1. The Abbot, the Royal Will and Magna Carta: the amercement of the Abbot of St Albans for non-attendance at the common summons of the Yorkshire Forest Eyre in 1212

One aspect of the political and legal history of the thirteenth century that the Henry III Fine Rolls Project aims to help examine in greater detail is the extent to which Magna Carta took root in England and the extent to which different members of society resorted to it to address royal policies. Here, Michael Clasby, who is working on a doctorate at King's on St. Albans in the age of Matthew Paris, discusses the attempts by the abbot of St. Albans to challenge an amercement imposed upon him by the royal will and Henry III’s willingness to rule less arbitrarily than his father.

⁋1The administration of the royal forests, and the amercements imposed for offences against the forest law, were a source of aggravation to the barons during the reigns of Henry II and King John, and were a contributory factor leading to civil war at the end of John’s reign. The conflict centred on the justice of the decisions made by the king alone, per voluntatem regis, as against the decisions made by the king in consultation with his barons taking account of the customs and laws of the realm. In his book, The Northerners, Sir James Holt sets out the problem very clearly, ‘The forest law derived solely from the King’s will and bore no relationship to the custom of the realm. The justice of the forest law was relative, not absolute. All this ran counter to the views men were coming to hold on the proper organisation of the kingdom, and what they did, in effect, in 1215 and 1217 was to put forest law for the first time on the same footing as the custom of the realm.’ 1

⁋2The arbitrary and excessive impositions made by the justices conducting the forest eyres are well illustrated by the amercement levied on the abbot of St. Albans in 1212 when he did not respond to a summons to attend the forest eyre in Yorkshire. 2 What is more interesting, however, is the subsequent recognition by Henry III, some 20 years later, that the amercement had been unreasonable, and had been imposed by King John solely through the exercise of the royal will. In a writ enrolled on the fine rolls for 1232 Henry pardoned the amercement and, in doing so, indicated that his attitude to the way the king should rule was different from that of his father.

⁋3The record of the abbot’s amercement first occurs in the pipe roll 14 John, that which covers the financial year from Michaelmas 1211 to Michaelmas 1212. It appears in the sheriff’s account for Essex and Hertfordshire and reads:

⁋4‘The Abbot of St. Albans owes 300 marks for a default made in Yorkshire.’ 3

⁋5Since this record comes under the ‘new offerings/nova oblata’ heading in the Essex and Hertfordshire section of the pipe roll, the debt was evidently newly incurred. 4 Just why the debt had been incurred is not said but later pipe rolls are a little more informative. In that for 1213–1214, the next to survive, the entry now reads:

⁋6 ‘The abbot of St. Albans [blank] 300 marks for an amercement of the forest in Yorkshire’. 5

⁋7The entry is then repeated in the first roll of Henry III’s reign, and re-appears in all subsequent rolls in print up to 1230. 6 Fortunately, the eventual pardon in the fine roll, gives much fuller information. There, a writ dated 5 May 1232 and issued at Westminster, runs as follows:

⁋8‘5 May. Westminster. For the abbot of St. Albans. Because the king has learnt that the abbot of St. Albans was amerced at 300 m. in the time of King John by will more than by any reason (voluntate magis quam aliqua ratione) before his justices itinerating at that time to take the pleas of the forest in the county of Yorkshire on account of the default he made in not coming before them at common summons, because the abbot has no land nor then had land in the aforesaid county, as is said, by reason of which he ought to be amerced, the king has pardoned him the aforesaid 300 m. of the aforesaid amercement by the fine of four palfreys of the price of 20 m. which he made with him. Order to the barons of the Exchequer to cause the abbot to be quit of the aforesaid 300 m.’ 7

⁋9It seems pretty safe to assume, given its date, that the abbot’s amercement was imposed by the forest judges during their eyre in Yorkshire in 1212, an eyre which, as Holt has shown, was particularly exigent. 8 Indeed, the abbot was not the only person to suffer swingeing penalties for ‘default’: those imposed on Robert fitzWalter and Hugh Bigod both amounted to 100 marks. 9 Still the St. Albans penalty was easily the highest and may reflect John’s anger at the way the abbot had refused to celebrate mass before him during the Interdict. 10 It contrasts with the one goshawk which John of Bassingbourn was amerced for the same offence (‘pro eodem’) in the next line in the pipe roll. 11 Nor was the debt scaled down as was that of Robert fitz Walter who was allowed to give two casks of good Angevin wine instead. 12 What made all this worse was that the default in question was of a comparatively minor nature, the abbot having failed to turn up in response to the ‘common summons’ through which forest judges, like justices in eyre, ordered all those involved to present themselves on the first day of their business. Under Henry III, exemptions from having to answer such summonses were granted as pretty routine favours to people of influence. Worse still, as the eventual pardon indicated, was that the abbot claimed he had no land in Yorkshire which should render him liable to the common summons in the first place, this meaning he had no land within the boundaries of the forest. This was, in fact, an issue dealt with directly in Magna Carta in 1215 where chapter 44 laid down that:

