• Home
• Project Information
• Fine Rolls
• Style Book
• Commentary
  • Introduction to Reign
  • Introduction to Rolls
  • Originalia Rolls
  • Technical Introduction
  • Heads and Headings
• News
• Help
• Fine of the Month
• Book Publication
• Blog
• Conference
• Podcasts
• Related Papers

1. Hubert de Burgh, Matilda de Mowbray, and Magna Carta’s protection of widows.

John’s reign had seen widows exploited and their rights to a free marriage or to stay single constrained. Following the issue of Magna Carta, in which the assertion of their rights figures prominently, widows might expect to avoid arbitrary and exorbitant fines and hope to live and marry as they desired. In this month’s article David Carpenter examines the extent to which Magna Carta continued to offer such protection to widows in the early decades of Henry III’s reign and analyses the often dichotomous wishes and actions of the king, his government and his barons. This article, more importantly, demonstrates the huge savings in research time that can be made by using the web search facility, calling up in an instant, for example, and printing out together all entries from 1216–34 that relate to the marriage of widows.

⁋1In November 1232, in a letter close enrolled on the fine rolls, Henry III announced his acceptance of a fine which Matilda, widow of Nigel de Mowbray, had made with Hubert de Burgh to stay single or marry whom she wished. ¹ This fine, unusual in various ways, has prompted me to examine Hubert’s dealings with Matilda de Mowbray within the more general context of the way in which royal government treated widows in the first phase of Henry’s reign down to 1234. ² The conclusion is striking. Whereas that government, headed by Hubert between 1219 and 1232, respected the protection offered to widows in Magna Carta, Hubert, in his private dealings with Matilda, acted clean contrary to them.

⁋2By the time of Matilda’s fine in 1232, Hubert de Burgh’s relations with the Mowbrays went back many years. Although they had been shorn of their castles after the civil war of 1173–74, and had lost land and fees through disputes with the Stutevilles, their honour remained a large one, including, as it did, Thirsk and Kirkby Malzeard in Yorkshire, the isle of Axholme in Lincolnshire, Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire and a large number of knights fees. ³ William de Mowbray, one of the twenty-five barons of Magna Carta’s security clause, had been captured at the battle of Lincoln in 1217 and had come to owe his ransom to Hubert de Burgh, although just how is unclear since Hubert was not at the battle. In order to pay the ransom, William had granted Hubert his manor of Banstead in Surrey to hold in hereditary right. ⁴ On his death in 1224, William was succeeded by his son, Nigel, and here there is a puzzle. Magna Carta had laid down that the relief of an earl or baron should be £100. Almost universally, in the period after 1217 (as Laura Walker has shown from work on the fine rolls), this stipulation was obeyed. Yet Nigel’s fine to succeed his father was not £100 but £500. ⁵

⁋3Whether, however, this fine involved a breach of the Charter remains unclear for it is possible that Nigel was under age and was thus in effect buying himself out of a period of royal wardship. The terms of the fine (which has been studied by Celine Dignan) may hint as much for, in fact, the £500 was offered for two things, first the relief and secondly to have seisin of all the lands that William de Mowbray held on the day he died and which belonged to Nigel in hereditary right. ⁶ This contrasts with the more usual formula (like that in the £100 offer made by Matthew of Torrington earlier in 1224 to succeed to his barony) where the fine is simply for the relief and there is no second ‘and to have seisin clause’, the sheriff being simply ordered to take security for the relief and then to give seisin. ⁷ Nigel Mowbray’s fine does not say this but it may well be, therefore, that he fined for seisin as well as for relief because he was obtaining seisin while still under age. Unfortunately there appears to be no evidence for the date of Nigel’s birth, but it may be significant that his younger brother and eventual heir, Roger, seems to have been born as late as 1220. ⁸ Incidentally nearly all the fifteen pledges for Nigel’s fine were tenants of the honour of Mowbray, a warning to those who underestimate the ‘feudal’ strand in thirteenth-century society. ⁹

