Non-Alienation Clauses in Thirteenth-Century English Charters

1985 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Scott L. Waugh

During the thirteenth century, English lords acted to halt the deterioration of their feudal powers brought about by social and legal changes at the end of the twelfth century. Their determination produced a long line of legislation on feudal incidents, mortmain, and subinfeudation that stretched from Magna Carta to the Statute of Quia Emptores in 1290. Yet, until that legislation was finally in place, landlords had to find other methods of maintaining their lordship over free tenures. Professor Donald Sutherland, for example, has shown that lords asserted “a new authority to take into their hands the holdings of their free tenants if the tenants attempted to alienate the holdings in ways that prejudiced the lord's rights.” Lords also used conditional grants to restrict alienation, and beginning in the early thirteenth century, they played an important role in the effort to reassert tenurial lordship. Conditional grants have been studied primarily in the context of the family, which used them to create marriage portions, jointures, and entails. This study of a sampling of cartularies and charters, however, analyzes the different forms of restrictions on alienation in order to demonstrate how lords used the expanding remedies of the royal courts to reinforce their private lordship.The right to consent to a tenant's alienation of his holding had been an essential prop of lordship prior to Henry II's legal reforms. Through his consent, the lord could determine the acceptability of his tenants and ensure the adequate performance of services attached to the holdings. He also protected himself against a serious loss of resources through grants in alms to the Church or through dowries to women marrying out of his lordship. Seizure of the tenement was the sanction that lords used to enforce their rights of consent. If a tenant failed to obtain that consent, he lost his land.

1865 ◽  
Vol 91 ◽  
pp. i-xxxiv

The volume now presented to the reader, and entitled “Registrum Prioratus Beatæ Wigorniensis,” contains documents of many kinds. Some few are of a public nature, such as the Magna Carta, de Libertatibus Angliæ, 9 Henrici III. 1224, the Carta de Libertatibus Forestæ of the same year, the Novæ Provisiones Angliæ, 44 H. III. 1259, and the Provisiones de Merton, 20 H. III. 1235. Others are Precedents of forms to be observed upon the vacancy of a Bishopric, for announcing the vacancy, and for obtaining from the Crown licence to elect. There are also Royal, Episcopal, and Private charters relating to the possessions and privileges of the Church at Worcester, together with records of proceedings in law suits before the Justices in Eyre. The larger portion, however, of the volume consists of a Descriptive Rental, as it may be termed, of the Possessions of the Benedictine Monastery of Worcester in the middle of the thirteenth century, including as well the Spiritual Revenues derived from Churches and Tithes, as the Temporal Revenues derived from Manors and Lands.


1977 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph V. Turner

The latter part of the twentieth century may not find many of us wishing to pay tribute to bureaucrats, but as Helen Cam reminded us, the civil servant “deserves more credit than he has yet had for building up and maintaining our precious tradition of law and order.” In the late twelfth century and the thirteenth century the process of “bureaucratization” first got underway in England. An early professional civil servant, one specializing in judicial activity, was Simon of Pattishall. His name surfaces in the records in 1190, and it disappears after 1216. His time of activity, then, coincides with an important period for English common law: the years between “Glanvill” and Magna Carta.Simon was one of that group of royal judges who might be termed the first “professionals,” a group that took shape by the middle years of Richard I's reign. By the time of John, about ninety men acted at various times as royal judges, either at the Bench at Westminster, with the court following the king, or as itinerant justices. Many of these had only temporary appointments, making circuits in the counties; but a core of fifteen, who concentrated on the work of the courts, can be regarded as early members of a professional judiciary. Simon of PattishalPs is perhaps the most respected name among the fifteen. He had the longest career on the bench, from 1190 until 1216. He founded a judicial dynasty, for his clerk, Martin of Pattishall, became a judge, as did his clerk, William Raleigh, who had as his clerk Henry of Bracton, author of the great treatise on English law.


