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From: Tim Powys-Lybbe <>
Subject: Re: Bishop's Kinsfolk: Bishop Godfrey Giffard's kinsman, William de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 22:38:23 GMT
References: <5cf47a19.0310260837.582bbc3e@posting.google.com> <ac1a87e4.0310280809.63057174@posting.google.com> <ec29fb484c.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk> <bnofu9$p6k$1@news6.svr.pol.co.uk> <5cf47a19.0310291158.37a3431a@posting.google.com> <bnp9qj$a9$1@news8.svr.pol.co.uk> <5cf47a19.0310300825.2af3cc2@posting.google.com> <5cf47a19.0310310004.60ce86b4@posting.google.com> <5cf47a19.0310311046.7f013e9d@posting.google.com>


In message of 31 Oct, (Douglas Richardson) wrote:

> Dear Newsgroup ~
>
> The biography of Bishop Godfrey Giffard (died 1301) copied below is
> found on the website for the online edition of the Catholic
> Encyclopedia at the following web address:
>
> http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06551b.htm
>
> Best always, Douglas Richardson, Salt Lake City, Utah
>
> E-mail:
>
> - - - - - - - - - -
> Biography of Godfrey Giffard:

<snip>

> EDWARD MYERS
> Transcribed by Kerry Smith
>
> The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VI

______________________________________________________________________

Hmmm...

It must be a miracle. So many of Edward Myers' phrases are just the
same as those in the earlier Dictionary of National Biography article
of 1889. And the flavour has been subtly changed by what has been left
out, too. Read On:


"Giffard, Godfrey 1235?-1302, chancellor of England and bishop of
Worcester, was the son of Hugh Giffard of Boyton in Wiltshire, a royal
justice, and of his wife Sibyl, daughter and coheiress of Walter de
Cormeilles. He was born about 1235 (Calendarium Genealogicum, p. 281).
He was the younger brother of Walter Giffard [q.v.], ultimately
archbishop of York, whose successful career insured the preferment of
Godfrey. When his brother was bishop of Bath and Wells, he became canon
of Wells (Newcourt, Repert. Eccl. Lond. i. 59) and rector of Mells. He
was also rector of the greater mediety of Attleburgh in Norfolk
(Blomefield, Norfolk, i. 523), archdeacon of Barnstaple from 1265 to
1267, and, after Walter became archbishop of York, archdeacon of York
and rector of Adlingfleet in 1267 (Raine, Fasti Eboracenses, p. 315
from Reg. W. Giffard). Complaints were afterwards made at Rome of the
way in which the archbishop gave this and many other benefices to his
brother, though Godfrey was only in minor orders and deficient in
learning. After Walter became chancellor of England in 1265, Godfrey in
1266 was made chancellor of the exchequer (Madox, Hist. of Exchequer,
i. 476), and next year was allowed to appoint a fit person to act for
him when his own affairs gave him occasion to withdraw from the
exchequer (ib. ii. 52). When in 1266 Walter was translated to York, he
resigned the chancellorship, and Godfrey was appointed his successor.
He was still chancellor when the monks of Worcester elected him as
their bishop on the translation of Bishop Nicholas of Ely [q.v.] to the
see of Winchester. Henry III accepted his appointment, and he received
the temporalities on 13 June 1268. After some little resistance,
Archbishop Boniface confirmed his election, but it was not until 23
Sept. that he was consecrated by the archbishop at Canterbury (‘Ann.
London.’ in Stubbs, Chronicles of Edward I and II, i. 79). He was
enthroned in his cathedral on Christmas day (Wykes in Annales
Monastici, iv. 220). He still retained the chancellorship, and in 1268
received a grant of five hundred marks a year for the support of
himself and the clerks of the chancery (Madox, i. 76), but before 1270
he had resigned the office.

"In 1272 he acted with the Bishop of Lichfield in treating with Llewelyn
of Wales (Shirley, Royal Letters, ii. 343). In May 1273 he was sent
abroad with Nicholas of Ely, bishop of Winchester, and Walter
Bronescomb, bishop of Exeter, to meet Edward I on his return from the
Holy Land. He was made a commissioner along with Roger Mortimer to
investigate certain grievances of the Oxford scholars, and in 1278
acted as an itinerant justice in Herefordshire, Hertfordshire, and Kent
(Foss, Judges of England, ii. 94). In 1279 he succeeded to the very
extensive property, inherited and acquired, of his brother the
archbishop. He was one of the four negotiators selected in 1289 by
Edward I to treat at Salisbury with the Scottish and Norwegian envoys
about sending Margaret of Norway to Scotland (Federa, i. 720).

