard, ed. Matthaei Parisiensis Monachi Sancti Albani Chronica Majora (Rolls Series, 6 vols., London, 1866–80), v, 383) and adds the touching portrait of a distraught Prince Edward (at 388). 15. Westminster Abbey Muniments, 6318a. A copy was also placed on the charter rolls (Calendar of the Charter Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, 1226–1257 (London, 1903), 306). The text of Henry’s testament refers to an earlier decision he had made (before Oct 1246), that his remains should go to the Temple in London. That the 1246 bequest does not mention this earlier arrangement, but the 1253 testament does, suggests that there was some discussion over the king’s change of heart.

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3 AND THE LAST DAYS OF HIS REIGN

After the arrival of John’s body and testament in Worcester in late October 1216, nothing further is heard of the document, though it was certainly known to the historiographer royal, Thomas Hearne (d. 1713),16 who had it transcribed for his work on the Foedera, though he decided, in the end, not to include it in the first edition of his published work (volume 1, in which John’s testament would have appeared, was published in November 1704).17 In 1736, an inaccurate text of the testament was published by the well-known church man and antiquary, William Thomas, who transcribed it as an appendix to his work on the cathedral.18 After 1736, the testament disappeared from view again, only to re-surface in 1876, when it was reported that the testament, along with many other documents belonging to the cathedral, had been returned to the dean and chapter by E.S. Cayley, a descendant of James Stillingfleet, dean of Worcester between 1726 and 1746,19 into whose papers these Worcester documents seem to have found their way.20 The manuscript testament to this day remains in the custody of the dean and chapter at Worcester.

The edition of John’s testament that is universally used by modern historians is that contained in the 1816-augmented edition of Thomas Rymer’s Foedera.21 Evidently, the editors of that volume did not have access to the original manuscript and also did not consult the transcription that by that time was lodged, and catalogued, in the British Museum.22 They seem to have taken their text from one of the two editions then in print, either that of William Thomas or that of John Nichols, who had, in 1780, printed Thomas’s 1736 edition anew in

16. M.M. Condon and E.M. Hallam, ‘Government Printing of the Public Records in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, vii (1982–5), 348–88. 17. A. Sherbo, ‘Rymer, Thomas (1642/3–1713)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004); B[ritish] L[ibrary] Additional MS 4573, fo. 238r is an accurate transcription of the testament in a hand unique to the collection of transcriptions in the volume. It is headed ‘ex archivis Wigorn’ and ‘18 J[ohannis] R[egis] 1216’ in a hand different from that of the transcription itself. The transcriber of the text also supplied identifying details for the three bishops who were co-arbiters of the testament. The uniqueness of the hand suggests that the transcription was done for Rymer, perhaps by one of the members of the cathedral chapter. His Latin and palaeographical skills, whoever he was, were good. 18. W. Thomas, A Survey of the Cathedral-Church of Worcester with an Account of the Bishops thereof from the Foundation of the See to the Year 1600 (London, 1738, first published 1736), Appendix 19, no. 33. 19. J.M. Horn, ed., John le Neve, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1541–1857 (London, 1992), 112. 20. J.H. Hooper, ‘On Some of the Documents Lately Restored to the Dean and Chapter of Worcester’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, xxxii (1876), 210–14. 21. Rymer et al., eds., Foedera, I i. 140. 22. Ibid., I i. vii, note, where the editors stated that they had not used the volumes of transcriptions then held in the British Museum because they ‘are so exceedingly incorrect as to be perfectly useless for the purposes of being printed’. Not so the transcription of John’s testament, which is a good one. Rymer’s unprinted transcriptions were catalogued by S. Ayscough, A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the British Museum hitherto Undescribed (2 vols., London, 1782), i, 235; cf, Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts 1756–1782 (London, 1977), 183.

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his Collection of royal wills.23 Ever since then, the manuscript has been ignored, except by two scholars. Firstly, on 20 May 1885, Walter de Gray Birch exhibited the testament (which had been leant to him by the dean and chapter) at a meeting of the British Archaeological Association and later wrote up the comments that he had made that evening into a short article published in the journal in 1887, together with a facsimile printed on the opening page of that year’s journal.24 There he published the text of the testament edited much more accurately than Thomas had managed a century and a half earlier, and he provided a translation of it. And secondly, H.J. Chaytor, in writing his biography of Savaric de Mauléon, sought out John’s testament because of Savaric’s place in it as a witness to its terms. Like Birch, Chaytor produced a facsimile of the testament, which he used as a frontispiece to his biography, and he transcribed the text accurately as appendix 6.25

Although both Birch and Chaytor provided more accurate texts of the testament than that published by Thomas and incorporated into the Foedera, no one subsequently has made reference to their editions instead relying on the copy in the Foedera.26 Birch’s article is short and its comments largely restricted to identifying the names of the witnesses to the testament. He paid little attention to the script or to the diplomatic of the document. Chaytor’s biography of Savaric de Mauléon also seems to have had no impact on historians’ awareness of the text of John’s testament. The purpose of this article is to make the original text of the testament generally known for the first time and also to offer some thoughts about its meaning and significance both in terms of the diplomatic of will making in the twelfth and early thirteenth century and in terms of the events that took place during the last days of King John’s reign.

Worcester Cathedral Muniments B1693 is a single sheet parchment measuring 125 mm × 158 mm. The bottom of the manuscript is folded, sur double queue, and contains slits to hold nine seal tags (now missing). The central slit is larger than the other eight, prompting the suggestion that it was intended to hold the Great Seal. No work has been undertaken on the chancery hands of John’s reign, so it is not possible to identify the

23. J. Nichols, A Collection of all the Wills now Known to Be Extant of the Kings and Queens of England, Princes and Princesses of Wales, and Every Branch of the Blood Royal, from the Reign of William the Conqueror to That of Henry the Seventh Exclusive (London, 1780), 13–14. 24. W. de Gray Birch, ‘Notes on the Will of King John’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, xliii (1887), 335–9. 25. H.J. Chaytor, Savaric de Mauléon: Baron and Troubador (Cambridge, 1939), 86–7. 26. See most recently, J. Gillingham, ‘At the Deathbeds of the Kings of England, 1066–1216’, in B. Kasten, ed., Herrscher- und Fürstentestamente im westeuropäischen Mittelalter (Vienna, 2008), 509–30, who has reprinted the text from the Foedera in an appendix to his article (at 530). K. Norgate, John Lackland (London, 1902), 284–5 followed the Foedera text, and also assumed that there were no seals appended. W.L. Warren, King John (London, 1961), 255 also followed the Foedera.

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scribe who penned this testament, but that it is a chancery hand, rather than the hand of a monk of Worcester, is certain. The hand has much in common with the hands that drew up the last membranes of the charter, patent and close rolls, for example, though it does not appear to be exactly the same.27 The script of the testament is heavily abbreviated and the text is written over sixteen lines, averaging fifteen words a line. The document has been folded in the past first horizontally along the centre line, then horizontally again, before being folded vertically by a third of its length and then by a half of the remaining length. This folding has resulted in the obliteration of the ‘P’ for Peter des Roches’s name in the list of men designated by John as arbiters and administrators of his testament (the Latin word in the text is ordinatores) and three other, less serious and less damaging, holes. There are no medieval markings on the reverse (hair side) of the manuscript.

