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Notes and Documents

The date and authorship of Robert
Grosseteste's Rules for Household and
Estate Management*
Michael Burger

Mississippi University for Women

Abstract

Grosseteste's Rules is canonically dated 12402 arguing thus: the countess of Lincoln,
for whom the work was written, was a widow since only widows needed a manual
concerning matters not pertinent to married noble women. The one widowed
countess of Lincoln during Grosseteste's episcopate (123553) was widowed in 1240
and remarried in 1242. Given, however, the activities of married noblewomen, and
the appearance of other unmarried countesses of Lincoln during Grosseteste's
ponticate, the treatise is datable only to 123553. Pace Dr. Dorothea Oschinsky,
Grosseteste also had the capacity to write the Rules, and so presumably wrote it.

Robert Grosseteste's Rules is one of several treatises on household and estate

management produced in England in the high middle ages. The Rules has,
however, long had a double attraction. Not only does it illuminate its subject
matter, but it was produced by one of the leading gures of the day. This
dual status explains the continued interest in the work in the middle ages.
The French original seems to have been especially attractive to later copyists,
to judge from the ten surviving French manuscripts. From this original at
least one Latin translation was made, apparently for the use of the bishop's
own household. Part of the work was also translated into English in the
fteenth century.1 This interest has continued among modern historians,
making the work something of a minor classic.2
The Rules can be divided into two parts: rules for estate management and
rules for managing a great household. This division was one clearly made in
the text itself. The rules are numbered, with rules 112 governing estates.
* The author is grateful to Evelyn Mackie, Dr. Emily Zack Tabuteau, Dr. Bjorn Weiler, and the
reader for Historical Research, who made suggestions or supplied information which improved this
piece. The author is, of course, solely responsible for any errors.
1
Walter of Henley and Other Treatises on Estate Management and Accounting, ed. D. Oschinsky
(Oxford, 1971), pp. 1936, 199.
2
Hence Eileen Power's reference to `the Rules . . . which are so often quoted' (E. Power, Medieval
Women, ed. M. M. Postan (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 478).
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Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA.

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This rst set is preceded by the information that `He who will keep to the
rules will live well and comfortably o his demesne and keep himself and his
people'.3 Rules 1328, covering households, are preceded by the Latin note
`incipiunt statuta ospicii',4 thus clearly dividing the Rules into estate and
household portions.
The work has long been dated to between 1240 and 1242. The kernel of
the argument establishing these dates was propounded by Samuel Pegge in
the late eighteenth century; Pegge's argument was partly reproduced by
Elizabeth Lamond in her edition of the Rules in 1890, and the Lamond
version was rened by Dr. Dorothea Oschinsky in her very ne edition of
1971.5 The fully-developed version of the argument runs as follows. The text
itself opens by stating `here begin the rules, which Robert Grosseteste the
good bishop of Lincoln made for the countess of Lincoln, on how to guard
and govern lands and households'.6 The countess herself is not named. Pegge,
followed by Lamond and Oschinsky, supposed that no such treatise would
have been drawn up for a married countess. The recipient must therefore
have been a widow. Who could she have been? Although neither Lamond
nor Oschinsky says so outright, the explicit implies that the work was written
while Grosseteste was bishop, which means that the widowed countess must
have lived, as a widow, between 1235 and 1253. This point is apparently
conrmed by a Latin document called the Statuta which served as the preexisting basis for the household section of the Rules and which, Oschinsky
believes, was clearly written during Grosseteste's episcopate.7 These facts
narrow the eld of potential dedicatees to Margaret de Quincy, countess of
Lincoln, whose husband, John de Lacy, the earl, died on 22 July 1240. In 1242
Margaret married again, this time taking Walter Marshal, the earl of
Pembroke, as her new husband. Thus, Lamond and Oschinsky established
the dates 12402 as those of the treatise although, as will be noted below,
Pegge himself allowed for an earlier date as well.8 Indeed, these dates are the
canonical ones, appearing nearly wherever the date of the work is given.9
3
`Ki les reules vout tenir ben e bel del son demeyne porra vivre e soy meymes e les sons sustenir'
(Oschinsky, pp. 3889). Here and below, all translations are taken from Oschinsky.
4
Oschinsky, p. 398.
5
S. Pegge, The Life of Robert Grosseteste (1793), p. 95; Walter of Henley's Husbandry, Together with an
Anonymous Husbandry, Seneschaucie and Robert Grosseteste's Rules, ed. E. Lamond (1890), pp. xliiiii;
Oschinsky, pp. 1967. See also F. S. Stevenson, Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln: a Contribution to the
Religious, Political and Intellectual History of the 13th-Century (1899), pp. 2301; S. H. Thomson, The
Writings of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln 123553 (Cambridge, 1940), p. 149.
6
`Isci comencent les reules ke le bon eveske de Nichole Robert Grosseteste st a la contesse de
Nichole de garder e governer terres e hostel' (Oschinsky, pp. 3889).
7
Ibid., p. 196.
8
Lamond, pp. xliiiii; Oschinsky, p. 196.
9
E.g., Women of the English Nobility and Gentry, 10661500, ed. and trans. J. Ward (New York,
1995), pp. 128, 159; eadem, English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages (1992), p. 58; J. R. Maddicott,
Simon de Montfort (Cambridge, 1994), p. 167; M. W. Labarge, A Baronial Household of the 13th Century
(New York, 1965), p. 40; J. M. W. Bean, From Lord to Patron: Lordship in Late Medieval England
(Manchester, 1989), p. 132; Household Accounts from Medieval England, ed. C. M. Woolgar (Oxford,
1992) pt. i, p. 16; P. Coss, The Lady in Medieval England, 10001500 (Stroud, 1998), p. 52; M. Thompson,

