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Home , Saladin tithe, Tallage

1916 THE ABBEY OF ST. RIQUIER 447 quidam nobilis, natione Britto ',M puts his identity with the earl of Norfolk out of doubt, whilst reviving the problem of his birth. It is probable, however, that he is imputing Breton birth to Ralph the Staller on the strength of the lands in Brittany (Gael and Montfort) which his Breton wife brought him, and we need not reject the statement of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that he wae an Englishman born in Norfolk.38 The charter also goes to show that Ralph the Staller was alive in February 1068, and hence to help in fixing the date of his death, which, according to Mr. Round,37 must have occurred before April 1Q70. On "the Downloaded from other hand, the charter raises the question why an Englishman holding lands in Brittany should confer gifts on an abbey of Ponthieu. Stapleton M provides the connecting link by supposing that Ralph the Staller, like Frederick the lord of Palgrave, was a Fleming by birth, but he gives no evidence in support of his http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ conjecture beyond that which has been already considered, and there Beems no reason to accept the suggestion. HELEN M. CAM.

The Tithe

ALTHOUGH Sir James Ramsay has made a special study of the at University of Connecticut on May 22, 2015 financial side of our twelfth-century history, from the Pipe Rolls and all available sources, he has to write : It would have been interesting to know what the proceeds of the came to ; but no accounts of the yield seem to be forthcoming.1 The other modern historians of the period seem to be equally at a loss, though Mr. Eyton—without, however, citing any authority for the statement—asserted that ' the English realized £13,000, of which £6,000 was extorted from Jews '.2 At the great council of 11 February 1187-8 it was decreed that the money should be raised, as Mr. Eyton puts it, ' in the course of a year', or, as the ordinance itself expresses it, it was to be ready for collection on 2 February 1188-9,3 ' infra Purifica- tionem Beatae Virginis,' and paid over on the following day or subsequently. If any allusion, therefore, to its collection is to be found on the Pipe Rolls, we should expect it on that of 1189 (1 Ric. I).* As a matter of fact, it is to be found there, though

" Chron. Cent. iv. 23 ; Lot, p. 240. " Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a. 1076. " Victoria County History, Norfolk, ii. 12. Ct. Feudal , p. 428. 11 Archaeological Journal, iii. 4. > The Angevin Empire (1903), p. 254. Cf. pp. 236, 251-4, 369-72. 1 Court, Household, and Itinerary o] Henry 11, p. 286 n. * Benediotus Abbs.B,Oula Regis Henrici, ii. 31. 4 This roll was published by the Kecord Commission, in 1844, as of ' 1189-90 ' owing to confusion between the regnal and fiscal years. 448 THE SALADIN TITHE July the fact seems to have been overlooked. On p. 178 we read, under Wiltshire : Et pro ducend' CC marc' a Sareab[iria] usque Bristou . . . Et pro ducend' M.M. et D. lib. a 8are8b[iria] usque Glocestre . . . Et pro Tonellis et Clavis ad eosdem denarios . . . Et item in Carragfio] de M.M.M.M.M. marcis a Sar[esbiria] usque Sudhant' et pro Tonellis et aliia necessariis ...

Et in liberatione clericor[um] Thesaurarii et Cameiariorum et x Com- putatorum qvi receperunt denarios Decimarum apud Sar[esbiriam] c. solidos. Downloaded from We are here dealing with what were then very considerable sums. The total is as follows : £ 8. d

[200 marcs = ] 133 6 8 http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ 2,500 0 0 [5,000 marcs =F] 3,333 6 8 5,966 13 4 The ordinance for the tithe defines it as ' decimam redituum et mobilium'. We can hardly say positively how this would work, but as ' movables ' could neither be accurately tithed nor paid in as cash, one presumes that both tithes had to be paid in at University of Connecticut on May 22, 2015 pennies (denarios Decimarum). I desire to draw special attention to the presence of repre- sentatives of the at for the receipt of the silver pennies. Apart from the ten tellers (computatores), there was a group the description of whom might be rendered either as / the clerks [sic] of the Treasurer and Chamberlains ', or as ' the Treasurer's clerks and the Chamberlains'. Now this is no accidental phrase ; it recurs on pp. 206, 223 of the same roll,6 which proves that it describes a recognized group. On the roll (as yet unpub- lished) of two years earlier (1187) I find it occurring twice,6 and in this case it is definitely applied to the exchequer officers in charge of treasure in transit. The same observation applies to the two instances of its occurrence on the roll of 11847 (30 Hen. II). Now this evidence is definitely opposed to the statement in the Dialogue, which is accepted and repeated by the commen- tators thereon, that the three officers who had charge of the

