A mediaeval burglary : $b A lecture delivered at the John Rylands Library on the 20th January, 1915

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Title: A mediaeval burglary : A lecture delivered at the John Rylands Library on the 20th January, 1915
Author: Tout, T. F. (Thomas Frederick)
Language: English
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A
MEDIAEVAL BURGLARY

A LECTURE
DELIVERED AT THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY ON THE
20TH JANUARY, 1915

BY
T. F. TOUT, M.A., F.B.A.
BISHOP FRASER PROFESSOR OF MEDIAEVAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

_Reprinted from “The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library”
October, 1915_

MANCHESTER: THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 12 LIME GROVE, OXFORD
ROAD. LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON,
E.C., NEW YORK, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS. BERNARD
QUARITCH, 11 GRAFTON STREET, LONDON, W. MCMXVI

PUBLISHED FOR THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY AT

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
12 Lime Grove, Oxford Road, Manchester

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
London: 39 Paternoster Row
New York: 443–449 Fourth Avenue and Thirteenth Street
Bombay: 8 Hornby Road
Calcutta: 303 Bowbazar Street
Madras: 167 Mount Street

BERNARD QUARITCH
11 Grafton Street, New Bond Street, London, W.

A
MEDIAEVAL BURGLARY

A LECTURE
DELIVERED AT THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY ON THE
20TH JANUARY, 1915

BY
T. F. TOUT, M.A., F.B.A.
BISHOP FRASER PROFESSOR OF MEDIAEVAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

_Reprinted from “The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library”
October, 1915_

A MEDIAEVAL BURGLARY.[1]

By T. F. Tout, M.A., F.B.A., Bishop Fraser Professor of Mediaeval and
Ecclesiastical History in the University of Manchester.

The burglary, about which I have to speak to-night, I did not discover
by ransacking the picturesque and humorous annals of mediaeval crime.
I came across the details of this incident when seeking for something
quite different, for it happened when I was attempting to investigate
the technicalities of the history of the administrative department
known as the king’s Wardrobe. But so human a story did something to
cheer up the weary paths of Dryasdust, and he hands it on to you in the
hope that you will not find it absolutely wanting in instruction and
amusement. Now my burglary was the burglary of the king’s treasury,
or more precisely, of the treasury of the king’s wardrobe, within
the precincts of the abbey at Westminster. The date of the event was
24 April, 1303. More precisely, according to the chief burglar’s own
account, it was on the evening of that day that the burglar effected an
entrance into the king’s treasury, from which, he tells us he escaped,
with as much booty as he could carry, on the morning of 26 April. Who
had committed the burglary is a problem which was not quite settled,
even by the trials which followed the offence, though these trials
resulted in the hanging of some half a dozen people at least. But after
the hanging of the half-dozen, it was still maintained in some quarters
that the burglary was committed by one robber only, though charges of
complicity in his guilt were in common fame extended to something like
a hundred individuals. And in this case common fame was not, I think,
at fault.

I wish first of all to explain the meaning of the sentence, rather
cryptic to the generality, in which I spoke of my burglary as that of
the robbery of the treasury of the king’s wardrobe within Westminster
Abbey. For this purpose I must ask you to carry your minds back to the
Westminster of the early years of the fourteenth century. Westminster
was then what Kensington was in the eighteenth or early nineteenth
century, a court suburb, aloof from the traffic and business of the
great city of London. Now the twin centres of Westminster were the
king’s palace and the adjacent Benedictine Abbey. The rough plan, which
I am permitted to print on the opposite page, will show the close
relation of the two great groups of buildings. It was much closer
in many ways than the relations between the Houses of Parliament,
the modern representative of the old palace, and the present abbey
buildings. If these latter largely remain, despite many destructive
alterations in details, in their ancient site, we must remember that
there was nothing like the broad modern road that separates the east
end of the abbey from Westminster Hall and the House of Lords. A wall
enclosed the royal precincts, and went westwards to within a few feet
of the monks’ infirmary and the end of St. Margaret’s Church. The still
existing access to the abbey on the east side of the south transept
through the door by which you can still go into “poet’s corner,”
having the chapter house on your left and Henry VII’s chapel on your
right, was the portal by which immediate access to the palace could
be gained through a gate in this wall. The space between the abbey
and the palace wall was occupied by the churchyard of St. Margaret’s.
The parish church—or rather its successor—still crouches beneath the
shade of the neighbouring minster. This churchyard covered the ground
now taken up by Henry VII’s chapel, which of course was not as yet in
existence. In the midst of this grassy plot stood the chapter house of
the monks of Westminster, with its flying buttresses and its single
pillar supporting its huge vault, then newly erected by the pious zeal
of Henry III.

[Illustration: Plan of Westminster Abbey and Palace.]

Westminster Abbey was founded by Edward the Confessor, and
substantially refounded by Henry III, who had shown immense care and
lavished large sums on a grandiose scheme for the rebuilding of the
great house of religion which contained the shrine of his favourite
saint, in whose honour he had given his son the name of Edward. The
rebuilding went on into the reign of Edward I, who was not much
inferior to his father in his zeal for the church, and was doubly
bound to honour his father’s wishes and the memory of his own patron
saint. In the closing years of the thirteenth century circumstances
compelled Edward I to desist from this work. The king now found
himself dragged into enormous expenses by the French, Scottish, and
Flemish wars. He was perforce turned from church-building to get men
and money for his wars.