There ought to have been very many last wills and testaments made in twelfth-century England. As Archbishop Theobald of Bec had written in a document that he dictated towards the end of his life, ‘the law lends its support to the last wills of those who are near their end, and he who opposes their pious desires provokes God’s anger by his inhumanity’,28 yet the texts of very few English wills or testaments from this period survive. Testaments that have survived in their original form are even more sparsely represented in the surviving evidence. In the ‘list of thirteenth-century wills’ published by M.M. Sheehan,29 just four testaments were categorically dated to at or before John’s testament of October 1216.30 In addition to Sheehan’s corpus of testaments, we must

27. T[he] N[ational] A[rchives], P[ublic] R[ecord] O[ffice], C 53/16; C 54/14; C 66/15. 28. W.J. Millor, H.E. Butler and C.N.L. Brooke, eds., The Letters of John of Salisbury (2 vols., Oxford, 1986), i, no. 134 ‘Supremis deficientium uluntatibus suum accomodant iura fauorem, et in se uelut inhumanus prouocat iram Dei qui piis eorum desideriis obuius contradicit’. The archbishop had made a testament in the summer of 1155, when in fear for his life, he had ‘facto iam testamento rebusque omnibus usque ad uictum tenuem erogatis’ (ibid., no. 8). St Hugh of Lincoln, when close to death in the year 1200, was made by his biographer to complain that the making of testaments by bishops was a novel adoption (D.L. Douie and D.H. Farmer, eds., Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis (2 vols., Oxford, 1985), ii, 186–7). It is not clear what novel might have meant in this context. Theobald certainly thought that there was a long custom associated with testament making and he intended to take full advantage of it. 29. M.M. Sheehan, ‘A List of Thirteenth-Century English Wills’, Genealogist Magazine, xii (1961), 259–65 reprinted in his Marriage, Family, and Law in Medieval Europe: Collected Studies, ed. J.J. Farge and J.T. Rosenthal (Toronto, 1997), 8–15 (from which references are taken). 30. I have excluded from this list the notice of the testament of Gunni of Stanton, the essence of which was recited in Gilbert Foliot’s letter to Robert de Béthune, bishop of Hereford, dated between 1139 and 1148 (A. Morey and C.N.L. Brooke, eds., The Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot (Cambridge, 1967), no. 13). The text seems to suggest that rather than a testament, this was a pre-mortem gift for entry into the monastic community. I have also excluded the document of Bertha widow of Elias Giffard (W.H. Hart, ed., Historia et Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestriae (Rolls Series, 3 vols., London, 1863), no. 74, which is a post-mortem gift (Sheehan’s date c. 1179).

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add Archbishop Theobald’s will, which was unknown to Sheehan. No doubt there are other testaments waiting to be discovered, but until a proper search is undertaken, these five testaments must form the basis of the discussion concerning the context of John’s testament.

The first of these testaments, therefore, is that made by Archbishop Theobald, dated to between 1158 and his death in 1161, though it is known that he made an earlier testament in the summer of 1155, the text of which has not survived to us.31 Written in the first person plural, the testament records that the archbishop left his movables to be given over wholly ‘to the use of the poor’, and the execution of this wish was to be overseen by four named persons who were to supervise the distribution of the archbishop’s alms. The archbishop’s servants were then enjoined to help the four named individuals by ensuring that all of Theobald’s movables were collected together for the purpose of his pious distribution. The king’s servants were expressly forbidden, on pain of excommunication, from interfering with the activities of the archbishop’s men in the pursuance of their late lord’s wishes. Those who aided the execution of the archbishop’s testament were to be granted an indulgence of forty days and to be deemed participants in the (spiritual) benefits of the church of Canterbury. The archbishop also used the testament to restate the privileges granted to the monks by the pope concerning the protection of their property and to urge, on pain of excommunication, that the archbishop’s lands should remain untouched until his successor should be appointed. The testamentary element in this document was, therefore, confined to the few movable goods retained by the archbishop for his personal use in the final days of his life. It may well be that in the text of Archbishop Theobald’s will we have part of the explanation why so few wills and testaments survive. When disposing of his movable goods, the archbishop explained that he had kept these things until the end of his life ‘by reason of our domestic necessities and our long sickness’. It seems likely, therefore, that the disposal of the majority of one’s movable property was something to be undertaken before death rather than something to be left to the last moment for one’s executors to undertake. Property had its own rules concerning decent which made it difficult for the testator to interfere with established practice, hence property tended to be absent from surviving testaments unless directed at works that would benefit the testator’s soul. In the assize of Northampton of 1176, for example, chapter 4 assumed that the heirs of the deceased free holder were known and that the only part of his effects over which the dead man’s wishes might prevail seems to have been his movables. Chapter 4 also assumed that when a freeholder died, his heirs

31. Letters of John of Salisbury, I no. 134; see no. 8.

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were entitled to hold onto his chattels so that they might ‘execute the dead man’s division’.32

The second surviving testament belongs to John’s father, King Henry II, made in 1182 (dated by a dating clause in the testament ‘hanc autem diuisam feci in predicto loco, anno incarnationis Domini mclxxxii’) and is couched in terms of a charter.33 Written in the first person singular, it has a standard post-1172 charter proem: ‘Henricus dei gratia rex Ang’ et dux Norm’ et Aquit’ et comes Andeg’’ followed by a standard address clause but with pride of place given to his sons, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey and John, and addressing his men ‘on this side and the farther side of the sea’.34 Those addressed were then notified that, before nine named witnesses,35 Henry had made a division36 of certain monies for various crusading and other religious purposes to be delivered to Henry’s beneficiaries by a series of named individuals; in addition, money was given to aid the marriages of the ‘pauperes et liberas feminas’ of England, Normandy, Anjou, but no landed property was given. At the end of the ‘division’, Henry urged his sons to hold its terms firm and inviolable because of the faith they owed him and because of the oaths that they had sworn to him. The text of the testament then goes onto an anathema clause, followed by an urge by Henry to his archbishops and bishops (which was also turned into a sealing clause) to join in the spiritual punishment of those—obviously Henry meant his sons here—who might have been minded to interfere with the execution of the testament. Overseers were appointed to supervise the payment of monies to named beneficiaries:37 money that was given for the common defence of the Holy Land, for example, was to be distributed by the masters of the Templars and Hostpitallars in Jerusalem;38 money that was given in England to various religious beneficiaries was to be overseen by the

32. ‘unde faciant divisam defuncti’ (W. Stubbs, Select Charters and Other Illustrations of English Constitutional History (9th edn., Oxford, 1913), 181). For the authority of Roger of Howden’s text of the assize of Northampton, see J.C. Holt, ‘The Assizes of Henry II: The Texts’, in D.A. Bullough and R.L. Storey, eds., The Study of Medieval Records: Essays in Honour of Kathleen Major (Oxford, 1971), 85–106 at 90, 94–5. 33. Vincent et al., eds., Acta of Henry II, no. 1260; also Stubbs, ed., Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, i, 298; M. Léopold Delisle, ed., Recueil des actes de Henri II roi d’Angleterre et duc de Normandie (2 vols., Paris, 1920), no. 612; and Rymer et al., eds., Foedera, I i. 47. 34. N. Vincent, ‘Regional Variations in the Charters of King Henry II’, in M.T. Flanagan and J.A. Green, eds., Charters and Charter Scholarship in Britain and Ireland (Basingstoke, 2005), 70–106. 35. Richard of Ilchester bishop of Winchester, John of Oxford bishop of Norwich, Geoffrey Henry II’s illegitimate son, Mr Walter of Coutances archdeacon of Oxford, Godfrey de Lucy archdeacon of Derby, Ranulf de Glanville Henry II’s justiciar, Roger fitz Reimfrey, Hugh de Morewic, Ralph fitz Stephen and William Rufus. 36. Though Gerald of Wales substituted ‘testamentum’ in his copy of the text (Vincent et al., eds., Acta of Henry II, no. 1260). 37. For the word ‘overseer’, see below, 11–12. 38. H.E. Mayer, ‘Henry II of England and the Holy Land’, ante, lxcvi (1982), 721–39.

