Geoffrey de Mandeville: A study of the Anarchy

by John Horace Round

There can, I think, be little question that this charter passed at Oxford just after that by which Miles of Gloucester was created Earl of Hereford (July 25, 1141). It is certainly previous to the Earl of Gloucester's departure from England in the summer of 1142, and I do not know of any evidence for the presence of these bishops with the Empress at Oxford after the rout of Winchester. The names of the eight first witnesses to this charter are all found in Miles's charter (Fœdera, N.E., i. 14). As to the others, Miles de Beauchamp had held his castle of Bedford against Stephen (Christmas, 1137), and, though compelled to surrender it, had regained it on the triumph of the Empress. Stephen de Beauchamp heads the list of William de Beauchamp's under-tenants in his Carta (1166), and the Abetots—Heming's "Ursini"—also held of him. "Isnardus" was a landowner in Worcestershire and witnessed a charter to Evesham Abbey in 1130.

The text of this charter—which is taken from the Beauchamp Cartulary (Add. MSS., 28,024, fol. 126 b), a most precious volume, of which the existence is little known—is perhaps corrupt in places, but the document affords several points of considerable interest. Among them are the formula "dedi et reddidi" applied to the grantee's previous possessions, as contrasted with the "dedi et concessi" of the new grant (60 "librates" of land) and of the grant of his relatives' inheritance; the reference to the hereditary shrievalty of Worcester; the allusion to Tamworth Castle as the head of its "honour" (as at Arundel); and the phrase "de hoc devenit ... meus ligius homo contra omnes mortales," to be compared with "pro hiis ... devenit homo noster ligius contra omnes homines" in the charter (1144) to Humfrey de Bohun (Pipe-Roll Society: Ancient Charters, p. 46), and the "homagium suum fecit ligie contra omnes homines" in the charter to Miles of Gloucester (see p. 56). The statement that active opponents of the Empress were precluded from compounding for their offence, except by special intervention, occurs, I think, here alone. The facts that Urse de Abetot was a constable and Walter de Beauchamp an hereditary "Dispenser" are also noteworthy, the latter bearing on the question of the succession to Robert "Dispensator" (see my remarks in Ancient Charters, p. 2).

[920] See Appendix F.

APPENDIX M.
THE EARLDOM OF ARUNDEL.

(See p. [146].)

It is difficult to overrate the importance of the Canterbury charter to Geoffrey in its bearing on the origin and nature of this far-famed earldom. For centuries, antiquaries and lawyers have wrangled over this dignity, the premier earldom of England, but its true character and history have remained an unsolved enigma.

The popular belief that the dignity is "an earldom by tenure" and is annexed to the possession of Arundel Castle, is based on the petitions of John fitz Alan in 11 Hen. IV. and of Thomas Howard in 3 Car. I. This view would be strenuously upheld, of course, by the possessors of the castle, but neither their own ex parte statements, nor even the tacit admission of them by the Crown, can override the facts of the case as established by the evidence of history. The problem is for us, it should be added, of merely historical interest, as the dignity is now, and has been since 1627, held under a special parliamentary entail created in that year.

Even the warmest advocates of the "earldom by tenure" theory would admit that such an anomaly was absolutely unique of its kind. The onus of proving the fact must therefore rest on them, and the presumption, to put it mildly, is completely against them, for I do not hesitate to say that to a student of the dignity of an earl the proposition they ask us to accept is more than impossible: it is ludicrous.

Tierney endeavoured, with some skill, to rebut the arguments of Lord Redesdale in the Reports of the Lords' Committee, but the advance of historical research leaves them both behind. The latest words on the subject have been spoken by Mr. Pym Yeatman, the confidence of whose assertions and the size of whose work[921] might convey the erroneous impression that he had solved this ancient riddle. I shall therefore here examine his arguments in some detail, and, having disposed of his theories, shall then discuss the facts.