The finances of England under Edward I were less elastic than under
Mr. Lloyd-George, and modern credit and banking were then in their
very infancy. Edward I, though he imposed taxes which would make
the most stalwart militarist of to-day quiver, soon found himself
hopelessly in debt. To meet his burdens the king constantly employed
differentiated taxation, but the differentiation was calculated by
rather a different method from that in fashion nowadays. It was
differentiation according to status, not according to wealth. The
clergy, who were not expected to fight, were expected to pay more
heavily than the laymen. Let us take as an instance of how things were
then done the taxes levied in 1294 when the fighting country districts
were called upon to pay a tenth of their moveables in taxation, and
the wealthier and more peaceful towns were asked for a sixth. From the
clergy a tax equal, I think, to a modern income tax of ten shillings
in the pound, was demanded, and it is said that when the dean of
St. Paul’s heard of this unprecedented impost, he fell dead on the
spot. If such heroic efforts—I mean the king’s not the dean’s—were
necessary in 1294 at the beginning of England’s troubles, how much
worse things must have become by 1303, after ten years of storm and
stress? By this date Edward I’s finances were indeed in a bad state.
Historians are only now gradually beginning to realise how embarrassed
the great king was in the last years of his reign, and how desperate
were some of his attempts to fill his exchequer.

The whole of Edward’s declining years were not equally strenuous,
though his finances steadily grew worse. Before the end of the old
century Edward had got over the worst of his troubles abroad. He
therefore determined to devote himself with characteristic energy
to the conquest of the “rebel” Scots. Since therefore Scotland now
became the king’s chief anxiety, Edward made his headquarters in
the north of England. In those days, where the king lived there the
machinery of government was to be found. For though England in the
thirteenth century had centralised institutions, those institutions
were not centralised in a local capital. It is true that one English
city was immensely more important than all the rest. London, in the
thirteenth as in the eighteenth century, was, relatively to other
towns, even greater and more important than is the case nowadays. Of
course Edward I’s London to our eyes would be quite a little place,
but at a time when there was, outside London, perhaps no town of more
than 10,000 inhabitants and very few of that population, a city four or
five times that size was something portentous. Yet this greatness of
London was due to its commercial activity, much more than to the fact
that it was the “capital” of the country or its seat of government.
In reality there was no capital in the modern sense, for the English
tradition was that the government should follow the king. It was only
very gradually that the governing machinery of the land was permanently
settled in Westminster or London. There was, however, already a
tendency towards making the great city, or rather its neighbouring
court suburb, a centre of permanent administrative offices, a capital
in the modern sense. Thus the Court of Common Pleas had been settled in
London since Magna Carta and the Exchequer, that is the department of
finance, had also been fixed there since the reign of Henry II. These
were, however, still the exceptions which proved the rule. The office
of the Chancery—which was not then a law-court, but the secretarial
office of state—followed the king. So also did certain branches of the
administration which depended on the court, and were intended, first of
all, to be the machinery for the government of the king’s household.

In the middle ages no distinction was made between the king and the
kingdom. If the king had devised a useful machine for governing his
household and estates, he naturally used it for any other purposes for
which he thought it would be useful. We find, therefore, the court
offices of administration and finance working side by side with the
national offices, not only in dealing with household affairs, but in
the actual work of governing the country.

The most important of these household offices was that called the
king’s Wardrobe. Originally the Wardrobe was, of course, the closet
in which the king hung up his clothes, and the staff belonging to
it were the valets and servants whose business it was to look after
them. From this modest beginning the king’s Wardrobe had become an
organised office of government. Its clerks rivalled the officers of the
Exchequer in their dealings with financial matters, and the officers of
the Chancery, in the number of letters, mandates, orders, and general
administrative business which passed through their hands.

The Wardrobe always “followed the king”. In war time, then, it was far
away from London, at or near the scene of fighting. In such periods
it became the great spending department, while the Exchequer normally
remained at Westminster collecting the revenue of the country, and
forwarding the money to the Wardrobe which spent it. For five years
before 1303 the king had thrown his chief energies into the conquest of
Scotland. Under these circumstances London and Westminster saw little
of him. Moreover, he found it convenient to have near him in the north
even the sedentary offices of government. Accordingly in 1298 Edward
transferred the Exchequer, the law courts, and the Chancery to York.
From 1298, then, to 1303 York, rather than Westminster, might have been
called the capital of England, and the king’s appearances to the south
were few and far between. The occasion of such visits was generally his
desire to get money, and to make arrangements with his creditors. From
such a short sojourn the king went north in the early months of 1303.
Despite all his efforts it was only in that year that he was really
able to put his main weight into the Scottish war.

When our burglary took place, king, court, and government offices had
been removed to York for over five years. Under mediaeval conditions
the eye of a vigilant task-master was an essential condition of
efficiency. It followed then that during Edward’s long absence things
at Westminster were allowed to drift into an extraordinary state of
confusion and disorder. Affairs were made worse by the fact that even
kings were not always free to choose their own servants. Thus the
king’s palace at Westminster was in the hands of an hereditary keeper.
There was nothing strange about this. In the middle ages such offices
were frequently held by hereditary right, just as in the East everybody
takes up his father’s business as a matter of religious duty. Earl
Curzon once pointed out to the electors of Oldham that in India there
are still hereditary tailors, who did their work very well. However
this may be with tailors in the East and legislators in the West, the
hereditary keeper of Edward’s palace of Westminster did not prove to
be a very effective custodian of his master’s property. His name was
John Shenche or Senche, and he held two hereditary offices, that of
“keeper of the king’s palace at Westminster,” and also the keepership
of the Fleet prison, in right of his wife Joan, who had inherited both
from her father. Thus in addition to the keepership of the palace John
Shenche “kept” the king’s prison of the Fleet in the city of London.
As a rule, John and his wife Joan had their habitation in the prison
in the City. John, therefore, employed as his deputy at Westminster
an underling, a certain William of the Palace, who kept, or rather
did not keep, for him the king’s palace at Westminster. However,
early in the year 1303, John left his abode in the City where his
wife remained, and took up his quarters in the palace. Apparently the
prison was not so comfortable a place for an easy-going officer to live
in as the palace. Perhaps, too, the domestic restraints imposed upon
Shenche in the city were burdensome to him. Certainly gay times now
ensued in the deserted palace. Soon John and William, in the absence
of the higher authorities, seem to have gathered together a band of
disreputable boon companions of both sexes, whose drunken revels and
scandalous misconduct were soon notorious throughout the neighbourhood.
One element in this band of revellers was, I regret to say, a certain
section of the monks of the neighbouring monastery. For as the absence
of the king and the court had left the palace asleep, as it were, so
also had the monastery at Westminster sunk into a deeper and more
scandalous slumber.

