From Rolls to Riches: King's Clerks and Moneylending in Thirteenth-Century England

Author(s): Richard H. Bowers

Source: Speculum , Jan., 1983, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Jan., 1983), pp. 60-71
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Medieval Academy of
America

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/2846613

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 SPECULUM 58,1 (1983)

From Rolls to Riches:

King's Clerks and Moneylending
in Thirteenth-Century England
By Richard H. Bowers

The notorious moneylenders of thirteenth-century England were the Jews,

the Lombards, and merchants from Cahors, Sens, and other towns of the
Midi. While Matthew Paris and other writers castigated the Jews and foreign
usurers with their pens, few critics of usury took notice of the king's clerks
who were quietly fattening on the profits of moneylending.1
At the beginning of the century the exchequer had the largest professional
clerical staff, but during the reigns of Henry III and Edward I, as the
chancery went out of court, the wardrobe developed into a major depart-
ment of royal administration, and the king's justices claimed an ever widen-
ing cognizance, the king's clerks rapidly increased in number and impor-
tance. Most of these clerks were ordained men, not only for the obvious
reason that the church was the sole reliable reservoir of literate men but also
because clerics were loyal and could be rather painlessly remunerated by
appointment to one or more ecclesiastical livings that lay within the king's
patronage. The majority were in minor orders, which made them eligible for
benefices but did not exclude the possibility of marriage provided they
renounced their ordination and resigned their ecclesiastical livings. More

1 Examples of contemporary attitudes toward the Cahorsins, Italians, and Jews can be f
Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, 5 vols., ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls Series (London, 1880), 3:328-32;
4:8, 421-22; 5:189, 194, 245-46, 362, 404-5, 409-10, 516-20; Annales de Burton in vol. 1 of
Annales monastici, ed. H. R. Luard, 5 vols., Rolls Series (London, 1864), p. 442; and De antiquis
legibus liber: Chronica maiorum et vicecomitum Londonarium, ed. Thomas Stapleton, Camden Soci-
ety, old ser. 34 (1846), pp. 62, 118-19. Recent and not so recent scholarship related to the
involvement of king's clerks in moneylending includes Ralph B. Pugh, "Some Mediaeval
Moneylenders," Speculum 43 (1968), 274-89, in which are described the activities of three
fourteenth-century chancery clerks; Alice Beardwood, "Bishop Langton's Use of Statute Mer-
chant Recognizances," Medievalia et Humanistica 9 (1955), 54-70; a dated and inaccurate dis-
course on the career of notorious thirteenth-century exchequer chamberlain and Christian
usurer, Adam de Stratton, in the introduction to Hubert Hall, ed., The Red Book of the Exchequer,
Rolls Series, 3 vols. (London, 1896), 3:cccxv-cccxxxvi; and the shorter but more reliable
"Excursus on Sir Adam de Stratton" by W. Page in W. Page, ed., Starrs and Jewish Charters, 3
vols., Jewish Historical Society Transactions (Cambridge, Eng., 1930-32), 1:lxxvii-lxxx. The most
recent and incisive considerations of Adam de Stratton's career are in Noel Denholm-Young,
Seignorial Administration in England (1936; repr., London, 1963), pp. 77-85; and in M. W. Farr,
ed., Accounts and Surveys of the Wiltshire Lands of Adam de Stratton, Wiltshire Archaeological and
Natural History Society, Records Branch 14 (1959), pp. xiv-xxiii.

60

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 King's Clerks and Moneylending 61

