[Footnote 1:] A lecture delivered in the John Rylands Library on 20 January, 1915.] [Return to text]
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.