⁋4For all the favour of being allowed to succeed early to his inheritance, if favour it was, Nigel remained very much in the power of the government and thus of Hubert de Burgh. This was because of his colossal debts. When those he had inherited from his father were added to the £500, these amounted to some £1976. ¹⁰ Under the terms of the fine, Nigel was to pay this sum off at £80 a year, a rate £60 a year more than that enjoyed by his father, and one which proved beyond him. ¹¹ Doubtless, in the circumstances, Nigel made no difficulty about confirming the grant of Banstead to Hubert de Burgh. ¹² More positively, he also married although the marriage seems, at first sight, a strange one. His wife, Matilda, seems to have been a grandchild of Simon of Pattishall (died c. 1217), one of the most eminent judges of the late twelfth and early thirteenth-century. We know this because Simon’s son, Hugh of Pattishall, later treasurer of the exchequer and bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, is described as Matilda’s ‘avunculus’ and she as his ‘neptis’. ¹³ Most probably, Matilda, was the daughter of Walter of Pattishall, Hugh’s elder brother, who, though he never reached the heights of his father, is found acting as a justice and sheriff down to his death in 1231. ¹⁴ The Mowbrays themselves had come up in the world, being descended from Nigel d’Aubigny, a household knight of Henry I. But however much they preserved the name Nigel, they soon laid claim to a more illustrious descent by adopting the toponymic surname Mowbray, the centre of their estates in Normandy, thus linking themselves spuriously to the family of its previous lord, Robert de Mowbray earl of Northumbria. ¹⁵ In the 1220s Matilda of Pattishall, if such she was, can hardly have seemed a suitable bride for Nigel of Mowbray, the head of one of England’s greatest baronial houses. True, Simon of Pattishall had built up a substantial landed estate, and his son Walter, perhaps as we have seen Matilda’s father, inherited lands in several counties including Northamptonshire (where Pattishall itself was situated) and Yorkshire. But Walter had a son, Simon, so Matilda was not an heiress. ¹⁶ What then did she bring? One answer surely is money. Her grandfather, Simon, must have made large sums of money from ‘a continuous judicial career lasting some 26 years’. ¹⁷ Hugh too, Matilda’s protector as we will see, must have done well out of his work at the exchequer where, before his elevation to the treasurership in 1234, he was keeper of the seal. ¹⁸ Another reason for the alliance may indeed be the connections it brought with those in government service. The Mowbrays experience of royal ‘justice’ had been the reverse of happy. ¹⁹ Now through marriage they would be connected not merely to Hugh of Pattishall but to Martin of Pattishall, Simon’s former clerk, who was the chief justice at the bench, and thus one of the heads of the judicial establishment. ²⁰

⁋5Nigel de Mowbray did not have long to profit from these marital connections for, loyally accompanying the king, he died during Henry III’s expedition to France in 1230 without apparently producing children by Matilda. Hubert de Burgh pounced at once. As the home government was informed in a royal letter witnessed at Redon in Brittany on 29 September, he paid 500 marks cash down into the wardrobe and secured in return custody of the land of Nigel de Mowbray until the heir came of age, together with the heir’s marriage. ²¹ The transaction suggests the plenty of Hubert’s cash and the paucity of the king’s, hence its one sided nature. In the more than ten years before Nigel’s heir, his brother, Roger, would come of age, Hubert could surely have made 500 marks many times over. In 1234, when John de Lacy, earl of Lincoln, bought the wardship and Roger’s marriage from the king his fine was 1000 marks although the wardship had three and a half less years to run. ²²

⁋6Hubert’s fine gave him no rights over the marriage of Nigel’s widow Matilda. Indeed it did not mention her at all, probably because other plans for her future were already afoot. Thus, on 2 October, three days after Hubert’s fine, the king attested two letters patent, one announcing the concession he had just made to Hubert, and the other proclaiming that he had conceded Matilda’s marriage to Ralph fitzNicholas for the use (ad opus) of one of his sons. ²³ At the same time, he also attested a letter close addressed to the governors in England (the chancellor, Ralph de Neville and Stephen of Seagrave) informing them that fitzNicholas ‘our steward’ (he was steward of the royal household) had fined in 500 marks for the marriage, and that they should deliver it to him

⁋7‘if she [Matilda] can be induced to accept one of his sons as her husband, whom you should induce to this in whatsoever way you can – si ipsa induci possit quod unum filiorum suorum in virum velit admittere; quam ad hoc modis quibuscumque poteritis inducatis.’ ²⁴

⁋8No reference was made in any of this material to Matilda’s dower, which was strange since her entitlement to a third of the Mowbray estates for her lifetime must have been her chief attraction, but perhaps Hubert and fitzNicholas intended to settle this between themselves.

