The death and burial of King John

During the night of October 18th-19th 1216 as a storm raged outside King John breathed his last at Newark Castle. He was in the midst of a campaign march heading north but was suffering from dysentery which had taken hold of his system whilst he was at Lynn in East Anglia nine days earlier. On his journey towards Newark he had lost a part at least of his baggage train in the treacherous sands of the Wellstream which flowed into The Wash.

The effigy of King John in Worcester Cathedral 

Dated to 1232

Image: Dean and Chapter of Worcester 

The King was forty nine and, until laid low by illness, had been energetically fighting against those of his nobles who had rejected his authority and invited Louis of France, son and heir to King Philip II, to replace him. Louis’ wife, Blanche of Castile, was King John’s niece and a granddaughter of King Henry II and Queen Eleanor.

Wikipedia has a good biography of King John which appears well grounded in current academic studies of the reign, and of the personality of this ever-intriguing monarch. There is also an up to date bibliography. It can be seen at John, King of England

From it one senses that none of his biographers and historians can fail but to find at least one serious personality failing in King John, and that these contributed to his political, diplomatic and military failures. Nevertheless modern historians do recognise his energy and inventiveness in government - often in order to secure money - and that his reign witnessed an expansion of the royal administration. 

For long the subject of the scorn of near contemporary monastic chroniclers and of high-minded nineteenth century academics maybe it has required the moral ambiguities and uncertainties of the twentieth century to re-humanise King John.

It is always dangerous for historians to seek to identify illnesses and mental conditions in their subjects, especially eight centuries ago, but I wonder if King John suffered from one of the non-incapacitating personality disorders of which we hear so much these days. His mood swings and at times hyper active behaviour might suggest that. Of course it could be simply that he had red hair - that can indicate, as I understand it, in all seriousness, a recognisably distinct medical personality.

Following the King’s death his body was embalmed by his physician, the Cistercian Abbot of Croxden, and who took the internal organs for burial at his monastery.

The burial place for the body was more difficult. With the loss of his lands in France the Angevin family monastery at Fontevraud where he had been educated as a child and which held the remains of his parents and predecessor, as well, later on, of his widow, was not practical. The family association remained as King John’s son King Henry III had his heart buried there in the 1270s.

For the same reason Rouen Cathedral where his elder brother the Young King is buried was not possible.

In England the King’s own Cistercian foundation at Beaulieu in Hampshire was not easily accessible in the wartime conditions then prevailing.

It appears to have been the Abbot of Croxden who asked if the dying monarch would wish to be buried in the cathedral at Worcester. This was a place to which he was attached, having prayed at the recently canonised St Wulfstan’s shrine in 1207, funded repairs to the monastic buildings, and spent Christmas there in 1214. It was also, with its two saints in St Oswald and St Wulfstan, church with an English identity, and, for all his strong desire to regain his lost territories in France, King John had also begun to emphasise his role as an English ruler. To this proposal the King agreed, and it was to Worcester that his body was taken, escorted by some of his mercenaries.

The King’s will, which is preserved at Worcester Cathedral 

Image: Dean and Chapter of Worcester 

There are videos about the burial, the tomb and its subsequent openings in 1529 and 1797 from

History Calling at History Calling and from The Antiquary at Opening the Tomb of King John

There is more about the events of the days leading up to the royal demise and those which followed as well as more on the tomb at King John's Bones

The effigy from a slightly different angle

Image: Pinterest

Fabric from the garments that King John was clothed in removed from his tomb in 1797. The animal appears to be an heraldic lion.

Image: Dean and Chapter of Worcester 

The arrangements for the King’s burial brings back the stories of his alleged impiety and lack of attention during the celebration of Mass. Possibly, like his great great uncle King William II, whom he may have resembled physically, he was impatient to do other things. His verbal impiety may reflect something of his upbringing, and the twelfth century Goliard tradition of irreverent literature such as The Gospel according to the Mark of Silver. It may also indicate a cutting sense of humour that was lost on others.

In that respect he may be similar to the Emperor Frederick II who scandalised many churchmen by his 

attitudes in succeeding decades. By contrast King John’s son King Henry III and his near contemporary King Louis IX were notably pious in ways that would be very different. 

