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Peter Coss, The Nobility and Ecclesiastical Patronage in Thirteenth-Century England, by Elizabeth Gemmill, The English Historical Review, Volume 131, Issue 553, 1 December 2016, Pages 1486–1488, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cew269
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Extract
Patronage is a term much used by historians, sometimes controversially. The subject of this book by Elizabeth Gemmill, however, is patronage of a particular kind: the rights exercised by the founders of ecclesiastical institutions and by their heirs and successors. By the thirteenth century these rights had been heavily circumscribed by the Church. The power of patrons of religious houses was officially confined to giving licence to elect a new head and to assent to the choice made—they were not supposed to influence the outcome. Benefits included prayers, burial rights (often resulting in the house becoming a family mausoleum), hospitality and the granting of pensions and corrodies to dependants. In terms of the secular Church, the rights of patrons had been whittled down essentially to the possession of advowson—that is to say, the right to nominate the incumbent priest; institution was the responsibility of the bishop. In short, the laity was no longer to be concerned with spiritual matters and with spiritual property. Nonetheless, patronage rights, being themselves a form of property, were jealously guarded and often disputed. Not surprisingly, they have been the subject of many important studies over the years. However, as the author points out, there has been no full-length study bringing together monastic patronage and advowson of churches and showing how they ‘complemented each other and gave the patron who exercised them different means of accessing the resources of the Church’ (p. 5). Given that members of the higher nobility were those who most often enjoyed both of these rights, they are the natural focus for the book. Equally, the nature of the sources determines a concentration on the second half of the thirteenth century. Bishops’ registers and the royal inquisitions post mortem give unrivalled access to the exercise of these twin forms of patronage. Among other sources are some of the magnates’ own letters, and a few of these are published as an appendix. A second appendix provides an invaluable list of magnate presentations.