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archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of Winchester, Worcester, Ely and Norwich, and by Ranulf de Glanville, Henry II’s justiciar; in Normandy, the overseers were to be the archbishop of Rouen, and the bishops of Bayeux, Avranches, Sées and Evreux. Gervase of Canterbury stated that the testament had been made in three copies, one to go to Canterbury, one to go to the treasury at Winchester and one to be retained in the king’s court.

The document that appears to be the third oldest surviving post-Conquest testament is that of Robert son of Alan of Fordham, dated by Sheehan to between 1190 and 1200, though the hand could be as late as 1220.39 This is the first testament in the series so far discussed to survive in the original. The diplomatic of the testament begins with a simple ‘hoc est testamentum Roberti filii Alani de Fordham’ and goes into the preamble ‘in nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti’ before, in the first person singular, commending the testator’s soul to God and granting that his mortal remains were to lie in a sepulchre in the cemetery of the abbey of St Benet at Holme. The testament then recounts the fact that Robert left his horse and its harness with his body at St Benet’s and the service of Edmund son of Alexander Stutard and his sequela, along with land in Fordham, for the lights that were to be placed before the altar of the Virgin at St Benet’s. The testament records that Robert made grants to other churches (including a cow to the mother church at Fordham). The testament further records that Robert made grants to named ecclesiastics (including a calf to Richard chaplain of Fordham), for the sake of his soul. The testament enumerates the land, wheat, money and items of his clothing which Robert left to a number of named ecclesiastics, to family members and to friends. And ‘for the sake of his soul’, the testament states that Robert left all the houses held by a certain Adam of Isleham to his son to support the boy in completing a pilgrimage on his behalf. Finally, the testament records that Robert appointed executors. The residue of Robert’s estate was to be distributed by the view of his executors who were then named as the prior of St Benet’s, the prior of Fordham and Richard the chaplain of Fordham. The testament was witnessed at St Benet’s on the Saturday before Palm Sunday in the unstated year in which the testament was drawn up.40 There are five slits for seal tags (sur double queue), though all are now missing.

The fourth testament to be considered in this group, the first of two such documents drawn up in the name of Hugh of Wells, also has the

39. Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. Norfolk Charter 614. 40. By the view of the prior of St B. Holme, ‘N. capellano, A. de Radl’ de Bod . . ., clericis et Benedicto . . . et coram Agnete uxore mea et Andrea fabro de Fordham et Roberto Portario et Willelmo Wachfi . . . et [. . .]’.

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pious preamble, pictorially a cross (which may not have been on the original testament),41 and verbally ‘in nomine sancte et individue Trinitatis’ before naming the testator, Hugh, at that time in exile because of the interdict, who expected the return of his goods, which had been sequestrated by the king’s officers. The testament survives as a late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century copy in the Wells Dean and Chapter Library Liber Albus II.42 Hugh was appointed bishop of Lincoln in 1209, so the preservation of this testament in a Wells context is yet another reminder that despite being bishop of Lincoln, Hugh retained a strong link with the community that had nurtured him. The testament has a place date of St Martin de Garenne, 13 or 14 November 1212 (he returned from exile in the summer of 1213). In this the first of his testaments, Hugh, in the first person singular, urged his executors to repay his debts for unpaid Peter’s pence, his debts to the king and any other debts that he had. He gave pro anima gifts of money to the community of Lincoln, to the other religious communities in the diocese for the souls of a series of named individuals. He further gave money to enable certain named women to marry (an echo of Henry II’s testament discussed above), and further money to named men, some of whom were evidently his servants. No property was given. Two executors were named and the archbishop in exile was urged by Hugh to aid them in securing the testament’s terms.43 There were nine witnesses to the testament.44

The fifth and final testament that may predate John’s testament is an original held in the National Archives.45 This testament is the bottom portion of a chirograph prepared sur double queue with slits for four tags with seals. Two of the tags remain intact, but just one of the seal impressions survives, a single-sided, lozenge-shaped seal, which is too badly damaged for an identification of the seal matrix’s owner to be made.46 The testator was a certain Gilbert son of Fulk. The testament begins with the pious preamble, ‘in nomine sancte et individue trinitatis’, before naming the testator, followed by a sealing clause, which states, in the first person singular, that Gilbert had appended his seal to this testament, after which follow details of the grants made by Gilbert.

41. Wells Cathedral Library, DC/CF2/3(a). 42. D.M. Smith, ed., The Acta of Hugh of Wells, Bishop of Lincoln, 1209–1235, Lincoln Record Society, lxxxviii (2000), no. 2. 43. Hugh’s younger brother Jocelyn bishop of Bath and Mr Elias of Dereham. If the bishop should die, then the executors were to be Mr Elias and Mr Reginald of Chester with the advice of the archbishop of Canterbury and of the bishop of Ely. 44. The witnesses were Jocelyn bishop of Bath, Mr Elias of Dereham, Mr John of York, Mr Reginald of Chester, Mr William, Roger and Elias, chaplains, Peter of Chichester and William de Ham’. 45. Sheehan, ‘List’, 11, dates it to c. 1215. 46. TNA, PRO, E 40/11559.

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Gilbert gave his principal residence in Limstrete (Lime Street), London, including a garden, and various properties in and around London for the benefit of his soul and for the souls of his father and mother in pure and perpetual alms to the Church of the Holy Trinity, London, saving the portion owed to his wife, Elena, for her dower lands. Gilbert named fifteen men as his witnesses and executors.

These five early testaments, together with John’s testament, make up the known corpus of English testaments dated to 1216 and before, according to Sheehan’s list of thirteenth-century wills. They show a variety of approaches to will-making in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century at a point in time before the diplomatic of the testamentary form had yet to become settled. There was evidently no fixed number of executors in these early testaments. Neither did those who drew up the testaments for their testators necessarily see the need to differentiate executors from witnesses (this is an important point to bear in mind when it comes to examine the detail of King John’s testament). The will maker who drew up Robert son of Alan of Fordham’s testament did differentiate between executors and witnesses to the act, as did the author of Hugh of Wells’s testament (even though two of the witnesses, Jocelyn of Bath and Elias of Dereham, were also named as executors). The man who composed the testament of Gilbert son of Fulk, however, like the clerk who wrote out King John’s testament, saw no reason to separate witnesses from executors.