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Unfortunately, the composition of Grosseteste's Rules cannot be conned to

the years 12402. There are several reasons why what can be called the
Pegge-Lamond-Oschinsky position is not tenable.
The rst of these reasons stems from a broad reassessment of the activity
of noblewomen in the high and late middle ages which has taken place since
Pegge wrote in 1793. It has become something of a textbook commonplace,
and a true one, that medieval noblewomen could be called upon to manage
both household and estates when their husbands were away.10 Thus, one
cannot assume that a treatise on household or estate management could have
been written only for a femme sole. Moreover, noblewomen might have their
own households to manage even when their husbands were present, although
no evidence on such matters survives specically for the countesses of
Lincoln in Grosseteste's time.11 An English lady could also nd herself
involved in the administration of her husband's estates, and not only while
her husband was away, although clear evidence for the latter situation dates
only from the fteenth century.12
These observations explain why a married countess might have had need
of the Rules, but do not explain why a bishop would undertake to write such
a work for her. Grosseteste could, of course, have wanted to create a
relationship with a married noblewoman for her own sake, or perhaps to
maintain an already existing one. But one would expect her husband to be
the chief focus of Grosseteste's attention. The high middle ages had, however,
seen the realization in ecclesiastical circles of the morally benecial inuence
wives might have on their husbands,13 a development which suggests a reason
The Medieval Hall: the Basis of Secular Domestic Life, 6001600 A.D. (Aldershot, 1995), p. 115. The lone
dissenters are Pegge (see below, at n. 21) and Sir Richard Southern, who states, without elaboration,
that `these rules, which form a comprehensive guide to the management of a great estate, were
probably written for Hawice de Quincy, who was Countess of Lincoln in her own right from 1232
to 1242' (idem, Robert Grosseteste: the Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe (2nd edn., Oxford,
1992), p. 319 n. 41). As will be apparent below (nn. 1921), this conclusion is a real possibility.
10
Hence S. Shahar, The Fourth Estate: a History of Women in the Middle Ages (1983), pp. 14950;
D. Herlihy, Opera Muliebria: Women and Work in Medieval Europe (New York, 1990), p. 60; Power,
pp. 423; Coss, pp. 312; H. Leyser, Medieval Women: a Social History of Women in England, 4501500
(1995), p. 165; Ward, English Nobility, pp. 89. For an assessment of some of the evidentiary problems
regarding this topic, see R. A. Archer, ` ``How Ladies . . . who live on their manors ought to manage
their households and estates'': women as landholders and administrators in the later middle ages', in
Woman is a Worthy Wight: Women in English Society c.12001500, ed. P. J. P. Goldberg (Stroud, 1992),
pp. 1503, followed by Coss, pp. 701.
11
Ward, English Noblewomen, p. 51; and see Manners and Household Expenses of England in the 13th
and 14th Centuries, ed. T. H. Turner (1841), p. 15. One noble wife built her own quarters, separate
from her husband's (R. Gilchrist, `Medieval bodies in the material world: gender, stigma and the
body', in Framing Medieval Bodies, ed. S. Kay and M. Rubin (Manchester, 1994), p. 53), although it is
unclear how far this can be generalized. Queens did enjoy their own extensive quarters during their
husband's lifetimes (ibid., p. 51). For a discussion of the activities of noble wives during the earlier
12th century, see M. Chibnall, `Women in Orderic Vitalis', Haskins Soc. Jour., ii (1990), 11516.
12
Ward, English Noblewomen, pp. 10910; Archer, pp. 15361.
13
S. A. Farmer, `Persuasive voices: clerical images of medieval wives', Speculum, lxi (1986), 51743,
esp. pp. 52134 and eadem, `Softening the hearts of men: women, embodiment, and persuasion in the
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for Grosseteste to address such a gift specically to a married woman. By