The enthusiasm, effort, and excitement which had marked the period of
Henry III’s reconstruction of Westminster Abbey had now died down.
Mediaeval man, though zealous and full of ideas, was seldom persistent.
It is a commonplace of history that when the first impulse of fervour
that attended a new order or a new foundation had passed away,
religious activity was followed by a strong reaction. The great period
of the monastery at Westminster had been during its reconstitution
under Henry III, but that time of energy had now worked itself out, and
the abbey had gone to sleep. The work of reconstruction had stopped
from lack of funds; the royal favour as well as the royal presence
was withdrawn gradually from the abbey. Moreover, a few years earlier
a disastrous fire devastated the monastic buildings, and only just
spared the chapter house and the abbey church. It looks as if the
monks had to camp out in half-ruined buildings till their home could
be restored. All this naturally relaxed the reins of discipline, the
more so since the abbot, Walter of Wenlock, was an old man, whose hold
on the monks was slight, and some of the chief officers of the abbey,
the _obedientiaries_, as they were called, were singularly incompetent
or unscrupulous persons. It followed naturally that many of the fifty
monks became slack beyond ordinary standards of mediaeval slackness.
It was both from obedientiaries and common monks that John Shenche and
William of the Palace secured the companions for their unseemly revels.
There now comes upon the scene a new figure, in fact, the hero of the
burglary, Richard of Pudlicott.

Richard of Pudlicott began life as a clerk, but abandoned his clergy
for the more profitable calling of a wandering trader in wool, cheese,
and butter. England’s economic position in those days reminds us of the
state of things now prevailing in Argentina or Australia, rather than
that in modern industrial England. She had little to sell abroad save
raw materials, especially wool, which was largely exported to the great
clothing towns of Flanders. This traffic took Pudlicott to Ghent and
Bruges in 1298, when Edward I had allied with the Flemings against the
king of France. But his trading adventures were as unsuccessful as the
king’s military efforts in Flanders. Moreover, after the king’s return
to England, Pudlicott had the ill luck to be among those merchants
arrested as a surety for the debts which Edward had left behind him
in the Low Countries. This unceremonious treatment of an alien ally
is a method of mediaeval frightfulness which may be recommended to
our alien enemies, but Edward’s credit was so bad that we can hardly
blame the Flemings for leaving no stone unturned to obtain payment of
their debts; whether they succeeded I do not know. Before long Richard
escaped from his Flemish gaol, leaving his property in Flanders in the
hands of his captors. Nursing a grievance against the king, and with
dire poverty facing him, he took lodgings in London, where, like many
bankrupts, he seems to have generally had enough money to indulge in
all the personal gratifications that he had a special mind to practice.
It seems that in the pursuit of his disreputable pleasures, Pudlicott
was brought into contact with John Shenche, William of the Palace, and
the other merrymakers, lay and ecclesiastical, in the lodge of the
king’s palace of Westminster. He had a specious excuse for haunting
Westminster Hall. He was—he says himself—seeking a remedy in the king’s
courts for the property he had lost in Flanders. How he could find one,
when these courts were at York, I cannot say. But, as we shall see,
many of Pudlicott’s personal statements are difficult to reconcile
with facts. However, Edward himself soon came to Westminster, but
withdrew after a short stay, leaving Pudlicott unpaid.

We have seen how near was the palace to the abbey, and how the palace
keeper’s monastic friends formed a living bridge between the two.
One result of these pleasant social relations was that the Abbey of
Westminster soon became familiar ground to Pudlicott. One day, when
disturbed at the hopelessness of getting his grievances redressed by
the king, he wandered through the cloisters of the abbey, and noticed
with greedy eyes the rich stores of silver plate carried in and out of
the refectory of the monks, by the servants who were waiting on the
brethren at meals. The happy idea struck him to seek a means to “enable
him to come at the goods which he saw”. Thus the king’s foundation
might, somewhat irregularly, be made to pay the king’s debts. Pudlicott
soon laid his plans accordingly. The very day after the king left
Westminster, Pudlicott found a ladder reared up against a house near
the palace gate. He put this ladder against one of the windows of the
chapter house; he climbed up the ladder; found a window that opened by
means of a cord; opened the window and swung himself by the same cord
into the chapter house. Thence he made his way to the refectory, and
secured a rich booty of plate which he managed to carry off and sell.

Pudlicott’s success with the monks’ plate did not profit him for long.
Within nine months—and we may believe surely this part of his not too
veracious tale—the proceeds of the sale of the silver cups and dishes
of the abbey had been eaten up. No doubt the loose life he was living
and the revels with the keepers of the palace involved a constant need
for plentiful supplies of ready cash. Anyhow by the end of 1302 Richard
was again destitute, and looking out for something more to steal. It
was, doubtless, dangerous to rob the monks any more, and perhaps the
intimacy which was now established between him and his monastic boon
companions suggested to Richard a more excellent way of restoring his
fortunes. His plan was now to rob the king’s treasury, and his success
seemed assured since, as he tells us, he “knew the premises of the
abbey, where the treasury was, and how he might come to it”. How he
profited by his knowledge we shall soon see, but first we must for a
moment part company with Pudlicott’s “confession,” which up to now I
have followed with hesitation. But for the next stage of our story
it is plainly almost the contrary of the truth. Before we can with
advantage explain why we can no longer trust his tale, it would be well
for us to state what this treasury was and how it could be got at.