Despite the chronicle tradition of shock at his impiety he seems often to be conventionally devout, a patron of the Croxden Cistercians from the beginning of his reign up to his care by the Abbot on his deathbed, and the founder of another Cistercian house, the sizeable one at Beaulieu. 

He was on one occasion reproved by the Carthusian St Hugh of Lincoln when the saint told him not to trust in an amulet the King wore to keep him safe but in the living stone which is Christ, and he left a lengthy sermon preached at him by St Hugh on the duties of kingship. Nevertheless in that same year, 1200, he was a pall bearer at the bishop’s funeral, escorting the body from London to Lincoln.

Whether the deaths for which he is usually deemed particularly responsible, notably of his nephew Arthur of Brittany and of Matilda de Briouse and one of her son, and which are discussed as to their accuracy by History Calling here and here respectively weighed on his mind in his last hours is unknowable. What can be said is that for all the tyranny and horror of both instances, and which contributed to his dreadful reputation, worse was to come from some of his descendants, such as King Edward II in his last years, very probably King Richard III, and was as nothing to the events of the sixteenth century.

Similarly the reports of his promiscuity - evidenced by a number of illegitimate children - on closer examination appear to be from before his accession and before his marriage to Isabella of Angôuleme. In that he appears similar to his great grandfather King Henry I, whose vast progeny of children born out of wedlock pre-dated his accession and marriage. 

King John may indeed not have been virtuous but he does not need to be made monstrous.

His reign was a turning point in English history. If Magna Carta came to be seen as a foundational constitutional document that was no thanks to King John, but the loss of most of his landed inheritance in France left his successors with the matter of safeguarding what remained and seeking how to recover those in the hands of the French crown. For the King of France their acquisition made possible the formation of an increasingly powerful and centralised realm - until the English returned with not just an army but a claim to the crown of France. The death of King John was not just the end of one man’s life and of an age but the beginning of a myth about a man and the forging of a new era.

“Putting it all back” at the Oxford Oratory

 It was about a month ago that the Oxford Oratory publicly launched its “Putting it all back” restoration of the sanctuary in the church of St Aloysius.

Several years of planning have gone into this phase of the scheme, and it is clearly at the heart of the project.

The ceiling painting and the reredos were restored several years ago, with the statues being removed for conservation, with missing features restored and the highlight gilding renewed, as was that on the wall beneath. 

In essence the sanctuary will be restored to its original appearance with the High Altar against the wall of the apse and its structural setting recreated. Details of the plans can be seen at Putting it all back

I was one of those who wrote in to the Diocesan advisory committee strongly in support of the project - slightly unusual for me as when I usually write about planning proposals in the secular sphere it is to oppose them… That must have been about five years ago. 

In the intervening time of waiting the spandrel paintings on the side walls have been uncovered and restored. They, like much of the interior decoration of the church, had been painted over in the 1960s or 70s.

The sanctuary has now been screened off and a temporary altar erected in front of it for the time the work takes to complete.

From this week’s Parish E-newsletter:

Progress on the sanctuary is now quite hard to miss.

The previous altar has been completely dismantled and its concrete foundations are now visible. The old flooring has been salvaged. The walls crossing the sanctuary supported the floor and will support the new one. The ledge that formerly held the tabernacle has been taken down. It was surrounded by (now rare) English alabaster pieces recycled from the original altar. These are too small to form any part of the new altar, but they’ve been saved to be reused for something else in the future. The tabernacle will be heading off for restoration soon.

Meanwhile good progress is being made on the apse repairs too, especially the stained glass repairs, despite our poor conservationist being subjected to four seasons per day on top of our scaffolding this week!

Image and text, slightly amended, from the Oxford Oratory website

Archbishop of Birmingham sanctions a Sarum Mass

The Advaticanum website reports that the Archbishop of Birmingham has agreed in principle to the celebration of a Sarum Use - or Rite - Mass within his diocese. 

The story has been picked up by other Catholic websites, but the original article from Advaticanum can be read at Archbishop of Birmingham, UK, gives approval for celebration of medieval Sarum Mass

A page from a Sarum Missal

Image: Cheetham’s Library

The account of recent celebrations includes two by permission of the then Archbishop in 1996 and 1997 in 

the glorious chapel of Merton College in Oxford. I was able to attend those two offerings of the Mass and it was a great privilege, and indeed a beautiful experience, to witness the liturgy of medieval England in a building created for just such a celebration. On the basis of those two occasions I think there can be no doubt that other such celebrations would be very popular.