⁋10 ‘Henceforth, men who live outside the forest shall not come before our justices of the forest upon a common summons, unless they are impleaded or are sureties for any person or persons, who are attached for forest offences’. 13

⁋11The abbot’s complaint seems to have been well justified because his interests at Thorpe Basset, Norton the Clay and elsewhere in Yorkshire were all outside the bounds of the royal forest, if, that is, we may judge from the maps drawn in W.H. Liddell’s, ‘Some Royal Forests, North of the Trent, 1066–1307’, a university of Nottingham MA thesis of 1961. 14 The amercement was thus excessive by any standard and must have been regarded as an example of John’s tyranny in an area dealt with directly by Magna Carta. The only surprise is that there is no reference to the incident in Matthew Paris’s Gesta, perhaps because there were other examples to write about where the abbot really did lose money whereas in this case, he was not actually made to pay up. 15

⁋12Whether any pressure was put on the abbot to pay the debt between 1218 and 1231 we do not know, although a run through the memoranda rolls of the Exchequer might shed light on the subject. That he paid nothing in this period certainly suggests he was not under pressure to do so and had from the start challenged the basis of the debt. 16 In 1231, however, this changed, although we do not know why. Perhaps the Exchequer was doing a trawl through old unpaid debts. Whatever the reason, when the sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire came to the Exchequer to account at Easter 1231, he was ordered to distrain the abbot to pay up. This move, as the memoranda roll goes on to note, produced the fine which we have set out above. 17 The abbot offered the king four palfreys which were commuted to twenty marks, a sum which, as the pipe roll shows, the abbot paid at once. 18 The offer of palfreys, formal not real, is interesting and perhaps symbolized that the abbot was giving the king a friendly gift in return for his consideration rather than paying any part of the amercement. In any case, in return, the fine was pardoned. All this happened in May 1232 less than three months before the king’s chief minister, the justiciar, Hubert de Burgh, was pulled from power by his great rival, Peter des Roches. Hubert was admired at St. Albans and had tried to govern, for the most part, in conformity with Magna Carta. 19 That the writ to the Exchequer explaining the pardon was so open about the reasons for it – John had acted ‘by will and not by any reason’ – may well reflect Hubert’s attitude to John’s rule and his belief that Henry should rule in another way. Was it also a kind of manifesto issued at the height of his struggle with Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester? Bishop Peter was at court alongside Hubert on the day the writ was issued, 20 and was soon, to drive Henry III along a course which took him very close, at least in the public mind to tyranny of his father.

⁋13The importance of the fine roll entry for 1232 is that Henry III accepted that the amercement of 1212, was imposed by his father’s will rather than by a lawful process. The implication was that a decision per voluntatem regis was no longer acceptable to his barons and the wider political community, all the more so when it ran contrary to a clause in the Great Charter. For St. Albans this could seem a significant change since Roger of Wendover had said of the attitude of John’s council in 1211 that ‘in their desire to please the king, (they) gave their advice not according to reason, but as the king’s pleasure dictated.’ 21 This was very much what Henry III later accused Peter des Roches of doing during his period of power. He had made the king deviate from the path of justice, attributing to ‘the plenitude of royal power’ his ability to injure his subjects ‘at his will’ (pro velle nostro). 22 The completely contrary view of how a king should rule, set out in the St. Albans pardon, just before des Roches’s ascent to power, helps explain why the opposition to him had such wide support, and why, by the time of his fall, it was clear that the principles of the Charter ‘were too deeply entrenched to be set at nought’. 23

1.2. C 60/31, Fine Roll 16 Henry III (28 October 1231–27 October 1232), membrane 5 (schedule)

1.2.1. 94

⁋15 May. Westminster. For the abbot of St. Albans. Because the king has learnt that the abbot of St. Albans was amerced at 300 m. in the time of King John by will more than by any reason (voluntate magis quam aliqua ratione) before his justices itinerating at that time to take the pleas of the forest in the county of Yorkshire on account of the default he made in not coming before them at common summons, because the abbot has no land nor then had land in the aforesaid county, as is said, by reason of which he ought to be amerced, the king has pardoned him the aforesaid 300 m. of the aforesaid amercement by the fine of four palfreys of the price of 20 m. which he made with him. Order to the barons of the Exchequer to cause the abbot to be quit of the aforesaid 300 m.

