Note (29) — Chapter II
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One of the Constitutions of Clarendon forbade villains to be ordained without the consent of their lords. “Filii rusticorum non debent ordinari absque assensu domini de cujus terra nati dignoscuntur” (Stubbs, Select Charters, 134). On the principles of feudal law nothing can be said against this, as the lord had a property in his villain which he would lose by the villain’s ordination. The prohibition is noticed in some remarkable lines of the earliest biographer of Thomas, Garnier of Pont-Sainte-Maxence (La Vie de Saint Thomas le Martyr, Paris, 1859, p. 89), where he strongly asserts the equality of gentleman and villain before God:—
“Fils à vilains ne fust en nul liu ordenez Sanz l’otrei sun seigneur de cui terre il fu nez. Et deus à sun servise nus a tuz apelez! Mielz valt filz à vilain qui est preux e senez, Que ne feit gentilz hum failliz et debutez.”
Thomas himself was not the son of a villain, but his birth was such that the King could sneer at him as “plebeius quidam clericus.”
(30) We are not inclined to find fault with such an appointment as that of Stephen Langton; still his forced election at the bidding of Innocent was a distinct breach of the rights of the King, of the Convent of Christ Church, and of the English nation generally. See the account of his election in Roger of Wendover, iii. 212; Lingard, ii. 314; Hook’s Archbishops, ii. 668.
(31) See the Bulls and Letters by which Innocent professed to annul the Great Charter in Roger of Wendover, iii. 323, 327; the excommunication of the Barons in iii. 336; and the suspension of the Archbishop in iii. 340.
(32) There is a separate treatise on the Miracles of Simon of Montfort, printed along with Rishanger’s Chronicle by the Camden Society, 1840.
(33) I think I may safely say that the only royalist chronicler of the reign of Henry the Third is Thomas Wykes, the Austin Canon of Osney. There is also one poem on the royalist side, to balance many on the side of the Barons, among the Political Songs published by the Camden Society, 1839, page 128.
Letters to Earl Simon and his Countess Eleanor form a considerable part of the letters of Robert Grosseteste, published by Mr. Luard for the Master of the Rolls. Matthew Paris also (879, Wats) speaks of him as “episcopus Lincolniensis Robertus, cui comes tamquam patri confessori exstitit familiarissimus.” This however was in the earlier part of Simon’s career, before the war had broken out. The share of Bishop Walter of Cantilupe, who was present at Evesham and absolved the Earl and his followers, will be found in most of the Chronicles of the time. It comes out well in the riming Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester (ii. 558):—
“Þe bissop Water of Wurcetre asoiled hom alle pere And prechede hom, þat hii adde of deþ þe lasse fere.”
This writer says of the battle of Evesham:—
“Suich was þe morþre of Eivesham (vor bataile non it was).”