This article was downloaded by: [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] On: 04 February 2014, At: 01:10 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Journal of Medieval History Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmed20 Jocelin of Brakelond and the power of Abbot Samson a Daniel Gerrard a St Peter's College, University of Oxford, New Inn Hall Street, Oxford OX1 2DL, United Kingdom Published online: 30 Jan 2014. To cite this article: Daniel Gerrard (2014) Jocelin of Brakelond and the power of Abbot Samson, Journal of Medieval History, 40:1, 1-23, DOI: 10.1080/03044181.2013.871326 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2013.871326 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. 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Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions  Journal of Medieval History, 2014 Vol. 40, No. 1, 1–23, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2013.871326 Jocelin of Brakelond and the power of Abbot Samson Daniel Gerrard* Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 St Peter’s College, University of Oxford, New Inn Hall Street, Oxford OX1 2DL, United Kingdom (Received 8 August 2012; final version received 5 March 2013) This article reconsiders a well-known narrative source from the beginning of the thirteenth century, Jocelin of Brakelond’s Chronicle. Much of the value of this text has traditionally been seen in its intimate portrayal of Abbot Samson of Bury St Edmunds (1182–1211). Jocelin’s account can be understood less as a depiction of Samson’s life and character than of the workings of his power within the monastery and within broader East Anglian society, as seen in his management of opposition to his rule through the use of documentation and his access to the royal court. This suggests a different understanding of the position of the abbot of Bury in which he is depicted less as a great lord and more as a pragmatic and inventive politician. Keywords: monasticism; Bury St Edmunds; chronicles; power; East Anglia; history of emotions; anger; literacy By the Angevin period, the abbey of Bury St Edmunds was one of the premier Benedictine houses of the British Isles. The cult of its famous patron, Edmund of East Anglia (d. 870), and the extensive generosity of the late Anglo-Saxon kings had made it into one of the two great ecclesiastical powers of the region, the other being the bishopric of Ely. Between 1182 and 1211, Bury was ruled by Samson of Tottington, a man of obscure background, possibly from minor nobility. His abbacy has left behind a number of acta, but, unlike most of his contemporaries, he is also a major figure in a narrative account by one of his own monks, Jocelin of Brakelond.1 This account has been well known to historians since the nineteenth *Email: Daniel.gerrard@spc.ox.ac.uk 1 The following abbreviations are used in this paper: BL: London, British Library; CBA: E. Searle, ed. and trans., The Chronicle of Battle Abbey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980); CJB: H.E. Butler, ed. and trans., Cronica Jocelini de Brakelonda de rebus gestis Samsonis abbatis monasterii Sancti Edmundi (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd, 1949); CSA: H. Riley, Chronica monasterii S. Albani: Gesta abbatum monasterii Sancti Albani, a Thoma Walsingham, regnante Ricardo secundo, ejusdem ecclesiae praecentore compilata. Rolls Series 28. 3 vols. (London: Longman, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1867–9). CJB: there have been a series of editions and translations of Jocelin’s Chronicle. The most recent translation is by Diana Greenway and Jane Sayers, Jocelin of Brakelond: Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). I have chosen to cite Butler’s translations (with some minor amendments) in this paper because it is a more direct rendering of the Latin than Greenway and Sayers’ (often more readable) version. The most significant collection of Bury charters is D.C. Douglas, ed., Feudal Documents from the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds. British Academy, Records of Social and Economic History 8 (London: Oxford © 2014 Taylor & Francis  2 D. Gerrard century and even briefly enjoyed popularity among the wider public, inspired by the enthusiasm of Thomas Carlyle. Louis Parker, in his foreword to Clarke’s edition of the text noted that ‘from that day to this, Samson has been more or less a household word’;2 while Abbot Gasquet, in his introduction to Jane’s edition, observed that ‘Few medieval documents have exercised a greater fascination over men’s minds in these latter days than the Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond.’3 It has generally been understood as a peculiarly intimate portrait of the abbot in the context of lay and ecclesiastical society, portraying Samson’s remarkable personality and the strength of his office. Despite its considerable importance, however, its composition has been subject to little detailed consideration. Closer scrutiny of the interests and preoccupations of the author Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 suggests a different reading, in which the ‘vivid portrait’ recedes, allowing a clearer view to emerge of the workings of the abbot’s power both within and outside the abbey walls. The argument of this paper falls into two parts: the first explores the limitations of the Chronicle as a source for understanding the character of its subject; the second examines some of the opportunities it presents for understanding Samson’s politics. Jocelin of Brakelond and his work Jocelin was a novice under Samson’s instruction before the latter became abbot and most of what we know of both men is derived from Jocelin’s account, which covers the years 1173 (when Jocelin was professed) to 1202. After Samson’s election, Jocelin became the abbot’s chaplain, and later, Bury’s guest master. It is unclear when and why he began his Chronicle, but Samson seems to have still been alive when it was written. Only one substantial passage in the Chronicle refers to the abbot in the past tense: the long section on his appearance, character and habits.4 This may, therefore, be an interpolation made after the abbot’s death, though that need not imply that it is not Jocelin’s work. Other passages refer to fears or hopes for what will happen after Samson’s death.5 The Chronicle’s sometimes laudatory, sometimes unflattering presentation does not suggest that it was written at his behest or under his supervision. Further investigation of the text is complicated by its manuscript history. The fullest surviving version of the Chronicle was copied in the second half of the thirteenth century into the abbey’s Liber albus.6 There is a slightly earlier copy which was severely damaged by the Cotton Library fire in 1731.7 There are also excerpts in two Bodleian manuscripts.8 Even the Liber albus text gives the impression of incompleteness. There are a few introductory words explaining in conventional fashion that the author would tell of ‘certain evil things for a warning, and certain good as an example to others’,9 but the ending comes suddenly in the events of 1202. The impression is of a text aborted in mid-stream. Unfortunately, none of the texts is the author’s autograph and it is impossible to tell whether Jocelin abandoned his work at this point, or whether the surviving manuscripts were copied from a damaged exemplar. Either way, it appears that the work ends before the author had originally intended. University Press for the British Academy, 1932). This should be supplemented with R. Thomson, ‘Twelfth- Century Documents from Bury St Edmunds Abbey’, English Historical Review 92 (1977): 806–19. 2 Ernest Clarke, ed., The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond: a Picture of Monastic Life in the Days of Abbot Samson. 3rd edn. (London: A. Moring, 1907), xv. 3 Lionel Jane, ed., The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond (London: Chatto and Windus, 1907). 4 CJB, 39–44. 5 e.g. CJB, 95. 6 BL MS Harley 1005. 7 BL MS Cotton Vitellius D XV. 8 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Bodley 240 and 297 (SC 2468–9). 9 ‘ … quedam mala interserens ad cautelem, quedam bona ad usum … ’: CJB, 1  Journal of Medieval History 3 There has been much ‘mining’ of the text. In some cases this has been used to reconstruct aspects of monastic life at Bury, but a good deal has focused on discussing the personality of the abbot.10 The Chronicle is a favourite of historians of this period, much photocopied for teaching, much praised for its accessibility and vividness. Nineteenth- and early twentieth- century commentary was greatly influenced by Carlyle’s enthusiasm for Samson’s moral character.11 Though more recent work has departed from this tradition, the narrative remains particularly loved for its personal vignettes, which seem to give us the opportunity to ‘get to grips’ with Jocelin and with Abbot Samson himself. The Chronicle itself is episodic, and even a thematic treatment of it must involve the Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 discussion of a great number of individual anecdotes. There may, however, have been excessive focus on those sections which seem to show the character of the abbot most clearly and the very vividness of the account poses problems. Perhaps because the author appears so artless, there has been little discussion of the Chronicle as a literary work, or of Jocelin’s working methods. Gransden, the foremost authority on medieval Bury, has observed that Jocelin ‘wrote mainly from memory, based on intimate knowledge’.12 Nevertheless, if we are to claim to understand the personality of a man long dead, we need to be very sure indeed of our evidence and the Chronicle may not be as clear a lens as it first appears. There are, for instance, occasions when either Jocelin’s memory failed or he was unwilling to supply details. He was very interested in a dream which Samson and the convent interpreted differently, but did not know the name of the ‘person of some repute’ who dreamt it.13 More significantly, Jocelin also chose to omit the names of many of the monks of his own day whose behaviour was unacceptable. He once described some of those who challenged Samson’s conduct with the delightful phrase ‘three brethren of moderate understanding’.14 Though there are exceptions, usually monks of Bury who misbehaved were merely ‘some persons’.15 Jocelin’s text, therefore, was conditioned by gaps that he was unable or in some cases unwilling to fill. We must therefore be careful to acknowledge the incompleteness, as well as the strengths of the narrative as a source. 10 See especially Brian P. McGuire, ‘The Collapse of a Monastic Friendship: the Case of Jocelin and Samson of Bury’, Journal of Medieval History 4 (1978): 369–97; Antonia Gransden, A History of Bury St Edmunds, 1182–1256: Samson of Tottington to Edmund of Walpole (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007), 2: ‘Few medieval abbots were favoured with such lifelike portraits of themselves and such graphic descriptions of the convent under their rule as was Samson’; Robert Brentrano, ‘Samson of Bury Revisited’, in Vita Religiosa im Mittelalter: Festschrift für Kaspar Elm zum 70. Geburtstag, eds. Franz J. Felten and Nikolas Jaspert (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1999), 79–85 (79): ‘Abbot Samson of Bury Saint Edmunds in Suffolk, who was abbot from his election in 1182 until his death in 1211, is as sharply and sensibly visible and audible as it is possible to imagine a thirteenth-century abbot being’ (author’s emphases). 11 Thomas Carlyle, The Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle, vol. 13, Past and Present (London: Chapman and Hall, 1843); Thomas Arnold, ed., Memorials of St Edmunds Abbey. Rolls Series 96. 