Thirty years before this 1232 charter, Mauclerc shows up as a clerk in Normandy, and then having his own church. A year later, however, he is in England and holding a prebend (a portion of the revenue of a church) in Exeter.
He collected taxes for John, who also sent him to Rome as an envoy to Pope Innocent III. Loyal to John, one of his jobs in Rome was to make sure Innocent did not give support to any English barons who might turn to the pope for help against the king. In 1223 he was elevated to be bishop of Carlisle.
As bishop of Carlisle, he came into a very handsome property, Rose Castle (the illustration is recent, but at the time it was likely wooden). Henry's grandfather, Henry II, had confiscated Rose Castle from a man who irritated him. It was still a royal possession, and Henry III handed it off to Mauclerc in 1230.
Mauclerc was part of the embassy in 1225 to arrange marriage between Henry and the daughter of the Duke of Austria. (That marriage did not happen.) In 1228 he was named the royal Treasurer for life, but in 1233 he was expelled from that office and replaced with Peter des Rivaux, the nephew of Peter des Roches.
Peter des Roches' influence on the king that caused Mauclerc's removal from office would be reversed when des Roches himself fell from grace, and Mauclerc returned to court. In June 1246 he resigned the bishopric and retired to Oxford, joining a Dominican community there. He died in October 1248 in Oxford, His will left his personal property to Carlisle and to the Dominicans.
Tomorrow we'll look at the other witness to the Domus Conversorum charter, Peter des Roches.
