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‘Home Thoughts from Abroad’: Rome to York in 1452
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 January 2017
Extract
Private correspondence between Rome and England in the fifteenth century is not unknown but is usually to be found among the business papers of proctors permanently resident at the Curia, such as William Swan and Thomas Hope. By contrast, the three letters printed below were written by an occasional visitor to Rome, charged with a specific errand. They tell us more about England than Italy, and more about the everyday concerns of a moderately successful clerical careerist than the procedures of the papal court, but they are unusual and valuable precisely for that reason. The author of these letters was Master Robert Thornton. A canon lawyer in the service of Archbishop Kempe, he began his career as an advocate in the prerogative court of York and, during the 1440s, established himself as one of the mainstays of the diocesan administration there: he acted as commissary-general to the court of York and official of the absentee archdeacon of York, besides serving on many ad hoc commissions. By the time these letters were written, Thornton's diligence in the archbishop's service had brought him several desirable benefices: already perpetual vicar of Silkstone (Yorkshire, West Riding), he became rector of Almondbury (Yorkshire, West Riding) in 1451 and was presented by William Bothe, Kempe'ssuccessor as archbishop, to a prebend at St. John's, Chester, in the following year. It was his membership of Kempe' familia that, indirectly, set him on the road to Rome. In May 1452 he was dispatched with a bundle of papers and sixteen marks in cash to pursue the claims of John Berningham, resident canon and treasurer of York, to the vacant deanery.
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References
BIHR = Borthwick Institute of H istorical Research; BRUO = Emden, A. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to 1500, Oxford 1958 Google Scholar; CPR = Calendar of Papal Registers; YML = York Minster Library.
1 For Swan, see Jacob, E. F., Essays in Later Medieval History, Manchester 1968, 58–97 Google Scholar; for Hope, see Ker, N. R., Medieval Manuscripts in the British Libraries, Oxford 1969, i. 184–5Google Scholar; BRUO, 959–60.
2 YML, A 1/4/1/M, N, O.
3 BIHR, Register 19, fos I I I, 127V, 129V, 187, 398, 413V, 439; PRO, C.85/186/28–31. Among the ad hoc appointments were commissions to establish the bounds of the parish of Thornhill, to sequester the fruits of the living of St Oswald's, York, until the rector made repairs to the parish church, and to enquire into dilapidations in the goods belonging to the office of provost of St John's, Beverley: BIHR, Reg. 19, fos I I Iv, 153V, 186.
4 BRUO, ii. 1868.
5 YML, A 1/4/1 and BIHR, DY 2/1–3 provide the principal narratives of this affair, which can be supplemented by Loci e Libro Veritatum, ed. Rogers, J. E. T., Oxford 1881, 37–8, 47–8, 193, 203Google Scholar.
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27 Norfolk Record Office, Reg. 6/11, fo. 51V.
28 BIHR, Reg. 20, fo. 267V.
29 Ibid. Reg. 19, fo. 442.
30 Stillington was for many years attorney for the dean and chapter at the common law; he established a chantry at St Leonard's in his will: YML, E 1/40/1, 2,/42; M 2 (6) e, fos 33V, 41.
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34 Ibbett, J., ‘The hospice of St Edmund in Trastevere’, The Venerabile xxi (1962), 96 Google Scholar. I owe this reference to Dr Margaret Harvey.
35 BIHR, Reg. 20, fos 161, 190V; Ibbett, ‘Hospice of St Edmund’, 97. Thornton died intestate, in Curia Romana protunc residens, and administration of his goods at St Leonard's Hospital was committed to William Tauke, his clerk, and William Arthur of Pontefract: YML, M 2 (6) e, fo. 37V.
36 Ibid. E 1/12/1–39/2; H2/2 fo. 7V.
37 All three letters survive as drafts and were presumably brought back in Thornton's case-file when he was recalled to York. The use of capitals has been modernised in this transcription, standard abbreviations extended and additional punctuation added where necessary.
38 ‘as much’: Middle English Dictionary, ed. Kuhn, S. N. and Reidy, J., Ann Arbor 1975 Google Scholar, s.v. muchel.
39 Archbishop's registrar at York and a notary-public, who acted as one of the witnesses of the disputed decanal election: BIHR, Reg. 20, fo. 45; YML, A 1/4/1/D.
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42 BIHR, Reg. 19, fos 188V–91V for the full text of Scargill's ordinances for his chantry of the Holy Trinity at St Mary's, Whitkirk.
43 Master of St Leonard's Hospital, York. He resigned the mastership in 1456 not, as stated by Emden, in 1448; BL, MS Cotton Vespasian xiii, fo. 60; BRUO iii. 1660–1.
44 Katherine, daughter of Thomas Urswick, was married to William Vavasour of Badsworth by 1457: PRO, CP 40/786 m. 365.
45 ‘cook’; Middle English Dictionary, ed. Kurath, S. and Kuhn, S. N., Ann Arbor 1959 Google Scholar, S.V. comede.
46 A witness to, and beneficiary under, the will of Master John Thornton: BIHR, Prob. Reg. 3, fo. 519.
47 A chaplain, resident in Wakefield: ibid. Prob. Reg. 2, fo. 589.
48 Mariel had acted as Berningham's proctor in the proceedings at Nottingham before the Archbishop's commissaries: YML, A 1/4/i/E fo. 2v.
49 Drafts of this letter in both Latin and English survive: only the English version is given below.
50 Residentiary canon of York, and the most active of Berningham's supporters during the decanal election; delegated by the chapter to exercise the proxy vote in all those cases in which he had been nominated as one of the proctors, on account of his expertise in law: YML, A 1/4/1/B fo. 8.
51 The Latin version adds at this point: ‘neque subexecutori mandati apostolici’.
52 The Latin version adds: ‘Et si placuerit vestre reverencie aliqua michi percipere que valeo ero prestus deus novit qui vos conservet per tempora feliciter duratura. Script' Rome xvj die Septembr' sine mora. 1452.’ It is addressed: ‘Magistro Johanni Sutton cum Domino Cardinali Anglie’.