In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • The Nobility and Ecclesiastical Patronage in Thirteenth-Century England by Elizabeth Gemmill
  • David Crouch
The Nobility and Ecclesiastical Patronage in Thirteenth-Century England. By Elizabeth Gemmill. [Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, Vol. XL.] (Rochester, NY: Boydell Press. 2013. Pp. xii, 240. $99.00. ISBN 978-1-843-83812-8.)

Elizabeth Gemmill’s highly detailed and skillful work deals with a narrow but revealing area of study: the way the great aristocrats of England filled ecclesiastical offices in their gift. Although the thirteenth century is the period cited in the title, in fact the nature of the principal sources employed—episcopal registers, plea rolls, and lay cartularies—means that it is the second half of the century that monopolizes the argument. This does not mean there is any shortage of evidence on which Gemmill can found her conclusions. Indeed, to fulfill her aim she has to narrow the focus to particular great nobles, notably William de Beauchamp, earl of Warwick; [End Page 333] Edmund, earl of Lancaster; William de Valence, earl of Pembroke; John de Warenne, earl of Surrey; John of Brittany, earl of Richmond; Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford; and Isabel de Forz, countess of Aumale and Devon—all magnates active in the last part of Henry III’s reign and the reign of his son, Edward I. At this date aristocrats had in their gift few of the appointments to collegiate free chantries that would begin to multiply in the next century. The argument mostly deals with appointments to the rectories under their patronage. The right to appoint to benefices (advocatio, Anglicized as “advowson”) was a point where the laity intruded into the clerical world, and indeed it was a matter for lay courts where it was contested. It then might well give us some ideas of what the aristocracy wanted from its clerks and what it valued in them. Gemmill maps for us the concern of the nobility to further clerical relatives, sometimes excessively. Benefices also rewarded their domestic clerks and could be deployed as favors to make political connections with other aristocrats. She uses the phrase “clerical affinity” for this interest group of clergy that surrounded a magnate, seeking favor and offering support and skills to him or her. She conjures up this delicate world of gift exchange and shifting political alliance with some dry skill; the alertness of patrons to the state of health of incumbents of churches in their gift is a case in point. During the period of the study there was change; the king was particularly aggressive in acquiring and exploiting benefices, often at his subjects’ cost, and concerned also to diminish the role of bishops in admitting the clerks he presented. The right to present became increasingly detached from the ownership of estates that the church of the benefice served. Gemmill makes the link here with the next century, and the emerging source of lay patronage of clergy represented by the foundation of endowed chantry altars and the transformation of large parish churches into collegiate foundations, already beginning in the reign of Edward I. She makes the point that the concern of aristocrats, detached in their devotions from lesser folk, was not with the pastoral needs of the churches to which they appointed. The pluralists they promoted were also not men calculated to further the work of the local church. The resources aristocrats were beginning to employ in their new foundations it seems reinforced their spiritual detachment. When taken with the corrosive effect of papal provisions on the English church, this accomplished study does not encourage a belief that this transactional and careerist world of lay patronage was good for the English.

David Crouch
University of Hull
...

pdf

Share