⁋9How, then, did the gift of Matilda’s marriage square with the protections offered widows in Magna Carta? The Charter stated that:

⁋10‘No widow shall be distrained to marry so long as she wishes to live without a husband, provided that she gives security that she will not marry without our consent if she holds of us, or without the consent of the lord of whom she holds, if she holds of another.’ ²⁵

⁋11The clear implication of the Charter, therefore, was that the king did not have the marriages of widows in his gift. All he had was the right of veto through withholding his consent. ²⁶ The implication of the fitzNicholas fine was the opposite of this, namely that the king could give widows in marriage subject at best to their right of veto. That veto, moreover, was something which the king was prepared to go to any lengths to overcome: Neville and Seagrave were empowered to induce Matilda to marry ‘in whatsoever ways you can’, which meant, on the face of it, that they might even resort to the distraint forbidden by the Charter, resort that is to seizing her chattels and withholding her dower, thus leaving her without resources.

⁋12Matilda de Mowbray, however, was able to withstand these pressures, if they were indeed exerted, for, while Hubert certainly gained possession of the Mowbray lands, she did not marry a son of Ralph fitzNicholas. On 10 October 1230, only twelve days after the letter giving Hubert possession of the Mowbray lands was witnessed and presumably dispatched from Redon, the English government acted upon it and sent out orders to the relevant sheriffs. ²⁷ Then, in November, now back with the king in England, Hubert had his proffer of 500 marks for the wardship recorded on the fine rolls from whence it passed to the pipe rolls which recorded his quittance through a payment ‘in parts across the sea’. ²⁸ At the same time, Hubert had the concession embodied in a royal charter, one witnessed exclusively by his curial colleagues. ²⁹ Testimony to his right to the wardship was thus to be found across the close, patent, charter, fine and pipe rolls, a striking indication of Hubert’s faith in the written record. By contrast, only one source records the gift to fitzNicholas, namely the original letter recorded on the close roll. After that there is silence That the fine never reached the fine roll, much less the pipe roll, suggests that it was clear, soon after the return to England, that Matilda was un-persuadable, whatever the means adopted to persuade her.

⁋13It may be, therefore, that the issue of Matilda’s dower which first surfaces in November 1230 was the result not of fitzNicholas’s concern for his prospective daughter in law but of the ability of Matilda, doubtless with the help of her family, to look after herself. Thus it was that the charter of 10 November which confirmed Hubert’s possession of the Mowbray lands said that he was to have them saving the assignment of a ‘rightful’ dower to Matilda. More remarkable, on the same day, the king issued a letter close to Hubert precisely commanding him to assign to Matilda her ‘rightful (racionabilem) dower which belongs to her from the lands and tenements which were of Nigel de Mowbray’. ³⁰

⁋14Thus Matilda remained unmarried. When the justices in eyre visited Yorkshire in 1231, the jurors of the wapentake of Birdforth reported that Matilda was ‘in the gift of the king and is to be married’, thus themselves overstating the rights of the king over widows. ³¹ Indeed, the jurors were arguably wrong in another way. Since the Mowbray lands were now in Hubert’s hands, it was he, rather than the king, from whom she held her dower and thus it was he, rather than the king, who needed to give consent to her marriage. ³² Matilda recognized as much for, some time before 21 July 1232, when the king issued a letter patent accepting the arrangement, she fined with Hubert to the tune of 300 marks in order, so the king said, to be allowed to stay single or marry whom she wished. The king added that he had accepted the fine despite any concession he had previously made about her marriage, a clear reference to the fitzNicholas episode. ³³

⁋15If Matilda’s fine was made shortly before 21 July, as seems quite probable, then it belonged to the very last days before Hubert’s dismissal. Eight days later he was ousted from court. ³⁴ The summary of the fine on the patent roll can be supplemented by the much fuller record made on the fine roll, when the king took notice of it again in November 1232 after Hubert’s fall. From there it appears that the fine was in fact to secure Matilda three things ³⁵

⁋16Evidently Matilda still feared being pressured into an uncongenial marriage, just as she had earlier been pressured to marry a son of Ralph fitzNicholas. Equally, despite the order over her dower issued in November 1230, she evidently felt short changed in respect of it. Given her reluctance to marry, Hubert had certainly no incentive to fatten up her dower so as to get a good price from a husband, and anything he did give her just meant less of the Mowbray lands for himself. In all this, the protection to widows offered by Magna Carta had seemingly availed Matilda nothing. She was having to pay for what, under the Charter, should have been her own by right. The only part of the fine congruent with the Charter was that to be allowed to marry whom she wished. The Charter, as we have seen, protected the lord’s right of consent, and did not forbid a payment for it to be waived. On the other hand, for Matilda to have to pay to live without a husband should have been quite unnecessary since the Charter permitted her to do just that. Indeed the very phraseology of Matilda’s fine ‘vivere sine marito si vellet’ ironically echoed the Charter where a widow was not to be distrained to marry ‘dum vivere voluerit sine marito’. Equally, for Matilda to have to pay for her rightful dower was contrary to the Charter’s stipulation that a widow should not have to do so: ‘nec aliquid det pro dote sua.’ ³⁶