significantly, ordination as a subdeacon rarely effaced the secular outlook of

the cleric. A few royal clerks like John of Gaddesden, who had accumulated
considerable wealth in royal service, gave up their clerical status, surren-
dered their benefices, and assumed a place among the landed gentry. Most,
however, preferred to retain their religious privileges and ecclesiastical liv-
ings (or the expectation thereof), an inclination that was reinforced before
the end of the thirteenth century by the anticipation that a distinguished
career in the king's service would lead to a bishopric. Since many of these
clerks had sought ordination only to attend the universities or to become
eligible for appointment to benefices and pursued mundane careers, it is not
surprising that they were no less ambitious, acquisitive, and desirous of
advancing their families than their lay contemporaries.2
Successful clerks had traditionally supplemented the meager and usually
temporary wages of office with the income from benefices, attorney's fees,
and investments in land, marriages, and wardships. But during the thir-
teenth century, economic change, legal innovations, and a new materialistic
spirit made moneylending an attractive and lucrative pursuit for ambitious
clerks.3 Credit demand in England intensified during the last half of the
century. The rapid commercial expansion in Western Europe that had made
the presence of German, French, Iberian, and Italian merchants in London,
Boston, and York commonplace caused English merchants to seek capital
that would enable them to claim a larger share of the profitable trade with
the Continent. At the same time the increased availability and variety of
consumer goods tempted many English nobles and other men of status to
spend beyond their means, and the Barons' War (1264-1267) produced in
England a horde of financially desperate men. Hundreds, perhaps thou-
sands, of rebels who had fought unsuccessfully for Simon de Montfort and
the Provisions of Oxford were able to save their lands only by saddling
themselves with heavy redemptive payments. Finally, during the last three

2 For descriptions of the role of the clerk in thirteenth-century royal administration se

Pegues, "The Clericus in the Legal Administration of Thirteenth Century England," English
Historical Review 41 (1956), 556-59; William H. Dunham, ed., Casus Placitorum and Reports of
Cases in the King's Courts, 1272-1278, Selden Society 69 (1950), pp. lx-lxi; George P. Cuttino,
"King's Clerks and the Community of the Realm," Speculum 29 (1954), 396-403; and Frederick
Maurice Powicke, The Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1953), pp. 278-79, 340-41, 459-60. For the
careers of individual clerks see Thomas Frederick Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of
Medieval England, 6 vols. (Manchester, 1938), 1:253-54, 260-83; 2:10-25, Powicke, Thirteenth
Century, pp. 336-39; and George 0. Sayles, ed., Select Cases in the Court of King's Bench under
Edward I, 3 vols., Selden Society 55, 57, 58 (1936, 1937-38), 1:lxxix-lxxxviii.
3See M. M. Postan, Medieval Trade and Finance (Cambridge, Eng., 1973), pp. 201-19, for the
role of English merchants in northern trade. See also Eileen Power, The Wool Trade in Medieval
England (Oxford, 1941), and T. H. Lloyd, The English Wool Trade in the Middle Ages (Cambridge,
Eng., 1977). For examples of thirteenth-century English merchants borrowing to finance busi-
ness ventures, see Public Record Office, London, Exchequer of Pleas, Plea Rolls, E 13/9/m. 27d.,
E 13/18/m. 53.

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 62 King's Clerks and Moneylending

decades of the century every Englishman had to share the financial burden
of the Welsh and Scottish wars of Edward I, while the papacy drained away
the wealth of the English church with a series of crusading taxes and clerical
subsidies granted to bolster the king's war chests.4
While the demand for money increased, one traditional source of capital,
the Jewish lender, withered and then disappeared. The Jews, whose capacity
to lend was diminished by confiscatory taxation and repressive legislation,
were reduced to financial impotence long before the Jewish expulsion in
1290.5 Although the Italians and merchants from the Midi were already on
the scene, they were nervous and discriminating lenders who loaned only
when it was politic and clearly profitable.6 Thus, a clerk, or anyone else for
that matter, with the money and the inclination to lend was inundated with
opportunity. These opportunities, however, would necessarily have gone
begging if the legal risks of lending for profit had not diminished during the
thirteenth century. Previously English law had favored the debtor over the
lender. Not only had debts been easily repudiated, but there had also been
no satisfactory legal remedy by which a creditor could compel a debtor to
pay a delinquent obligation. But the development of the enrolled recogni-
zance of debt and the formulation of the statute merchant recognizance
turned the tide of law against the debtor before the end of the thirteenth
century.7
The enrolled recognizance was a confession of debt entered on the close
rolls of chancery, the exchequer memoranda rolls, or the plea rolls of the
courts. The procedure required the debtor to appear in court and confess
that he owed his creditor a stated sum of money to be paid at an appointed
time and place. The debtor further granted that if he were delinquent in
payment, the sheriff could levy the debt from his lands and goods. A
recognizance could be quite detailed, as was the following enrollment made
in favor of Simon Passelew, king's clerk, who served Henry III as justice of
the Jews and later as a baron of the exchequer.