Grosseteste's time such views had already led some ecclesiastics to cultivate
noblewomen as a means of inuencing their husbands, often in moral
matters.14 As Dr. J. R. Maddicott notes, Grosseteste's associate Adam Marsh t
that mould in relation to Eleanor, wife of Simon de Montfort.15 Moreover,
noble households of the period were very much religious communities.16
This point, along with the Rules' attention to the Christian nature of the
household,17 made the work an especially suitable means for the spiritual
development of the recipient. Thus, the cultivation of a noblewoman in
order to inuence her husband could have been the social context in which
Grosseteste presented the Rules to the countess of Lincoln, a context not
unusual in Grosseteste's time, although the situation must remain obscure.
It is true that a widow would more certainly have found use for
Grosseteste's work than a married woman. Moreover, by this time, a countess
who survived her husband was unlikely to remarry; it has been calculated
that two out of three widowed English countesses in the years 121630
remained single.18 There are, however, problems with the dates 12402 which
do not stem from general considerations of women's history. For even if one
accepts the principle that the Rules was written for a widowed countess of
Lincoln, Margaret de Quincy was not the only eligible widowed countess of
Lincoln. Pegge's followers overlooked another lady, Hawise de Quincy,
Margaret's mother. Hawise, a widow, had become countess of Lincoln in
1232.19 She did grant the earldom to her son-in-law, Margaret's husband,
later that year. Yet she was still referred to as countess of Lincoln, even as late
as her death; in the ne rolls for 1242, when her lands were turned over to
Margaret and her husband, she is called `countess of Lincoln'.20 If ocial
documents could grant her the title of countess after she had technically
transferred the earldom to her son-in-law, one cannot expect a scribe
recording Grosseteste's dedication to be more particular about such matters.
Hawise, then, extends the possible date of the treatise from 1242 back to the
13th century', in Embodied Love: Sensuality and Relationship as Feminist Values, ed. P. M. Cooey, S. A.
Farmer and M. E. Ross (New York, 1987), pp. 11922.
14
Farmer, `Persuasive Voices', pp. 5216.
15
Maddicott, p. 41. No trace of Grosseteste's manipulation of Eleanor to reach her husband
survives in the sources, although Grosseteste certainly had ample opportunity for such activity. He
was closely connected to Eleanor and the earl of Leicester, both of whom turned to him for spiritual
counsel (ibid.).
16
K. Mertes, The English Noble Household, 12501600: Good Governance and Politic Rule (Oxford,
1988), pp. 139160.
17
Oschinsky, pp. 399401 for rules 1315.
18
R. DeAragon, `Dowager Countesses', in Anglo-Norman Studies, xvii: Proceedings of the Battle
Conference 1994, ed. C. Harper-Bill (New York, 1995), p. 98.
19
For these countesses, see The Complete Peerage, comp. G. E. Cokayne and others (13 vols. in 14,
191059) vii. 67580.
20
For her death, see ibid., p. 676 n. h. For instances c.12361240, see Rotuli Roberti Grosseteste,
Episcopi Lincolniensis A.D. MCCXXVMCCLIII, ed. F. N. Davis (Lincoln Record Soc. Publications, xi,
Horncastle, 1914), pp. 9, 11, 17, 23, 44.
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beginning of Grosseteste's episcopate in 1235. Indeed, Pegge himself noted