Let us begin with the word treasury. In the fourteenth century
treasury meant simply a storehouse, or at its narrowest a storehouse
of valuables. To us the “treasury” is the government department of
finance, but under Edward I the state office of finance was the
Exchequer, which, as we saw, was located normally at Westminster, but
since 1298 at York. When at Westminster the Exchequer had a “treasury”
or storehouse there also, yet in its absence it is not likely that it
kept either valuables or money at Westminster. But side by side with
the state office was the household office of finance, the Wardrobe,
and, though the wardrobe office was itinerating with the king, it
still kept a “treasury” or storehouse at Westminster, and this,
for the sake of greater safety, had been placed for some years at
least within the precincts of the abbey. From the monastic point of
view, it was doubtless an inconvenience that nearness to the royal
dwelling compelled them to offer their premises for the royal service.
Accordingly, kings not infrequently made demands upon the abbey to
use its buildings. Thus the chapter house became a frequent place for
meetings of parliament, and at a later time it was used and continued
to be used till the nineteenth century, for the storage of official
records. In the same way Edward secured the crypt underneath the
chapter house as one of the storehouses of his Wardrobe. When the crypt
was first used for this purpose I do not know, but records show us that
it was already in use in 1291, at which date it was newly paved. It was
not the only storehouse of the Wardrobe. There was another “treasury
of the wardrobe” in the Tower of London, but this was mainly used for
bulky articles, arms and armour, cloth, furs, furniture, and the like.
Most of what we should call treasure was deposited in the Westminster
crypt, and we are fortunate in having still extant a list of the jewels
preserved there in 1298, the time when the court began to establish
itself for its five years’ sojourn in the north. In 1303 jewels and
plate were still the chief treasures preserved there. Some money was
there also, notably a store of “gold florins of Florence,” the only
gold coins currently used in England at a time when the national mints
limited themselves to the coinage of silver. But I do not think there
could have been much money, for Edward’s needs were too pressing,
his financial policy too much from hand to mouth, for the crypt at
Westminster to be a hoard of coined money, like the famous Prussian
_Kriegsschatz_ at Spandau, which, we now rejoice to learn, is becoming
rapidly depleted. Whatever its contents, Edward estimated that their
value was £100,000, a sum equivalent to a year’s revenue of the English
state in ordinary times. Unluckily mediaeval statistics are largely
mere guess-work. But the amount of the guess at least suggests the
feeling that the value of the treasures stored in the crypt was very
considerable.

The crypt under the chapter house is one of the most interesting
portions of the abbey buildings at Westminster. It is little known
because it is not, I think, generally shown to visitors. I am indebted
to the kindness of my friend, Bishop Ryle, the present dean, for an
opportunity of making a special inspection of it. It is delightfully
complete, and delightfully unrestored. The chief new thing about it
seems the pavement, but the dean’s well-informed verger told me that it
was within living memory that this pavement had replaced the flooring
of 1291. Numerous windows give a fair amount of light to the apartment;
though the enormous thickness of the walls, some thirteen feet, it was
said, prevent the light being very abundant, even on a bright day. The
central column, the lower part of the great pillar from which radiates
the high soaring vaults of the chapter house above, alone breaks the
present emptiness of the crypt. Considerable portions of the column
are cut away to form a series of neatly made recesses, and there are
recesses within these recesses, which suggest in themselves careful
devices for secreting valuables, for it would be easy to conceal them
by the simple expedient of inserting a stone here and there where the
masonry had been cut away, and so suggesting to the unwary an unbroken
column. I should not like to say that these curious store-places
already existed in 1303; but there is no reason why they should not.
Certainly they fit in admirably with the use of the crypt as a treasury.

One other point we must also remember about the dispositions of this
crypt. There is only one access to it, and that is neither from the
chapter house above nor from the adjacent cloister, but from the church
itself. A low, vaulted passage is entered by a door at the south-east
corner of the south transept of the abbey, now for many centuries the
special burial place for poets, eminent and otherwise. This passage
descends by a flight of steep steps to the crypt itself, and the flight
originally seems, I am told—doubtless as another precaution against
robbery—to have been a broken one suggesting that a steep drop,
presumably spanned by a short ladder, further barred access to the
crypt. We must remember, too, that this sole access to the treasury was
within a few feet of the sacristy of the abbey. The sacristy was the
chapel to the south of the south transept, and communicating with it
where the sacrist kept the precious vessels appropriated to the service
of the altar. Altogether it looks as if the crypt were originally
intended as a storehouse for such church treasure as the sacrist did
not need for his immediate purposes. From this use it was diverted,
as we have seen, to the keeping of the royal treasures. Nowadays the
sacristy is called the chapel of St. Faith and is used for purposes of
private devotion. We must not forget the close connexion in our period
of the sacristy and the crypt. The connexion becomes significant when
we remember that among Pudlicott’s monastic boon companions at the
palace-keeper’s lodge was the sacrist of the abbey, Adam of Warfield.