4 For the economic and social impact of the Barons' War see E. F. Jacob, Studies in the Period of
Baronial Reform and Rebellion, Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History (Oxford, 1925). For
Edward I's wars see Michael Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance under Edward I (London, 1972),
and for papal taxation see William E. Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England to 1327,
Studies in Anglo-Papal Relations during the Middle Ages 1 (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), pp.
255-365, especially pp. 309-12.
5 H. G. Richardson, The English Jewry under the Angevin Kings (London, 1960), p. 216;
B. Lionel Abrahams, "The Condition of the Jews in England at the Time of Their Expulsion in
1290," Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 3 (1895), 75-105.
6 N. Denholm-Young, "The Merchants of Cahors," Medievalia et Humanistica 4 (1946), 36-44;
Richard W. Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown: The Riccardi of Lucca and Edward I (Princeton, 1978),
pp. 27-35, 60-69.
7Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland, The History of English Law, 2 vols., 2nd ed.
(1898; reissued, Cambridge, Eng., 1968), 2:117-24, 203-7.

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 King's Clerks and Moneylending 63

Johannes de Vallibus et Ricardus Estormy recognoverunt coram rege- in vigilia

Palmarum anno etc. xlja. se debere Simoni Passelewe la.ix. marcas sterlingorum, unde
solvent ei vel assignatis suis in domo ejusdem Simonis apud London' x. marcas in
quindena Pasche anno predicto, ad festum Sancti Johannis Baptiste proximo se-
quens x. marcas, et ad festum Sancti Martini anni sequentis xiij. marcas, et ad
festum Sancti Hillarii ejusdem anni xiij. marcas, et ad Pascha proximo sequens xiij.
marcas: quod si non fecerint, concesserunt quod rex per ballivos suos de terris et
catallis predictorum Johannis et Ricardi in comitatibus Norf', Suff' et Linc' levari
faciat pecuniam predictam ad opus predicti Simonis sine aliqua contradiccione vel
impedimento. Et sciendum quod pro ista recognicione quieti sunt predicti Johannes
et Alanus de Weseh' de viijxx. marcis, quas recognoverunt se debere prefato Simoni
coram justiciariis de banco. Teste rege apud Westmonasterium xxx. die Marcii. Per
Walterum de Merton '.8

However, as the use of the recognizance became more common, the enroll-
ing clerks tended to follow the simple formula illustrated by this example
from the King's Remembrancer Memoranda Rolls.

Idem [Johannes Pipard'] venit coram baronibus et recognoverit se teneri Ade de

Argoges, clerico de scaccario, in lx. s. quos ei reddet quindena Pascha anno xlvij. et
nisi fecerit concessit quod baronibus de scaccario fieri facias eidem Ade predictis
denariis de bonis et catallis suis.9

The recognizance, regardless of its form, stood as a legal judgment, beyond

challenge or repudiation; only the execution against the debtor was sus-
pended. If the date fixed for payment passed and the debtor had not
satisfied the creditor and obtained the cancellation of the recognizance, then,
at the request of the creditor, the judgment proceeded in the form of writs
fieri facias or levari facias, which required the sheriff to seize the goods an
chattels of the debtor up to the amount of the debt and to deliver them to
the creditor.10
The statute merchant recognizance emerged from legislation in 1283 and
1285. It was a recognizance with vicious teeth, allowing the creditor action

8 Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, 1256-1259, p. 126 (hereafter cited as CR).
P.R.O., Exchequer, King's Remembrancer Memoranda Rolls, E 159137/m. 20.
10 The recognizance appeared first in the plea rolls of the courts (Pollock and Maitland,
History of English Law, 2:204n.). However, as early as the year 1218 recognizances began to be
taken in the exchequer, where they were recorded on the memoranda rolls (E 159/2/m. 9d.),
and by the middle of Henry III's reign recognizances were being grouped together, by ex-
chequer session, under the heading of "recogniciones" (E 1 59/37/m. 19). They do not appear oD
the close rolls of chancery until the 1250s, when it became customary to enroll recognizances on
the dorse, or back, of the membranes making up the rolls. Pollock and Maitland have suggested
that the recognizance may have been introduced into chancery because "some of its officers
were moneylenders on a grand scale." Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, 1: 204. For a
discussion of various indentures of indebtedness and recognizances and the process of collection
see Postan, Medieval Trade and Finance, pp. 29-40; Angela Conyers, ed., Wiltshire Extents for Debts,
Edward I-Elizabeth I, Wiltshire Record Society 28 (1972), pp. 1-13; Hilary Jenkinson and Beryl
E. R. Formoy, eds., Select Cases in the Exchequer of Pleas, Selden Society 48 (1932), pp. lix-lxiii.