3 vols. (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1890–6), 1: especially xlii. 12 Antonia Gransden, ‘Brakelond, Jocelin of (fl. 1173–c.1215)’, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, eds. H.C.G. Matthew and B. Harrison. 61 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 7: 304–5, online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/14829 (Accessed 29 March 2012). 13 CJB, 110. 14 ‘Tribus fratribus mediocris intelligentie’: CJB, 136. 15 ‘Aliqui’: CJB, 3, 105. There are many examples of this. See also, for instance, the unnamed flatterers, CJB, 7, and the equally anonymous opponents, one of whom Samson excommunicated and imprisoned, CJB, 118–19. Similarly, the monk who tried to bring the faults of Master G. to Samson’s attention is simply ‘one of our obedientiaries’ (aliquis ex obedientiariis nostris), while the one who passed on his message was ‘a third person’ (quisquis fuit ille), CJB, 91.  4 D. Gerrard The structure of the text is also problematic. For the most part, Jocelin ordered his work chronologically, and he gives several examples of events that happened at about the same time (eodem tempore).16 Jocelin, however, experimented with different structures as he wrote and there are numerous occasions where he described events out of sequence.17 Sometimes he proceeds in staccato fashion, with short, unconnected paragraphs.18 Occasionally he groups incidents by theme. For instance, he discusses a series of Samson’s letters to popes under one paragraph.19 A little later, he discusses all the churches of which Samson managed to obtain the advowson.20 In neither case is the chronology clear. On one occasion, he uses a short introductory section to set up a complex and involved discussion of several paragraphs.21 In Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 terms of Jocelin’s working method, perhaps the most revealing aspect of his structure is the way in which he sometimes picks up a thread from one paragraph and carries it forward as the basis of the next. For instance, Jocelin relates how Samson reacted to the death of the wealthy Bury usurer, Hamo Blunt, who had died intestate. Henceforth, Jocelin tells us, Samson would no longer allow any such man to be buried in the abbey cemetery.22 The next paragraph is a discussion of a brawl that broke out among a group of locals. It has no obvious reason for following the section on Blunt’s death, except that the altercation happened in the abbey cemetery. To take another case, when he notes that the Abbot of Flaix successfully encouraged the closure of the market on Sundays, Jocelin follows it up with a discussion of the dispute between Samson and the monks of Ely and their new market at Lakenheath. It appears that as he discussed an event, for example, concerning the abbey cemetery or a town market, it prompted his memory of something notable that happened there, which then came next in the text. It is as if Jocelin’s work proceeded with only minimal planning and perhaps only a vague concept of where his writing would take him on any given day. There is something appealing in McGuire’s speculation that Jocelin was trying to use the writing process to clarify his own views on Samson.23 Whether one accepts McGuire’s view or not, it seems reasonable to suggest that whatever Jocelin’s qualities as a writer, thorough forward planning was not among them. His unsystematic approach implies that Jocelin may have failed to include important information simply through disorganisation.24 Nor should we assume that offering an insight into Abbot Samson’s life or personality was even Jocelin’s purpose. Clarke, who edited the account in 1903, called Jocelin Samson’s 16 CJB, 15–16. 17 For instance, his discussion of Richard I’s demand for knight service, in 1197, follows immediately after events of 1198 and 1199: CJB, 85–6. 18 For instance, CJB, 45. 19 CJB, 56. 20 CJB, 60. 21 ‘The recovery of the manor of Mildenhall for 1100 paltry marks of silver, and the expulsion of the Jews from the town of St Edmund, and the foundation of the new hospital at Babwell are all proofs of the abbot’s excellence.’ CJB, 45. What follows are two sprawling paragraphs in which Jocelin describes the expulsion of the Jews from the town with royal assent and Samson’s negotiations with the king over the price of the manor of Mildenhall (which also includes a discussion of the loss and redemption of a great golden cup). 22 Hamo’s profession also endangered his soul. See J. LeGoff, Your Money or Your Life: Economy and Religion in the Middle Ages (New York: Zone Books, 1988), especially Chapter 4. 23 McGuire, ‘Collapse of a Monastic Friendship’, 387. 24 An important theme of Jocelin’s work is the failure of documents to provide reliable means of dispute resolution. It is striking that a study of Bury’s thirteenth-century financial records has heavily emphasised their irregularities of form and their generally ad hoc organisation: P.D.A. Harvey, ‘Mid Thirteenth- Century Accounts from Bury St Edmunds’, in Bury St Edmunds: Medieval Art, Architecture, Archaeology and Economy, ed. A. Gransden. British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 20 (Leeds: British Archaeological Association, 1998), 128–38.  Journal of Medieval History 5 biographer and his arch-eulogist.25 Gransden referred to this account both as ‘chronicle’ and ‘biography’ and has noted that Jocelin was influenced in places by hagiography and perhaps secular biography.26 The most recent translation (the Oxford World’s Classics version by Greenway and Sayers) retitles the text Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds.27 There are, however, problems with reading the account as either biography or as conventual history. Jocelin’s omissions become instructive here. Though there are a number of occasions on which he refers to Samson’s life before his election, these generally occur when Samson himself is quoted in direct speech or when they provide necessary background to his actions as abbot. There is almost no treatment of Samson’s youth. Jocelin noted when Samson became Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 ill, but never described his symptoms. Even after he becomes abbot, there is little on the interior, spiritual life of either Samson or his monks. The only substantial comment we have on Samson’s spirituality is in his devoted treatment of the relics of St Edmund, but Jocelin says almost nothing about Samson as theologian or pastor. On one occasion alone does Jocelin describe him showing an interest in the last hours of one of his lay flock (Hamo Blunt) and then it is only because this event caused the abbot to change his policies.28 Only once does Jocelin describe Samson interpreting his monks’ dreams, but the abbot used this as a means to discipline them.29 This apparent lack of concern with spiritual matters led Knowles to suggest that Samson should stand for a class of god-fearing administrators without spiritual ambition.30 In service of this thesis, the Chronicle might easily be contrasted with, say, Eadmer’s Life of St Anselm.31 This, however, is to do both Jocelin and Samson a disservice. After all, Jocelin wrote at least one hagiography that has been lost;32 and on those occasions when Samson’s direct speech is recorded, he has a markedly more religious tone, with noticeably more reference to Scripture than is usually the case with Jocelin’s own narrative voice.33 Substantial discussion of a prelate’s spiritual and political life, however, could be difficult to accommodate within a single history. Even Eadmer had split St Anselm’s life into a Vita and a Historia novorum: there is notably little of the saint’s spiritual life in the latter which, rather like Jocelin’s work, revolves around his disputes.34 Samson’s inner life was simply not the theme of the Chronicle and its omission tells us nothing about the spirituality of Jocelin, Samson or the community at Bury St Edmunds more generally.35 The utility of the Chronicle for future monks who might need to refight any of Samson’s legal battles must have been obvious, and helps account for its inclusion in Liber albus. Institutional 25 Clarke, ed. Jocelin of Brakelond, xv. 26 Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England c.550–1307 (London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1974), 381–5. 27 See n. 1. 28 CJB, 111–16; Gransden, Historical Writing in England c.550–1307, 381–5. 29 CJB, 92. 30 CJB, 110. 31 David Knowles, The Monastic Order in England. 2nd edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 306–8. Contrast Arnold’s assessment, Memorials of St Edmunds, 1: xlviii. 32 Eadmer, The Life of St Anselm Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. and trans. R.W. Southern (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd, 1962). For Anselm’s origins and family, 3; his ostentatious (perhaps theatrical) indifference to secular affairs, 46–7, 80–1; and his careful acts as a moral guide, 54–7. 33 CJB, 16. 34 CJB, 69–71. 35 M. Rule, ed., Eadmeri Historia novorum in Anglia et opuscula duo, De vita sancti Anselmi et quibusdam miraculis ejus. Rolls Series 81 (London: Longman, 1884), 1–302; G. Bossanquet, ed. and trans., Eadmer’s History of Recent Events in England (London: Cresset Press, 1964).  6 D. Gerrard memory still resided in chronicles to a significant extent in this period.36 Moreover, it is clear that Jocelin himself made substantial use of Bury’s archive. We are given, for instance, precise details of a dispute between Samson and one Master Jordan over the land of Herard at Harlow: what the dispute concerned, where the case was held, what the jury swore and what the outcome was.37 On one occasion, Jocelin seems to drop a hint for disputants when he records that though Adam de Cockfield had been allowed to hold the lands of Semer and Groton for his lifetime, Samson had given him no explicit grant of the town of Cockfield, ‘nor is it thought that he has any charter for it’.38 In another case, Jocelin tells of the knights who were sent to the Exchequer to testify to the exemption of Bury’s lands from amercements placed on the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk: Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 ‘Hubert de Braiseworth, William Fitz Hervey, William de Francheville and three others.’39 Warkton Book, a sixteenth-century conflation of sections from Bury’s extant cartularies, lists all six knights and confirms the three names that Jocelin records.40 Furthermore, Jocelin included two documents in extenso, a list he had made of the churches held by the abbot and the convent, with notes of their value and the rate at which they might be leased out, which he presented to Samson as a gift, and a list of the knights who held abbey estates in 1200.42 Unfortunately, the label of ‘conventual history’ does not fit well either. Jocelin was reviewing the documentary record of Samson’s activities as he wrote, but the result is neither extensive nor organised enough for us to classify it as a house chronicle in the usual sense. There are only a handful of incidents recorded in the whole work that do not mention Samson’s direct involvement, and the Chronicle has a markedly different approach to documentation than house chronicles like Liber Eliensis or the Abingdon Chronicle, which revolve around presenting documents in context.43 Perhaps the most closely comparable work to Jocelin’s in its purpose is the Chronicle of Battle Abbey. Its author, however, was a very different sort of writer to Jocelin. His express purpose was to explain the origins and development of Battle’s endowment as the context for a series of legal cases fought by the abbots of Battle in the course of the twelfth century. As its editor has indicated, ‘The Chronicle of Battle Abbey is both a narrative cartulary and, at the same time, the case-book of a common lawyer, an old 36 For a similar assessment regarding the lack of discussion of spiritual activity in Thomas Burton’s Chronicle of Meaux, see Chris Given-Wilson, Chronicles (London: Hambledon, 2004), 95. 