Four of the five testaments were couched in the first person singular. Only Archbishop Theobald maintained the formal first person plural in his testament. Needless to say, the document called a testament was not in of itself dispositive. The dispositive act was the death of the testator; the testament merely recorded his wishes and the names of those who were to ensure that his wishes were completed. Hence, in the thirteenth century, the testamentary form could vary between the first and third person singular depending, presumably, on the inclination of the clerk drawing up its terms. An original testament of Bartholomew of Thurleigh datable to before 1227,47 for example, is couched in the third person singular present tense, as are the testaments of three further thirteenth-century testators that Thomas Madox transcribed from the originals he knew.48 The testament of John de St John (1231) is likewise presented in the third person singular.49 William fitz William’s testament

47. T. Madox, Formulare Anglicanum (London, 1702), 423–4 (no. 768, cf. TNA, PRO, 315/42 (246)). 48. Madox, Formulare, 424 (no. 769, original lost), 424–5 (770, cf E 327/770), 425 (771, cf E 327/771). 49. H.E. Salter, ed., Cartulary of Osney Abbey, Oxford Historical Society, 2 vols. lxxix (1929), i, no. 142.

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is in the third person singular perfect tense, though this may reflect its presence in a fourteenth-century cartulary copy.50 The testaments of Richard of Elmham (1228) and of Earl William Longespee (1225), on the other hand, are presented in the first person singular,51 as is the testament of King Henry III (1253).52

The concern of those granting money and property seems to have been focused around the future of their souls. Archbishop Theobald’s goods were to be ‘devoted in its entirety to the use of the poor, even as God has inspired us to do’ and his brothers and sons in Christ were urged to pray for him. Henry II’s grants of money (he gave no land in his testament) were all to causes that might have been expected to deliver to him spiritual benefits. Robert son of Alan of Fordham’s grants and Bishop Hugh of Wells gifts were given ‘pro anima mea’, and Gilbert fitz Fulk gave his grants ‘pro anima mea et animibus patris mei et matris mee’. The concerns of the testators with their souls were paramount in these documents. A notice of the existence of a testament in 1202 confirms that men did not dispose of all their property in their testaments. In that year, William Brewer fined in 500 marks to have the daughter along with the lands and revenues of Hugh de Moreville, ‘except those that were in the hands of the king and those which had been left in his testament’.53

In the translation of the text, I have used the word ‘arbiters’ for the Latin word ordinatores. While it ought to be possible to translate ordinatores as ‘executors’, it may well have been that John deliberately eschewed the word in his testament. The terms of his father’s divisio were administered by a number of named individuals who were described as having responsibility ‘by their view and by their hand’.54 And Hugh of Wells appointed men who were ‘to distribute our alms’.55 None of these men were described as executores. We might call them ‘overseers’ or ‘administrators’. Those who saw to the terms of the two of other testaments that pre-date John’s testament of October 1216—Robert of

50. Cambridge University Library, MS Additional 3020 (Red Book of Thorney part 1) fos. 183v–184r. 51. N. Vincent, ‘The Will of Richard of Elmham (d. 1228)’, Historical Research, lxx (1997), 110–20; (T.D. Hardy, ed., Rot[uli] Litt[erarum] Claus[arum in Turri Londinensi Asservati] (2 vols., London, 1833–4), ii, 71. 52. Rymer et al., eds., Foedera, I i. 496. 53. T.D. Hardy, ed., Rotuli de Oblatis et Finibus in Turri Londinensi Asservati (London, 1835), 184–5; Pipe Roll 4 John, 256. I owe this reference to the kindness of Dr H. Doherty. 54. Stubbs, ed., Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, i, 298–300 (‘per visum et manum’). 55. Smith, ed., Acta of Hugh of Wells, no. 2 (‘quos elemosinae nostrae dispensandae praefecimus’, slipping, momentarily, into the first person plural.)

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Fordham and Hugh of Wells—did appoint men they called executores. The variation in terms used to describe the men who were to act as agents of those who made up their testaments may have been significant. It seems wise, therefore, to signify this difference in term by a different word in the English translation.

Ego I(ohannes) Dei gratia Rex Angl(ie), dominus Hibern(ie), dux Norm(annie) et Aquit(ainie), comes And(egavie), graui infirmitate preuentus, nec sufficiens ad tempus infirmitatis mee currere per singula ut testamentum meum de singulis rebus meis condam, ordinationem et dispositionem testamenti mei fidei et dispositioni legitime committo fidelium meorum subscriptorum, sine quorum consilio, etiam in bono statu constitutus nullatenus in presentia eorum testamentum meum ordinarem,56 ut quod ipsi fideliter ordinauerint et disposuerint de rebus meis, tam in satisfaccione facienda Deo et sancte ecclesie de dampnis et iniuriis eis illatis quam57 in succursu faciendo terre Ierosolimitane et sustentacione prestanda filiis meis pro hereditate sua perquirenda et defendenda et in remuneratione facienda illis qui fideliter nobis58 seruierunt et in distributione facienda pauperibus et domibus religiosis pro salute anime mee, ratum sit et firmum. Peto etiam ut qui consilium et iuuamen eis fecerit ad testamentum meum ordinandum, gratiam Dei percipiat et fauorem. Qui autem ordinationem et dispositionem suam infregerit, maledictionem et indignationem omnipotentis Dei et beate Marie et omnium sanctorum incurrat. In primis igitur volo quod corpus meum sepuliatur in ecclesia sancte Marie et sancti Wulstan(i) de Wigorn’. Ordinatores autem et disponitores tales constituo: dominum G(ualam) Dei gratia t(i)t(uli) sancti Martini presbiterem cardinalem apostolice sedis legatum; dominum <Petrum> Winton’ episcopum; dominum R(icardum) Cicestrensem episcopum; Dominum S(iluestrem) Wigorn’ episcopum; fratrem Aimericum de Sancta Maura; W(illelmum) Maresc(allum) comitem Penbroc’; R(anulfum) com(item) Cestr’; Willelmum comitem de Ferrar’; Willelmum Briwe’; Walterum de Lascy et Iohannem de Monemut’; Savaricum de Malo Leone; Falkesium de Breaute.

I, John, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, count of Anjou, hindered by grave infirmity and not being able at this time of my infirmity to itemize all my things so that I may make a testament, commit the arbitration and administration of my testament to the trust and to the legitimate

56. The scribe got himself into an awkward double negative here. Did he intend to start the clause ‘cum quorum consilio’, rather than ‘sine quorum consilio’? 57. There is a comparative equality implied in the ‘tam . . . quam’ construction. 58. The scribe returned to the royal plural here.

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administration of my faithful men whose names are written below, without whose counsel, even in good health, I would have by no means arranged my testament in their presence,59 so that what they will faithfully arrange and determine concerning my things as much as in making satisfaction to God and to holy church for damages and injuries done to them as in sending succour to the land of Jerusalem and in providing support to my sons towards obtaining and defending their inheritance and in making reward to those who have served us faithfully and in making distribution to the poor and to religious houses for the salvation of my soul, be right and sure. I ask, furthermore, that whoever shall give them counsel and assistance in the arranging of my testament shall receive the grace and favour of God. Whoever shall infringe their arrangement and disposition, may he incur the curse and indignation of almighty God and the blessed Mary and all the saints. In the first place, therefore, I desire that my body be buried in the church of St Mary and

59. Two translations of this sub-clause have been previously offered: Both Norgate, John Lackland, 284, and Warren, King John, 255 rendered it as ‘without whose counsel, were they at hand, I would not, even in health, ordain anything’ (both were using the Foedera text, so did not know of the existence of the words ‘testamentum meum’); and de Gray Birch, ‘Notes on the Will’, 336, as ‘without whose advice, while they were present with me, even when I was in good health, I should arrange my testament in nothing whatsoever’.