Hawise's candidacy,21 although Lamond and Oschinsky neglected her.
Margaret de Quincy herself is also worth a closer look. Although Margaret
remarried in 1242, her second husband, the earl of Pembroke, did not survive
Grosseteste (Pembroke died in 1245). Thus, Margaret's second widowhood
points to her candidacy as a dedicatee of the Rules between 1245 and 1252,
when she took a third husband.22 In this second widowhood she sometimes
appears as the `countess of Lincoln and Pembroke', but she could also be
styled simply `countess of Lincoln' as in, for example, a royal charter of
1251.23 Moreover, although the treatise was said to be written for a `countess
of Lincoln', it may be too much to demand that the scribe concerned render
Margaret's complete title, if indeed the Rules was written for Margaret, and
written for her in this stage of her life. That may particularly have been the
case for a source originating in the diocese of Lincoln, where Margaret's rst
title can be expected to have made the greater impression.24
Thus, one cannot, for various reasons, limit the composition of the Rules
more narrowly than the beginning of Grosseteste's episcopate in 1235 and the
bishop's death in 1253 or, perhaps, to the conjunction of his ponticate and
the widowhoods of Hawise de Lacy or Margaret de Quincy (and so 123542
and 124552). There is also the possibility that Grosseteste wrote the work
before he became bishop. One cannot be sure a notice stating that the Rules
was written by Bishop Grosseteste in fact accompanied the original, which
does not survive among the copies identied by modern scholars.25 A copyist,
either during Grosseteste's episcopate or later, might naturally have amplied
a notice that the Rules was written by Robert Grosseteste by including a
dignity Grosseteste had by then attained. Indeed, the description of
Grosseteste in this passage as `le bon eveske' raises the suspicion of this sort
of interpolation; it is unlikely that the author would have described himself
in this way.26 A similar scribal decision to add later information explains why
Pegge, p. 96. As does Southern (see above, n. 9).
Complete Peerage, p. 680.
23
For `countess of Lincoln and Pembroke', see ibid., p. 680 n. b and Calendar of the Charter Rolls
122657 (1903), p. 393. For `countess of Lincoln' in 1251, see ibid., p. 362 and see also Davis, p. 111
and Close Rolls 124751, pp. 475, 486.
24
Her natal family's close association with the earldom also, perhaps, gave her identity as
countess of Lincoln greater weight in the eyes of the scribe than her later title `countess of
Pembroke'.
25
The earliest copy identied by Oschinsky (British Library, Harleian MS. 1005 fo. 51v54v)
dates, on palaeographical grounds, from the `mid 13th century' and appears in the manuscript with a
reference to an event of 1265 in the same hand as that of the Rules (Oschinsky, p. 13 and n. 3).
Oschinsky considers this the best text. The volume includes other texts in the same hand associated
with the house of Bury St. Edmunds (Oschinsky, p. 13). This copy was unknown to Lamond, who
based her text on Bodleian Library, Douce MS. 98 fo. 182r186v, which dates to c.1300 (Lamond,
p. xliii; Oschinsky, p. 41).
26
Oschinsky, p. 388 (the author's emphasis). Two manuscripts refer to `Saint Robert' as the
author (ibid., p. 410). For a discussion of the aected humility more common in medieval authors'
introductions, a ourishing tradition by Grosseteste's time, see E. R. Curtius, European Literature and
the Latin Middle Ages, trans. W. R. Trask (Princeton, N.J., 1990), pp. 835.
21
22