37 Given-Wilson, Chronicles, 80. 38 CJB, 62. 39 CJB, 59. 40 ‘Hubertus de Briseworda, W. filius Hervie, et Willelmus de Franchevilla, et tres alii’: CJB, 65. 41 This was published in Thomson, ‘Twelfth-Century Documents’, 818. In this record of the proceedings, the list of knights is as follows: ‘Thomas de Beilam, Iohannes le Manat[us], Willelmus filius Hervei, Hubertus de Broseworde, Willelmus de Fraunchevile, Robertus Bules de Saham’. See also R.C. van Caenegem, ed. and trans., English Lawsuits from William I to Richard I. Selden Society 106–7. 2 vols. (London: Selden Society, 1990–1), 2: no. 592. 42 CJB, 63–4 and 120–2. The list of knights has striking similarities to a list in the Vitae abbatum monasterii Sancti Albani omitted from the Gesta abbatum. See CSA, 1: 505–6. The latter is a list of those who hold by knight service and others whose lands are assessed by hide but apparently without such an obligation. I have suggested elsewhere that the comparison of monastic estate surveys with royal records may also prove problematic: D. Gerrard, ‘The Military Activities of Bishops, Abbots and Other Clergy in England c.900– 1200’ (PhD diss., University of Glasgow, 2010), 65–6. Abbot Henry de Sully’s survey of Glastonbury (1189) is vastly more detailed and complex than either the Bury or the St Albans survey. N.E. Stacy, ed., Surveys of the Estates of Glastonbury Abbey c.1135–1201. British Academy, Records of Social and Economic History, new series 33 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2001), 79– 238, though the list of vassals who performed homage to Henry on his accession (79–89) is comparable. 43 For the institutional needs served by chronicle writing in English monasteries, focused on the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Given-Wilson, Chronicles, 79–97.  Journal of Medieval History 7 man writing to instruct his successors on how to carry on a number of cases … ’44 As we will see, the abbot in conflict was Jocelin’s primary interest, but the collation of large numbers of documents was not a central part of his approach. Indeed, Jocelin seems at times to provide much better evidence for the failures of documentation in dispute resolution than for their careful preservation. Many of the conflicts that Jocelin describes were with the monks of Bury, not the outside world, and many of the conflicts that he describes were not conducted through legal processes. If the Chronicle can be regarded as neither biography, nor true conventual history, we must still deal with the pressing question of Samson’s personality, a personality in which historians Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 have shown much interest and which, for some Victorian scholars, was the subject almost of fascination. There is indeed one long passage in which Jocelin sketches Samson’s habits and character, including his appearance. Though the most commonly quoted passage in the work,45 it is abruptly inserted into the narrative; as we have seen, it is the only passage in which Samson is described in the past tense, suggesting perhaps that it is a later interpolation; and within a folio it dissolves back into the story of the abbot’s disputes. What it does reveal, however, is an important point of Samson’s approach to leadership; this was a man who kept much of himself carefully hidden. When Jocelin accused him of giving too ready an ear to flattery, he replied: My son, it is long since I have been acquainted with flatterers, and it is therefore that I cannot help listening to them. In many things I must feign, and in many I must dissemble to maintain peace in the convent. I shall not cease to listen to their words, but they will not deceive me, as they deceived my predecessor who was so foolish as to put faith in their counsels, so that before his death neither he nor his household had aught to eat save what was borrowed from their creditors … 46 On another occasion, when Jocelin asked why, since becoming abbot, Samson was much sterner in his dealings with old friends, the abbot replied: ‘You are a fool and speak like a fool. You should know what Solomon says, “Thou hast many daughters. Show not thy face cheerful towards them.”’47 The theme of secrecy emerges several times. The very first time we encounter Samson in Jocelin’s narrative, as master of the novices, he was discreetly concealing his views about the dire condition of the monastery under Abbot Hugh, to the young Jocelin’s confusion.48 A little later, he related a story about Samson’s journey to Rome to bring back letters of privilege to the abbey. Fearing capture by partisans of the antipope, Victor IV, Samson disguised himself as a Scot.49 When this failed and he was searched, he made the pope’s message disappear by sleight-of-hand. He even kept secret the identities of his kin within the third degree because ‘they would be more of a burden than an honour to him, if they were aware of it.’50 44 CBA, i. 45 e.g. Knowles, Monastic Order, 308–9. 46 ‘Fili mi, diu est quod adulatores novi, et ideo non possum adulatores non audire. Multa sunt simulanda et dissimulanda, ad pacem conventus conservandam. Audiam eos loqui, set non decipient me, si possum, sicut predecessorem meum, qui consilio eorum ita inconsulte credidit, quod diu ante obitum suum nichil habuit quod manducaret vel ipse vel familia sua, nisi a creditoribus mutuo acceptum … ’: CJB, 41. For the vice of Abbot Warin of St Albans, giving credence to flatterers, CSA, 1: 198. 47 ‘Stultus es et stulte loqueris. Scire deberes quod Salomon ait: “Filie tibi sunt multe: vultum propicium ne ostendas eis.”’ CJB, 36. 48 CJB, 4. 49 CJB, 48. 50 ‘Plus essent ei oneri quam honori, si hoc scirent’: CJB, 43  8 D. Gerrard In addition to the problem of Samson’s secrecy, we must also deal with the difficulty that some of the most ‘vivid’ moments in Jocelin’s account, where we appear to get a glimpse of Samson’s character and emotional life, reveal more of his use of emotional performance to manipulate those around him than they do his ‘personality’. The abbot was apparently furious, for instance, when Herbert the Dean built a windmill on Haberdun without his permission. Samson was ‘so hot with anger that he would scarcely eat or speak a single word’, and told Herbert: ‘Go away … before you reach your house, you shall hear what will be done with your mill.’ But [Herbert] shrinking with fear from the face of the abbot, by the advice of his son Master Stephen, Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 anticipated the servants of the abbot and caused the mill which he had built to be pulled down by his own servants without delay, so that, when the servants of the sacrist came, they found nothing left to demolish.51 In reading this story, it would be unjustified to focus on Samson’s anger without paying sufficient regard to the effects of that anger, in this case a successful defence of his economic rights. There is now much scholarship on the subject of public emotion, when wrath or sorrow can be considered formal performances to solve political or social problems as much as reflections of the inner emotional life of the subject,52 an approach that has been applied to kings, lords and saints. Thus far, however, historians have tended to leave the anger of abbots under-interrogated. W.C. Jordan has recently addressed some noteworthy examples of abbatial anger, considering the challenges facing thirteenth-century abbots (particularly changes to patterns of patronage and episcopal assaults on exemptions) and giving considerable attention to their wrathful response to such difficulties.53 His analysis, however, does not consider that his abbots’ wrath may have been in part a political performance, which (at least sometimes) could be effective.54 The sense that anger was at its most effective as a political instrument when performed (rather than written) is lost. Jocelin sometimes presented Samson’s ira as natural, restrained by the sense of the duty of his office: Both though he was naturally quick to anger and easily kindled to wrath, yet more often, remembering his position, with a great struggle he curbed his wrath. And of this at times he boasted, saying ‘I have seen this thing and that, I have heard this and that, and yet have patiently endured it.’55 51 ‘“Recede”, inquit, “recede; antequam domum tuam veneris, audies quid fiet de molendino tuo.” Decanus autem timens a facie abbatis, consilio filii sui magistri Stephani, famulos sacriste preveniens, molendinum illud elevatum a propriis famulis suis sine omni mora erui fecit; ita quod, venientibus servientibus sacriste, nichil subvertendum invenerunt’: CJB, 60. 52 e.g. Barbara Rosenwein, ed., Anger’s Past: the Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1998). See also Lindsay Diggelmann, ‘Hewing the Ancient Elm: Anger, Arboricide and Medieval Kingship’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 40 (2010): 249–72. 53 W.C. Jordan, ‘The Anger of the Abbots in the Thirteenth Century’, Catholic Historical Review 96 (2010): 219–33. He considers, for instance the dramatic case of Abbot Matthieu of St Denis, who disrupted the funeral of Louis IX in 1270, apparently furious at the bishop of Paris’ insolence in wearing episcopal vestments to the ceremony in defiance of his privilege. Jordan notes that ‘It is hard to imagine an angrier abbot’, 231. 54 Similarly, it is worth distinguishing between the highly theatrical, visible and effective display of Abbot Matthieu, the angry but ineffectual polemic of Abbot Jacques de Thérines and the written statement of abbatial displeasure presented to Archbishop John Pecham in 1281: Jordan, ‘Anger of the Abbots’, 229–30. 55 ‘Cum autem esset colericus naturaliter, et facile accenderetur ad iram, iram tamen ratione dignitatis cum magna lucta animi refrenabat sepius. De qua etiam re aliquando se iactitabat, dicens: “Hoc et illud vidi, hoc et illud audivi, et tamen patienter sustinui.”’ CJB, 38.  Journal of Medieval History 9 This view of the abbot’s public explosions, however, is difficult to reconcile with his symbolic destruction of the sacrist, whose houses were torn down after his removal from office, ‘so that within a year, in the place where a fine building had stood, we saw beans sprouting, and nettles in abundance where once had lain barrels of wine’.56 It is equally difficult to reconcile with Samson’s withdrawal and restoration of amicitia in the case of Jordan of Ros.57 It is impossible to reconcile with the imagery of the ‘ravening wolf’, associated with Samson’s anger several times. The first time Jocelin employs this phrase is in his description of William of Hastings’ vision shortly before Samson’s election. William was told by a spectral prophet that the monks of Bury would have one of their own number as abbot, ‘but he shall raven Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 among you like a wolf’.58 The image is recalled twice more by monks who felt that Samson had abused their liberties.59 Surprisingly, Jocelin tells us that Samson himself used the image: God, God, it is most expedient that I should remember the dream that was dreamed before I became abbot, to wit, that I should raven like a wolf. For assuredly this is what I fear most above all earthly things, namely that the convent may say or do something that will make it my duty so to raven. But thus it is, when they say or do something contrary to my desire, I remember that dream and, though I raven in my heart, secretly roaring and gnashing my teeth, I force myself not to raven in word or deed; and my pent-up grief doth choke me and my heart within me boils.60 Discussion of whether direct speech in medieval chronicles ever represents a faithful record of words actually spoken has tended to the view that chroniclers only give us access to what speakers ought to have said, a discussion that often points to the inapplicability of modern concepts of historical authenticity to the work of medieval authors.61 We cannot be certain that this passage offers Samson’s own words (a possibility that should not, perhaps, be immediately dismissed), but even if it does not, we are still presented with a double conception of his anger as Jocelin understood it. On the one hand, we retain the sense of monastic restraint on an innate ferocity.62 On the other, we have the idea that the convent’s misbehaviour could make it Samson’s duty to be wrathful. Furthermore, the image of the ravening wolf (Matt. 7:15) is a standard one in monastic chronicles for the oppressors of churches, extensively used by Orderic Vitalis in particular.63 We must therefore deal with a conception of Samson’s wrath that may have reflected a genuinely short temper, but which 56 ‘ … infra annum, ubi steterat nobile edificium, vidimus fabas pullulare, et ubi iacuerant dolia vini, urticas habundare’: CJB, 31. 