Fig. 1 Worcester Cathedral Muniments, B1693: King John’s Testament. Photograph by Mr Christopher Guy, Cathedral Archaeologist. Printed by

kind permission of the Dean and Chapter of Worcester Cathedral.

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St Wulfstan at Worcester. I appoint, moreover, the following arbiters and administrators: the lord G(uala), by the grace of God, cardinal-priest of the title of St Martin and legate of the apostolic see; the lord <Peter> bishop of Winchester; the lord R(ichard) bishop of Chichester; the lord S(ilvester) bishop of Worcester; Brother Aimery de St-Maur; W(illiam) Marshal earl of Pembroke; R(anulf ) earl of Chester; W(illiam) earl Ferrers; William Brewer; Walter de Lacy and John of Monmouth; Savaric de Mauléon; Falkes de Bréauté.60

The text as it appears in William Thomas’ edition, and so in the editions produced by Nichols and, subsequently, by the revisers of Rymer’s Foedera, contained in it one substantial error. The Latin, as Thomas transcribed it, reads as follows: ‘sine quorum consilio etiam in bono statu constitutus nullatenus in presentia eorum oridinarem’, yet, as may be seen in the transcription produced above, the text in fact reads as follows: ‘sine quorum consilio etiam in bono statu constitutus nullatenus in presentia eorum testamentum meum ordinarem’. The desire to arrange nothing of importance without the counsel of the men who are listed at the foot of the document is, therefore, transformed into a desire to arrange nothing concerning his testament without their input into the decisions he wished to make.

The testament is a chancery document drawn up in a chancery hand, but the diplomatic of this testament represents the general testamentary form in use in the early thirteenth century, rather than the usual chancery form, in that John used the first person singular (‘ego Iohannes’) rather than the first person plural, and placed the ‘ego’ as the first word in the document emphasising the word’s importance. In royal documents, the first person plural had been the standard diplomatic form since 1189 giving verbal expression to the developing concept that the king was acting for the collective community of the realm. Here, then, John was speaking in person, as an individual, not as the embodiment of the polity over which he held sway. The second point of note is that there was no pious preamble to John’s testament (no pictorial cross nor words of pious acclamation), which is perhaps surprising in the context of the diplomatic of will making. John’s father, Henry II, had, however, equally eschewed the pious preamble in his testament. Perhaps kings did not need to express their piety in such a formulaic way until later in the thirteenth century.

Unusually for chancery documents of this date, no place-date clause was included in the testament. Dating it is, therefore, problematic. It

60. The text was translated by Birch, ‘Notes on the Will’, 336–7; it has also been translated by Norgate, John Lackland, 284–5 and partially by Warren, King John, 255.

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might have been drawn up long before the king died. Henry II, for example, expressed his wishes in a testament that was made in 1182 (d. 1189). Henry III had a testament concocted before he embarked for Gascony in 1253 (d. 1272). The terms of both testaments were known to at least some people outside the charmed circle of the royal court.61 John’s testament, however, seems to have been drawn up when the king was in extremis, perhaps even as the last official act of his life. The words that he used in his testament (‘hindered by grave infirmity’) certainly indicate that we should place the creation of this document to the last few days of the reign as John’s sickness took hold after his departure from Lynn, Norfolk, on 11 October 1216. The Barnwell Chronicler, a man whose interests lay directly in the area of the country in which John fell ill, stated that John began to feel sick at Sleaford, where he was on 14 October.62 Here, according to Ralph of Coggeshall (who seems to have had medical interests so may be expected to have taken an interest in these matters), the king was bled, but to no avail.63 On 15 October, still at Sleaford, John dictated a letter to Pope Honorius III. In that letter, the king wrote that he began to despair of his life and he therefore commended his kingdom and his heirs to the protection of the pope.64 The language used in the letter of 15 October is echoed in John’s testament, as is the common theme that Pope Honorius and the arbiters of John’s testament were to aid John’s heirs gain their inheritances. The similarities in language and sentiment between the letter to Honorius of 15 October and the undated testament, therefore, adds circumstantial evidence to the suggestion that John’s testament was one of the final official acts of his life. By 16 October, John had moved to Newark where he remained until he died in the early hours of 19 October.65

At the end of the document, thirteen men were named as arbiters and administrators of the testament.66 These were men who, in his final hours, John trusted to know his wishes and to carry them out to the best of their ability. John was setting up what he thought would be the council that would direct the minority government of one of his sons.

61. Stubbs, ed., Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, i, 298–300; Luard, ed., Matthaei Parisiensis . . . Chronica Majora, v, 383. 62. W. Stubbs, ed., Memoriale Fratris Walteri de Coventria (Rolls Series, 2 vols., London, 1873), ii, 231. 63. J. Stevenson, ed., Radulphi de Coggeshall Chronicon Anglicanum (Rolls Series, London, 1875), 183. 64. N. Vincent, ed., The Letters and Charters of Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, Papal Legate in England, 1216–1218, Canterbury and York Society, lxxxiii (1996), no. 140b (‘cum gravi infirmitate et incurabili detineremur ita quod de nobis penitus desperabatur’). 65. The events of 16 to 19 Oct 1216 are explored in more detail below, 21–4. 66. The assumption that underpins the following discussion is that John dictated the terms of his own testament. This is not an unreasonable assumption, given what we know about the ways in which testaments were drawn up (see the preceding discussion, 6–10). That said, it is possible that the names the arbiters that sprung to John’s mind as he lay dying were influenced by some of those in attendance (see the discussion below, 17–21).

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This is a document that was conceived of as pointing to the future, not the past, and a future that would go on beyond the lifetime of King John who, even in extremis, had a mind to the future of his kingdom and his dynasty’s place at the head of it. There are, however, only nine slits made at the foot of the testament in preparation for the seals that were to have been attached to the document (whether they were ever actually attached is a matter for debate). The central slit is larger than the other eight and it might be supposed, therefore, that this slit was prepared to hold the great seal of the king, which would have been considerably larger than those of the other witnesses to this act.67 What little evidence there is concerning the diplomatic of will-making before 1216 suggests that the testator might have been expected to append his seal to the text of his testament. Certainly Gilbert fitz Fulk specifically stated in his testament that he had appended his seal to his document. And it was the diplomatic practice of the chancery to append the great seal to acts of the king.68 The other eight seals that are now missing, but for which provision was made, are likely to have been of eight of the thirteen men named as subscribing to the testament (if we may accept, for the purposes of the conceit posited in this article, that it was created in John’s last hours). These must have belonged to the men who witnessed the king’s last hours on earth. Although at least one source refers to executores (a word not used in the testaments of either Henry II or John) being asked to append their seals to a testament after it had been drawn up and had been sealed by the testator and his witnesses, the testament to which this source refers, that of William Marshal, was created in the context of a leisurely (if painful) death.69 John’s death was a hurried and pressured affair with little time allowed for having those who were not present seal his testament. The eight seals that were to have been appended to the testament are likely to have been of the eight men who were at Newark during the king’s last hours alive and who thus acted not only as arbiters and administrators but also as witnesses. While it is hardly an exact science working out the itineraries of medieval men, even those at the very pinnacle of society, it is possible to make a case for who those eight men may have been.

