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Part 1: A Medieval Burglary - Section 2 · King Edward I of England: Three Essays

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Part one of King Edward the First of England, three essays by Thomas Frederick.
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Doubt this libvox recording is in the public domain. Part one, Section
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two of a medieval burglary. Publicut had made up his mind to steal the
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king's treasure. The practical problem was how to get access to it. If
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we examine the evidence collected at the inquiry, we find that there are two
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discrepant accounts as to how the robber effected his purpose. The one is warranted
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by the testimony of a large number of sworn juries of reputable citizens of every
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ward in the City of London, of burgesses of Westminster, and of the
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good men of every hundred in the adjacent shires of Middlesex and Surrey. It
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is, like much truthful evidence, rather vague, but its general tendency is
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while recognizing that Publicut is the prime offender to make various monks and palace officers
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his accomplices. Of the latter category, William of the Palace seems to have
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been the most active, while of the many monks, Adam Worfield the Sacrist
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was the most generally denounced. But the proved share of both Adam and William
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was based largely on the discovery of stolen property in their possession. The evidence
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of the juries suggests theories as to how the crime may have been perpetrated.
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It does not make the methods of the culprits clear and palpable, but it
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suggests that masons and carpenters were called in so that some breaking in of the
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structure was attempted, And in particular it suggests that the churchyard was the thoroughfare
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through which the robbers removed their booty. Let us turn next to Poddakat's own
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confession, that remarkable document from which I have already borrowed many details, though
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seldom without a word of warning. According to his confession, a public god,
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having resolved to rob the treasury, came to the conclusion that the best
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way to tackle the business was to pierce a hole through the wall of thirteen
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feet of stone that supported the lower story of the chapter House. For so
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colossal a task, time was clearly needed. Richard accordingly devoted himself during the
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dark nights of winter and early spring to drilling through the solid masonry. He
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attacked the building from the churchyard or eastern side, having access there too,
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from the palace, but the churchyard was open to the parish, and the
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thrifty churchwardens of Saint Margaret's had led to a neighboring butcher the right of grazing
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his sheep in it. Now the butcher was told that his privilege was withdrawn,
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and passers by were sent round by another path. This was a precaution
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against the casual wayfarer seeing the hole, which was daily growing larger. To
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hide from the casual observer the great gash in the stonework, Richard tells us
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that he sowed hemp seed in the churchyard near the hole, and that this
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grew so rapidly that the tender hemp plants not only hid the gap in the
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wall, but provided cover for him to hide the spoils he hoped to steal
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from the treasury. When the whole was complete, on twenty four April,
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Pudlakad went through and found to his delight that the chamber was full of baskets,
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chests and other vessels for holding valuables, plate relics, jewels, and
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gold florins of Florence. Richard remained in the crypt, gloating over the treasure
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surrounding him from the evening of twenty four April to the morning of twenty six
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April. Perhaps he found it impossible to tear himself away from so much wealth,
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or perhaps the intervening day being the feast of Saint Mark, there were
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too many people about and too many services in the u s A To make
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his retreat secure. However, he managed on the morning of twenty sixth April
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to get away, taking with him as much as he could carry. He
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seems to have dropped or to have left, lying about a good deal that
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he was unable to carry, possibly for his friends to pick up. Such
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is Public Hut's story. It is the tale of a bold Ruffian who glories
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in his crime and is proud to declare I alone did it. But there
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was a touch of heroism and of devotion in our hero. Thus taking on
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himself the whole blame, he voluntarily made himself the scapegoat of an offense for
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which scores were charged, and in particular he took on his own shoulders the
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heavy share of responsibility which belonged to the negligent monks of Westminster. Now,
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as to the credibility of Public huts story, we must admit that some of
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the juries accepted evidence that cooperated some parts of it. Sworn men declared their
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belief that the crypt was approached from the outside, that masons and carpenters were
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employed on the business, that the churchyard was closely guarded, and access refuse
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even to the butcher who rented the grazing. It is clear too that the
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booty was got rid of through the churchyard, and that p. Smeal.