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64 King's Clerks and Moneylending

against the debtor's body as well as his property. In the event of default,
authorities placed the creditor in possession of the debtor's lands and other
property and imprisoned the debtor until the debt was satisfied from the sale
of his goods or the revenues of his lands, or until some arrangement was
made between debtor and creditor."
Also it became possible in the thirteenth century for a lender to advance
money on the security of land gaged, or pledged, to him for payment of the
obligation with reasonable assurance that the courts would defend his right
in the gaged land. Although English law had for centuries recognized vari-
ous forms of usufruct and property gages, heretofore judges, the law, and
procedure had favored the debtor, or gagor, over the creditor. By claiming
the land in dispute as his own and denying both the debt and the gage, the
debtor placed the burden of proof of the debt and the gage on the property
in question on the creditor. Furthermore, the possession of gaged land by
the gagee was not protected by law, and even if the gagor ejected him, the
gagee had no satisfactory legal remedy. If ejected, a gagee could recover the
debt only by bringing an action of debt against the gagor, in which case the
gagor could then plead a plethora of essoins, or excuses for failure to appear
in court, that might delay for years a judgment in favor of the creditor. But
during the thirteenth century, two forms of the gage became popular, the
gage which gave the creditor a lease for a term of years and that which took
the form of a conditional feoffment.12 Both the gage for term of years and
the conditional feoffment, which will be described later, gave the gagee
rights that were protected by writ. Together with the security afforded by
the recognizance, the gage greatly reduced the risk of lending.
The clerks, who had the recognizance at their fingertips, were among the
first to use it as a means of guaranteeing payment of debts, including money
advanced by them in loans. Indeed, they and other royal officials quickly
grasped any legal innovation which would improve their position as lenders
and creditors, as the following table reveals.13
Sometimes clerks loaned money in the Christian spirit of charity, but we
can be assured that profit was their usual motive for lending. Some might
loan to a friend or neighbor for no more than rewards in the world to come,
but even in this age of faith there were few men so saintly that they would

11 Beardwood, "Langton's Use of Statute Merchant Recognizances," pp. 54-68; Pugh,

"Mediaeval Moneylenders," pp. 274-89; Postan, Medieval Trade and Finance, pp. 29-40.
12 Harold D. Hazeltine, "The Gage of Land in Medieval England," Harvard Law Review 17
and 18 (1903 and 1904), 17:552-57; 18:43-50; Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law,
2:117-24; A. B. W. Simpson, An Introduction to the History of the Land Law (1961; repr. Oxford,
1973), pp. 28-29, 132-34.
13 One of the earliest recognizances in chancery was made in favor of Simon Passelew, clerk
and justice of the Jews: CR, 1256-59, p. 126. Other royal clerks who used recognizances in
chancery to secure their debts were Adam de Chesterton (ibid., pp. 272, 282, 329), Wibert de
Kent (ibid., p. 148), John de Stratford (ibid., pp. 281, 292), and John de Langtoft (ibid., pp.
292, 332). King's clerks and other officials in the exchequer availed themselves of the new
device even more quickly: E 159/2 1/m. 15d., E 159/24/m. 5, E 159/28/m. 16d.

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 King's C^lerks and Moneylending 65

RECOGNIZANCES OF DEBT

In favor
In favor of other
of royal royal
Period Reference Total* clerks officials

Enrolled in the Close Rolls

Michaelmas 1269- CR, 1269-72, 78 21 34

Michaelmas 1270 pp. 139-47, 242-91
Michaelmas 1274- CCR, 1272-79, 80 17 24
Michaelmas 1275 pp. 131-36, 232-47
Michaelmas 1279- CCR, 1272-79 159 44 34
Michaelmas 1280 pp. 574-83;
CCR, 1279-88,
pp. 40-68
Michaelmas 1289- CCR, 1288-96, 309 115 39
Michaelmas 1290 pp. 54-57, 110-45