67. A.B. Wyon, The Great Seals of England from the Earliest Period to the Present Time Arranged and Illustrated with Historical and Descriptive Notes (London, 1887), 20–1 and plate VI. Cf. H. Jenkinson, ‘The Great Seal of England: Some Notes and Suggestions’, Antiquaries Journal, xvi (1936), 8–28 for a critique of Wyon’s methodology in ‘recreating’ some of the seals which he published (at 13, 15–16). 68. T.F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England: The Wardrobe, The Chamber and the Small Seals (6 vols., Manchester, 1920–33), 123. Richard Marsh, the chancellor, was with John throughout the summer and autumn of 1216. The last charter issued by John on 28 Sept 1216 was issued ‘datum per manum’ by Richard at Lincoln (T.D. Hardy, ed., Rot[uli] Chart[arum in Turri Londinensi Asservati] (London, 1837), 224) and he was mentioned in a letter patent on 7 Oct (Rot. Litt. Pat., 198b). 69. A.J. Holden, S. Gregory, and D. Crouch, eds., The History of William Marshal, Anglo-Norman Text Society, Occasional Publications Series, iv–vi (2002–6), lines 18327–43.

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We can start this analysis by excluding three of the arbiters from John’s presence immediately: William Marshal, Guala Bicchieri70 and Ranulf of Chester were not with the king during his final moments. All three men were specifically excluded from the scene by the author of the History of William Marshal.71 The same source also reveals the names of some of those who were present at John’s deathbed on the night of 18/19 October. Included among them were two of the king’s arbiters and administrators, Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester and John of Monmouth.72 The author of the History had as one of his principal sources John Marshal, William Marshal’s nephew, who is named in the History as being present at Newark when John died (though he was not named in the testament).73 The author’s source of information for the presence of des Roches and Monmouth seems to have been, therefore, impeccable.74 The locations of the other arbiters of John’s testament at the point that the document was drawn up are difficult to ascertain, but it is worth indulging in the speculative exercise of locating these men if for no other reason than it helps elucidate the events leading up to John’s death and the writing of his last testament.

John had reached Newark by 16 October where, in considerable pain, according to Roger of Wendover, he began to make preparations for what was quickly becoming inevitable.75 On the final day of his life (18 October), he attempted to prepare the way for those who were to help his heirs enter into their inheritances. In two of the letters issued that day,76 he made provision for Hubert de Burgh, his justiciar (and therefore the name which stands out as oddly missing from the list of arbiters of the testament) so that he would have sufficient funds to maintain his defence of Dover castle.77 Dover, with Louis at that time

70. Ibid., lines 15210; 17968. 71. Ibid., lines 15287–304. 72. Ibid., lines 15154–62. 73. On 11 Oct 1216, a letter close authorized by the king gave John Marshal the land of Alan son of Roland (Rot. Litt. Claus. i, 290 b). 74. D. Crouch, ‘Historical Introduction’, in Holden et al., eds., History of William Marshal, iii, 30–1. 75. H.O. Cox, ed., Rogeri de Wendover, Chronica sive Flores Historiarum (5 vols., London, 1841–4), iii, 385. 76. Chancery practice in the reign of King John is still little understood and will remain so until the surviving original letters and charters from his reign are collected and analysed. This is a project that Nicholas Vincent proposes to undertake. Until that work is completed, it must be assumed that the dates given on the rolls represent the dates on which the letters patent were actually authorised and therefore sent out. This assumption is based on the observable fact that letters were usually enrolled in chronological order, but when the scribe received a copy of an earlier letter, he was perfectly at ease with the idea of enrolling that letter in among the letters he was currently enrolling. No attempt was made to insert letters into their ‘proper’ chronological order; they were simply enrolled as they came to hand (see, for example, TNA, PRO, C 66/15, ‘Patent Roll 18 John’). 77. Rot. Litt. Pat., 199b.

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camped outside its walls, had taken a significant place in the minds of the king’s supporters and of those who sought to unseat him. It had become essential to the royalist cause that Hubert hold secure the citadel if John’s progeny were to make good their claim to the kingdom.78 In a further letter patent, John gave Nicola de Haye and Philip Mark custody of Lincolnshire at pleasure. Nicola, it seems certain, was the active partner here, after her successful defence of the castle that summer.79 Falkes de Bréauté was given the Luton estates of the late Baldwin de Béthune (d. 1212), count of Aumale, presumably to help him in his defence of Bedford castle, of which he was castellan.80 Letters of safe conduct were issued for William of Bustlingthorpe and Gerard de Furnivall. And, as the final letter patent issued on 18 October, John granted a general safe conduct lasting until Christmas to all who would reconcile themselves to him through Savaric de Mauléon.81 One letter patent would seem to suggest that two more of the arbiters were absent from Newark on 18 October. On that day, John issued letters of credence for Falkes de Bréauté and Savaric de Mauléon (along with William II de Forz, earl of Aumale) to go to Hervey Belet to negotiate on the king’s behalf.82 But the only letter close which was recorded on the rolls for 18 October seems to suggest that, having sent these three men on royal business, possibly first thing in the morning, a change of plan was demanded by the deteriorating state of the king. That letter close was sent to Savaric de Mauléon alone and it instructed him to receive 300 Welsh soldiers who the king had sent to him (‘mittimus’, the scribe of the letter wrote, using a verb denoting movement rather than one that simply suggests a transfer of authority).83 These men had been, presumably, part of John’s force as he ravaged the lands of his enemies in the eastern region and it seems likely that this letter close represents the moment when John realised that the game was truly up and that these troops could now be diverted to tasks set them by Savaric. The letter close, therefore, suggests that by the time the king knew he was to die, it was Savaric who, on his own, was away from Newark, and that Falkes (and William II de Forz) had returned to Newark before dusk. If John made his testament the last act official of his life—and the language of the testament is very suggestive that he did—then Savaric may have been the fourth man who was elsewhere on the king’s business and therefore was not present to have his seal attached to John’s testament.

78. Luard, ed., Matthaei Parisiensis . . . Chronica Majora, iii, 28. 79. Rot. Litt. Pat., 199b; L.J. Wilkinson, Women in Thirteenth-Century Lincolnshire (London, 2007), 19–20. 80. Rot. Litt. Pat., 199b; B. English, The Lords of Holderness (Oxford, 1979), 32–40. 81. Rot. Litt. Pat., 199b. 82. Ibid. 83. Rot. Litt. Claus., i, 291b.

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Who might the fifth absentee have been? He might have been Falkes de Bréauté, who was with the king on 17 October when he was responsible for initiating and witnessing a letter patent issued that day granting custody of Wallingford castle to one of John’s unnamed illegitimate sons,84 presumably Richard fitz Roy, who was at that time active in Oxfordshire.85 Falkes was, as we have seen, in receipt of lands in Bedfordshire on 18 October, presumably to bolster his power in the county for the impending succession dispute. He had departed on royal business on the morning of 18 October, but had then perhaps returned to Newark, without Savaric de Mauléon, in time to witness the king’s expiration.