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There is evidence even that hemp was sown, though the verdict of a jury
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cannot alter the conditions of vegetable growth in an English winter. We must allow
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too that it is pretty certain that Warfield had not the custody of the keys
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of the crypt, though he was doubtless able to give facilities for tampering with
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the door or forcing the lock. Yet Public Hut's general story remains absolutely incredible.
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It was surely impossible to break through the solid wall, and no incuriousness
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or corruption would account for wall piercing operations being unnoticed when carried on in the
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midst of a considerable population for three months on end. Some of public House's
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lies were inconceivable in their crudity. Is it likely that hemp sown at Christmas
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time would before the end of April afford sufficient green cover to hide the hole
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in the wall and to secret it gleaming articles of silver within its thick recesses.
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And how are we to believe that there was a great gaping hole in
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the wall of a crypt when nothing was heard of the crime for several weeks
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after its perpetration, and no details of the king's losses were known until two
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months after the burglary, when the keeper of the wardrobe unlocked the door of
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the treasury and examined its contents. A more artistic liar would have made his
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confession more convincing. What really happened seems to me to have been something like
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this. I have no doubt the public Hut got into the treasury by the
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simple process of his friend Adam of Warfield, giving him facilities for forcing the
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door or perhaps breaking a window. He remained in the crypt a long time
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so that he might hand out its contents to confederates, who, as we
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learned from the depositions, ate, drank and reveled till midnight for two nights,
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running in a house within the precincts of the Fleet Prison, and then
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went armed and horsed to Westminster, returning towards daybreak loaded with booty. But
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not only the revelers and Cinchi's headquarters, but many monks, many abbey servants,
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the custodians of the palace, the leading goldsmiths of the city, and
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half the neighbors must have been cognizant of, if not participating, in the
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crime. It speaks well for honor among thieves that it was not until deplorable
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indiscretions were made in the disposal of the booty that any news of the misdeed
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reached the ears of any of the official custodians of the treasure. Suspicion of
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the crime was first excited by the discovery of fragments of the spoil in all
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sorts of unexpected places. A fisherman applying his craft in the then Silver Thames
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netted a silver goblet which had evidently been the property of the king. Passers
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by found cups, dishes, and similar precious things hidden behind tombstones and other
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rough hiding places. In Saint Margaret's churchyard, boys playing in the neighboring fields
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found pieces of plate concealed under hedgerows. Such discoveries were made as far from
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Westminster as Kentish Town. Moreover, many other people lighted upon similar pieces of
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treasure trove. Foreign money found its way into the hands of the money changers
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at London, York and Lyme and other remote parts the city. Goldsmiths were
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the happy receivers of large amounts of silver plate, among them, I regret
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to say being William Terrell, the artist goldsmith, whose skill in metal work
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has left such an abiding mark in the decorations of the abbey church. There
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were two scandalous stories whispered abroad. One of them was that a woman of
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loose life explained her possession of a precious ring by relating that it was given
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her by dom Adam the Sacrist, so that she should become his friend.
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Such tales soon made the story of the robbery common property. At last it
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came to the ears of the King and his ministers, then encamped at Linlugow
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for the Scottish War. Thereupon, on sixth June, the King appointed a
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special commission of judges to investigate the matter. On twenty June, John Droxford,
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the keeper of the wardrobe, came to Westminster with the keys of the
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cryp and then and only then did any official examination of the treasury take place.