57 CJB, 62. 58 ‘Seviet inter vos ut lupus’: CJB, 19. 59 CJB, 30, 89. 60 ‘“Deus, Deus”, inquit ille, “multum expedit mihi memorare somnium illud quod somniatum est de me antequam fierem abbas, scilicet quod sevirem ut lupus. Certe hoc est quod super omnia mundana timeo, ne conventus meus aliquid faciat, unde me sevire oporteat; sed ita est, cum dicunt vel agunt aliquid contra voluntatem meam; recolo illud somnium, et licet seviam in animo meo, occulte fremens et fredens, vim mihi facio ne seviam verbo vel opera, et strangulat inclusus dolor et cor estuat intus.’” CJB, 37. 61 Most recently, the final chapter ‘History, Ethics and Truth’ in Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury and the Ethics of History (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012). 62 For the problems that individual (as opposed to corporate) anger on the part of monks (for whom patientia was an important virtue), see L.K. Little, ‘Anger in Monastic Curses’, in Anger’s Past, ed. Rosenwein, 9–35, and Paul Hyams, ‘What Did Henry III of England Think in Bed and in French about Kingship and Anger?’, in Anger’s Past, ed. Rosenwein, 99. 63 Emily Albu, The Normans in Their Histories: Propaganda, Myth, and Subversion (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001), 180–213. See also Thomas of Marlborough, History of the Abbey of Evesham, ed. and trans. J. Sayers and L. Watkiss (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), 176; E.O. Blake, ed., Liber Eliensis. Camden 3rd series, 92 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1962), 211.  10 D. Gerrard was also dutiful demonstrative anger conceived as a proper response to the misbehaviour of his subordinates and which was articulated using a formal imagery, a view relatively close to that sometimes advanced for royal anger after the rehabilitation of just anger during the twelfth century.64 In short, Jocelin acknowledged that the abbot used deceit as part of his method of leadership and was practised at projecting a personality to help achieve his goals. As a result, the historian attempting to reconstruct ‘the inner man’ from Jocelin’s account is likely trying to solve a problem that was intractable not least to Jocelin himself when the abbot was still alive. Even on occasions when Samson apparently displayed great force of emotion, the suggestion is that he did so partly Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 calculating its strategic effect. Rokewood gave the text a title for his 1840 edition, Cronica Jocelini de Brakelonda de rebus gestis Samsonis abbatis monasterii Sancti Edmundi – The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond Concerning the Acts of Samson Abbot of the Monastery of St Edmund.65 That title was well chosen, and was re-used for Butler’s 1949 edition, but its implications have been largely unregarded. If Samson’s anger was to some extent performative and utilitarian, we should bear in mind Rokewood’s title and remember that many passages that seem to focus on his personality really describe his deeds. When we do this, it becomes clear that Jocelin’s interest was even more specific than ‘the acts of Samson’. He was primarily focused on Samson’s actions when the abbot was faced with opposition. For instance, shortly after Samson became abbot, Jocelin relates that he restored old halls and ruinous houses, through which kites and crows were flying; he built new chapels and lodgings in many places, where there had never before been buildings save only barns … He also cleared many lands and brought them back into cultivation.66 The picture is of admirable industry, but the details are vague. When, however, Samson expanded his fish-pond at Babwell, Jocelin goes into great detail because this ruined the gardens, orchards and pastures of laymen and monks, and precipitated confrontation between the cellarer and the abbot.67 Jocelin of Brakelond’s Chronicle is disorderly and incomplete, and though it seems to give us access to the personality of its subject, it is conditioned by Jocelin’s reticence, Samson’s secrecy and the abbot’s use of demonstrative, emotional performances in the pursuit of policy. Classifying the work by genre is problematic and ascertaining the purpose for which Jocelin wrote is both more important and more difficult than have generally been assumed. Nevertheless, its value remains immense. When we adopt a more critical reading, it becomes clear that the work’s primary value is not in the access that it gives us to the workings of Samson’s mind, but in the workings of his power, the tools that he used to overcome his many opponents. 64 Gerd Althoff, ‘Ira Regis: Prolegomena to a History of Royal Anger’, in Anger’s Past, ed. Rosenwein, 70–3. The chapter ‘Ira et malevolentia’ in J.E.A. Joliffe, Angevin Kingship. 2nd edn. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1963), 87–109, laid much of the foundation for subsequent discussions of royal anger. Joliffe’s approach, however, makes anger both tool of policy and an expression of personality: ‘the dynastic habit of power, a kind of prime force of Angevin monarchy’ (108). My approach to Samson is to emphasise the importance of the former, but to be very cautious regarding discussion of the latter. 65 The title in the Liber albus (BL, MS Harley 1005, f. 121) is simply ‘Cronica Jocelini de Brakelonda’. 66 ‘Aulas autem veteres et domos confractas, per quas milvi et cornices volabant, reformavit; capellas novas edificavit, et talamos et solis pluribus locis, ubi numquam fuerunt edificia, nisi horrea solummodo … Plura etiam assartavit et in agriculturam reduxit’: CJB, 28. See also 33 and 45. 67 CJB, 131.  Journal of Medieval History 11 The power of Abbot Samson It has often been observed that during the High and late Middle Ages, the monastery of Bury was, in material terms, a force to be reckoned with. The most recent translators of Jocelin’s work lay a heavy emphasis on this in their introduction. For over 500 years St Edmund’s abbey dominated East Anglia, an area rich from its farmland and highly populated. Local and regional government came under the abbey, which was also the landlord of extensive estates. The monks owned and controlled the town, the market, the mills, the hospitals and the inns … 68 Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 The abbots are introduced as powers in the land, men of international importance, their position founded upon great landed wealth, which gave them access to the king himself. Though Greenway and Sayers acknowledge that there was often faction within the convent, behind the abbey walls the abbot was an autocrat, his power over the monks guaranteed by the Benedictine rule, and particularly by Chapter 5, with its heavy emphasis on instant obedience to authority: ‘The first duty of the monk was obedience to the abbot “without delay”, and his goal was the salvation of his soul.’ 69 This picture of Bury as the seat of a great lordship built on the rule within and landholdings without is indispensable, but problematic. The Liberty of St Edmund, the eight and a half hundreds of Thingoe, comprised almost half the county of Suffolk.70 With extensive landholdings and the loyalty of the men that lived on them came substantial coercive power, and Jocelin does provide us with some examples of that in action. In 1190 Samson expelled the Jews from Bury to neighbouring towns under armed guard.71 More remarkably, in 1202 when he was offended that the monks of Ely Cathedral had established an unlicensed market on his lands at Lakenheath, Samson dispatched his men, with horses, arms and armour. They overturned the market stalls and other paraphernalia of the meat market, and seized the cattle.72 The prior of Ely, who had brought his own men to defend the market, was hopelessly outmatched and hid.73 Samson did not neglect the sources of his spiritual authority either. Jocelin tells us that he was the first abbot of Bury to be portrayed on his seal wearing a mitre.74 Samson expanded his authority further by becoming a papal judge delegate and royal itinerant justice.75 So significant was his place in East Anglian society that when in 1188 the abbot asked Henry II for leave to join him on crusade, Bishop John of Norwich (who had already taken the cross) intervened to prevent it, on the grounds that ‘it would not be expedient for the country nor safe for the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, if both the bishop of Norwich and the abbot of St Edmund departed at the same time.’76 68 Greenway and Sayers, trans., Jocelin of Brakelond, ix. 69 Greenway and Sayers, trans., Jocelin of Brakelond, ix– xxiii. 70 On the origins of the Liberty, P. Warner, ‘Pre-Conquest Territorial and Administrative Organization in East Suffolk’ in Anglo-Saxon Settlements, ed. Della Hooke (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 9–34. 71 CJB, 45–6. 72 CJB, 133–4. 73 CJB, 133. Jocelin claims that some 600 men went on the expedition, which seems too high, but the force was clearly substantial. 74 For Samson acting as bishop in the case of Hamo Blunt, CJB, 92. 75 CJB, 33–4. 76 ‘Non expediret patrie nec tutum esset comitatibus Norfolchie et Sutfolchie, si episcopus Norwicensis et abbas Sancti Aedmundi simul recederent’: CJB, 53–4.  12 D. Gerrard Samson’s resources were indeed extensive, and he was prepared to draw upon them, even to the point of violence. It is perhaps surprising, therefore, how rarely we find instances of the abbot ruling by issuing peremptory commands or by using physical force. This is despite the fact that most of Jocelin’s account is concerned with the manifold challenges to Samson’s power. For the most part, they concern disputes over title to lands or rights in East Anglia. A great many of them came from the abbot’s own vassals, and some came from within the monastery itself; it is necessary to discuss some of the more subtle means by which Samson met those challenges. Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 Relations with lay vassals, monks and obedientiaries The abbot of Bury was a tenant-in-chief of the king, responsible for a servitium debitum of 40 knights.77 It is tempting to build a picture of an organised system of knight service on the back of the Bury charters or on royal surveys like the inquest of 1166 preserved in the Red Book of the Exchequer, with its orderly lists of knights holding de novo and de veteri feffamento and their precise levels of obligation.78 We must not, however, assume that Samson could rely on the ready obedience of those men, even when the king was at war. Jocelin gives us far more information about the relationship between abbot and knights when it was malfunctioning than when it was running smoothly. We are told that the knights of Bury swore to assist and counsel Samson when he was appointed, but the abbot soon dismissed from his private councils ‘all the great men of the abbey, both lay and literate, without whose help it seemed that the abbey could not be governed’,79 and that they, in consequence, began to speak badly of him at court. When the knights of Bury broke their promise to pay Samson an aid of 20s. each, the abbot swore vengeance.80 He achieved this by outmanoeuvring them in a tortuous and expensive series of legal battles, compelling them to do service on his terms.81 In 1197 Samson summoned his vassals to serve King Richard in the French war, but they refused to appear, claiming that they were not obliged to serve overseas.82 Intriguingly, Jocelin states that Samson was concerned, ‘since on the one hand he saw that the liberty of his knights was in peril, and on the other hand he feared that he might lose seisin of his barony for default of the king’s service … ’83 He also recounts that, though he obtained a royal writ which he could use to compel the knights to pay compensation for his trouble, Samson recognised that he had already had his way in the matter of scutage, and would accept a minimal payment of two marks from each knight because he ‘now desired to win their favour and freely accepted what they had freely offered’.84 However fractious his relationship with his vassals may have been, Samson still considered himself the head of a community of St Edmund’s knights, whose liberties, like 77 Helena Chew, The Ecclesiastical Tenants in Chief and Knight Service (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932), 20. 78 For Bury’s carta, H. Hall, ed., The Red Book of the Exchequer. Rolls Series 99. 3 vols. (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1896), 1: 392–4. 79 ‘ … magnates abbacie, tam laicos quam literos, sine quorum consilio et auxilio abbatia videbatur non posse regi … ’: CJB, 26. 80 CJB, 28. 81 CJB, 65–7. 82 CJB, 86. 83 ‘ … hinc videns libertatem suorum militum periclitari, illinc timens ne amitteret saisinam baronie sue pro defectu servicii regis … ’: CJB, 86. 84 ‘ … volens eos conciliare in gratiam, gratanter accepit, quod illi gratanter optulerunt’: CJB, 87. One must suspect that the gifts that he brought back for the convent on that trip were intended to placate any annoyance that the monks may have felt at this coddling of the knights.  Journal of Medieval History 13 those of his church, it was his responsibility to defend. Furthermore, having established his ascendancy, he was prepared to suffer financial loss to repair his relationship with the knights. This is not the only occasion where Samson was poised to press his advantage yet chose instead to make a display of generosity. Though it took massive effort to secure control over the church of Woolpit, Samson persuaded the convent to appoint a secular clerk to the benefice in order not to alienate the bishop of Norwich.85 When he had gained control of the advowson of the church of Wetherden from Robert de Scales, he bestowed that benefice on Robert’s brother, ‘though no compact or promise had previously been made’.86 Nevertheless, we should be careful not to read anything sentimental into Samson’s acts of Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 magnanimity. Jocelin is clear that the abbot’s primary interest in his connections was not loyalty, or even kinship, but utility. When he became abbot, Samson dismissed the ‘gaggle of new kinsmen’ (multitudo novorum parentum) who presented themselves in the hope of being given an office, retaining the services of just one knight whom ‘he kept with him, an eloquent man and skilled in the law, not so much on account of his kinship, but for his usefulness, since he was accustomed to secular business.’87 Later, Samson modified this policy by bringing in more of his own relatives: ‘according as he thought them suitable and like to be of use to himself, he appointed to sundry offices in his house or to have charge of townships.’88 When one proved to be untrustworthy, he banished ‘[him] far … without hope of return’.89 To run the manors of Bradfield and Rougham, he appointed ‘both monks and laymen who were wiser than their former wardens, that they might make more prudent provision for ourselves and our lands’.90 Samson left alone one Ernald fitz William, who held the wood of Harlow, though ‘a devil incarnate, an enemy of God and a flayer of the country folk’,91 because Ernald feared the abbot. If Samson’s relationship with his vassals is seen less as the exploitation of a static power structure than local political manoeuvring, less lordship than management, manipulation and negotiation, something similar can be said about his government of the world behind the abbey walls. His pragmatically adaptable approach extended to the internal organisational structure of the abbey. Butler’s introduction to his edition outlines this as a static structure: Beneath [the abbot] … came the prior, who was responsible for the discipline of the monks and the observance of the rule … After the priors came the officials known as obedientiaries. The cantor or precentor had charge of the choral services in the church … The sacrist was in charge of the services of the altar … he had a sub-sacrist to assist him … 92 85 CJB, 49–50. 86 ‘ … nulla conventione prius habita, nullo prius facto promisso’: CJB, 95. Samson knowing just when to give ground, though the terrain appeared to favour him, can be set in marked contrast to the convent’s rigidity in the matter of the town merchants’ right to set up booths, in which the convent ended up with nothing: CJB, 79. For similar acts of compromise (including the installation of the brother of a legal opponent in a benefice), CBA, 244, 248, 250. 87 ‘Retinuit eloquentem et iuris peritum, non tantum consideracione proximitatis, set ratione utilitatis, causis quidem secularibus assuetum’: CJB, 24. 88 ‘Quosdam eorum (eos secundum quod sibi utiles et idoneos estimavit) diversis officiis in domo sua, quosdam villis custodiendis deputavit’: CJB, 43. 89 ‘ … a se elongavit sine spe redeundi’: CJB, 43. 90 ‘ … tam monachos quam laicos sapientiores prioribus custodibus constituit, qui et nobis et terris nostris consultis providerent’: CJB, 29. 91 ‘quia demon vivus fuerat, inimicus Dei et excoriator rusticorum’: CJB, 32. 92 CJB, xxvi–xxvii.  14 D. Gerrard Yet Samson not only moved individual officers around;93 on several occasions he remodelled the structure itself. Frustrated by a series of cellarers who failed to rein in expenditure,94 much to the convent’s annoyance Samson appointed one of his own clerks, Master Ranulph ‘to serve the cellarer both as a witness and a partner in respect both of income and expenditure’.95 He also reformed the cellarer’s finances so that the cellarer would receive his funds in monthly instalments. When this approach failed in the face of determined opposition from the convent, Samson removed both cellarer and guestmaster and installed yet another of his own clerks. None of this is incompatible with the idea of the abbot as autocrat, but it does show that his rule was not built on a static organisation.96 Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 Jocelin makes it abundantly clear that Samson took the issue of internal dissent very seriously. Just as in his dealings with the external world, there are occasions when he seems to have dealt with opposition in full-blooded autocratic style. In a dispute with the convent over Ralph the gatekeeper, for instance, he was opposed by Jocellus the cellarer. Samson commanded that Jocellus fast until he bent to the abbot’s will.97 Whilst it is tempting to regard this as an expression of abbatial autocracy, it shows how determined the convent could be when it chose to resist the abbot’s commands and how difficult it could be to enforce abbatial supremacy in practice. Jocellus rose in chapter and threatened to resign his post. ‘And there was a great uproar in the convent, such as I never beheld before, and they said that the abbot’s order ought not to be obeyed.’98 Though the prior (with a party of the older monks) tried to close the debate, he too was resisted by ‘nearly half the convent, protesting loudly and crying out against him’.99 Samson at this point claimed to fear for his life at the hands of his unruly monks. He chipped away at the opposition by sending messengers to individual monks, and by arresting and excommunicating one of the leaders, for ‘every kingdom that is divided against itself shall be brought to desolation.’100 When the revolt collapsed, Samson presented himself as exhausted and repentant at all the trouble and wept. The brothers he had excommunicated were absolved and the trouble was over. Nevertheless, Samson secretly restored Ralph the Gatekeeper to his former corrody. The convent did not challenge him on this a second time. To this we shut our eyes, since we had at last learned that there is no master that does not desire the mastery, that it is perilous to fight with one who is braver than oneself, and that to take up arms against one who is stronger is full of hazard.101 Samson’s strength lay in his strategy, not his office; the good order of the community had been restored not by fiat, but by outmanoeuvring his opponents by a combination of good planning and successful emotional performance, this time not of anger but of sorrow. 93 CJB, 30. 94 Note how this is portrayed as threatening Samson’s own finances as well. 95 ‘ … celerario nostro associavit, ut ei tanquam testis et socius assisteret et in expensis et in receptis’: CJB, 79–80. 96 For the various re-organisations of the personnel and financial administration at Canterbury, see R.A.L. Smith, Canterbury Cathedral Priory: a Study in Monastic Administration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), especially Chapters 2, 3 and 7. 97 CJB, 118. 98 ‘Factusque est tumultus magnus in conventu, qualem numquam prius vidi; dixeruntque preceptum abbatis non esse tenendum’: CJB, 118. 99 ‘ … et cum eis fere media pars conventus, et sublimi voce reclamaverunt et contradixerunt’: CJB, 118. 100 ‘Omne regnum in se divisum desolabitur’: CJB, 119 (Matt. 12:25). 101 ‘ … quam rem dissimulavimus, tandem comperientes, quod non est dominus qui dominari non velit, et periculosa est pugna que contra fortiorem initur et contra potentiorem arripitur’: CJB, 120.  Journal of Medieval History 15 The case of Samson’s battle with part of the convent and Jocellus might usefully be compared to an incident before Samson became abbot. Master Denys (who was then cellarer) had entered a dispute with Samson’s predecessor, Abbot Hugh, over who should pay for the entertainment of the abbot’s guests. Jocelin praised Denys for his courage, for he burst into the abbot’s hall clutching the keys to the cellar and threatened to resign. Hugh submitted and accepted his responsibility for entertaining guests.102 The abbot, it seems, was not the only one who could use the art of dramatic gesture to get his way in the internal politics of the abbey.103 Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 Literate administration and its limits Samson’s use of power against his opponents was more political than lordly and was often challenged even by his own vassals and monks. The abbot employed two instruments extensively in overcoming those challenges: his power over documentation and his access to the monarch. In the second half of the twelfth century, Bury was thrust into a world in which literate tools of administration and justice were used in ever greater quantities, driven in no small part by the expanding reach of royal government and papal jurisdiction, as well as by the increasingly intensive exploitation of documents by monasteries themselves. Jocelin’s work is replete with references to written instruments and records: documents certifying the convent’s debts to Jews, royal letters,104 royal writs,105 papal privileges,106 papal decrees,107 charters,108 an inventory of the contents of the monastery,109 lists of criminals110 and so on. There is even mention of Samson making mischief with Domesday Book.111 This world was awash with documents. The explosion of literate activity has fuelled scholarly interest in the administrative workings of individual monasteries and their estates.112 Samson’s reorganisations of the abbey’s affairs, meanwhile, must have created substantial additional record-keeping at Bury itself, most obviously his decision to shift decisively toward demesne farming in 1182.113 102 CJB, 20. 