Enrolled in the King's Remembrancer Memoranda Rolls

Michaelmas 1264-
Michaelmas 1265 E 159/39/m. 29-32 30 14 5
Michaelmas 1269-
Michaelmas 1270 E 159/44/m. 11-14d. 54 19 15
Michaelmas 1274-
Michaelmas 1275 E 159/49/m. 22-26d. 78 39 13
Michaelmas 1279-
Michaelmas 1280 E 159/53/m. 9-17d. 223 67 25
Michaelmas 1289-
Michaelmas 1290 E 159/63/m. 20-32d. 359 43t 43

* Totals do not include recognizances of debt made i

the royal family.
t The diminished clerical use of the recognizance of debt is at least partially explained by the
arrest and imprisonment of Adam de Stratton, clerk, chamberlain of the exchequer, and
one of the greatest moneylenders, in the fall of 1289.

lend to a stranger with no anticipation of material gain. Because of civil and

canonical prohibitions against usury, evidence of profit in medieval lending
agreements is elusive. Profit usually lurked somewhere, but it could be well
hidden or disguised. Most moneylenders were little concerned about prose-
cution in the ecclesiastical courts and avoided civil action by omitting overt
usury from their bonds. The clerks, expert in law and familiar with Jewish
and Italian innovations in lending, were quite capable of employing every
known device for exacting covert usury.'4

14 Several studies that consider the writings of the civil and canon legalists on usury are T. P.
McLaughlin, "Teachings of the Canonists on Usury," Mediaeval Studies 1 (1939), 81-147; Henry
C. Lea, "Ecclesiastical Treatment of Usury," Yale Review 3 (1894), 356-85; John T. Noonan, The
Scholastic Analysis of Usury (Cambridge, Mass., 1957); and Benjamin Nelson, The Idea of Usury
from Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood, 2nd ed., enlarged (Chicago, 1969), especially pp.
3-28.

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66 King's Clerks and Moneylending

One method of concealing lending profits was to discount the loan, or take
the profit beforehand, in which case any personal indenture or recognizance
could conceal usury. However, discounting involved an element of risk
because the testimony of witnesses to the transaction could prove the agree-
ment usurious. Also some borrowers had the embarrassing habit of noting in
their records not only the face amount of the obligation they incurred but
also the portion which was principal and that which was usury.'5
Penalties assessed for delinquent payment of obligations provided a legal
profit for lenders. English courts would assess reasonable damages against a
debtor who defaulted in payment, even if such penalties were not required
in the bond. Around the middle of the century, the clerks adopted the
Italian practice of requiring borrowers to agree to pay late charges (dam-
ages, interest, and expenses) in the event they defaulted in payment.'6 These
late charges were anything but reasonable, as two indentures made to Adam
de Stratton, chamberlain of the exchequer, reveal. In one bond of ?40, the
debtor agreed to pay ?1 each day that the debt was overdue; and in another,
damages, interest, and expenses were to be paid at the rate of ?10 every two
months for each 10 marks (f6 13s. 4d.) in arrears.'7
There were also methods of manipulating conveyances of land to provide
both security and profit for the lender. This practice, known as gaging,
could take several forms. In one version, the conditional feoffment, the
borrower granted the lender land in fee simple; but the conveyance, or
deed, was conditioned so that if the borrower paid the lender a stated sum of
money on a fixed day, the lender would surrender to him all his rights in the
land. For example, in September 1285, Henry, son of Richard Dubois,
enfeoffed William Hamilton, a chancery clerk, with a house, mill, 140 acres
of land, and other property in the Yorkshire village of Ouseburn. Hamilton,
in turn, conceded that if Henry paid him 100 marks at Christmas in the
priory of Worksop, he would restore the premises to him.'8 Even if Hamil-
ton never actually took permanent possession, he kept all revenues received
from the Dubois land as his profit during the period of the gage.

15 Discounting is virtually impossible to document, but for examples of what appear to have
been discounted bonds on which the king himself paid usury see Calendar of Patent Rolls,
1247-1258, p. 629 (hereafter cited as CPR), and CPR, 1258-66, p. 71. In these enrollments, the
clerks noted on the face of the bond the amount paid in usury. The monks of Canterbury
Cathedral Priory also made notations of usury paid on their borrowings. Mavis Mate, "The
Indebtedness of Canterbury Cathedral Priory, 1215-1219," Economic History Review 24 (1973),
183-97.
16 An example of a classic Italian bond drawn up by a notary in Viterbo, but preserved in the
English records, can be found in CPR, 1266-72, p. 277. The penalty clause and the borrower's
renunciation of all civil and ecclesiastical help which might prejudice the agreement are re-
markably similar to an English bond obligating the monastery of Bermondsey to Adam de
Stratton: CR, 1268 -72, pp. 4 10-1 1.
17 CR, 1268-72, pp. 409-12.
18 Calendar of Close Rolls, 1279-1283, p. 366 (hereafter cited as CCR).