Pudlicott had made up his mind to steal the king’s treasure. The
practical problem was how to get access to it. If we examine the
evidence collected at the enquiry, we find that there are two
discrepant accounts as to how the robber effected his purpose.
The one is warranted by the testimony of a large number of sworn
juries of reputable citizens of every ward in the city of London, of
burgesses of Westminster, and of the good men of every hundred in the
adjacent shires of Middlesex and Surrey. It is—like much truthful
evidence—rather vague, but its general tendency is, while recognizing
that Pudlicott is the prime offender, to make various monks and palace
officers his accomplices. Of the latter category William of the Palace
seems to have been the most active, while of the many monks Adam
Warfield the sacrist was the most generally denounced. But the proved
share of both Adam and William was based largely on the discovery
of stolen property in their possession. The evidence of the juries
suggests theories as to how the crime may have been perpetrated; it
does not make the methods of the culprits clear and palpable. But
it suggests that masons and carpenters were called in, so that some
breaking in of the structure was attempted, and in particular it
suggests that the churchyard was the thoroughfare through which the
robbers removed their booty.

Let us turn next to Pudlicott’s own confession, that remarkable
document from which I have already borrowed many details, though
seldom without a word of warning. According to his confession,
Pudlicott, having resolved to rob the treasury, came to the conclusion
that the best way to tackle the business was to pierce a hole through
the wall of thirteen feet of stone that supported the lower story of
the chapter house. For so colossal a task time was clearly needed.
Richard accordingly devoted himself during the dark nights of winter
and early spring to drilling through the solid masonry. He attacked the
building from the churchyard or eastern side, having access thereto
from the palace. But the churchyard was open to the parish and the
thrifty churchwardens of St. Margaret’s had let to a neighbouring
butcher the right of grazing his sheep in it. Now the butcher was
told that his privilege was withdrawn, and passers-by were sent round
by another path. This was a precaution against the casual wayfarer
seeing the hole which was daily growing larger. To hide from the casual
observer the great gash in the stonework, Richard tells us that he
sowed hempseed in the churchyard near the hole, and that this grew so
rapidly that the tender hemp plants not only hid the gap in the wall,
but provided cover for him to hide the spoils he hoped to steal from
the treasury. When the hole was complete on 24 April, Pudlicott went
through and found to his delight that the chamber was full of baskets,
chests, and other vessels for holding valuables, plate, relics, jewels,
and gold florins of Florence. Richard remained in the crypt gloating
over the treasure surrounding him from the evening of 24 April to the
morning of 26 April. Perhaps he found it impossible to tear himself
away from so much wealth; or perhaps the intervening day, being the
feast of St. Mark, there were too many people about, and too many
services in the abbey to make his retreat secure. However, he managed
on the morning of 26 April to get away, taking with him as much as he
could carry. He seems to have dropped, or to have left lying about, a
good deal that he was unable to carry, possibly for his friends to pick
up.

Such is Pudlicott’s story. It is the tale of a bold ruffian who glories
in his crime, and is proud to declare “I alone did it”. But there
was a touch of heroism and of devotion in our hero thus taking on
himself the whole blame. He voluntarily made himself the scapegoat of
an offence for which scores were charged, and in particular he took
on his own shoulders the heavy share of responsibility which belonged
to the negligent monks of Westminster. Now as to the credibility of
Pudlicott’s story, we must admit that some of the juries accepted
evidence that corroborated some parts of it. Sworn men declared their
belief that the crypt was approached from the outside; that masons
and carpenters were employed on the business; that the churchyard was
closely guarded, and access refused, even to the butcher who rented
the grazing. It is clear too that the booty was got rid of through
the churchyard, and that piecemeal. There is evidence even that hemp
was sown, though the verdict of a jury cannot alter the conditions of
vegetable growth in an English winter. We must allow too that it is
pretty certain that Warfield had not the custody of the keys of the
crypt; though he was doubtless able to give facilities for tampering
with the door or forcing the lock. Yet Pudlicott’s general story
remains absolutely incredible. It was surely impossible to break
through the solid wall, and no incuriousness or corruption would
account for wall-piercing operations being unnoticed, when carried on
in the midst of a considerable population for three months on end. Some
of Pudlicott’s lies were inconceivable in their crudity. Is it likely
that hemp, sown at Christmas-time, would, before the end of April,
afford sufficient green cover to hide the hole in the wall, and to
secrete gleaming articles of silver within its thick recesses? And how
are we to believe that there was a great gaping hole in the wall of the
crypt when nothing was heard of the crime for several weeks after its
perpetration, and no details of the king’s losses were known until two
months after the burglary, when the keeper of the Wardrobe unlocked the
door of the treasury and examined its contents? A more artistic liar
would have made his confession more convincing.

What really happened seems to me to have been something like this.
I have no doubt that Pudlicott got into the treasury by the simple
process of his friend, Adam of Warfield, giving him facilities for
forcing the door or perhaps breaking a window. He remained in the crypt
a long time so that he might hand out its contents to confederates
who, as we learn from the depositions, ate, drank, and revelled till
midnight for two nights running in a house within the precincts of the
Fleet prison, and then went armed and horsed to Westminster, returning
towards daybreak loaded with booty. But not only the revellers in
Shenche’s headquarters, but many monks, many abbey servants, the
custodians of the palace, the leading goldsmiths of the city, and half
the neighbours must have been cognisant of, if not participating in,
the crime. It speaks well for honour among thieves, that it was not
until deplorable indiscretions were made in the disposal of the booty
that any news of the misdeed reached the ears of any of the official
custodians of the treasure.

Suspicion of the crime was first excited by the discovery of fragments
of the spoil in all sorts of unexpected places. A fisherman, plying
his craft in the then silver Thames, netted a silver goblet which
had evidently been the property of the king. Passers-by found cups,
dishes, and similar precious things hidden behind tombstones and other
rough hiding-places in St. Margaret’s Churchyard. Boys playing in the
neighbouring fields found pieces of plate concealed under hedgerows.
Such discoveries were made as far from Westminster as Kentish Town.
Moreover, many other people lighted upon similar pieces of treasure
trove. Foreign money found its way into the hands of the money-changers
at London, York, and Lymm, and other remote parts. The city goldsmiths
were the happy receivers of large amounts of silver plate, among them,
I regret to say, being William Torel, the artist-goldsmith, whose skill
in metal work has left such an abiding mark in the decorations of the
abbey church. There were, too, scandalous stories whispered abroad. One
of them was that a woman of loose life explained her possession of a
precious ring by relating that it was given her by Dom Adam the sacrist
“so that she should become his friend”.