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the Latin version of the Rules notes that its author, Grosseteste, is `bone
memorie'.27 But if the Rules was written before Grosseteste became bishop,
how much before? The question very much turns on how early the future
bishop had the knowledge to write such a work. That issue, however,
requires an investigation of a claim that Grosseteste was not in fact the
author of the Rules.
In her edition of the Rules of 1971, Dorothea Oschinsky concluded that `it
seems unlikely that the Bishop of Lincoln can have been solely responsible
for the compilation of the Rules', concluding that Grosseteste simply
commissioned the work.28 Her argument is that Grosseteste did not know
enough about great households or estates to have composed the work
himself. In the rst place, she argues, Grosseteste's other works fail to
provide evidence that he knew much about estates or noble households, as
might be expected given his low birth. Moreover, Grosseteste had had little
opportunity to learn about either subject during an academic career and, as
bishop, he would have been too old and busy to learn. He could, in short,
`have [hardly] advised the Countess of Lincoln, who had grown up in such a
household and, together with her husband, had presided over one'.29
Although Oschinsky's authority is not to be disregarded lightly, this
position needs to be reassessed. In order to do so, however, one should
stress that there are two areas of knowledge under consideration here the
management of noble households, and the management of great estates.
Grosseteste or any bishop might have had expertise in one without the other.
Since the work itself follows this division in subject matter, he could have
composed one part and not the other. In both cases, however, Grosseteste
should be presumed to be the author.
That is particularly so with regard to the household. Despite his obscure
origins, Grosseteste had evidently mastered the ways of courteous society,
which centred to such an extent on the noble household, at least by the time
of his episcopate. Even some of the evidence of his obscure background
attests to this: the earl of Clare once asked Grosseteste how he, a man of such
humble birth, had become so courteous.30 This back-handed compliment
was, at least, a compliment; the earl was acknowledging Grosseteste's
courtesy.
Grosseteste had had opportunity to learn. Episcopal households were
generally run along lines in common with those of the nobility,31 and
Grosseteste had acquired years of acquaintance with such households before
entering the episcopate. Fortunately, it is not necessary here to reconstruct in
Oschinsky, p. 194.
Ibid., p. 192, and pp. xxi, 195.
29
All these points are taken from ibid., p. 192, and see p. 195.
30
For this and other evidence regarding Grosseteste's birth, see Southern, An English Mind, p. 63
and n. 1. For a suggestion that Grosseteste's background may have been more exalted, see N. M.
Schulman, `Husband, father, bishop? Grosseteste in Paris', Speculum, lxii (1997), 3423.
31
Mertes, p. 5, though see pp. 645.
27
28