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 King's Clerks and Moneylending 67

A variation of the gage occurred when the borrower granted the lender a
term of years in land, of the sort received by Robert Burnell, Edward I's
chancellor, from Simon de Insula in July 1281. Simon demised his manors
of Hinxton and Wold in Cambridgeshire to Burnell for five years, receiving
?240 from the chancellor, and granted that if he should die within that term
and the lands were taken into wardship by Simon's lord, then his executors
were to pay Burnell ?56 annually for the remainder of the term.19 In this
case, Burnell intended to take actual possession of the manors, but in some
instances gagees would redemise the lands to the gagor in return for an
annual rent, as did William de Hamilton in an agreement with the abbey of
Meaux. William and hiis brother Andrew gave the abbot of Meaux 800 marks
for a twenty-year lease on one of the abbey's manors. They then redemised
the manor to the abbot and convent for an annual rent of ?100 and bound
themselves to restore the premises to the abbot when they had been repaid
the face amount of the loan.20 These were certainly not the only means of
profiting from lending, for there were as many ways of taking covert usury
as there were ingenious minds to conceive them. However, taking gages on
land, imposing late charges, and possibly discounting were among the most
common.
Certainly not all the king's clerks were in the business of lending for profit,
and of those who were, few loaned on a grand scale. The most active lenders
were, as one might expect, the clerks who had advanced to powerful and
lucrative offices. In the last half of the thirteenth century this select group
included Robert Burnell, bishop of Bath and Wells, who served as Edward
I's chancellor from 1274 to 1292; Adam de Stratton, chamberlain of the
exchequer; William Hamilton, a chancery clerk who was royal chancellor
from 1305 to 1307; and Walter Langton, bishop of Lichfield and Coventry
and royal treasurer during the reigns of Edward I and Edward 11.21 All
these men were intelligent, ambitious, and driven by a fierce determination
to acquire land which would give them and their kinsmen durable respect-
ability and security. They were also capable of abusing power, and Langton
and Stratton did not possess the first moral scruple between them.
Burnell and the other moneylending ministers had the resources to lend
amounts in excess of ?1,000, but it was unusual for them to lend an individ-
ual more than ?200 or ?300, and most of their transactions involved less

19 E 159/59/m. 19.
20 Chronica Monasterii de Melsa, 3 vols., ed. E. A. Bond, Rolls Series (London, 1866-68), 2:183;
Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, 2:123.
21 Walter LangtoD's career has been admirably reconstructed by Alice Beardwood in such
studies as "The Trial of Walter Langton, Bishop of Lichfield, 1307-12," Transactions of the
American Philosophical Society, new ser. 54 (1964); and Records of the Trial of Walter Langton, ed.
Alice Beardwood, Camden Society, 4th ser. 6 (1969). For Stratton see Denholm-Young, Seigno-
rial Administration, pp. 77-85. For Burnell and Hamilton see Tout, Administrative History, 2:60-
65, passim.

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 68 King's Clerks and Moneylending