Photographs from the video  - which can be found online - of the second of these Masses, that of Candlemas in 1997, together with some notes about the Sarum Use, can be seen by scrolling down at Sarum Rite

Properly speaking it is a Use, variant form of the Roman Rite rather than a distinct Rite like Milan, Lyons, or Braga, or the Spanish Mozarabic Rite at Toledo - and akin to the Traditional Dominican form. At the Council of Constance in 1414-17 the different ‘nations’ celebrated Mass according to their home usage and members of other ‘nations’ were especially impressed by the beauty of the English celebration.

Violent death of a bishop in London in 1326

Seven centuries ago the London of 1326 was falling into chaos. The invasion of the country led by the Queen, Isabella of France, and her lover Roger Mortimer, having landed at Orwell, swept through Suffolk, Cambridge and Oxford, and the government had virtually abandoned London.

  

 

  

Queen Isabella

  

A label stop in Beverley Minster

Image: rebeccastarrbrown.com

Her husband, King Edward II and his close adviser Hugh Despenser the Younger, had fled westwards to Gloucester. The former Treasurer, Bishop Walter Stapledon of Exeter, was left in London together with his brother. Both men were in their sixties. As a figure very much associated with the collapsing government Stapledon and his properties in and close to London came under attack. He was also seen as an opponent by the Queen as a result of some of his actions the previous year when she had been in exile at the court of her brother King Charles IV.

As was their wont the population of London was hostile to the government of the day and on October 15th that by now intense hostility was to claim the lives of the Bishop, his brother who was a judge, and at least two of their servants.

The effigy of Bishop Walter Stapledon 

on his tomb in Exeter Cathedral 

Image: Wikipedia 

There is a detailed account of their murders on Kathryn Warner’s Edward II blog at The Murder of Walter Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter, 15 October 1326

According to Walter Stapledon’s modern biographer he was beheaded at the Cross in Cheapside with a bread knife. Since reading that over thirty years ago I have never looked at a bread knife in quite the same way.

Stapledon’s head was reportedly sent to Queen Isabella at Bristol as proof of his death.

 Wikipedia has illustrated biographies of the Bishop and his brother at Walter Stapledon and at Richard Stapledon

Bishop Stapledon has left two enduring monuments. 

The first is the presbytery and choir, with its throne and stalls at Exeter Cathedral. Taking his inspiration no doubt from the Lady Chapel built by a previous bishop a generation earlier the Devon-born Stapledon began the rebuilding of the whole cathedral in the latest style. All that survives of the previous structure are the distinctive transeptal towers. It fell to his successor Bishop John Grandisson to complete the nave in the succeeding decades.

The second is Exeter College in Oxford. Founded in 1314 by the bishop and his brother, and originally known as Stapledon Hall, this was intended to provide for clerical students from the counties of Devon and Cornwall, which comprised the diocese of Exeter. It is the fourth oldest in date of the constituent colleges of the University. 

The Battle of Hastings

As the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum is the hottest ticket in town at the moment it seems appropriate to write about the central event it depicts, the Battle of Hastings, fought in this day 960 years ago in 1066.

The death of King Harold II

The King is the figure being cut down in the right. The standing figure apparently with an arrow in his eye is the result of nineteenth century restoration - originally what is now an arrow was a spear the figure was throwing

Image: Wikipedia 

Duke William, if he did not know it already, took over the most sophisticated royal government in Europe, and being the intelligent and practical man that he was as King William he kept it in place and learned how to use it. Domesday Book may be a great monument to the Normans, but they could not have created it without the institutions created and nurtured by the Anglo-Saxons.

 

The Norman cavalry face the English foot soldiers 

 

Image: historic-uk.com

The battle saw the destruction of much of the military elite of the English realm. Those who survived or were not present were to often go into exile in the years following, but some, with varying success, made their peace with the new dispensation. At least one great English Whig aristocratic family which claims its ancestor fought alongside Duke William at Hastings has been shown by twentieth century scholarship to be of northern English origin who acquired a more glamorous pedigree over the centuries.