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detail Grosseteste's disputed career between 1198 and 1225.32 It is still agreed
that Grosseteste had some connection with the household of Bishop St. Hugh
of Lincoln c.11861192, that he entered the bishop of Hereford's household
c.1195, with the blessing of Gerald of Wales, and that this service came to an
end with that bishop's death in 1198.33
Moreover, Grosseteste had gained some experience as a head of a
moderately complex household of his own even before his episcopate.
Grosseteste became archdeacon of Leicester in 1229, resigning the post in
1232.34 Being an archdeacon was not, of course, the same as being a bishop.
Some idea of the size of an archdeacon's domestic establishment can,
however, be gained from Archbishop Langton's regulation of 1213 or
1214, limiting the number of horses the archdeacon of Canterbury could
have in his party while conducting visitations to seven, roughly between a
quarter and a third of the number allowed to a bishop by the Third Lateran
Council of 1179.35 This rule concerning archdeacons was considered broadly
applicable; diocesan legislation of 124552 from Chichester applies the same
rule to the archdeacons of that see.36
Moreover, once he became a bishop, Grosseteste's own household seems to
have been suciently comparable to that of an earl for Simon de Montfort to
entrust his eldest son to the bishop's care in order to learn manners as well as
letters.37 This point is conrmed by the recollection of a member of
Grosseteste's household, who remembered that the bishop had educated
`ingenuos pueros' in manners as well as in Latin and Greek.38 And of course,
32
For the dispute, see Southern, An English Mind, pp. xviixxxiv, 6370 and idem, `Intellectual
development and local environment: the case of Robert Grosseteste', in Essays in Honor of Edward B.
King, ed. R. G. Benson and E. W. Naylor (Sewanee, Tenn., 1991), pp. 122; B. Eastwood, review of
Southern, Robert Grosseteste, in Speculum, lxiii (1988), 2337; Schulman, pp. 33046.
33
D. A. P. Callus, `Robert Grosseteste as scholar', in Robert Grosseteste, Scholar and Bishop: Essays in
Commemoration of the 7th Centenary of his Death, ed. idem (Oxford, 1955), pp. 35; Southern, An English
Mind, pp. 636; Schulman, pp. 3301; J. McEvoy, The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste (Oxford, 1982),
pp. 411. The arguments below are strengthened if, as Southern suggests, Grosseteste was again
active in the bishop of Hereford's household in the 1220s (idem, An English Mind, p. 67), although see
also the alternative reconstructions cited in this note.
34
John Le Neve, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 10661300, iii: Lincoln, comp. D. E. Greenway (1977),
p. 34.
35
Councils and Synods, with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, ed. F. M. Powicke and
C. R. Cheney (2 vols., Oxford, 1964), i. 36. For the Third Lateran Council, see C. R. Cheney, Episcopal
Visitation of Monasteries in the 13th Century (rev. edn., Manchester, 1983), p. 105. The same council also
limited archdeacons to 5 or 7 horses.
36
Ibid., p. 458. The line `ista tamen ad memoriam . . . excedant' seems to deal with horses,
although they are not mentioned by name a copyist's or editor's error? The next line limits
archdeacons' ocials to 3 or 4 horses (ibid.) and the chapter as a whole is modelled on Langton's
regulation (ibid. n. 2 and p. 451).
37
I.e., for `doctrina litterarum et morum disciplina' (Monumenta Franciscana, ed. J. S. Brewer
(2 vols., Rolls Ser., 185882) i. 110).
38
`Verses on the Life of Robert Grosseteste', ed. R. W. Hunt, Medievalia et Humanistica, new ser., i
(1970), 248 ll. 959. This should not be a surprise, given not only Grosseteste's academic eminence, but
also his apparent authorship of a 669-line poem, the Liber Curialis, a guide to etiquette, signicantly, it
seems, written before Grosseteste had ascended to the episcopate (Thomson, pp. 1489).

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as Oschinsky notes, the French Rules written for the countess was itself
translated into Latin for Grosseteste's own household,39 underlining the
comparability of the two institutions.
Oschinsky's argument is harder to meet regarding the rst portion of the
Rules on estate management. Did Grosseteste know enough to have written
it? As rector of Abbotsley in the years 122532,40 Grosseteste directly
managed his glebe lands, farmed them out, or managed the rents from
them, but his could hardly be called a great estate.41 He was in a similar
position as prebendary of Leicester St. Margaret in Lincoln cathedral, a
dignity he had reached by at least 1232, and which he presumably retained
until his elevation to the episcopate three years later.42 These tenures might,
however, have given the future bishop a small introduction to some, though
not all, of the problems he would later face as a great landed lord and, more
particularly, to the problems addressed in the Rules. He might have learned
that it is good to have an estate servant on a xed payment,43 and to have
the twentieth sheaf of grain collected at harvest in order to calculate the
amount of grain threshed, or that a ploughland can be expected to yield 100
seams of grain,44 or, possibly, that one acre of fallow can support two
sheep.45 A bad experience, even on a small scale, could have taught him not
to hold on to grain so long that it rots.46 It may also be that it was in the
service of the bishop of Hereford, or possibly Lincoln, that Grosseteste
learned about these and moderately more technical matters, such as why one
should not sell wheat unless its straw is retained for sheepfolds and compost,
or that one should buy wine and wax at Boston, but robes at St. Ives.47 All
this is easily possible, but uncertain. The nature of his service to these
bishops is obscure; it could have involved governance of their estates, but
this can be only a possibility. Gerald of Wales's letter commending
Grosseteste to the bishop of Hereford praises Grosseteste for his ability to
decide cases, his command of law, medicine, letters and general aairs, as
39
Oschinsky, pp. 1946. The dierences between the Latin and French texts are not great (eadem,
pp. 1945, 41215).
40
Rotuli Hugonis de Welles, Episcopi Lincolniensis, MCCIXMCCXXXV, ed. W. P. W. Phillimore
and others (3 vols., Canterbury and York Soc., 19079), iii. 48.
41
Unfortunately, the exact nature of most parochial revenues is generally obscure (R. N.
Swanson, `Standards of livings: parochial revenues in pre-Reformation England', in Religious Beliefs
and Ecclesiastical Careers in Late Medieval England, Proceedings of the Conference held at Strawberry Hill,
Easter, 1989, ed. C. Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 15196) and this is so of Grosseteste's
beneces.
42
In 1232 Grosseteste told his sister that he was giving up all his preferments except his prebend
in the cathedral, thus establishing this year as marking the end of his tenure in Abbotsley and also
the fact of his tenure in Leicester St. Margaret, which included at least 2 churches and was valued at
20 in 1254 (Roberti Grosseteste Episcopi Quondam Lincolniensis Epistolae, ed. H. R. Luard (Rolls Ser.,
1861), pp. 434 and Le Neve, p. 77).
43
Rule 2 (Oschinsky, pp. 38990).
44
Rule 8 (ibid., pp. 3967).
45
Rule 8 (ibid.).
46
Rule 4 (ibid., pp. 3923).
47
Rule 9 (ibid., pp. 3967); Rule 12 (ibid., pp. 3989).