than ?100. Lending patterns would be much clearer if the enrolled recogni-
zance of debt explained the reason for the obligation. But very few do.
Consequently, unless a private indenture survives which would explain the
obligation (and virtually none have) or unless the obligation was subse-
quently litigated (which is rare), it is impossible to infer that a mute recogni-
zance was incurred as the result of a loan.
If the limitations of the recognizance are kept in mind, it can still be of
some value. Many enrolled recognizances were certainly made to guarantee
payment of loans, and those which were not at least represent some form of
credit extended to the maker. While it is impossible to determine from
recognizances how many loans a clerk made, they do provide an idea of the
extent of his lending and credit activities. Twenty-six recognizances were
made to William Hamilton and enrolled on the close rolls between February
1291 and January 1292.22 The total acknowledged debt to Hamilton ex-
ceeded ?1,350, of which the largest obligation was ?209 6s. 8d. and the
smallest 6s. 8d. A comparable volume of recognizances was enrolled in
exchequer memoranda rolls for Adam de Stratton during the height of his
career, while numerous recognizances made by Burnell's debtors are liber-
ally sprinkled through the memoranda rolls and close rolls from 1272 until
the chancellor's death in 1292. Langton used recognizances enrolled in
exchequer and the chancery to secure his debts, but he also required many
of his debtors to make statute merchant recognizances, of which some
eighty-five were reported to be in force when he was arrested in 1307.23
Occasionally it is possible to identify positively a transaction involving one
of the king's clerks as a loan, and in a few instances even the borrower's
reason for incurring the obligation can be determined. These examples
reveal something about the men who borrowed and the nature of their need.
During the Welsh campaign of 1277, Robert Burnell loaned a knight 30
marks to buy a remount from an Italian horse trader.24 In 1287 Adam de
Stratton loaned John de Warenne, earl of Surrey, ?300 to enable the earl to
pay part of his debts to Barencino Gaulteri, an important Lucchese mer-
chant.25 The bailiff of the town of Wye, Kent, sought a loan of ?24 from
Richard de Hereford, clerk of the exchequer, to pay his town's debt to the
king and keep himself out of the marshal's prison.26 In 1307, the bishop of
Norwich approached Walter Langton, who was accompanying Edward I's
body back from the north, to seek a loan of 490 marks to pay the high cost
of doing business at the papal court.27 Alan, merchant of Newbury, ar-

22 CCR, 1288-96, p. 190, passim.

23 Beardwood, "Langton's Use of Statute Merchants Recognizances."
24 CPR, 1273 -81, p. 242.
25 Abbreviatio placitorum, Richard I-Edward II, ed. G. Rose and W. Illingworth, Record Commis
sion (London, 181 1).
26 E 159/41/m. 13d.
27 Beardwood, Records of the Trial of Walter Langton, pp. 33-34.

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 King's Clerks and Moneylending 69

ranged a loan of 100 marks for a commercial venture from John, a chaplain
of Richard Hederset, clerk of the exchequer.28 And Adam de Stratton
brokered a loan with the money of several merchants for John, prior of
Bermondsey, to enable him to buy a forest for his monastery.29
Although loans made by the clerks might not appear large-or lucrative,
once the talons of usury were set in the borrower, huge profits could be torn
away. The monastery of Bermondsey was caught in Stratton's grasp and
nearly devoured before the king wrested it free.30 Bermondsey's problems
with Stratton began in 1271, when their incompetent prior, John, granted
Stratton a ?40 annuity that included a penalty of ?1 a day for delinquency in
payment. The annuity was probably intended to settle the monastery's exist-
ing debts to Stratton, but the next year Prior John was back asking Stratton
to arrange the 700-mark loan mentioned above. Stratton took the convent's
bond for the loan, which was to be repaid in annual installments of 100
marks, the first due only thirteen weeks after the agreement was sealed. The
bond included devastating penalties for default, which could cost the monas-
tery 900% annual interest on the arrears. To make a long and tragic story
short, Stratton was soon in possession of five of Bermondsey's manors and
the advowsons of all its churches, and he claimed in addition a debt due him
of ?6,000.3'
Langton was as avaricious as Stratton, and his ruthlessness made him an
even more dangerous creditor, as Richard St. Valery had the misfortune to
discover. St. Valery owed Langton ?200 by a statute merchant recognizance
made in 1299. He apparently paid part of the obligation but then defaulted,
and in 1305 Langton had him imprisoned at Winchester. Three times the
sheriff, on Langton's instructions, brought St. Valery to the bishop's house in
London, where he was abused and threatened in an effort to persuade him
to grant Langton two of his manors in fee. St. Valery stubbornly resisted,
and three times the frustrated bishop sent him back to Winchester. The
conditions of St. Valery's confinement worsened until he finally lay fettered
in the deepest dungeon. No one, not even his wife, was permitted to see him.
Meanwhile Langton's men broke into the prisoner's house, seized his papers,
including acquitances which Richard had received for payment already
made to Langton, and threatened the lives of his children. When Langton
sent for him again, St. Valery, who had spent two and a half years in prison,
finally broke. Langton hauled him before the justices of the Common Pleas,
where St. Valery demised his manor of Norton to the bishop. When it was all

28 E 13/9/m. 27d.
29 CR, 1268-72, pp. 410-12; G. F. Duckett, Visitations of English Cluniac Foundations (London,
1890), p. 21.
30 The convent of Bermondsey listed all their grievances against Stratton in a bill of complaint
presented to the king in 1288 (P.R.O., Exchequer, King's Remembrancer, Parliamentary and
Council Proceedings, #175/roll 2). This remonstrance aroused Edward I's wrath against Strat-
ton and led to the end of the moneylender's career in government.
31 Ibid.; CPR, 1281-92, p. 338.