The heat and fury, and also the casualties, of the battle

Image: britannica.com

   

There can be no doubt that what happened on the battlefield at Hastings was one of the most momentous events in the history of England, and, by extension, of the British Isles. Virtually everything which has happened since that day is either directly a consequence of the Norman victory, or indirectly conditioned by it. The survival of English as a language, of some national institutions such as the Monarchy and parts of the Common Law and, surprisingly, many Anglo-Saxon churches is a tribute to the vigour and resilience of the kingdom the Duke of Normandy had conquered.

 

The link with Normandy and, consequently, with the Angevin territories shaped the English medieval centuries and the continuing relationship with Europe. Without Hastings there would be little likelihood of such images of national identity as Crécy, Poitiers and, above all, Agincourt. The French territories may have been lost, but the memory shaped the sense of nationhood.

By linking England to the mainstream of European thought and culture England itself, and then the rest of the British Isles, were integrated into the ecclesiastical, cultural and intellectual world of western Europe, and played a major part in transmitting those ideas to Scandinavia.

Within the British Isles the Normans were to have both direct and indirect impact on Wales, in Scotland, and Ireland. These were the new frontiers for territorial and cultural expansion, but yet again, building on Anglo-Saxon precedents.

The sharp distinction between Norman and Saxon so beloved of seventeenth century radicals, nineteenth century novelists and twentieth century filmmakers does seem to have faded quite rapidly. The wealth of England which attracted invaders had already seen successful Danish invasions in the earlier part of the eleventh century and King Harold II’s family were Anglo-Saxon protégés of King Cnut. Within a relatively short time after Hastings men and women of Anglo-Saxon descent were entering into the life of a new Anglo-Norman elite. The very fact that the Bayeux Tapestry is thought to be the work of English embroiderers at Canterbury suggests how early that linkage was taking place.

I have no doubt that the battle of Hastings was terrible and bloody for those who took part, whether they survived or not. It is noteworthy that survivors were required to do penance for what had taken place. It is also an event that has shaped, and continues to shape, not only England, but the English-speaking world.

The Pilgrimage of Grace 1536

Today is the 490th anniversary of the beginning of the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536. This followed on from the Lincolnshire Rising which had collapsed a fortnight beforehand. The what extent they were actually linked remains unclear, and they may be an instance of similar circumstances producing similar, but distinct, events.  

        

   

A surviving embroidered badge of the Five Wounds from the Pilgrimage 

Image.adastpaul.com

As I wrote in my article about the Lincolnshire Rising the Pilgrimage of Grace is one of those events which people either so know about, more especially perhaps if they are northerners, or they do not know about it or dismiss as just a conservative, reactionary movement in opposition to the progressive moves of King Henry VIII and his dreadful lackeys, Cromwell and Cranmer. ….

Wikipedia has a very general and rather superficial account at of the movement at Pilgrimage of Grace

We have a great deal of contemporary source material available but it requires time to read it. A knowledge of the region and places involved helps to locate it not just geographically but also spiritually and culturally.

Although there was strong support in Craven and in north Lancashire, Westmoreland and Cumberland, which might be considered ‘backwoods’ areas the  Pilgrimage began in the prosperous lowlands of the East Riding east of the Ouse and similar areas across that Riding and the West Riding. These were areas much more similar to the eastern Midlands and southern England, and with an inbuilt tradition of being independent-minded, and like the Lincolnshire men who had risen only weeks earlier.

Could it have succeeded? I think the odds were ultimately stacked in favour of the Crown and central government. Like the smaller Lincolnshire uprising it appears to have broken down behind the seeming front of unity, especially after the truce arranged at the end of the year. Those like Sir Francis Bigod who started another uprising early in 1537 played into the government’s hand and enabled the King to call off the truce and go on the offensive.

Although there was aristocratic support there was not the type of leadership from a great magnate or magnates which had proved so potent in the previous century with regional and factional rebellions. We do not really know what discussions took place in  private over a sizeable area beforehand, and the historical debate continues as to who was behind the movement.

Was Robert Aske, like Thomas Moigne in Lincolnshire, the leader or the legally trained spokesman for what was in part a movement by the social and religious elite, but was also a genuinely popular movement?