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An entry was made into the crypt, and the damage which had been
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done was inspected. The result is still to be read in an Inventory of
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the Treasures Lost and the Treasures Found, which Droxford drew up, and which
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may now be studied in print. It is pleasant to say that by the
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time Droxford went to work, much of the treasure which had been scattered broadcast
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was being brought back, and that more was soon to follow. The first
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investigations as to where the treasure had been carried led to fruitful results. A
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good deal of it was found hidden beneath the beds of the keeper of the
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palace and of his assistant. Still more was found in the lodgings of Richard
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Publicot and his mistress. Adam the Sacrist, and some of his brother monks
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and their servants were discovered to be in possession of other missing articles. Altogether,
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when Roxford had finished his inventory, a large proportion of the articles which
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had been lost were reclaimed. Ultimately, it seems that the losses were not
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very severe. Wholesale arrests were now made. Richard Padlicat was apprehended on twenty
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five June, and William of the Palace soon experienced the same fate. Before
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long, the connection which the monks had had with the business seems so well
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established that the whole convent, including the abbot and forty eight monks, were
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indicted and sent to the tower, where they were soon joined by thirty two
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other persons. This time the King's net had spread rather too widely, and
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the indiscriminate arrest of guilty and innocent excited some measure of sympathy even for the
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guilty. The majority of the clerical prisoners were released on bail, but some
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half dozen laymen and ten monks were still kept in custody. Both the released
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and the imprisoned culprits raised a great outcry, sending petitions to the King demanding
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a further inquiry into the whole matter. The first Commission, meanwhile had been
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impaneling juries and collecting evidence, but the matter was so serious that in November
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a second Royal commission was appointed to hear and determine the matter. The members
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of this second commission were chosen from among the most eminent of the King's judges,
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including the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, Sir Roger Brabazon, and
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the shrewdest judge of the time, William Bereford afterwards, Chief Justice of Common
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Pleas. I have already indicated in outline the result of the investigations of the
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two judicial commissions. I have told you how juries were impaneled from every hundred
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in the counties of Middlesex and Surrey, and from the wars of the City
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of London and from Westminster. The detail of the evidence are worthy of more
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special treatment than I can give them here, because they afford a wonderful picture
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of the loose living, easy going, slack, negligent, casual and criminal
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doings of medieval men and women. I must, however, be content to
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restate the general result of the trials. Richard Apublicat was found guilty. Various
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other people, including William of the Palace and certain monks, were declared accomplices,
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while Adam Worfield was shrewdly suspected to be at the bottom of the whole
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business. More than a year was spent in investigations, and it was not
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until March thirteen o four, eleven months after the burglary, that William of
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the Palace and five other lay culprits were comfortably hanged. The great problem was
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how to deal with the clerical offenders without adding to the King's difficulties by rousing
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the sleeping dogs of the church, always ready to bark when the state meditate
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any infringement of the claim of all clerks to be subject solely to the ecclesiastical
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tribunals. Accordingly, Richard A. Publicot and ten monks were reserved for further
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treatment. Publicot, as we have seen, had been a tonsured person in
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his youth, and he probably claimed, as did the monks, benefit of
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clergy. It was probably now that Publicot nobly tried to shield his monastic allies
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by his extraordinary confession. His heroism, however, availed him nothing but whatever
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his zeal for the church. Edward the First was, upon adequate occasion,
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ready to ride roughshod over clerical privileges, and he always bitterly resented any attempt
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of a culprit who had lived as a layman, trying to shield himself on
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the PreTect that he had been a clerk in his youth. His corrupt Chief
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Justice Thomas Wayland, had sought to evade condemnation by resuming the taunture and claric
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garb, which he had worn before he abandoned his orders to become a knight,
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a country squire, and the founder of a family of landed gentry.
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But Wayland's subdiaconate did not save him from exile and loss of land and goods.