Traditio ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 63-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland J. Teske

William of Auvergne became a master of theology in the University of Paris in 1223 and was appointed bishop of Paris by Gregory IX in 1228. William governed the church of Paris until his death in 1249, while continuing to write the works which constitute his immense Magisterium divinale et sapientiale. Despite the fact that he was the first of the thirteenth-century theologians to appreciate the value of the Aristotelian philosophy that poured into the Latin West during the last half of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, his writings have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. Étienne Gilson has sketched well the impact of the influx of Greek and Arabian philosophical works into the Christian West: Up to the last years of the twelfth century, when the Christian world unexpectedly discovered the existence of non-Christian interpretations of the universe, Christian theology never had to concern itself with the fact that a non-Christian interpretation of the world as a whole, including man and his destiny, was still an open possibility.


Traditio ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 451-460
Author(s):  
Marcia L. Colish

The romanesque façade of the abbey church of St.-Gilles in the diocese of Nlmes has been a subject of debate among art historians for many years. This controversy has been centered on the design of the church's façade [Fig. 1]. In addition to a series of colonnettes supporting archivolts that surround the tympana over its three western doorways, the St.-Gilles façade also possesses two free-standing columns flanking the central doorway that support nothing, a peculiarity which has led scholars to conclude that the plan of the façade was changed during the remodeling of the church in the twelfth century. The debate has focused on the dating of this change. A number of dates have been suggested, based on the façade's sculptural style, on dated inscriptions in the crypt, and on documents dealing with the church fabric. The art historians of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries dated the redesigning of the façade between 1116 and the middle of the thirteenth century, though the tendency of more recent scholarship has been to narrow the range of dates to between 1116 and the 1140s.


1990 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-127
Author(s):  
Ralph V. Turner

The legal treatise calledGlanvillis proof that by the end of Henry II's reign men capable of shaping the custom of the Englishcuria regisinto a systematic law book were present at Westminster.Glanvillis “the first textbook of the English common law.” This treatise was written near the end of Henry II's reign and since the thirteenth century, it has borne the name of his justiciar, Ranulf de Glanvill, although not many scholars today accept his authorship. Why, then, should we raise once more the question: Who was the author ofGlanvill?It remains a valid question because it affords an opportunity for reflection on questions concerning schools, learning, and twelfth-century English society. It forces us to consider the connections among the emerging English common law, the schools, the Scholastic method, and the study of Roman and canon law. It requires us to consider the contributions of Roman and eccesiastical law to Henry II's legal reforms.


1959 ◽  
Vol 39 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 219-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. M. Jope ◽  
R. I. Threlfall

SummaryThe castle of Ascot Doilly appears from documentary sources to have been put up c. 1129–50. Excavation in 1946–7 of a small mound on this manorial site showed that it had contained a stone tower 35 ft. square which had been built up from the natural surface of a 4-ft. rise of Lias clay protruding through the gravel of the Evenlode valley bottom. Round this tower, as it was raised, had been piled a low mound of clay; thus the impression of a tower on a mound was created. Beside it are remains of a bailey and contemporary paddocks. The tower had been deliberately demolished, probably c. 1180.The excavation thus revealed a new principle in smaller defensive building of the period, a mound piled round a stone tower. It also yielded a useful series of mid- to later twelfth-century pottery and other objects, and evidence of domestic window glass in the twelfth century.There are remains of thirteenth-century and later buildings in the bailey area. The village of Ascot represents a dual holding, with two mound-and-bailey castles at opposite ends 800 yds. apart, and between them the church (with twelfth-century work). There is also evidence of pottery-making in the village, at least in the early thirteenth century.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Philippa Byrne