Footnotes

1.
J.C. Holt, The Northerners (Oxford, 1961), p. 159. Back to context...
2.
Pipe Roll 14 John, p. 57. Back to context...
3.
Pipe Roll 14 John, p. 57: ‘Abbas de Sancto Albano debet ccc m. pro defalta facta in Euerwicsir’’. Back to context...
4.
Since this was an amercement and not a fine or offer it was probably placed in the nova oblata section simply as somewhere to put it. Back to context...
5.
Pipe Roll 16 John, p. 5: ‘Abbas de Sancto Albano [blank] ccc m. de misericordia foreste in Euerwicsir’’. Back to context...
6.
Pipe Roll 2 Henry III, p. 71; : Pipe Roll 14 Henry III, p. 144. Back to context...
7.
CFR 1231–32, no. 94. Back to context...
8.
Holt, The Northerners, p. 159. See also Pipe Roll 14 John, pp. 38–39. Back to context...
9.
Pipe Roll 14 John, pp. 18, 57; Pipe Roll 16 John, p. 93. Back to context...
10.
Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani a Thoma Walsingham, ed. H.T. Riley, three vols. (Rolls series, 1867–69), i, p. 235 [hereafter Gesta]. Back to context...
11.
Pipe Roll 14 John, p. 57. Back to context...
12.
Pipe Roll 14 John, p. 57. Back to context...
13.
J.C. Holt, Magna Carta, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 462–63. This became chapter 2 of the 1217/1225 Charter of the Forest (p. 513). W.H. Liddell states of John’s forest eyres that ‘North of the Trent many of the amercements were on towns, and especially on towns which stood some distance from those areas which are known to have been in the forest’: W.H. Liddell, ‘Some Royal Forests North of the Trent 1066–1307’, (unpublished University of Nottingham MA thesis, 1961), p. 75. Back to context...
14.
Liddell, ‘Some Royal Forests North of the Trent 1066–1307’, maps in the Appendix. For the interests of St. Albans in Yorkshire, see Early Yorkshire Charters, ii, ed. W. Farrer (Edinburgh, 1915), pp. 282–83; W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, revised edition by J. Caley, H. Ellis, and B. Bandinel, ii (London, 1819), p. 228. Back to context...
15.
Gesta, pp. 241–43. Back to context...
16.
Some uncertaintly about the debt at the Exchequer may be indicated by the way it continued to leave a blank in the pipe rolls (see above note 5) instead of filling it in with ‘he owes/debet’, as was usual when someone did not account. Back to context...
17.
Memoranda Roll 14 Henry III, p. 16. Back to context...
18.
TNA E 372/76, rot. 32. For the image see http://aalt.law.uh.edu/AALT4/H3/E372no76/aE372no76fronts/IMG_3877.htm Back to context...
19.
D.A. Carpenter, The Minority of Henry III (London, 1990), pp. 139–40, 211, 266, 291, 296–97, 334–37, 364, 385–88. For the many references to Hubert in Wendover and Paris see Matthaei Parisiensis Chronica Majora, 7 vols., ed. H.R. Luard, (Rolls series, 1872–83), vii, pp. 89–92. Back to context...
20.
The Royal Charter Witness Lists of Henry III, ed. M. Morris, 2 vols. (Lists and Index Society, 291–92, 2001), i, p. 114. For Peter’s rule see N. Vincent, Peter des Roches. An Alien in English Politics 1205–1238 (Cambridge 1996), chapters 8–13. Back to context...
21.
Chronica Majora, ii, p. 533; ‘qui, regi in omnibus placere cupientes, consilium non pro ratione sed pro voluntate dederunt.’ Back to context...
22.
Treaty Rolls 1234–1325, ed. P. Chaplais (London, 1955), no. 15. Back to context...
23.
D.A. Carpenter, The Reign of Henry III (London, 1996), pp. 37–39. Back to context...