Any hoped for foreign intervention was lacking, though how likely this was is highly debatable given the international situation. Nor can one see how such an operation could have been mounted, especially at short notice.  

King Henry could have abided by the truce, but again one must ask was that ever likely? It had been negotiated by the Duke of Norfolk who probably sympathised with the Pilgrimage’s aims, yet he was also bound to the King and safeguarding his own position in East Anglia and elsewhere.

In a time when the popular voice could only be heard by rebelling its chances of success were slim without support in other regions. Once the initial impact wore off the momentum changed and the balance of advantage passed to the government in London.

Retribution was severe, with executions continuing into the summer of 1538.

As with the members of the Lincolnshire Rising we can  appreciate the zeal to maintain the traditional faith, and to remedy socio-economic grievances, and say of the Pilgrims that at least they tried to save their way of life and faith. 

St Edward the Confessor

Today is the feast of St Edward the Confessor. It is the anniversary of the day in 1163 when his relics were translated from his original tomb in Westminster Abbey to a new shrine, following his canonisation in 1161 by Pope Alexander III.

King Edward the Confessor.   

 

From the Bayeux Tapestry 

    

Image: Wikipedia 

      

With all the coverage of the events of 1066 we are getting in connection with the visit of the Bayeux Tapestry to the British Museum I wonder if today was chosen so that the liturgical celebration of the new saint king falls on the day before the anniversary of the battle of Hastings. This would, by implication, make King William I the immediate successor of King Edward and thus deny King Harold II the status of ever being a lawful monarch.

 

Detail of St Edward the Confessor from the Wilton Diptych of 1397

 

Image: Historical Britain blog     

 

 The cult of St Edward flourished particularly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, most notably it would appear in the reign of King Richard II. It is noteworthy that in 1399 after the deposition of that king his successor, King Henry IV, chose to be crowned at Westminster on this feast day of St Edward, and by implication, stressing the significance of the role of St Edward as the patron in the monarchy and as the exemplar of divinely approved and sanctioned kingship.

 

A modern icon of St Edward in his shrine chapel at Westminster Abbey. 

Image:Reddit

St Wilfrid

Today is the feast day of the great Anglo-Saxon bishop and missionary St Wilfrid 

 

A modern icon of St Wilfrid 

Image: northumberlandtraveller.wordpress.com - Hexham

Due to the biography written soon after his death by Eddius Stephanus as well as the work of the Venerable Bede we probably know more about the life of St Wilfrid than about that of any of his contemporaries in the episcopate other than the very different life of St Cuthbert.

Wilfrid, born in 633 or 634, probably in what is now Yorkshire, lived to be seventy six, dying at his monastery at Oundle in Northamptonshire in 709. His life was rich and varied as, probably, a monk, the spokesman for the Roman option at the Synod of Whitby, a founder of monasteries and churches, a bishop influenced strongly by Frankish practice, a political figure often clashing with Northumbrian kings, a political exile, who used exile to evangelise in Frisia, and later in Sussex and the Isle of Wight, and later still in the East Midlands, and man who travelled three times to Rome to argue his case before the Pope.

  

 His impact on the long term development and life of the Church in England was probably greater than any of his contemporaries amongst the bishops other than Archbishop Theodore of Tarsus who began the establishment of the parochial system.

 

The biography of him on Wikipedia is, like their others on Anglo-Saxon figures, much better than the average on that website, and indicates a serious academic background. It can be read at Wilfrid

The York Oratory website has a short account which very properly brings to the fore the Roman element in St Wilfrid’s formation and ecclesiastical vision. It can be read at Saint Wilfrid of York 

Tradition in Action has an extract from Eddius Stephanus’ life of the saint in which he received a vision of St Michael as messenger of the Virgin Mary, and refers to his church building activities whilst seriously ill in Meaux in France in 704. This in itself is interesting as it is from the time Marian devotion began to develop in the West, and close in date to the Evesham apparition of Our Lady. It can be accessed at The Vision of St. Wilfrid by Eddius

 

St Wilfrid as depicted in a fifteenth century panel in Hexham Abbey

Image: History Extra  

 

May St Wilfrid pray for us