103 There are other examples of the convent or individual members of it manoeuvring in a very theatrical way to obtain their ends. When a group of monks was unhappy at Samson’s control over the cellar, they arranged that the church bells be rung during mass in honour of Abbot Robert (who had separated the lands and revenues of the convent and the abbot) in defiance of custom so that ‘the lord abbot’s heart might be moved to do good, or perhaps for the confusion of the abbot’. Though Samson’s initial reaction was to ignore this snub, he did eventually accede to his opponents’ demands, to silence their ‘murmurings’: CJB, 90. When Samson tried to support an initiative on the part of the burgesses of the town to change the terms of their rent, he surrendered when Benedict the sub-prior stood up to announce that ‘[Abbot] Ording who lies yonder [i.e. in the cemetery] would not have done such a thing for 500 marks of silver.’ Members of the convent, it seems, could be just as manipulative as their ‘master’ when in dispute with him: CJB, 90. Note that the result of his climbdown was disastrous. 104 CJB, 2–4, 16, 45. 105 CJB, 132. 106 CJB, 5. 107 CJB, 34. 108 CJB, 51, 57, 61, 65, 76, 78, 123, 133. 109 CJB, 8. 110 CJB, 93. 111 The abbot tried to use the Domesday valuation of Mildenhall to persuade the king to sell it to the abbey for far less than its late twelfth-century value. CJB, 46. 112 e.g. Smith, Canterbury Cathedral Priory; E. King, Peterborough Abbey 1086–1310: a Study in the Land Market (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973); and B.F. Harvey, Westminster Abbey and Its Estates in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977). 113 Harvey, ‘Mid Thirteenth-Century Accounts’, 32.  16 D. Gerrard Nevertheless, Jocelin did not make documents the skeleton of his narrative. Whilst documents were everywhere in Jocelin’s world, they were not as powerful as instruments of dispute resolution as we might imagine. Jocelin does describe occasions on which the issuing of a document represents the ending of a dispute or the consolidation of a claim. For instance, we are told that in the abbey’s dispute with the burgesses of Bury over the level of dues from the town, Samson gave them a charter fixing their obligations at the customary, low rate. As a result, the burgesses ‘had even greater confidence that they would never, so long as Samson was abbot, lose their holdings or their liberties’.114 Such events, however, are rare in Jocelin’s account, and even in this case we should note that Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 the burgesses’ confidence was supposedly limited to Samson’s own lifetime. There are occasions when the testimony of a charter is shown to be of little weight in comparison with the force of custom. For instance, Thomas de Burgh defeated a suit the convent brought in the royal court in the case of three manors he claimed to possess by right of his wardship of Adam de Cockfield’s daughter. Though the monks produced Adam’s charter, acknowledging that Adam’s right to the manors was for his own lifetime only, and this was read aloud, it was not enough to convince a hostile court in which a number of witnesses denied knowledge of the charter and agreements, and swore that the estates had long been held by hereditary fee farm.115 More common are occasions when documents are shown to have been useful but insufficient on their own to resolve disputes or achieve objectives. On one occasion, Samson found himself in dispute with the earl of Clare, who claimed a revenue of 5s. a year from the Hundred of Risbridge. Samson invoked Edward the Confessor’s charter in enquiring what service he did for this payment.116 When the earl claimed that he did the monastery’s service by carrying St Edmund’s banner to war, Samson pointed out that Earl Roger Bigot and Thomas de Mendham also claimed this right. The earl of Clare was therefore faced with the prospect of suing his own kinsman (Roger) and he dropped the suit. Even a venerable charter of Edward the Confessor might not protect the abbey against all claimants. We have already seen that Samson had to send a deputation of six knights who held lands in Norfolk and Suffolk to Henry II to strengthen claims derived from Edward’s grant.117 Such a document could, however, be used to change the terms of the dispute, and could bring victory when combined with a detailed knowledge of local history and politics, especially when wielded by an abbot who would acknowledge his vassals’ ambiguities of status.118 In a similar vein, Edward the Confessor’s charter was not enough to convince Henry II that the lands of the monastery should be exempt from an amercement on Norfolk and Suffolk, but the combination of the charter and the testimony of six knights who held lands in both counties was.119 114 ‘ … confidebant plenius quod numquam tempore abbatis S. amitterent tenementa sua nec libertates suas’: CJB, 79. 115 CJB, 123–4. 116 CJB, 57. It is unclear to which of the Confessor’s confirmations Samson might have been referring here. Four of Edward’s writs, P.H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography (London: Royal Historical Society, 1968), nos. 1069, 1070, 1078, 1084, testify to Bury’s full possession of the Thingoe Hundreds, and Samson may have possessed other documents that have since been lost. For a discussion of the royal writs in favour of Bury, R. Sharpe, ‘The Use of Writs in the Eleventh Century’, Anglo-Saxon England 32 (2003): 247–91. 117 CJB, 64–5. 118 This dispute may partially explain why Samson carried his own banner to the siege of Windsor: CJB, 55. It seems strange that Samson did not invoke this during the case. 119 CJB, 64–5.  Journal of Medieval History 17 More dramatic is a case in which Samson engaged in a dispute with the archbishop of Canterbury over the jurisdiction to try three murderers who had committed their crime on the manor of Eleigh, which was held by the church of Canterbury but in one of the abbot’s hundreds. Both claimants demonstrated their rights with reference to charters of Edward the Confessor. Samson therefore dispatched 80 armed men under the command of Robert de Cockfield, who seized the defendants from the archbishop’s men and threw them into the abbot’s dungeon. Samson had understood that when two charters of equal antiquity and authority contradicted one another, the decisive use of force to put himself in seisin of his rights would tip the balance. Though the matter had still not been formally settled when Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 Jocelin wrote, so effective had Samson’s approach to the case been that the chronicler tells us that the archbishop’s men would no longer even complain when some of their own had been murdered, lest they have to fight their case in Samson’s court.120 Even if their power to settle disputes decisively was limited, documents were nonetheless central to Samson’s approach to governing the monastery, and he is often portrayed dragging previously customary arrangements out of the realm of memory and into that of written record.121 This was not simply a matter of considering a profusion of documents to be positive in itself. One of Samson’s first acts as abbot was to stop members of the convent from contracting debts by destroying most of the 33 seals they held.122 By doing so, the abbot hoped to remove individual monks from the increasingly accessible but document-bound world of moneylending. Documents were an important source of power in Samson and Jocelin’s world, but they were not enough on their own to resolve many of the problems encountered by Samson’s rule, nor could their power be entrusted to individual monks. One of the most striking features of Samson’s use of documents in his disputes is its theatricality. Samson employed physical control of documents in a highly visible way to shock, intimidate or browbeat his opponents into submission. On some occasions, the precise content of documents seems to have mattered less than the way they could be used as ‘props’ in the theatre of the abbot’s power. When a clerk came to him bearing letters petitioning that he be granted a benefice, Samson produced no less than seven papal letters with their bulls still attached and proclaimed: Behold these letters apostolic in which divers popes ask that ecclesiastical benefices should be given to sundry clerks. When I have appeased them, and then only, I will give you a benefice.123 120 CJB, 51–2. 121 See, for example, his insistence that the debts owing to Hamo Blunt be written down after his death: CJB, 92; and his creation of a list of the dues owed from each manor after his first defeat by the knights of St Edmund in the affair of the aid he demanded of them after becoming abbot: CJB, 28. 122 CJB, 38. This might be compared to Richard de Luci’s acerbic complaint that seals were proper only to kings and great men, reflecting their diffusion among the lower ranks of knighthood: CBA, 214–15. Fraudulent use of the seal at St Albans by the monk, William Pygun, led to his exile and the imposition of new precautions regarding custody of the abbey seal: CSA, 1: 224. This did not prevent a party of St Albans’ monks from taking advantage of weakened state of Abbot John, when on his deathbed, to misuse his seal and that of Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury: CSA, 1: 248–9. Debts inherited from his predecessors, meanwhile, were one of Samson’s most serious problems. Compare CBA, 134, for Abbot Warner’s struggle against the same problem at Battle, and CSA, 1: 107, for Abbot Radulf’s achievement in freeing his abbey from debt. It is noteworthy that Matthew Paris and the other chroniclers of the St Albans tradition tended to attribute their losses and the financial problems of their community in various periods to the vices of their abbots. See for instance the iniquities of Abbot Simon, CSA, 1: 193–4, including debt, alienations to the abbot’s kinsmen and entanglement with Jews, subjects particularly troubling to Jocelin. 123 ‘Ecce scripta apostolica, quibus diversi apostolici diversis clericis ecclesiastica beneficia petunt dari. Cum ergo illos pacavero qui prevenerunt, tibi redditum dabo … ’: CJB, 56.  