Walter de Lacy seems to have been a constant presence in the royal entourage in the dog days of John’s rule,86 and it is perhaps significant that the very last entry on the patent rolls records a grant in which he had a vested interest. On 10 October 1216, at Lynn, Walter had extracted from John three carucates of forest at Aconbury in Herefordshire for his wife, Matilda, the daughter of William de Briouze, to found a female community of the order of the Hospital of St John (later turned into a community of Augustinian canonesses) in the memory of her father, mother and brother who John had driven to destruction.87 The fact that the letter patent, although issued at Lynn on the 10th, was placed as the final item on the final patent roll of John’s reign is suggestive that it came to the clerk late on 18 October. Items were placed on the chancery rolls in chronological order as they came to hand.88 It does not take that much imagination to see Walter taking advantage of the chaos that must have surrounded John’s demise to make sure that his letter patent was enrolled.89 It seems more likely than not, therefore, that Walter was at Newark on the evening of the 18th.

The fifth absentee is unlikely to have been William earl Ferrers of Derby. Derby seems to have been with the king in the late summer and early autumn of 1216,90 and the earl’s personal intervention can be detected in the issuing of a letter close, dated 17 October, to the constable

84. Rot. Litt. Pat., 199b. 85. Rot. Litt. Claus, i, 282b, 293. 86. Rot. Chart., 223b; Rot. Litt. Claus., i, 291. 87. Rot. Litt. Pat., 199b; S. Thompson, Women Religious: The Founding of Nunneries after the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1991), 50–2. 88. The final entries on the patent roll from 9 Oct 1216 are all written in the same ink and in the same hand as each other, seemingly en bloc (TNA, PRO, C 66/15, m. 1). The duplicate roll (TNA, PRO, C 66/16) was evidently written up from the main roll. It is worth noting that even in this time of crisis, the Chancery was still organised enough to copy out letters patent to the moment of John’s death and beyond as well as to make a duplicate: above, note 78. 89. W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum (6 vols. in 8, London, 1817–30), vi, part 1, 89–90; the cartulary survives as TNA, PRO, E315/55. 90. Rot. Chart., 223b, 224.

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of Hertford (no less a person than Falkes de Bréauté, so presumably the letter would have been handed directly to Falkes) in favour of his knight, William of Montgomery, ordering him to give full seisin of his land in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, from which Montgomery had been disseised.91 Without Derby’s direct intervention, it is hard to see why else a trivial matter such as this should have been brought to John’s attention. Derby was likely to have been around the king as John approached his demise.

The fifth absentee from John’s side might have been William Brewer. Brewer was certainly with John at Lincoln on 2 October 1216,92 but his movements after that date are obscure to us. Silvester, bishop of Worcester, is another possible candidate as the fifth absentee. On 1 September, he received letters of safe conduct without term to come and speak with the king who was at that time writing from Cirencester.93 On 8 September, he was enthroned at his cathedral church. Whether he then returned to John’s side is impossible to establish, though we know he was at Worcester to officiate at John’s funeral; but since the abbot of Croxton had an interest in John’s body (he got the intestines for his community) and given that the monks of John’s Cistercian foundation at Beaulieu had a claim on the king’s corpse,94 we might imagine that the wise head of a community that intended to house the royal corpse would be at the king’s deathbed.95 Another candidate for the position of fifth man is Richard Poer, bishop of Chichester. We know nothing of his movements in 1216 except that he was at the reissue of Magna Carta in early November that year; but then so were many other bishops and magnates who had not been with John at Newark.96 Undoubtedly, John chose Richard as an arbiter of his testament because of his outstanding reputation. Richard was a bishop, in the words of Brian Kemp, ‘in whom both sides could repose trust’.97 As a son of Henry II’s great courtier-bishop Richard of Ilchester and a pupil of Langton’s who had not come out against the king, he was acceptable to both sides in the dispute. And later in his career, he showed that he was not above

91. Rot. Litt. Claus., i, 291. 92. Rot. Litt. Pat., 198b. 93. Ibid., 195b. 94. P. Chaplais, ed., Diplomatic Documents Preserved in the Public Record Office, 1101–1272 (London, 1964), no. 440. 95. P.M. Hoskin, ed., English Episcopal Acta, xxxiv: Worcester (Oxford, forthcoming); Tussles over the royal corpse were not unknown. John’s brother, the young king, had had his body snatched by the citizens of Le Mans while in transit from his place of death to his intended place of burial, Rouen. Only the direct intervention of Henry II made good the young king’s wishes (E.M. Hallam, ‘Henry (1155–1183)’, ODNB). 96. H.R. Luard, ed., Annales Monastici (Rolls Series, 5 vols., London, 1864–9), ii, 286. 97. B.M. Kemp, ed., English Episcopal Acta, xviii, Salisbury 1078–1217 (Oxford, 1999), lvi; id., ‘God’s and the King’s Good Servant: Richard Poore, Bishop of Salisbury’, Peritia, xii (1998), 359–78.

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spending substantial periods of time at court. He was certainly chosen as an arbiter because, although at this stage in his career he was an outsider to the court, he could act as an honest broker to bring about reconciliation between the new king and his father’s enemies. He had, after all, spent much of his career to 1216 as a papal judge delegate and this fact, together with his wider reputation and his contacts with Langton, may have recommended his name to John at this particular moment.98 But was he at John’s bedside when the king died? The final candidate as fifth man is Aimery de St-Maur, master of the Temple. The Templars evidently supplied John with cash loans during the civil war, and when Aimery was in John’s company, he usually witnessed charters high in the pecking order.99 He was with John in early April 1216,100 but after this date, he disappears from the record.

The testament that John had drawn up in the last days of his existence was, like the acts issued by John from 15 October onwards,101 one that looked to a future without the man who had hitherto been its principal actor, King John. In an unusual clause for testaments of this period, John urged his arbiters to use his resources to help his sons ‘obtain and defend their inheritance’. His arbiters were to be, therefore, the men who he envisaged as providing the crucial support for his sons as they struggled against the might of Prince Louis and the rebel barons. And indeed these men did prove to be the backbone of the new regime that was to emerge around his son and heir, the nine-year-old Henry III; and it was a backbone that worked remarkably well, given the circumstances which these men faced. Although the thirteen named individuals did not act as a coherent group (perhaps that would have been too much to ask),102 from that group emerged the individuals who were to be the key players in the initial days that followed on John’s death. Guala, the papal legate, Peter des Roches of Winchester,103 William Marshal104 and Ranulf of Chester were deemed by all who gathered around Henry after his coronation at Gloucester on 28 October 1216 to be the men who might lead the kingdom out of its ruinous state.105 The reissue of Magna Carta, on 12 November 1216, was carried out at Bristol, where Savaric de Mauléon was castellan.106 The terms of the charter were granted by

98. P.M. Hoskin, ed., English Episcopal Acta, xxii, Chichester 1215–1253 (Oxford, 2001), xxvii–ix. 99. Rot. Chart., 214, 217b, 218. 100. Ibid., 221. 101. The testament itself was not enrolled. 102. D.A. Carpenter, The Minority of Henry III (London, 1990), 14, note 6. 103. N. Vincent, Peter des Roches: An Alien in English Politics (Cambridge, 1994), 134–41. 104. Holden et al., eds., History of William Marshal, lines 15189–90. 105. Carpenter, Minority of Henry III, 14–17. 106. F. Michel, ed., Histoire des Ducs de Normadie et des Rois de Angleterre (Paris, 1840), 181.