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Pudlicat sometime, clerical character had even less power to preserve him. He
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also paid tardily the capital penalty for his misdeed, but it was surely his
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clergy that kept him alive in prison for more than two years after the date
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of the commission of his crime. The fate of the incriminated clerks still hung
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in the balance when in the spring of thirteen o five, Edward came back
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in triumph to London, rejoicing that at last he had effected the thorough conquest
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of Scotland. His cheerful frame of mind made him listen readily to the demands
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of the monks of Westminster to have pity on their unfortunate brethren and to comply
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with the or general clerical desire that ecclesiastical privilege should be respected. Only a
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few months after the burglary, the news of the outrage on Pope Boniface the
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Eighth, that Annanni had filled all Christendom with horror. At the instance of
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Philip, the fair King of France and his agents in Italy. The Pope
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was seized, maltreated and insulted. In the indignant words of Dante, Christ
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was again crucified in the person of his vicar. The universal feeling of resentment
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against so wanton a violation of ecclesiastical privilege, was ingeniously used in favor of
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the monks of Westminster. Among the monks arrested at first, but soon released
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with the majority of their brethren, were two men who had some reputation as
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historians. One of these was magnanimous enough to write two or three years afterwards
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a sort of funeral eulogy of Edward. But the other, Robert of Bretting,
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who in my opinion, kept the official chronicle of the abbey from thirteen
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o two to thirteen twenty six, set forth the Westminster point of view very
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effectively in the well known version of the chronicle called Frares Historiarium, the original
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manuscript of which is now in the Chetham Library. In this is given what
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may be regarded as the official account of Richard's burglary, the robbery of the
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King of England was a crime only comparable to the robbery of the treasure of
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Boniface the eight six months later at Anani. The chronicler is most indignant at
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the suggestion that the monks had anything to do with the matter, and laments
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passionately their long imprisonment and their unmerited sufferings. He relies in substance on the
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story as told in Publikad's confession, the burglary was effected by a single robber.
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So lacking in humor was the Westminster analyst that he did not scruple to
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borrow the phraseology and the copious scriptural citations of a certain passion of the Monks
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of Westminster, according to John, the whole text of which is unfortunately not
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extant. I may say, however, that the species of composition called a
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passion was particularly in vogue at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
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and is mainly characterized by its extraordinary skill in periodying the words of the scripture
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in order to describe in mock heroic vein some incident of more or less undeserved
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suffering for profanity, grim humor and misapplied knowledge of the vogate. The passions
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of this period have no equal. They are a curious illustration of the profane
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humor of the medieval ecclesiastic in his lighter moments. The Westminster analyst did not
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stand alone. Of the monastic chroniclers took up and accepted his story. It
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became the accepted monastic doctrine that one robber only had stolen the king's treasure,
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and that therefore the monks of Westminster were unwarrantedly accused. One writer added to
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his text a crude illustration of how it was imagined Publicat affected his purpose.
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You may see opposite this page is rude pictorial representation of the one robber kneeling
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on the grass in the churchyard and picking up by a hand an arm extended
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through the broken window the precious stores within. But Publica's arm must have been
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longer than the arm of justice to effect this operation, and must have been
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twice or thrice the length of a tall man. This same chronicler was not
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contented with repeating the parallel now recognized between the sufferings of the monks of Westminster
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under their unjust accusations and the passion of Pope Boniface five months later at the
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hands of the robbers hired by the ruthless King of France. He must give
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a picture of the Ananyi outrage as well as of the orthodox version of the
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Westminster Burglary. How far he has succeeded, you may gather from the rude
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sketch figured on the opposite page. Not only does he give us so vivid
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a picture of Pope Boniface's sufferings from the rude soldiery, that the drawing might
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well be used as a representation of a martyrdom like that of Saint Thomas of
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Canterbury. His sketch of three other sacrilegious warriors rifling the huge chest that contained
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the papal treasures skillfully suggests that robbery was the common motive that united the outrage
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at Ananyi to the outrage at Westminster. He leaves us to draw the deeper
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moral that the sinful desire of unhallowed layman to bring Holy Church and her men
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ministers into discredit was the ultimate route of both these scandals. Edward was satisfied
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with his Scottish campaign. He was becoming old and tired. He was pleased
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to know that a great deal of the lost treasure had been recovered, and
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he was always anxious to avoid scandal and to minimize any disagreement with the monks
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of his father's foundation. He therefore condoned what he could not remedy. He
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soon released all the monks from prison. He even restored Shinchy to his hereditary
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office of the keepership of the palace. Richard of Publicat alone was offered up
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to vengeance. In October thirteen o five, Richard was hanged. Regardless of
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his clergy, affairs at the Monastery of Westminster were not improved after these events.
