T. F. Tout

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [17] 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. ”

“ 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 [21] of the abbey was that the chief treasury of the wardrobe was bodily transferred to the Tower of London. ”

“ 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 [18] Warfield was shrewdly suspected to be at the bottom of the whole business. ”

“ 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 [20] on the grass in the churchyard, and picking up by a hand and arm extended through the broken window the precious stores within. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are useful and more impartial notices in the non-monastic Annales [23] 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 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. ”

“ 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 [15] 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 ”

“ 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. ”