Abstract The episcopacy in the High Middle Ages (c.1100–1300) can be understood through the idea of a shared emotional language, as seen in two treatises written to advise new bishops. In them, episcopal office was largely defined by the emotions it provoked: it was a cause for sorrow, a burden akin to back-breaking agricultural service. The ideas most associated with episcopal office were anxiety, labour and endurance. Ideas about Christian service as painful labour became particularly important in the twelfth century, alongside the development of the institutional authority of the Church. As episcopal power began to look more threatening and less humble, this emotional register provided one means of distinguishing episcopal power from secular lordly power: both were authorities, but bishops were distinguished by sorrowing over office and ‘enduring’, not enjoying it.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Nurelni Limbong

Abstrac The aim of this research is to dscribe concept of the position of women in the worship according to 1 Thimothy 2:11-12 and to formulated what can be reflected in this time? Is the interpretation of this chapter still relevant in the midst of contemporary life? This research is used by descriptive qualitative research methods with using literature (library research). The interpretation that is use in this research is exegesis method with the right step to get the right interpretation. With the literature that have a relation with the title, the writer try to review 1 Thimothy 2:11-12 to get the clear meaning, point out view that was said by the writer of this hook about the position of women in the worship. In this chapter Paul said a women can't teach and she is better keep silence. Paul said these case have a corelation with the patriarch culture at the time. Paul aim to prevent women from teacher heretical at the time. This teaching is actually addressed to the woman who was involved in the heresy/ false, who have abuse the ercercise of power that is true in the church. So Paul said that such matter is not to be understood universally. From this research or exegesis the writer conclude that the woman also be used in God's work, a woman also can be a servant of God because nor only man can serve God woman also called to do the same thing. Proper or not is not about gender. Because man or women are same in the presence of God So. it's not true when this chapter be a reason to limiting the space of woman in the service both in the church and in the family and society. Key words: the position of women, worship


1997 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph V. Turner

While Henry II and John's bitter quarrels with the Church have inspired much comment from both contemporaries and modern scholars, Richard Lionheart's relations with the English Church have attracted little notice. The lack of theatrical clashes with the pope or the archbishop of Canterbury has led modern scholars to assume that Richard I enjoyed fortunate relations with his clergy. Richard's most recent biographer has viewed him as “a conventionally pious man,” and contemporary chroniclers depicted him as fitting the Church's definition of the perfect knight whose financial exactions and other faults could be overlooked because of his crusader status.Almost continuously absent from England, the Lionheart is assumed to have had little opportunity to assert his will in ecclesiastical matters. Yet, Richard I was as determined as his father and brother to defend English monarchs' traditional rights over the Church, because their mastery over such a powerful institution conferred many advantages. Their bishops were also barons who advised the king at great councils, who often held posts in the royal administration, and who owed feudal obligations, even quotas of knights. The royal right of regalia gave Richard custody of church lands during an episcopal vacancy and the right to authorize new elections and to approve bishops-elect.Sir Christopher Cheney, a leading authority on the twelfth-century Church, observed that Richard I was “forever busy with the English Church.” An examination of the Lionheart's ecclesiastical policy proves him correct, revealing a monarch who had little respect for the Church's freedom and worked to preserve his royal predecessors's authority over it. Richard took care to oversee closely English episcopal elections.


2009 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 20-30
Author(s):  
Josephine Laffin

The Last Judgement was one of the most important themes in Christian art from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. It can be found in glittering mosaics on the west wall of the cathedral on the island of Torcello in the Venetian lagoon, on the sculptured centre portal of the west façade of Notre Dame in Paris, in Luca Signorelli’s haunting frescos in the Chapel of the Madonna of San Brizio in Orvieto, and in Michelangelo’s masterpiece in the Sistine Chapel. Numerous other churches had their own ‘dooms’. A dramatic but not untypical example from the twelfth century can be found above the entrance to the Church of Sainte-Foy at Conques. Christ is enthroned as an austere judge, dividing the saved from the damned. The procession to heaven is neat and orderly while hell is chaotic, being depicted as a hideous mouth devouring the damned, a common representation in medieval art. In ominous foreboding, this Romanesque Last Judgement rivals the thirteenth-century hymn, theDies Irae, as a reminder of the coming ‘day of wrath and doom impending’.


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