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There was much quarreling among the monks. Walter of Winlock died, there
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were disputes as to his succession, an unsatisfactory appointment was made, and there
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was a considerable amount of strife for a generation. The feeling against the king
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was shown equally against his son, and is reflected in the Bitter Westminster Chronicle
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of the reign of Edward. The second one result of the demonstration of the
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futility of storing valuables within the precincts of the abbey was that the chief treasury
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of the wardrobe was bodily transferred to the Tower of London. Some obvious morals
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might be drawn from this slight, but not unpicturesque story, but I will
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forbear from printing them. One generalization I will, however, venture to make
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by way of conclusion. The strongest impression left by the records of the trial
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is one of the slackness and the easy going ways of the medieval man.
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The Middle Ages do not often receive fair treatment. Some are perhaps too apt
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to idealize them as an age of heroic piety, with its states, saints,
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heroes, artists and thinkers. But such people are in all ages,
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the brilliant exceptions the age of Saint Francis of ASSISI, of a Dante,
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of Edward, of Saint Louis of France, of Saint Thomas Aquinas. The
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age in which the greatest buildings of the world were made. Was a great
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time and had its great men. But the Middle Ages were a period of
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strange contrasts. Shining virtues and gross vices stood side by side. The contrasts
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between the clearly cut black and white of the thirteenth century are attractive to us
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immersed in the continuous gray of our own times, but we find our best
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analogies to medieval conditions in those which are nowadays stigmatized as oriental. Conspicuous among
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them was a deep, pervading shiftlessness and casualness. Medieval man was never up
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to time. He seldom kept his promise, not through malice, but because
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he never did today what could be put off till tomorrow or the next day.
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Publica, then, is a typical medieval criminal. He was doubtless a
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scamp, but most of the people with whom he had dealings were loose thinking,
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easygoing folk like himself. Of course, there are always the exceptions,
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but ever the First, with his gift of persistence, was a peculiarly exceptional
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type. In the Middle Ages, and even Edward the First found it convenient
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to let things slide in small matters. Thus, on this occasion Edward began
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his investigation with great show of care and determination to sift the whole matter.
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But when he found that thorny problems were being stirred up, he determined,
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not for the first time, to let sleeping dogs lie and avoid further scandal.
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We must, not, however, build up too large a superstructure of
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theory on this petty story of the police corps plus a mild ecclesiastical scandal.
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Nor must we emphasize too much or generalize too largely from the signs of slackness
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and negligence shown in medieval trials. I become more and more averse to facile
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generalization about the Middle Ages or Medieval man. They may moreover be made in
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both directions. On the one side, we have the doctrine of our greatest
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of recent scholars, Bishop Stubbs, that the thirteenth century was the greatest century
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of the Middle Ages, the flowering type of medieval Christianity, and so on.
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But on the other hand there is the contradictory generalization of students like my
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friend mister Colton, who surveys the time from Saint Francis to Dante with the
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conviction that the so called great days of faith were the days of unrestrained criminality
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and violence. Both these views can be argued, but neither are really convincing.
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They seem to me to be obtained by looking at one side of the
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question. Only A more fruitful doctrine is surely the view that ordinary medieval men
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were not so very unlike ourselves, and that their virtues and vices were not
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those of saints or ruffians, but were not wholly out of relation to the
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ordinary humdrum virtues and vices that are found today. And of Part one,
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Section two of a Medieval Burglary by Thomas Frederick Taut