⁋17All this was imposed on Matilda despite her having an influential supporter. Indeed had it not been for that supporter Matilda would presumably have not got even the deal she did. This supporter was her uncle Hugh of Pattishall. It is this which is revealed by the record of the fine made on the fine rolls in November 1232 to which we have referred. There the statement that the fine was made with Hubert by Matilda de Mowbray was altered to say that it had been made with him by Matilda’s uncle, Hugh of Pattishall. This is confirmed by a later entry in the patent rolls, which describes Matilda as Hugh’s neptis, and states that his pledges for the fine had been none other than the chancellor Ralph de Neville, bishop of Chichester (who had been ordered to pressurize Matilda in 1230), and the treasurer of the exchequer, Walter Mauclerc, bishop of Carlisle, a striking indication of Hugh’s connections in the king’s service. ³⁷ It was presumably Hugh’s influence (and perhaps also the weakening of Hubert’s political position) which brought the fine down to as low as 300 marks, as against the 500 marks which Ralph fitz Nicholas had offered for Matilda’s marriage less than two years before. But the over-riding impression remains that of the tough bargain which Hubert drove even in the last days of his power. ³⁸

⁋18All this looks bad for the Charter, but it needs to be put into perspective. When it came to their own affairs, Hubert and his henchmen were clearly prepared to break its spirit, indeed its letter. But the general conduct of government between 1216 and 1234 was different. It is perfectly true that the fine rolls regularly refer to widows as being in the king’s gift, ³⁹ but in fact, between 1216 and 1234, there appear to be only fourteen instances where a man, as in the fitzNicholas case, actually fines with the king to have the marriage of a widow. ⁴⁰ In not one of these cases, moreover, is there any suggestion that pressures can be brought on the widow to bring the marriage about. Those sanctioned in the fitzNicholas letter are unique. In three of the fourteen cases, moreover, the need for the widow’s consent to the marriage is expressly mentioned. Indeed, in one instance this had to be given in writing by the widow’s letters patent. ⁴¹ In two further cases, moreover, it emerges that what in fact the king was conceding was not so much the actual marriage of the widow, which he did not have under the Charter, as the right of veto and consent, which he did.

⁋19The terms of Matilda’s fine with Hubert are also untypical. In the fine rolls from 1216 to 1234, according to a search made on the project’s website, there appears to be only one instance of a widow having to pay to receive her dower, and that comes from Ireland. ⁴² It is also very rare to discover fines for permission to stay single or not to be distrained to marry. Here the Charter had its effect. In John’s sixteen years, there were 59 fines (39% of the total made by widows) which included a clause giving protection against compulsory re-marriage. ⁴³ In the eighteen years between 1216 and 1234, the number of such fines shrinks to three. ⁴⁴ By contrast, during the same period there are ten fines for the right to marry whom a widow pleases, fines, as we have suggested, perfectly congruent with the Charter. ⁴⁵ There are also ten cases where the king had been unable to enforce his rights at all, the marriages had taken place without his permission. ⁴⁶