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Henry III per consilium of a galaxy of key individuals, inter alios, Guala, Peter des Roches, Richard Poer bishop of Chichester, Silvester bishop of Worcester, William Marshal, Ranulf of Chester, William earl Ferrers, Savaric de Mauléon, William Brewer, Falkes de Bréauté, Walter de Lacy and John of Monmouth. Of the arbiters named in King John’s testament, only the master of the Temple, Aimery de St-Maur, was missing from this gathering, perhaps indicating that he was the missing fifth man as witness to John’s testament.107

It can be suggested, therefore, that the following eight seals were appended to John’s testament by the men who were there to witness the last wishes of King John as expressed in his surviving testament. Flanking the Great Seal, which hung in the central position, were the seals of the bishop of Winchester and John of Monmouth. It is likely that the seal of William earl Ferrers of Derby was present on the testament. Walter de Lacy’s seal was likely to have been appended to the document. It seems reasonable to suppose that the sixth seal that hung from the testament was that of William Brewer if for no other reason than the fact that Brewer spent much time at the king’s side. The exchequer process seems to have broken down by Michaelmas 1216,108 so he would not have been required at Westminster (in enemy hands at that point anyway) that October. He was certainly with John on the 2nd of that month. Having excluded from the remaining list of arbiters the seals of the Marshal, Guala, Chester and Savaric de Mauléon, the last three seals are likely to have been, therefore, those of either Silvester of Worcester, Richard Poer of Chichester, Aimery de St-Maur or Falkes de Bréauté. Aimery de St-Maur’s absence from Newark during John’s last hours is suggested by two points: the first that he failed to witness a single royal act after April 1216, and the second that he was absent from the assembly that witnessed the reissue of Magna Carta at Bristol on 12 November 1216.

While not acting as a group, the men who John appointed as the arbiters of his testament did play a pivotal role in the re-establishment of royal rule. The Marshal, the bishop of Winchester, Falkes de Bréauté and William Ferrers, earl of Derby were all crucial at the Battle of Lincoln in May 1217.109 William Brewer continued to play an important role in the new regime that surrounded Henry. He was an expert in exchequer practices and his knowledge was to be used to re-create the royal finances which had been put into a ruinous state by the upheaval

107. Stubbs, Select Charters, 336–9. Is it significant that Aimery missed the Bristol reissue but had been mentioned in the 1215 issue (J.C. Holt, Magna Carta (2nd edn., Cambridge, 1992), 449)? 108. Carpenter, Minority of Henry III, 65. 109. Ibid., 35–41.

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of the civil war.110 Walter de Lacy played his role in the new regime, too, securing the Welsh Marches for his new master.111 John of Monmouth, also a marcher lord of considerable influence, like Walter de Lacy, played a key role in securing this territory for the minority government.112 Richard Poer was given custody of the see of Salisbury on 9 May 1217 at a point in time when all was still in the balance. According to the Melrose Chronicle, Richard was at Lincoln on 20 May 1217, too, and he was a witness to the victory off Sandwich on 24 August 1217. Well-respected churchman that he was, he still realised the importance of showing his support by his personal presence at the crucial engagements of the war.113 It was not a bad collection of individuals with which to surround Henry III. Some did not play their part for long. Savaric de Mauléon, for example, asked for permission to depart for Poitou at the council of Bristol.114 The last letter close he received in England was dated 3 December 1216.115 Some did not play a major part in the new regime. The master of the Temple seems to have enjoyed little influence in the early stages of the reformation of royal rule, though the Marshal’s almoner was a Templar and Aimery de St-Maur witnessed the Marshal’s entry into the order on his deathbed.116 But everyone else John had named was a key player a year or more after they had first been appointed. John’s wisdom—or the wisdom of those who had advised him led, perhaps, by Peter des Roches117—during his dying hours was born out by events.

The arbiters of his testament were chosen on the grounds of the qualities they would bring to the business of ensuring the future success of his dynasty. Since England was a papal fief, the pope automatically became the guardian of the late king’s children;118 so Guala, as Honorius III’s representative, was to be the first among John’s arbiters. The earls of Pembroke, Chester and Derby were, among those who had remained steadfastly loyal to John, men of such consequence in the land that it

110. R.V. Turner, Men Raised from the Dust: Administrative Service and Upward Mobility in Angevin England (Philadelphia, 1988), 79. 111. M.T. Flanagan, ‘Walter de Lacy (d. 1241)’, ODNB. 112. A.F. Pollard rev. R.R. Davies, ‘John of Monmouth (d. 1248)’, ODNB. 113. Kemp, ed., English Episcopal Acta, xviii, Salisbury 1078–1217, lvii. 114. Holden et al., eds., History of William Marshal, lines 15713–16. 115. Rot. Litt. Claus., i, 294. 116. Holden et al., eds., History of William Marshal, lines 18318–19, 18356–8. 117. Perhaps it is significant that absent from the list of arbiters was Hubert de Burgh, John’s justiciar and a man who was notably squeezed out of the Minority government during the regency. Peter des Roches was no friend of Hubert’s (M. Weiss, ‘The Castellan: The Early Career of Hubert de Burgh’, Viator, v (1974), 235–52; F. Cazel, ‘Intertwined Careers: Hubert de Burgh and Peter des Roches’, Haskins Society Journal, i (1989), 173–81, though Vincent, Peter des Roches, 171, sees ‘little to substantiate such a claim’). Clearly, there were tensions at Bristol in early Nov when Hubert complained that the Marshal was using the title ‘justiciar’ yet he had not been dismissed from his post (Carpenter, Minority of Henry III, 21–2). Equally missing from the list of ordainers was Richard Marsh, John’s chancellor from Oct 1214 (note 70). 118. Letters of Guala, no. 140b.

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was essential that they would play their part in the restitution of royal rule. The bishop of Winchester was the young Henry’s guardian and a loyalist with an unimpeachable record of service. The Master of the Temple, Aimery de St-Maur, was a man with the backing of a crusading order of international consequence. Richard Poer, bishop of Chichester, was a man who was deemed to be acceptable to all sides of the dispute. Silvester of Worcester was to be the guardian of the royal corpse. Walter de Lacy was an important man in the marches of Wales, as was John of Monmouth with whom, interestingly, Lacy was linked with an unusual ‘et’ (in the context of witness lists) by the scribe who wrote John’s testament. The remaining arbiters were men of a different calibre, however. These men were the hard men of John’s regime and no doubt John saw them turning the strength of purpose that they had applied to his service to the use of those who would make one of his sons king after him. John cannot have imagined that William Brewer, Falkes de Bréauté and Savaraic de Mauléon would have been able to work to bring about the reconciliation with the wider community of the realm that would help establish his progeny on the throne. Each of these men had the taint of his master about him and no doubt there were many in the baronial camp who had suffered at their hands. But they had not had the ignominy of having been named in clause 50 of Magna Carta and they were powerful in the key royalist areas of England.119 Falkes, for example, was castellan of a string of midland castles which were going to be crucial in the defence of the royalist heartlands: Northampton, Oxford, Buckingham, Bedford, Cambridge and, the castle which Louis attacked almost as soon as it became possible after his withdrawal from the siege of Dover, Hertford.120 John had attempted to cover the full range of talents in appointing his arbiters, from men with natural authority to men whose ‘lack of squeamishness’ made them ideal royal servants.

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119. N. Vincent, ‘Who’s Who in Magna Carta Clause 50?’, in M. Aurell, ed., Le médiéviste et la monographie familiale: sources, méthodes et problématiques (Turnhout, 2004), 235–64. 120. Carpenter, Minority of Henry III, 20–1, 25.

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