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well as his character, and so gives little help, and no other evidence
recovered so far addresses the question.48
Some of what in the Rules which might be regarded as technical matter
concerning estates is technical more in relation to computation than estate
management per se. The Rules contains instances of rather emphatic
arithmetical advice: `You ought to know that each acre of fallow land can
support at least two sheep for one year, 100 acres of fallow land ought to
support 200 sheep, 200 acres 400 sheep, and so on'.49 Such calculations were
not likely to have been beyond so mathematically-oriented a thinker as
Grosseteste, although his bent was more toward geometry than calculation.50
It is also worth noting that, as bishop, Grosseteste stressed that lay estate
ocials employed by prelates in his diocese should in various respects
behave justly toward those under them, and that this should be a matter of
inquiry at episcopal visitation. These same concerns regarding extortion,
reception of bribes and redress of grievances mark the Rules' discussion of
estate management as well.51 Such considerations are expressed in rules 1
and 3. If one is to account for this fact by simply asserting that Grosseteste's
visitation instructions and the Rules were independently expressing ideas
common to his time and place, one can also note that such ideas were
hardly so technical that they would have been beyond a bishop's knowledge.
Similarly, Grosseteste was suciently impressed by royal inquiries by sworn
local juries that he attempted to hijack this institution for pastoral
purposes.52 This consciousness of the value of such procedure may lie
behind the Rules' instructions that, on lands which are not part of her
demesne, the countess should `begin by having the King's writ brought so
that an enquiry can be made on each manor, on oath by twelve free men,
into all the lands by their parcels . . .'.53 If many in the thirteenth century
were aware of the value of such procedures, the fact does not preclude
Grosseteste from having been so.
The same can be said for much of the rest of the estate portion of the
Rules. Most of the work cannot in fact be described as deeply technical. Rule
2 mandates that the countess take stock of all her movables and immovables,
and have the results enrolled. Rule 5 essentially tells the countess to be
careful to nd out about the extent of an escheat or wardship, and to do so
from trustworthy men. Rule 6 states that granges should be secured and
monitored, and that a tally should be used for the transfer of wheat out of
the grange. Rule 7 says one should, in secret, with one or two trustworthy
Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, ed. J. S. Brewer (8 vols., Rolls Ser., 186191), i. 249.
Rule 8: `Vus devez saver ke chascun acre de waret poet sustenir par an deus berbiz al meyns,
dunt cent acres de waret deus cenz berbiz poent sustenir, deus cenz acres quatre cenz berbiz, e issi
avaunt' (Oschinsky, pp. 3967). For similar arithmetical lessons, see ibid. and Rule 4 (ibid., pp. 3923).
50
For Grosseteste and mathematics, see McEvoy, pp. 18, 16880.
51
Maddicott, pp. 1678.
52
Southern, An English Mind, p. 259.
53
`al comencement fetes purchacer le bref le roy de enquere par serment de duze frauncs
hommes en chescun maner totes les terres par lur parceles . . .' (Oschinsky, pp. 3889).
48
49