18 D. Gerrard The most dramatic occasion of the production of documents was when Samson met resistance at his attempts to depose the corrupt sacrist, William. He dragged a sack containing the bonds for William’s debts into the chapterhouse where the convent was meeting, declaring: Behold the wisdom of your sacrist, William! Behold all these bonds sealed with his seal, in which he has pledged silken copes, dalmatics, silver thuribles and gospels bound in gold, without leave of the convent; and all these things I have redeemed and returned to you.124 Documents also played important symbolic roles for Samson. Jocelin tells us that the most Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 famous document that Samson created to solve a problem, his Kalendar, was made to list all his rights and revenues, ‘so that within four years from his election there was not one who could deceive him concerning the revenues of the abbey to a single pennyworth’.125 We should note here the assumption that the revenues of the abbey would continue to come under attack. More interesting yet is Jocelin’s description of how Samson used this document. We are told that he ‘consulted it almost every day, as though he could see therein the image of his own efficiency in a mirror’.126 The Kalendar was not only a helpful reference tool, but a visible instrument, often seen in the abbot’s hand. This is not the only book that Samson invested with symbolic importance. Sometimes we meet Samson using books as tokens of authority. He is portrayed, for instance, as the prime mover of the restoration of the convent of Coventry; Jocelin tells us that: ‘At his suggestion the matter was carried so far that day that simple seisin was given with a book to one of the monks of Coventry.’127 When at the end of the Chronicle, we are shown Samson about to leave on a perilous journey, he ‘caused all his books to be brought with him and presented them to the church and convent’.128 Even his seal represents the abbot carrying a book.129 It is easy to see why Samson might choose books as his instruments for performing symbolic functions. He had been a schoolmaster of some repute,130 who remembered fondly his days as a scholar in Paris and his period as custodian of the monastery’s books.131 After he became abbot and was appointed a papal judge delegate, he retained two skilled clerks to help him expand his defective legal 124 ‘“Ecce”, inquit, “sapientia sacriste vestri Willelmi! Ecce tot carte sigillo eius signate, cum quibus impignoraverat cappas sericas, dalmaticas, turribula argenti et textus aureos, sine conventu, que omnia adquietavi et vobis reconsignavi”’: CJB, 30–1. Jocelin may be hinting at deceit in addition to Samson’s theatricality here. Though Samson used the bonds to shock the convent into deposing the sacrist, Jocelin tells us that they had been accumulated ‘some by the prior, some by the sacrist, and some by the chamberlain and other officials’ (‘partim prioris, partim sacriste, partim camerarii, et aliorum officialium’): CJB, 30. 125 ‘Ita quod, infra iiii annos ab eleccione sua, non erat qui posset eum decipere de redditibus abbatie ad valentiam unius denarii’: CJB, 29. See also Michael Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307. 2nd edn. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 94–5. Clanchy observes that there are numerous examples of incoming landlords creating new surveys of their properties for regular consultation. R.H.C. Davis, ed., The Kalendar of Abbot Samson of Bury St Edmunds and Related Documents. Camden 3rd series, 84 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1954). 126 ‘ … librum fere cotidie inspexit, tanquam ibi consideraret vultum probitatis sue in speculo’: CJB, 29. 127 ‘ … eo procurante eotenus processum est illa die, quod quedam simplex saisina facta fuit uni ex monachis de Coventria cum uno libro’: CJB, 94. 128 ‘ … fecit portari secum omnes libros suos, et eos ecclesie et conventui presentavit’: CJB, 136. 129 There are other examples of Benedictine abbots represented with books on their seals, for instance, the seal of William de Godmanchester, abbot of Ramsey (1268–85), and that of Roberd of Hendred, abbot of Abingdon (1231). See R.H. Ellis and J.D. Millen, Catalogue of Seals in the Public Record Office: Monastic Seals (London: HMSO, 1986), nos. M709 and M010, but the practice was by no means universal. 130 CJB, 33–4. 131 CJB, 36.  Journal of Medieval History 19 knowledge and immersed himself in the study of the decretals ‘so that within a short time by reading of books he came to be regarded as a wise judge, proceeding in court according to the form of law’.132 In addition to being eloquent in both French and Latin, he could read English.133 Samson’s complex attitude to the power of the written word is one of the stranger paradoxes of his strategy of leadership. His response to a range of difficulties was to create new documents. He then used these not as simple records, but in a visual, theatrical fashion. He seems even to have used some of them as symbols of his leadership. He himself was a scholar, and increasingly practised in the use of learned law. Gransden has shown the range of devotional and Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 intellectual activity taking place at Bury in Samson’s day. Nevertheless, Samson does not seem to have been much concerned at the literate knowledge of others, even the monastery’s obedientiaries. On another, we are told that Samson, who often dispossessed tenants to take manors under direct management, confirmed in his possessions an unnamed Englishman, ‘in whose faithfulness he had greater confidence, because he was a good farmer and could speak no French’.134 Samson spoke in favour of his own chaplain, Herbert, becoming prior, though he was illiterate (and Herbert himself felt that this disqualified him), arguing that Herbert could easily commit to memory the sermons of others and inwardly digest them as others did; and he condemned rhetorical ornament and verbal embellishments and elaborate general reflections in a sermon, saying that in many churches sermons are preached before the convent in French or better still in English, for the edification of literary learning.135 We are told that ‘rarely did he approve of any man solely for his knowledge of literature, unless he were also wise in worldly affairs.’136 All of this fits naturally into the view of Samson as pragmatic arch-strategist, sympathetic only to the claims of those who could not challenge him intellectually and producing any argument necessary to get his man into a key post. There seems, however, to have been a strain of surprising anti-intellectualism among the monks of Bury in this period. Jocelin describes how a party of illiterate monks within the community, composed of ‘both cloister monks and obedientiaries’, took the opportunity afforded by Samson’s advocacy of Herbert to pour scorn on their literate brothers.137 Jocelin was unimpressed with this attitude and responded to their contempt for Latin grammar with an aphorism from Ovid.138 The position of learning and the power of the written word at Bury in this period were more ambivalent than might be expected by the start of the thirteenth century. Documents were important tools for many of the major figures in local politics and for Abbot Samson in 132 ‘ … ita quod infra breve tempus, tum librorum inspectione, tum causam exercitio, iudex dicretus haberetur, secundam formam iuris in iure procedens’: CJB, 34. It is interesting to note that in contrast, in secular cases, he seems not to have needed the same training or support, being ‘guided by his native power of reasoning’ (naturali ratione ductus): CJB, 34. 133 CJB, 40. On Samson’s trilingualism, see Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 205–6. 134 ‘ … quia bonus agricola erat, et quia nesciebat loqui Gallice’: CJB, 33 135 ‘ … bene posset recordari et ruminare alienos sermones, sicut et alii faciebant; et colores rhetoricos et phaleras verborum et exquisitas sentencias in sermone dampnabat, dicens quod in multis ecclesiis fit sermo in conventu Gallice vel pocius Anglice, ut morum fieret edificacio, non literature ostiensio’: CJB, 128. For Samson’s own habit of preaching to the people in English, in his native Norfolk dialect, CJB, 40. 136 ‘ … et raro aliquem propter solam scientiam literarum approbavit, nisi haberet scientiam rerum secularium’: CJB, 40. 137 CJB, 130. 138 CJB, 130.  20 D. Gerrard particular; they fulfilled a range of purposes as records, symbols and props in his dramatic acts of persuasion. Nevertheless, they remained tools with which to negotiate relationships, more often beginning than ending a process of dispute resolution. Meanwhile, both the abbot and certain members of the convent could, on occasion, show a marked suspicion of learning, particularly learning not in the vernacular. Perhaps Jocelin’s work does not act as a device for framing or even incorporating charters because the author had seen Samson at work and understood that the documentary record was one of an array of persuasive and coercive tools at the abbot’s disposal. The contents of the abbey’s charters was less important than the manner in which they were used. Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 Relations with king and court Access to the king’s favour could be of critical importance and historians have remarked on Abbot Samson’s relationship with three of the Angevin kings. That churchmen used a close relationship with the king for strategic advantage, typically by spending time at court (Konigsnähe), is well known.139 Just as with the power of documentation, however, a relationship with the monarch could be something of a mixed blessing. The early stages of Jocelin’s account in particular, before and during the process of Samson’s election, present the monarch (Henry II) as a substantial threat to the monastery’s interests. The first time royal action is mentioned by Jocelin is when the moneylender, Benedict the Jew of Norwich, was pursuing the sacrist of Bury for repayment of loans, armed with royal letters.140 The second is a well-meaning but intrusive visitation by the king’s almoner to check on the financial health of the monastery.141 When Abbot Hugh died, the royal agents that were appointed as custodians of the abbey became enmeshed in abbey politics and were described by Jocelin as ‘those two pillars … the two guardians by which his enemies’ malice was supported’.142 During the complex process by which Samson was elected abbot, the monks of Bury seem to have regarded the king with great suspicion, believing that he meant to force a candidate on them and ‘suspecting guile’.143 This suspicion seems to have been mutual. The king, who did not know Samson, warned them to have a care, ‘for by the very eyes of God, if you do ill, I will be at you!’144 After Samson’s election, Jocelin’s presentation of the monarchy is softened. Samson used the threat of appeal to the king’s court as a way of discouraging a suit brought by Thomas of Hastings,145 and obtained royal letters in order to expel the Jews from Bury.146 The king confirmed Samson’s charter endowing the hospital of Babwell,147 and a number of Samson’s successful struggles against his recalcitrant vassals were fought out in the king’s court. This, however, was no guarantee of success. It has been argued that as a result of the extension of royal prerogatives under Henry II and in particular of the tendency of the 139 T. Reuter, ‘Episcopi cum sua militia: The Prelate as Warrior in the Early Staufer Era’, in Warriors and Churchmen in the High Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Karl Leyser, ed. T. Reuter (London: Hambledon, 1992), 88. 140 CJB, 2. 141 CJB, 4. 142 ‘ … duobus columpnis, id est, remotis duobus custodibus abbacie quibus aliorum malitia innitebatur’: CJB, 11. Royal agents supervising monasteries between abbacies were known sometimes to treat their charges badly. See CBA, 135; CSA, 1: 307. 143 ‘ … suspiciantes dolum’: CJB, 21. 144 ‘ … per veros oculos Dei, si male feceretis, ego me capiam ad vos’: CJB, 23. 145 CJB, 27. 146 CJB, 46. 147 CJB, 47.  