"Giffard ruled over the see of Worcester for more than thirty-three
years, and his activity was almost confined to his own diocese. He was
engaged in constant disputes with his monastic chapter, long accounts
of which, written from the monks' point of view, have come down to us
in the ‘Annals of Worcester’ (Annales Monastici, vol. iv.). The great
subject of contention was whether the bishop should be allowed to annex
some of the more valuable livings in his gift to the prebends of the
college at Westbury, which led to tedious litigation, ultimately
decided in favour of the monks. But the claim of the bishop to receive
the monks' ‘profession’ produced other suits. In 1288, at an ordination
at Westbury, an unseemly dispute between the precentor of Worcester and
John of Evreux, archdeacon of Gloucester, a favourite nephew of the
bishop, as to who had the right to call over the names of the
candidates, led to the expulsion of the former from the chancel with
the connivance of the bishop (Ann. Wigorn. p. 496). A little later a
truce was patched up, but at Bromsgrove the bishop ‘would not permit
the prior to exercise his office, regardless of the peace that had been
made, which we believe to have been as vain as a peace with the Welsh.’
The monks also complained of his taking away the chapel at Grafton from
them, and of the constant efforts of the bishop to visit and to
exercise jurisdiction over them. In 1290 he held a visitation, and
required the convent to support his 140 horses, and went away in anger.
Though in 1290 he, at Bishop Burnell's mediation, revoked the statutes
of the priory and agreed to postpone the lawsuits, he soon after
procured from Rome a ‘very bad bull’ against them.

"Giffard was involved in another great dispute with the Abbot of
Westminster. He had deposed William of Ledbury, prior of Malvern, for
gross crimes. The monks of Westminster took up William's cause, as
Malvern was a cell of their abbey, and obtained the king's support. In
the end Giffard was glad to compromise the case, and received a grant
of land at Knightwick not to visit Malvern as his predecessors had done
(1283), and Ledbury was restored. This settlement Archbishop Peckham
denounced as simoniacal. Giffard had already been involved, like the
other suffragans to Canterbury, in the struggle against Peckham's
excessive claims of metropolitical jurisdiction. He afterwards,
however, became friendly with him, and sent the archbishop many costly
presents (Reg. Peckham, No. dli.). Giffard's many favours to the
Franciscans, whose general in 1277, and again in 1282, admitted him as
a brother of the order, must have procured him the friendship of the
Franciscan primate. His remissness in allowing the monks of the
cathedral to steal the body of one Henry Poche from the Franciscans and
bury it in their churchyard was in 1290 a new source of difference.

"In 1300 Giffard had become sick and infirm. He was in March visited by
Archbishop Winchelsey at Wyke. Next year William of Gloucester produced
thirty-six articles against him before the archbishop, when visiting
the diocese. They were mostly small, technical and legal, and included,
besides the old complaints of the chapter, a charge of manumitting
serfs without its consent, and unduly favouring his nephews. They were,
however, elaborately investigated, and the bishop's answers, which seem
fairly satisfactory, are recorded with the charges in his register.
Giffard died on Friday, 26 Jan. 1302, and was buried on 4 Feb. by John,
bishop of Llandaff, in Worcester Cathedral, on the south side of the
altar of the lady chapel, where his tomb is still to be seen. (There is
an engraving of it in Thomas's ‘Survey of Worcester Cathedral,’ p. 44.)

"Giffard's will, dated 13 Sept. 1300, left a large number of legacies to
kinsfolk, including his sister Mabel, abbess of Shaftesbury, and to
various churches. His heir was John, son of his younger brother,
William Giffard (Calendarium Genealogicum, p. 625) who, fighting on the
baronial side at Boroughbridge, was hanged at Gloucester, and forfeited
his estates to the crown. They were soon, however, restored, and in
later times the Giffords of Weston-sub-Edge assumed the arms of the see
of Worcester in memory of an ancestor who had done so much for the
family (Hoare, Wiltshire, i. 204). Despite his quarrels with the
chapter, Giffard was a benefactor of his cathedral, and beautified the
pillars of the choir and lady chapel by interlacing them with little
pillars. In 1280 he laid the first stone of the pavement of the
cathedral (Ann. Wigorn. p. 479). One of his first acts was to obtain
leave to fortify and finish Hartlebury Castle which Bishop Cantelupe
[q.v.] had begun. He extorted from Bishop Cantelupe's executors a
legacy left to the see, for supplying a stock of cattle on the lands of
the bishopric. He obtained a grant of fairs to Stratford-on-Avon and
Blockley. He also secured permission to fortify his palace at Worcester
and Wydindon like that at Hartlebury.

"Sources

"The fullest account of Giffard is in Thomas's Survey of Worcester
Cathedral, pp. 135-54, largely derived from his still surviving
Register, large extracts of which, including his will and the ‘Articuli
contra Godfridum episcopum Wygornensem et responsiones ejusdem,’ are
printed in the ‘Appendix chartarum originalium.’ His relations with
Malvern Priory are fully told in Thomas's Antiquitates prioratus
majoris Melverniæ, which prints from the Register all his acts relating
to that convent; Martin's Registrum Epistolarum Johannis Peckham (Rolls
Ser.) gives several of his letters and a large number of Peckham's to
him, and in the introduction to vol. ii. Mr. Martin summarises the
Malvern question; Raine's Fasti Eboracenses, in the notice of Walter
Giffard, gives what is known of his early history; Dugdale's Baronage,
i. 424, or, still better, Hoare's Wiltshire, i. 196-204, for an account
of his family; Annals of Winchester, Wykes, and more particularly the
Annals of Worcester in Annales Monastici, vols. ii. and iv.; Foss's
Judges of England, iii. 93-4; Roberts's Calendarium Genealogicum.

"Contributor: T. F. T.

"published 1889"


--
Tim Powys-Lybbe
For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org

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