Such tales soon made the story of the robbery common property. At
last it came to the ears of the king and his ministers, then encamped
at Linlithgow for the Scottish war. Thereupon, on 6 June, the king
appointed a special commission of judges to investigate the matter. On
20 June, John Droxford, the keeper of the wardrobe, came to Westminster
with the keys of the crypt, and then and only then did any official
examination of the treasury take place. An entry was made into the
crypt and the damage which had been done was inspected. The result
is still to be read in an inventory of the treasures lost and the
treasures found which Droxford drew up, and which may now be studied in
print.

It is pleasant to say that by the time Droxford went to work much of
the treasure, which had been scattered broadcast, was being brought
back and that more was soon to follow. The first investigations as to
where the treasure had been carried led to fruitful results. A good
deal of it was found hidden beneath the beds of the keeper of the
palace and of his assistant. Still more was found in the lodgings of
Richard Pudlicott and his mistress. Adam the sacrist, and some of his
brother monks and their servants, were discovered to be in possession
of other missing articles. Altogether, when Droxford had finished his
inventory, a large proportion of the articles which had been lost were
reclaimed. Ultimately it seems that the losses were not very severe.

Wholesale arrests were now made. Richard Pudlicott was apprehended on
25 June, and William of the Palace soon experienced the same fate.
Before long the connexion which the monks had had with the business
seemed so well established that the whole convent, including the abbot
and forty-eight monks, were indicted and sent to the Tower, where they
were soon joined by thirty-two other persons. This time the king’s net
had spread rather too widely, and the indiscriminate arrest of guilty
and innocent excited some measure of sympathy, even for the guilty.
The majority of the clerical prisoners were released on bail, but some
half-dozen laymen and ten monks were still kept in custody. Both the
released and the imprisoned culprits raised a great outcry, sending
petitions to the king demanding a further enquiry into the whole matter.

The first commission meanwhile had been empanelling juries and
collecting evidence. But the matter was so serious that in November a
second royal commission was appointed to hear and determine the matter.
The members of this second commission were chosen from among the most
eminent of the king’s judges, including the chief justice of the king’s
bench, Sir Roger Brabazon and the shrewdest judge of the time, William
Bereford, afterwards chief justice of common pleas.

I have already indicated in outline the result of the investigations
of the two judicial commissions. I have told you how juries were
empanelled from every hundred in the counties of Middlesex and Surrey,
and from the wards of the city of London and from Westminster. The
details of the evidence are worthy of more special treatment than I
can give them here, because they afford a wonderful picture of the
loose-living, easy-going, slack, negligent, casual, and criminal doings
of mediaeval men and women. I must, however, be content to restate the
general result of the trials. Richard of Pudlicott was found guilty.
Various other people, including William of the Palace, and certain
monks, were declared accomplices, while Adam Warfield was shrewdly
suspected to be at the bottom of the whole business. More than a year
was spent in investigations, and it was not until March, 1304, eleven
months after the burglary, that William of the Palace and five other
lay culprits were comfortably hanged.

The great problem was how to deal with the clerical offenders without
adding to the king’s difficulties by rousing the sleeping dogs of the
church, always ready to bark when the state meditated any infringement
of the claim of all clerks to be subject solely to the ecclesiastical
tribunals. Accordingly Richard of Pudlicott, and ten monks were
reserved for further treatment. Pudlicott, as we have seen, had been
a tonsured person in his youth, and he probably claimed, as did the
monks, benefit of clergy. It was probably now that Pudlicott nobly
tried to shield his monastic allies by his extraordinary confession.
His heroism, however, availed him nothing. But whatever his zeal
for the church, Edward I was upon adequate occasion ready to ride
rough-shod over clerical privileges, and he always bitterly resented
any attempt of a culprit, who had lived as a layman, trying to shield
himself on the pretext that he had been a clerk in his youth. His
corrupt chief justice, Thomas Weyland, had sought to evade condemnation
by resuming the tonsure and clerical garb which he had worn before
he abandoned his orders to become a knight, a country squire, and
the founder of a family of landed gentry. But Weyland’s subdiaconate
did not save him from exile and loss of land and goods. Pudlicott’s
sometime clerical character had even less power to preserve him. He
also paid tardily the capital penalty for his misdeed. But it was
surely his clergy that kept him alive in prison for more than two years
after the date of the commission of his crime.

[Illustration: The Outrage at Westminster.]

The fate of the incriminated clerks still hung in the balance when in
the spring of 1305 Edward came back in triumph to London, rejoicing
that at last he had effected the thorough conquest of Scotland. His
cheerful frame of mind made him listen readily to the demands of the
monks of Westminster to have pity on their unfortunate brethren, and
to comply with the more general clerical desire that ecclesiastical
privilege should be respected. Only a few months after the burglary,
the news of the outrage on pope Boniface VIII at Anagni had filled
all Christendom with horror. At the instance of Philip the Fair, king
of France, and his agents in Italy the pope was seized, maltreated,
and insulted. In the indignant words of Dante, “Christ was again
crucified in the person of his vicar”. The universal feeling of
resentment against so wanton a violation of ecclesiastical privilege
was ingeniously used in favour of the monks of Westminster. Among the
monks, arrested at first, but soon released with the majority of their
brethren, were two men who had some reputation as historians. One of
these was magnanimous enough to write, two or three years afterwards,
a sort of funeral eulogy of Edward, but the other, Robert of Reading,
who, in my opinion, kept the official chronicle of the abbey from 1302
to 1326, set forth the Westminster point of view very effectively in
the well-known version of the chronicle called _Flores Historiarum_,
the original manuscript of which is now in the Chetham Library.
In this is given what may be regarded as the official account of
Richard’s burglary. The robbery of the king of England was a crime only
comparable to the robbery of the treasure of Boniface VIII, six months
later at Anagni. The chronicler is most indignant at the suggestion
that the monks had anything to do with the matter, and laments
passionately their long imprisonment and their unmerited sufferings. He
relies in substance on the story as told in Pudlicott’s confession. The
burglary was effected by a single robber.

