Showing posts with label Westminster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Westminster. Show all posts

Thursday, April 21, 2016

The First Prisoner

Ralph Flambard was born in Bayeux, Normandy six years before William the Conqueror crossed the English Channel and became King of England. When he grew up, however, he became intertwined with the affairs of William and his sons.

Depiction of Flambard in stone
for Christ Church, Dorset
He must have been a clever lad, because he was one of the people put in charge of the Domesday Book in 1086, to make an account of all the lands and towns in England. He also became the keeper of the king's seal; documents had to pass through him to be stamped as official. When William died, Ralph chose to serve the new king, William Rufus.

Under Rufus, Flambard showed notable talent at raising funds for the king—and himself. He took control of empty parishes (up to 16 at one point), so that rent from their tenants flowed to him. With the money he was raising for the Crown, he built the first stone bridge in London (but not London Bridge itself). It was at this time that the king's hall was built in Westminster, the walls of which are still standing.

When William Rufus died in 1100, Ralph Flambard, now Bishop of Durham, was made a scapegoat for the financial hardships put on the citizens of England. King Henry I made Flambard the first person to be imprisoned in the Tower of London.

He also became the first man to escape the Tower of London.

The story goes that his friends sent to him a large jug of wine. (Prisoners in the Tower were not fed well, and food and drink from family and friends were allowed in order to sustain them.) Inside the jug was a rope. Flambard offered his captors wine, and when they were drunk and sleeping, he extracted the rope, tied it to the middle strut of the window, and climbed down to where his friends were waiting with horses to take him and his elderly mother to a boat that would whisk him to safety in Normandy.

Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury arranged a papal trial for the crime of simony. Henry officially confiscated his lands. Archbishop Gerard of York took away his title of bishop. Flambard didn't care: he had had dealings with every important member of William the Conqueror's family except one—the out-of-favor eldest son, Robert Curthose. He made his way to Robert, the Duke of Normandy; he had a plan.

[to be continued]

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Provisions of Oxford

Henry III (1207-1272) spent much of his reign of 56 years dealing with fallout from the reign of his father, King John. For one thing, the Barons who pushed the Magna Carta on John were always looking for ways to increase their power. In 1258, they got their chance.

Henry had fought a military action against Sicily on behalf of Pope Alexander IV, and subsequently was out of money. So he summoned Parliament in the spring of 1258 to discuss a grant of revenue. The Barons agreed, with the provision that Henry would, in exchange, submit to a list of reforms. This Parliament is alternately called the Easter Parliament and the Mad Parliament. Henry (reluctantly) agreed, and on June 10th the 24-man commission created to develop the reforms (half appointed by the king and half by the Barons) submitted its report. The changes within were called the Provisions of Oxford.

Although considered by some to be the first written constitution in England (and the first published in English: copies were circulated to all of England in French, Latin, and Middle English), the Provisions were actually very short-lived, being superseded by the Provisions of Westminster in 1259. (In fact, they were only supposed to exist for 12 years, as a temporary measure while further reforms were being studied and put in place.) As a consequence, we are not sure that we have a complete record of the Provisions, relying instead on references to them found in contemporary and later documents. Still, we know enough to know that they attempted a series of regulations and "checks and balances" in government.

For instance, Parliament was to meet three times a year, not just when the King wanted them. All high officers were to swear loyalty to the king. Many positions (such as the chancellor, the chief justice, the treasurer) were appointments of only one year—helping to prevent the amassing of power and the temptation to long-term corruption—at the end of which the officer was to give an accounting of his actions while in office. A system was put in place for addressing grievances against sheriffs. Sheriffs were to be loyal landholders who would receive no fees for their work, but be subsidized by the exchequer for their expenses.

Ruins of Kenilworth, where it ended
Attempt to curtail royal power persisted, and the conflict see-sawed. Pope Urban IV annulled the Provisions in 1261 and 1262. The Barons restored and reinforced them in 1263, then modified them in 1264. Finally, the Barons took over England in 1264, Henry defeated them at the Battle of Evesham in 1265 and killed their leader, Simon de Montfort; some Barons held out at Kenilworth, and the siege that started by Henry was curtailed by the intervention of the pope, who suggested reconciliation. The resulting Dictum of Kenilworth allowed the rebels to have their estates back (at prices dependent on how rebellious they had been!), and many of the statutes in the earlier Provisions were overturned. Henry agreed to reconfirm Magna Carta, but the appointment of royal officers was re-recognized as a royal prerogative. The reconciliation between the levels of power lasted through Henry's reign and into that of his son, Edward I (1239-1307).

Saturday, September 1, 2012

4 Stages of Gothic—Revival

[This is Part 3; the other 3 parts address Gothic Culture & History, Gothic Architecture, and Fiction.]

Augustus W. Pugin
In 1740, the reputation of the term "Gothic" took an odd turn. The style of architecture mis-named Gothic had been thoroughly denigrated in the previous century, but an 18th century antiquarian trend toward discovering the past and a re-awakening of interest in traditional church views combined to create a movement that looked to the past for inspiration rather than the future.

The so-called "Gothic Revival" grew over time, and influenced art and architecture throughout Europe, and reached Australia, Southern Africa and the Americas. Its spiritual center was England, however, and it found its true champion in the artist, architect and critic Augustus Welby Pugin (1812-1852).

House of Lords, Westminster
Pugin's father was a draughtsman who came to England from France, married Catherine Welby, and settled down to write volumes on architecture—notably Specimens of Gothic Architecture and the three-volume Examples of Gothic Architecture—and to teach his son to draw. Pugin worked in his father's office in his youth, but eventually started getting work of his own. An early job was to design furniture for Windsor Castle. Years later, after dabbling in bringing furniture and carvings from Flanders to England, he was convinced to go into architecture. His business of supplying architectural pieces to people building in the Gothic style failed. He went back to designing for others. He was 18 years old.

At 22, he converted to Roman Catholicism, which lost him some business but introduced him to new contacts. He was employed to make alterations and additions to Alton Towers by the 16th Earl of Shrewsbury, and then to build St. Giles Catholic Church, and then to design the Catholic church of Sts. Peter and Paul in Newport. His reputation grew, and he designed houses and churches and furnishings to satisfy the fans of the Revival. The interior of the House of Lords in Westminster is one of his most visible achievements.

But just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done. The Gothic Revival under Pugin left nothing out: any feature of Gothic architecture could be re-used, no matter its original purpose. The Pugin chair pictured here, for instance, reminds me of one at the Pugin exhibit "A Gothic Passion" that I saw at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in the early 1990s.* The back is carved as if it were the frame of a stained glass window. It employs the pointed arch that was such an important development in Gothic architecture because of the way it distributed the weight of the stone. Here, something that was vitally functional is made purely decorative. The hanging finials in the front of the chair are another architectural detail that, here, would be functional only if they were intended to impede the swinging of a small child's legs. It seems to me that much of the Gothic Revival style was intended to be as ornamental as possible, employing details that once had purpose but are, in this case, only something to look at, and that possibly make the object less comfortable.

*This may be the first time I have inserted my opinion and personal observation into a post, so I ask your forgiveness if it detracts from the information. I had a very strong negative reaction when I first saw Pugin's work, particularly a chair that had pointed arches upside-down carved into its back.