1 ' Pro locandis vi NavibuB ad opus olerioor[um] Theeaurarii et Camerariorum'; ' In liberatione Clericoifum] Theeaurarii et Camerariorum.' * 'Ad dncendum haruaBium clericorum thesaurarii et camerariorum qui transfre- tavcrunt onm theaauro . . .'; 'ad deferendum harnasinm . . . clericorum thesaurarii et camerariorum qui tranrfretaverunt com thesauro ' (p. 203). 7 ' In liberatione olericorum thesaurarii et camerariorum qui transfretaverunt cum thesauro ' ; 'in liberatione clericorum thesaurarii et camerariorum et in cuEtamento ducendi thesaurum a Londonia ' (pp. 87, 138). 1916 THE 8ALADIN TITHE 449 treasure in transit were (1) the treasurer's clerk and (2) the two deputy chamberlains, who were essentially not clerks, but ; ' hii tres simul omnes vel vicissim cum thesauro mittun- tur cum oportuerit.' 8 As there seems to have been throughout but one treasurer's clerk,9 it would appear that the right rendering of the phrase on the roll must be ' the clerks of the treasurer and chamberlains'. It is noteworthy that, by exception, on the roll of 1183 (29 Hen. II), the phrase used (p. 148) is ' clerico [sic] Thesaurarii et ij hominibus Camerarii' (?), while on that of 1182 (p. 139) it is 'in liberatione clerici [ate] thesaurarii et camerario- Downloaded from rum', which is what one may term orthodox, as in accordance with the Dialogue. It is obviously impossible to be certain that the Wiltshire entries quoted above prove Salisbury to have been the centre to which all the proceeds of the tithe were sent. On the one hand http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ —though it was situated most conveniently for the dispatch of treasure to Southampton or to Bristol, as also for its receipt by road from other parts of England—we do not know of it as a financial centre. On the other, one would rather have expected that, if there were other centres, some trace of them would be found in similar entries on the roll. But there was so muoh lack of system as to payments and receipts at the time, that the expenses connected with the receipt, checking, and dispatch of at University of Connecticut on May 22, 2015 the tithe might, in such a oase, have been defrayed from other sources. As to the Jews, the roll of 1189 is silent as to any forced contribution from them towards the recovery of the Holy City. It is only incidentally that we learn from the roll of 1187 that the king in that year took a quarter of their chattels in connexion with the that he was then levying. Another point of considerable interest is raised by these Wiltshire entries. The roll, as yet unpublished, of the following year (1190) shows us vast sums being spent on the dispatch of the crusading expedition. But these were mainly derived from treasure already stored in England10 and were disbursed in this country. With the Saladin tithe it was quite different ; the money was all withdrawn from currency in this country, and was then sent, in locked barrels, to ports, clearly, it seems to me, for export in bulk, I do not know if any one has studied the position of the currency, which must have caused frequent difficulty when, in the absence of banking facilities and of any system of international finance, the only way of remitting money abroad • Dialogue (Oxford, 1902), pp. 21-2, 62-3, 167, 169 (' tret, i.e. the two chamberlains and the treasurer's clerk'); Poole, The Exchequer in the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1912), pp. 73-5. • Poole, op. cit., pp. 73—4. John de Waltham was treasurer's clerk, I find, in 1190. '• e.g. Henry de Oornhill drew £2,250 from the central treasury and £2,500 from. the treasure in the Tower for this purpose. VOL. XXXI.—NO. OXXm. G g 450 THE SAL A DIN TITHE July was to export the silver pennies themselves. When these were withdrawn from currency, inconvenience must have been caused, as, for instance, by the constant drain of English money across the Channel for the wars of Henry II and Richard I. There was also the cost of its carriage and of its armed escort.11 There must, therefore, have been keenly felt the need for such facilities as the Templars were able, by their international organization, to afford, for the transmission of money otherwise than in coin, very 12 shortly after this. J. H. ROUND. Downloaded from

The Westminster Chronicle attributed to Robert of Reading THE attribution of the authorship of the concluding portion of the Flares Historiarum down to the early part of 1326 to the West- http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ minster monk, Robert of Reading, is based on the express testi- mony of the only two extant manuscripts in which that work is continued beyond the coming to England of the Cardinal Peter of Spain in February 1306.1 The earlier of these manuscripts is the well-known Westminster version of the Flores, now in the Chetham Library at Manchester, on which Dr. Luard has based his text of the whole of the chronicle for the reign of Edward II.2 Written at St. Albans down to 1265 and then transferred to and at University of Connecticut on May 22, 2015 continued at Westminster Abbey, this manuscript has been generally recognized as the most important and original of those containing the Flores. After describing the murder of Sir Roger Belers in February 1326, the narrative is continued in another and somewhat later hand, beginning with this note as to author- ship : Sic frater Robertas de Redinge, quondam monachuB ecclesie beati Petri apostoli, Westmonasterii, cronicarum uite quoque sue finem con- cluait.3 u Cf. Cal. of Documents preserved in , p. 383. u Ibid., p. 300. 1 The continuation made at Tintern from 1300 to 1323 may be disregarded for our purpose, as it was clearly independent of the Westminster continuation. The new matter from it is printed by Luard, Flores Hist. iii. 328-48 (Rolls Series). Still more independent is the continuation printed by Bishop Stubbs as Annales Pavlini in his Chronicles of Edward I and Edward II, vol. i (Rolls Series). • Flores, iii. 137-232. » Ibid. 232; Chetham MS., no. 6712, f. 295 d. The folios are only occasionally numbered, generally at each tenth folio, by a modem hand. Down to f. 259 reference is facilitated by quoting the ancient numbering of the columns, two to each page, in Arabic numerals. These begin on f. 8 and end at col. 1009 on f. 259 recto. In the passage quoted above the Cotton MS., Cleop. A. XVI, f. 139, omits 'cronicarum', clearly by a copyist's mistake. Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue of Materials of British History, iii. 384, neglects to notice this, and adds, ' In the margin is written " Finis cronioarum R. Reding, monachi West., et inohoacio Adae Merimouthe S. Pauli "'. I can discover no suoh note on f. 139 of the Cotton MS. It really comes from the Chetham MS.