Journal of Medieval History 21 Angevin monarchy to draw cases from seigniorial to royal jurisdiction, abbots were hard- pressed to maintain their positions against both king and tenant. Angevin kings granted justice to abbots as a form of patronage.148 If that is so, then Samson’s position in a royally sanctioned power structure in East Anglia was not enough to ensure royal favour. That had to be earned and maintained. While Samson worked hard to ensure that he remained in the king’s good grace, occasionally his interests and those of the monarch clashed directly. When Richard I tried to dispose of the wardship of Adam de Cockfield’s daughter, Samson resisted his claims; we are told that Richard was only prevented from wreaking his vengeance on the abbot by his fear of Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 St Edmund.149 When the king next wrote to Samson, it was in a more friendly mode, and the abbot leaped upon the chance to heal the breach and sent him a present of hounds, horses and other gifts, earning himself both a valuable countergift and the publicly voiced gratitude of the king.150 The abbot went to the king in person on a number of occasions. He visited Henry II at Clarendon to try to gain exemption from the amercement laid on Norfolk and Suffolk,151 visited Richard I in prison in Germany and brought him gifts,152 went to him in France to attempt to gain exemption for the knights of Bury from serving overseas in 1197,153 and at the end of the Chronicle, had planned to travel overseas to see King John to demand justice against the encroachments of the bishop of Ely.154 We might suspect that the enthusiasm with which he helped at the siege of Windsor was part of his on-going campaign to maintain the king’s favour.155 He had also hoped to ensure the king’s presence at the dedication of the new abbey church, though Jocelin is unclear as to whether he did in fact attend.156 Getting access to royal support, however, was more complex than gaining the personal favour of the king. Samson needed to maintain relations with the wider court. On several occasions, he was given valuable advice by courtiers, including Hubert Walter himself.157 We are also told, however, that laymen alienated by Samson’s leadership whispered about him at court, souring the opinion of Glanville towards him.158 However important the relationship between monarch and abbot, the delegation of royal powers is presented as at best irksome, and at worst positively dangerous: Am not I, I the abbot? Is it not my duty to dispose of the things of the church committed to my charge, provided that I act wisely and according to the will of God? If there be default of the king’s justice in this town it is I that shall be accused, I who shall be summoned; it is on me that will fall the toil and 148 Kevin L. Shirley, The Secular Jurisdiction of Monasteries in Anglo-Norman and Angevin England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004), especially 80–149. 149 CJB, 98. 150 CJB, 98–9. 151 CJB, 65. 152 CJB, 55. 153 CJB, 86. 154 CJB, 135. 155 CJB, 54. The knights of St Edmund had apparently responded with alacrity in the crisis of 1173–4 as well. Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, ed. and trans. R.C. Johnston (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 74. 156 CJB, 47–8. It is uncertain whether the dedication ever in fact occurred (47, n. 2). 157 CJB, 86, where the advisers are left vague as ‘certain of the king’s friends’ (quidam familiares regis); 65, for Hubert Walter. Note how Samson was also able to get Hubert to buy the wardship of Adam de Cockfield’s daughter, though she had been seized by her grandfather: CJB, 123. Note also the role of Archbishop Augustine of Trondhjem in securing the free election of Samson by using his influence at court: CJB, 15–16. 158 CJB, 26.  22 D. Gerrard travel and expense and the defence of the town and all that pertains to it; it is I who shall be deemed a fool, not the prior, not the sacrist, not the convent, but I, who am and ought to be their head.159 This is not the statement of autocrat wielding the power of a mighty lordship, nor indeed a monk dragged from contemplation to secular business. It is an observation that the apparent structural foundations of the abbot’s power, and especially his exercise of some royal prerogatives, contained the potential for humiliation and disaster. On another occasion, Samson was said to have described the king as he who ‘has the power to take away my abbey and my life’,160 even as he explained that if he compromised one iota on the principle that the abbey’s Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 hundreds were never to be passed on in hereditary succession, the weakness would be exploited by the king, and the Liberty of Bury itself would be at risk.161 The very substantial danger of what the king might do or demand also has a bearing on the incident where Samson appointed an illiterate fool by the name of Gilbert to the stewardship. On this occasion, Samson was prepared to compromise on the issue of heredity, because of his calculation that the low intelligence of the individual concerned made him unlikely to be able to deceive Samson, and because the abbot would be able to blame him as a hereditary office-holder, should he fail to fulfil his obligations to the king.162 Nevertheless, however carefully relations with the king and court were negotiated, and whatever steps the abbot might take to protect himself and his abbey from the demands of the rapacious Angevins, any progress built on such personal foundations was extraordinarily fragile. Goodwill, after all, however dearly purchased, was not hereditary: When the abbot had purchased the favour and grace of King Richard by gifts and money, so that he thought he could carry out all his affairs in accordance with his desire, King Richard died, and the abbot lost his money and his labour. But King John after his coronation, postponing all other business, came straightway to St Edmund, led thither by devotion and a vow that he had made. We indeed believed that he would make some great oblation; but he offered nothing save a single silken cloth which his servants had borrowed from our sacrist – and they have not yet paid the price. And yet he received the hospitality of St Edmund at great cost to the abbey, and when he departed he gave nothing at all to the honour or advantage of the saint save 13d. sterling, which he offered at his mass on the day when he left us.163 159 ‘Nonne ego, ego sum abbas? Nonne mea interest disponere de rebus ecclesie mihi commisse, dummodo sapienter egero et secundum Deum? Si defectus fuerit regie iustitie in villa ista, ego calumpniatus ero, ego ero summonitus, mihi incumbet labor itineris et expense, et defensio ville et pertinentium; ego stultus habebor, non prior, non sacrista, non conventus, set ego, qui caput eorum sum et esse debeo … ’: CJB, 74–5. 160 ‘ … mihi potest auferre abbatiam et vitam’: CJB, 58. See also Samson’s explanation that he had ‘changed ancient customs to prevent default of the king’s justice’ (‘dicens se mutasse antiquas consuetudines ne esset defectus regalis iustitie’): CJB, 136. The fear that Angevin kings could inspire in their subjects (including abbots) is discussed by Joliffe, Angevin Kingship, especially 89, 101. 161 It is interesting to note how rigidly this was maintained. When Samson received royal authority to abolish the market of the monks of Ely at Lakenheath, royal officials could not be allowed to carry out the order on the monastery’s land, so Samson had to send his own troops: CJB, 133. For the monks of Battle similarly caught between exercising their liberties and the fear of angering Henry II: CBA, 283. 162 CJB, 27. Compare the constable’s charter in T. Stapleton, ed., Chronicon Petroburgense. Camden Society, 1st series, 47 (London: Camden Society, 1849), 130–2; and Chew, Ecclesiastical Tenants in Chief, 85. 163 ‘Cum abbas emisset favorem et graciam regis Ricardi donis et denariis, ita quod omnia negocia sua crederet posse perficere pro suo desiderio, mortuus est rex R., et abbas perdidit opera et impensam. Rex autem Iohannes post coronacionem suam, omissis omnibus aliis negociis suis, statim venit ad sanctum Aedmundum voto et devocione tractus. Nos vero credebamus quod oblaturus esset aliquid magnum; pannum quidem sericum mutuo optulit, quem servientes eius a nostro sacrista mutuo acceperant, nec  Journal of Medieval History 23 The property of the abbot of Bury might well have been founded on a royal grant, and the abbey’s affairs might have pulled him into a relationship with both the king and his court, but this was a highly vexed area. The monarch might make a benefaction or support the abbot in his legal affairs one moment, and turn on him as soon as their interests diverged. The abbot was as much at risk from his delegated royal jurisdiction as he was elevated by it. Even if the abbot successfully maintained a good relationship with the king and court, there was no guarantee that the next monarch would be so favourable. Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 01:10 04 February 2014 Conclusion Jocelin of Brakelond’s account has received much attention for its vividness, its straightforwardness and the insights that it seems to promise into the mind of one man at the turn of the thirteenth century. Its potential is both less and more than this. A close reading of the text reveals that the abbot himself was, by deliberate policy, something of a mystery, even to Jocelin, who was in any case neither as concerned by Samson’s personality as has generally been assumed nor as open with his readers as appears at first sight. Whilst attempts to investigate the abbot’s character will necessarily stumble at these problems, the author’s concern with how Abbot Samson dealt with challenges to his authority is thrown into sharper relief. Samson’s method was sometimes to draw upon the sources of power that have been highlighted by historians, but which are usually considered as the ‘background’ to his struggles. There are, after all, occasions when he ruled by fiat or by force. The authority of his office and his material power were not enough, however, and the stronger impression that emerges is of a strategist who schemed, manipulated, terrified, bribed and lied his way through a shifting and largely hostile political environment. The abbey’s rights and charters, the abbot’s relationship with his vassals and the king, and even his authority over the monks were less fixed foundations of lordship or abbatial absolutism than unstable resources, tools and negotiating positions that were only profitable when judiciously used. It seems that there is danger in imagining the high medieval monastery and its social position as a series of structures, ideological, organisational or tenurial, which provided their abbots with the sinews of lordly power. Even in the age of Innocent III and the classical canon law, Glanville and Magna Carta, the power of the abbot remained highly and irrevocably personal. Acknowledgements An earlier version of this paper was given at the University of East Anglia at its History of East Anglia seminar in December 2011. I am grateful to Professor David Bates for the invitation to speak there and to the attendees that evening for their kind reception and stimulating questions. I am also indebted to Dr Stephen Marritt, Mrs Henrietta Leyser, Mrs Genevieve Gerrard and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts. Remaining mistakes of fact and interpretation are entirely mine. Daniel Gerrard is College Lecturer in Medieval History at St Peter’s College, Oxford, and Non-Stipendiary Lecturer at Merton College. A graduate of the universities of St Andrews and Glasgow, he is currently in the process of preparing an updated version of his doctoral thesis for publication by Ashgate. adhuc precium reddiderunt. Hospicium vero sancti Aedmundi suscepit, magnis celebratum expensis, et recedens nichil omnino honoris vel beneficii sancto contulit, preter xiii sterlingos, quos ad missam suam optulit, die qua recessit a nobis’: CJB, 116–17. John’s vengefulness was legendary. We might suspect that while Richard’s goodwill could not have been inherited, the new king remembered how the abbot had fought him at the siege of Windsor.