So lacking in humour was the Westminster annalist that he did not
scruple to borrow the phraseology and the copious Scriptural citations
of a certain “Passion of the monks of Westminster according to
John,” the whole text of which is unfortunately not extant. I may
say, however, that the species of composition called a “Passion” was
particularly in vogue at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, and is mainly characterised by its extraordinary skill in
parodying the words of the Scripture in order to describe in mock
heroic vein some incident of more or less undeserved suffering. For
profanity, grim humour, and misapplied knowledge of the Vulgate
the “passions” of this period have no equal. They are a curious
illustration of the profane humour of the mediaeval ecclesiastic in his
lighter moments.

The Westminster annalist did not stand alone. Other monastic
chroniclers took up and accepted his story. It became the accepted
monastic doctrine that one robber only had stolen the king’s treasure,
and that therefore the monks of Westminster were unwarrantably accused.
One writer added to his text a crude illustration of how, it was
imagined, Pudlicott effected his purpose. You may see opposite this
page his rude pictorial representation of the “one robber” kneeling on
the grass in the churchyard, and picking up by a hand and arm extended
through the broken window the precious stores within. But Pudlicott’s
arm must have been longer than the arm of justice to effect this
operation, and must have been twice or thrice the length of a tall man.
This same chronicler was not contented with repeating the parallel
now recognised between the sufferings of the monks of Westminster,
under their unjust accusations, and the passion of pope Boniface, five
months later, at the hands of the robbers hired by the ruthless king of
France. He must give a picture of the Anagni outrage as well as of the
orthodox version of the Westminster burglary. How far he has succeeded,
you may gather from the rude sketch figured on the opposite page. Not
only does he give us so vivid a picture of pope Boniface’s sufferings
from the rude soldiery that the drawing might well be used as a
representation of a martyrdom, like that of St. Thomas of Canterbury.
His sketch of three other sacrilegious warriors, rifling the huge chest
that contained the papal treasures, skilfully suggests that robbery
was the common motive that united the outrage at Anagni to the outrage
at Westminster. He leaves us to draw the deeper moral that the sinful
desire of unhallowed laymen to bring holy church and her ministers into
discredit was the ultimate root of both these scandals.

Edward was satisfied with his Scottish campaign; he was becoming
old and tired; he was pleased to know that a great deal of the lost
treasure had been recovered; and he was always anxious to avoid
scandal, and to minimise any disagreement with the monks of his
father’s foundation. He, therefore, condoned what he could not remedy.
He soon released all the monks from prison. He even restored Shenche
to his hereditary office of the keepership of the palace. Richard of
Pudlicott alone was offered up to vengeance. In October, 1305, Richard
was hanged, regardless of his clergy.

[Illustration: The Outrage at Anagni.]

Affairs at the monastery of Westminster were not improved after these
events. There was much quarrelling among the monks. Walter of Wenlock
died. There were disputes as to his succession; an unsatisfactory
appointment was made, and there was a considerable amount of strife for
a generation. The feeling against the king was shown equally against
his son, and is reflected in the bitter Westminster chronicle of the
reign of Edward II. One result of the demonstration of the futility
of storing valuables within the precincts of the abbey was that the
chief treasury of the wardrobe was bodily transferred to the Tower of
London.

Some obvious morals might be drawn from this slight but not
unpicturesque story; but I will forbear from printing them. One
generalisation I will, however, venture to make by way of conclusion.
The strongest impression left by the records of the trial is one of
the slackness and the easy-going ways of the mediaeval man. The middle
ages do not often receive fair treatment. Some are, perhaps, too apt to
idealise them, as an age of heroic piety, with its statesmen, saints,
heroes, artists, and thinkers; but such people are in all ages the
brilliant exceptions. The age of St. Francis of Assisi, of Dante, of
Edward I, of St. Louis of France, of St. Thomas Aquinas, the age in
which the greatest buildings of the world were made, was a great time
and had its great men. But the middle ages were a period of strange
contrasts. Shining virtues and gross vices stood side by side. The
contrasts between the clearly cut black and white of the thirteenth
century are attractive to us immersed in the continuous grey of our own
times. But we find our best analogies to mediaeval conditions in those
which are nowadays stigmatised as Oriental. Conspicuous among them was
a deep pervading shiftlessness and casualness. Mediaeval man was never
up to time. He seldom kept his promise, not through malice, but because
he never did to-day what could be put off till to-morrow or the next
day.

Pudlicott then is a typical mediaeval criminal. He was doubtless
a scamp, but most of the people with whom he had dealings were
loose-thinking, easy-going folk like himself. Of course there are
always the exceptions. But Edward I, with his gift of persistence, was
a peculiarly exceptional type in the middle ages, and even Edward I
found it convenient to let things slide in small matters. Thus on this
occasion Edward began his investigation with great show of care and
determination to sift the whole matter; but when he found that thorny
problems were being stirred up, he determined—not for the first time—to
let sleeping dogs lie, and avoid further scandal.