⁋20Hubert de Burgh fell from power only a few days after Matilda’s fine, and before he had done anything to implement the concession over her dower. At the end of September, the sheriffs, by letters enrolled on the fine rolls, were ordered to deliver the Mowbray lands to Peter de Rivallis, as the king’s escheator, one of the many posts he held in the new government. ⁴⁷ Matilda, therefore, now found herself holding her dower from the king. Whatever the king had said back in July, she must have wondered what her fate would be under the new regime dominated by Hubert’s enemy, Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, a man far readier to drive the king’s government beyond the Charter than Hubert himself. ⁴⁸ Indeed, one wonders whether the steps taken to get the king’s assent to the fine just before Hubert’s fall were an attempt to ensure against the changes it might bring. That attempt continued in the following months. Thus the writ of 28 September transferring the Mowbray lands to de Rivallis included a clause exempting the lands Matilda held in dower. Interestingly, the record of the writ on the fine rolls had initially omitted this clause and was subsequently altered through an interlineation to include it. ⁴⁹ Then, on 13 November, another writ, enrolled on the fine rolls informed de Rivallis that the king looked favourably on the fine Matilda had made with Hubert. Accordingly, he was now to make up what was lacking in her dower without delay, as Hubert had been bound to do. ⁵⁰ This was followed on the roll by an improved version of the same writ which, instead of leaving it to de Rivallis to decide how to assess Matilda’s dower, went into detail about how he should value by the oaths of law-worthy men the Mowbray lands held currently by both Matilda and the king. It was this writ which was altered, again through an interlineation, to make clear that the original fine with Hubert had been made by Hugh of Pattishall rather than Matilda herself. ⁵¹ It seems that someone was watching very closely over Matilda’s interests, someone who was so far an insider that he was able to influence the very writing of the fine rolls. Clearly this was Hugh of Pattishall himself. The interlineation of his name in Matilda’s fine shows he wanted everyone to know as much. He had also taken another precaution. When the Mowbray lands were taken into the king’s hand, he paid the 300 marks owed for the fine to the king. ⁵²

⁋21This attention to detail must have stood Hugh of Pattishall in good stead both as treasurer of the exchequer from1234 (where he won praise from Matthew Paris) and then as bishop of Coventry and Lichfield. ⁵³ Meanwhile Matilda had married again, presumably to someone she was happy to have. By January 1234, apparently with an increased dower, she is found as the wife of John de Courtenay, the heir to the barony of Okehampton. ⁵⁴ She died in 1240 when her executors were allowed the chattels at her manor of River in Kent, part of her Mowbray dower, for the execution of her will. ⁵⁵

⁋22Hubert de Burgh himself died three years later at Banstead, the manor he had prized from William de Mowbray. He died there because for all the fame he had gained as a castellan, for all the castles he had acquired, and the castles he had built, at the end of his days he possessed not a single one, something which makes his ruthless pursuit of land and wealth all the more ironic. In his private affairs, as we have seen, Hubert ignored the protections offered widows in the Great Charter. Yet, as head of the government, he largely respected them, as he respected other clauses in the Charter. He was, of course, being pragmatic. What he could get away with as a lord was quite different from what he could get away, or wished to get away with, as the first minister of the king. His conduct towards Matilda seems amply to justify the king’s complaint, frequent during his personal rule, that lords did not obey the Charter in their dealings with those subject to them. ⁵⁶ The attitude of many great lords may have been to take from the king what they could under the terms of Charter, and give as little as they could under its terms to their tenants in return. But the evidence we have for such dealings is very limited, and Matilda’s fine with Hubert is not necessarily typical. There were lords and lords. Many, less powerful than Hubert, may have regarded the Charter, with its stipulation that they should consent to the marriages of widows and have £5 for the relief of a knight’s fee more as a protection against their tenants than as a restriction on their ability to exploit them. After all, not even the king, as we have seen, was always successful in asserting his rights over the marriage of widows.

1.1. C 60/32 Fine Roll 17 Henry III (28 October 1232-27 October 1233), membrane 10

1.1.1. 22

⁋1 For Matilda de Mowbray. Hugh of Pattishall, uncle ⁵⁷ of Matilda de Mowbray, who was the wife of Nigel de Mowbray, made fine by 300 m. with Hubert de Burgh when he had custody of the lands formerly of Nigel, so that Matilda might marry whom she pleases, or else live without a husband if she wishes, and so that he was to make up to her that which had been lacking from her rightful dower of the land and tenements formerly of Nigel both in demesnes and in rents, services and knights’ fees accounted to Matilda in part of her dower of the manors of Hovingham and of Burton in Yorkshire, and the manor of River in Kent, of which she then had seisin. And because the king is happy with that fine and it falls to his use, order to P. de Rivallis that, having extended the aforesaid manors of which Matilda is in seisin by the oath of trustworthy and law-worthy men, and, in a similar manner, having extended the lands and manors that the king has in his hand of the lands formerly of the same Nigel, and having taken diligent inquisition as to what fees Nigel held of the king in chief, he is to cause to be made up to Matilda, both in demesnes and in rents, services and knights’ fees, that which is lacking to her of her rightful dower of the lands formerly of Nigel, her husband. [13 Nov. 1232].