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men, examine enrolled accounts of one's manors and compare them with
those from the previous year's harvest in order to detect cheating. Rule 10
advises the countess that, once she has at Michaelmas an estimate of how
much grain she will have from place to place, she should then plan her
itinerations for the year accordingly, also taking into account seasonal
oerings in meat and sh. Rule 11 says that animals can be valuable because
of the cheese and manure they produce.54 None of this advice seems to
require extensive, detailed experience with estates, even for a novice bishop.
Grosseteste, moreover, was a bishop for eighteen years. Even as a busy bishop
and he was a very busy bishop he could have had a chance to learn the
business detailed in the estate portion of the Rules, especially if he wrote the
Rules not before 1242, but some time as late as 1253. These arguments
indicate that there is no compelling reason to think Grosseteste did not write
both portions of the Rules. Of course, proving that he did so, without relying
on the attribution of the text itself, is impossible. But when a source names
its author, the best procedure is to accept the attribution unless there is clear
evidence to the contrary.
This discussion of the authorship of the Rules began by asking whether
Grosseteste might have written the Rules before he became bishop, thus
extending the date of composition before 1235. One cannot know. The
question, however, depends partly on how early one thinks Grosseteste had
the knowledge and experience to have written the Rules. As early as the
eleven-eighties, in the service of the bishop of Lincoln? In the twelvetwenties, as rector of Abbotsley? As archdeacon of Leicester? Some knowledge on Grosseteste's part of complex households can be presumed from
some of these capacities, and some, though less, can be postulated regarding
estate management. If Grosseteste did write the Rules before 1235, such a
date also suggests a social context rather dierent from that of an ecclesiastic
out to mould a great magnate's morals. It instead suggests a rising man
currying favour with a potential patron, or possibly one already in her
service. But this matter, too, remains uncertain.
This consideration of authorship also allows an assessment of other
evidence that the Rules must have been written during Grosseteste's
episcopate, specically the Statuta, a brief series of general statements in
Latin on the running of the household, evidently addressed to the bishop's
own ocers. Oschinsky argues that the Rules was based on the Statuta rather
than the reverse.55 Since the Statuta was composed during the episcopate, one
might be driven to conclude that so too must have been the Rules.
Oschinsky's reasons for dating the Statuta earlier than the Rules are twofold.
In the rst place, Grosseteste would not have based a work for his own
household on a work for a secular lord.56 This is unpersuasive, however, given
that the Rules was later translated into Latin for the bishop's own household,
54
55
56

Ibid., pp. 38999.

Ibid., p. 196.
Ibid., p. 193.

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as Oschinsky herself acknowledges.57 Her second argument relies on

Grosseteste's not having written the Rules. It is, she states, unlikely that
`Grosseteste would have based the Statuta on a treatise . . . compiled by
someone else'.58 If the arguments presented here hold true, however,
Grosseteste should be presumed to be the author of the Rules. Hence the
Statuta could be a later, or even contemporary, summary of the household
portion of the Rules, rather than the prior model for the Rules.59 Thus, the
sole evidence that the Rules dates from Grosseteste's episcopate is the Rules'
explicit, itself open to question.60
Grosseteste can be fairly regarded as the author of the Rules attributed to
him. As to date, one can say, with certainty, only that the Rules was composed
some time before Grosseteste's death in 1253, with a presumption in favour
of a date between 1235 and 1253. The venerable dates 12402 remain an
interesting example of how views on the date and composition of a source
can be fossilized, and so preserved long after the conceptions on which they
rely are obsolete.

Oschinsky, pp. 1936.

Ibid., p. 193.
59
The Statuta, it may be noted, survives only in two late 13th-century copies (Oschinsky, pp. 23
4, 2931, 191). The verbal similarity between the Statuta and the Latin translation of the Rules is
weak (Bodl. Libr., MS. Digby 204 fos. 3r4v versus Oschinsky, pp. 4089).
60
Above, at nn. 257.
57
58

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