Ela Longespee's Roll of Benefits: Piety And Reciprocity In The Thirteenth Century

ELA LONGESPEE'S ROLL OF BENEFITS: PIETY AND RECIPROCITY IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY By EMILIE AMT Ipsa auiem, bonorum temporalium liberalissima ac spirilualium ávida beneficiorum . . . — 1293 charter of Oxford University, describing EIa Longespee In 1293, the elderly and twice-widowed EIa Longespee, countess of Warwick , or someone acting on her behalf, gathered together eighteen charters that had been issued to her over the past dozen years and sent them to the bishop of Lincoln, to be confirmed and copied into a single roll. The original charters have long since vanished, but the enrolled copy survives in The National Archives at Kew.1 Its component documents, all of them detailed grants to EIa by religious institutions in the Oxford area, are highly unusual; even when compared to the few surviving parallels, they stand out for their specific content. The roll itself, comprising eighteen such documents in a private archive created for a thirteenth-century laywoman, is unique. And when it is examined along with other surviving evidence of Ela's religious activities, it provides us with an extraordinary perspective on the reciprocal nature of religious patronage at this time. What is especially unusual about Ela's case is that we know much more about what the religious promised to EIa than what she granted to them. Thus EIa Longespee 's records tell us the side of the story that is seldom told when we look at records of religious patronage; they reveal the return that donors expected in the late thirteenth century, with increasing precision and urgency. Using a chronological framework, this essay will examine the surviving documents, tell the story of Ela's life, and explore the most interest1 Kew, The National Archives (TNA), PRO E132/2/18. Three of the component documents in the roll, the three charters from Oxford University, also survive in a register made for the University (Munimenta Académica, or Documents Illustrative of Academical Life and Studies at Oxford, ed. Henry Anstey, 2 vols. [London, 1868], 1:62-67). The roll was not copied into or noted in the bishop's register that survives (Lincoln, Lincolnshire Archives, Bishop's Register 1). I am grateful to Bruce Venarde, Barbara Harvey, Janet Sorrentino, and Benjamin Thompson for helpful comments on this work at various stages. My research was partially funded by a Hodson Fellowship from Hood College; was carried out in part while I was in residence at Studium, St. Benedict's Monastery, St. Peter, Minnesota; and was first presented at the College of St. Benedict, Minnesota. I TRADITIO ing dimension of that story: her startlingly explicit reciprocal relationships with religious institutions. Family Background and First Marriage Ela's parents were two of the most prominent members of the early thirteenth -century English aristocracy. Her father, William Longespee, or Longsword , was an illegitimate son of King Henry II. Born in or before 1167, William received from his half-brother King Richard I the hand of the well-known EIa, eldest daughter and co-heiress of Earl William of Salisbury (d. 1196). Succeeding, by this marriage, to the Salisbury earldom himself, William Longespee earned fame in the service of Kings John and Henry III.2 Later in her life, William's daughter EIa would choose to employ her father's surname Longespee, thus signaling her paternal lineage and by extension her royal blood. Kings Henry III and Edward I would acknowledge her as their kinswoman.3 Countess EIa of Salisbury — our Ela's mother — was born in or after 1190 and was betrothed to William Longespee at a very young age in 1196. After William's death the elder EIa served as sheriff of Wiltshire for seven years, the only woman ever to occupy the medieval office of sheriff. Yet she is perhaps better known for her religious patronage. In 1220 she and her husband took part in the foundation of the new cathedral church at Salisbury, William ceremonially laying the fourth foundation stone and EIa the fifth. The couple founded a Carthusian monastery at Hatherop (Glos) in 1222, which the elder EIa moved to her own lands at Hinton (Som) after William's death. In the early 1230s she founded a priory for Augustinian nuns at Lacock...