We must not, however, build up too large a superstructure of theory
on this petty story of the police courts, plus a mild ecclesiastical
scandal. Nor must we emphasize too much or generalise too largely
from the signs of slackness and negligence shown in mediaeval trials.
I become more and more averse to facile generalisation about the
middle ages or mediaeval man. They may, moreover, be made in both
directions. On the one side we have the doctrine of our greatest
of recent scholars, bishop Stubbs, that the thirteenth century was
the greatest century of the middle ages, the flowering type of
mediaeval christianity and so on. But on the other hand there is the
contradictory generalisation of students, like my friend Mr. Coulton,
who surveys the time from St. Francis to Dante with the conviction
that the so-called great days of faith were the days of unrestrained
criminality and violence. Both these views can be argued; but neither
are really convincing. They seem to me to be obtained by looking at one
side of the question only. A more fruitful doctrine is surely the view
that ordinary mediaeval men were not so very unlike ourselves, and that
their virtues and vices were not those of saints or ruffians, but were
not wholly out of relation to the ordinary humdrum virtues and vices
that are found to-day.

[1] A lecture delivered in the John Rylands Library on 20 January, 1915.

NOTES.

I. Note on Authorities.

The accounts of the robbery of the king’s treasury in the Chronicles
are vitiated by the obvious desire of the writers, who were mainly
monks, to minimise the scandal to “religion” involved in the suspected
complicity of the Westminster monks. This is seen even in the moderate
account originating at St. Alban’s Abbey, and contained in William
Rishanger’s _Chronicle_ (Rolls Series), pp. 222 and 225, and also in
the other St. Alban’s version in _Gesta Edwardi Primi_, published in
the same volume, pp. 420–1. The bias is naturally at its worst in the
Westminster Abbey Chronicle, printed in _Flores Historiarum_, III. 115,
117, 121, and 131 (Rolls Series), which is more valuable perhaps as
an index of Westminster opinion than as a dispassionate statement of
the facts. The chief manuscript of this chronicle is preserved in the
Chetham Library, Manchester [MS. Chetham No. 6712]. It was certainly
written by a Westminster monk, and, perhaps after 1302, by Robert of
Reading, who undoubtedly was the author of the account of the reign
of Edward II. If Robert wrote the story of the robbery, it should be
remembered that he was one of the forty-nine monks indicted and sent
to the Tower on a charge of complicity in it. There are useful and
more impartial notices in the non-monastic _Annales Londonienses_ in
Stubbs’ _Chronicles of Edward I and Edward II_, I. 130, 131, 132, and
134 (Rolls Series). These date the robbery on 2 May.

The Chronicles being thus under suspicion, we must go for our main
knowledge of the story to record sources, many of which are fortunately
accessible in print. Palgrave’s _Kalendars and Inventories of the
Exchequer_, I. 251–99 (Record Commission, 1836), publishes the writs
appointing the two commissions of enquiry and the verdicts of the
juries empanelled by them. The writs are also in Rymer’s _Fœdera_,
I. 956, 959 (Record Commission). The confession of Richard Pudlicott
is printed in an English translation in H. Hall’s _Antiquities of
the Exchequer_, pp. 25–8, and also in L. O. Pike’s _History of Crime
in England_, Vol. I. The French original can be read in _Exchequer
Accounts, K. R._, 332/8. Cole’s _Records_ (Record Commission, 1844)
prints the indenture in which Droxford, the Keeper of the Wardrobe,
specifies the jewels lost and recovered. Some entries in the _Calendar
of Patent Rolls_ and the _Calendar of Close Rolls_ usefully supplement
the continuous records.

There are several fairly full modern accounts, the majority of which
are not quite satisfactory. That in Dean Stanley’s _Memorials of
Westminster Abbey_ is more eloquent than critical. H. Harrod’s article
in _Archæologia_, LXIV. 375, “on the crypt of the chapter house at
Westminster,” is valuable for its clear identification of the crypt
under the chapter house with the scene of the robbery. Equally useful
is J. Burtt’s important paper “On some discoveries in connexion with
the ancient treasury of Westminster,” published in G. G. Scott’s
_Gleanings from Westminster Abbey_, pp. 18–33. The two fullest modern
accounts are in L. O. Pike’s _History of Crime in England_, I. 199–203
and 466–7, and Hubert Hall’s _Antiquities of the Exchequer_, pp. 18–33.
The latter is perhaps the better because, though telling the story in a
book dealing with the exchequer, it recognises that the treasury robbed
was the treasury of the wardrobe. There are, however, materials for a
more detailed critical narrative than has hitherto been attempted.

II. Note on the Illustrations.

The two rough drawings, figured in the text, are reproduced from
f. 192d of a Manuscript Chronicle in the British Museum [_MS. Cotton,
Nero, D. ii._]. The first, opposite p. 19, represents the story of the
robbery of the treasury of the wardrobe “by a single robber,” which
this chronicle, following the Westminster version, adopts. The second,
opposite p. 20, depicts the outrage on Boniface VIII by the agents of
Philip the Fair at Anagni, in September, 1303. This picture of the
attack on the pope emphasizes the comparison made by the sympathetic
monastic writers between the scandal of Anagni and the analogous
outrage on the church by the imprisonment of the monks of Westminster.
The photographs were taken by the permission of the Principal Librarian
of the British Museum by the Artists Illustrators, Limited.

The rough plan of Westminster Abbey and the adjoining royal palace is
taken from that published in Hall’s _Antiquities of the Exchequer_,
p. 31. I am indebted to my friend Mr. Hubert Hall and to his publisher,
Mr. Elliott Stock, for permission to reproduce this.

Transcriber’s Note

Capitalisation of “christianity” and “Wardrobe/wardrobe” retained as
printed.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "A mediaeval burglary : A lecture delivered at the John Rylands Library on the 20th January, 1915" ***

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