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70 King's Clerks and Moneylending

over, Langton not only had the manor but also had received from the
revenues of St. Valery's lands and personal possessions ?340 more than the
recognizances entitled him.32
Such unrestrained ambition and unconscionable abuse of power generated
wealth in land and money, but they also aroused antagonism. Stratton
eventually paid for his faults when he became one of the more prominent
victims of the great purge of "judges" in 1289.33 The crown confiscated all
but his ecclesiastical holdings and ordered his imprisonment. However, after
a brief confinement in the Tower, he was allowed to fine for his release.34
Langton, too, fell from royal grace in the first few months of Edward II's
reign. Like Stratton, he was confined in the Tower, and the crown seized his
temporal possessions. Langton, however, recovered part of his confiscated
property and was eventually restored to favor.35 Burnell and Hamilton, who
apparently avoided the excesses of Stratton and Langton, died wealthy and
in the king's favor.
The crown carefully scrutinized the affairs of Langton and Stratton, and
what has survived from the inquests and inventories casts some light on the
immensity of their wealth. When Stratton's world came to pieces in 1289, he
was one of the richest men in England. He had manors scattered through
the southern half of the country and extensive holdings in London prop-
erty.36 He was beneficed in more than a score of churches and controlled the
advowsons of many more.37 Contemporaries estimated the income from his
spiritualities alone to approach ?1,000 a year.38 Officials who ransacked his
house in London found and accounted for more than ?12,000 in money
locked in his coffers.39
Langton's wealth probably exceeded that of Stratton, but here specific and
reliable information is lacking. One chronicler estimated the income from
his lands at 5,000 marks per annum and placed a value of 50,000 marks on
his treasure horde of money, gold, and jewels. These figures are exagger-

32 Beardwood, "Langton's Use of Statute Merchant Recognizances," pp. 59-60; Records

Trial of Walter Langton, pp. 262-70.
33 State Trials of Edward the First, 1289-1293, ed. T. F. Tout and Hilda Johnstone, Camden
Society, 3rd ser. 9 (1906), pp. xi-xliii.
34 Stratton's friends, including Barencino Gaulteri, pledged to pay the fine of 500 marks if
Adam failed to pay it within two years: E 159/62/m. 12; P.R.O., Exchequer, Originalia Rolls, E
3711531m. 15.
35 Beardwood, "The Trial of Walter Langton."
36 The accounts of Stratton's manors have been preserved in the P.R.O. Special Collections,
Ministers' Accounts, SC 6. The accounts of his Wiltshire manors have been published in the
Accounts and Surveys of the Wiltshire Manors of Adam de Stratton, ed. Farr.
37Registrum Robert Winchelsey, ed. Rose Graham, 2 vols., Canterbury and York Society (1952-
56), pp. 1148-49; Rotuli Ricardi de Gravesend, ed. F. N. Davis, Canterbury and York Society
(1925), pp. 38, 118, 181, 185, 223, 226, 231.
38 Bartholomew de Cotton, Historia Anglicana, ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls Series (London, 185
p. 173.
39 P.R.O., Exchequer, Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer, Pipe Rolls, E 372/138/m. 26.

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 King's Clerks and Moneylending 71

ated, but Langton did make an unsuccessful attempt to conceal 3,000 marks
deposited at the New Temple when he sensed that his fall was imminent,
and his known treasure was much greater than this.40 Burnell's landholdin
exceeded those of Stratton and Langton, and his cash reserves were substan-
tial enough for him to make loans as large as ?1,800.41 Of Hamilton, it can
only be said that his wealth in land, benefices, and money was considerable
and probably comparable to the fortunes of the others.
Of course, not all clerks who loaned money became rich. Moneylending
was usually only one facet of the financial activities of wealthy clerks, but an
important one because of the extraordinary profits it yielded in money and
in titles to lands encumbered with debt. Although some men were victimized
by the clerical moneylenders, most of the people who dealt with them appear
to have paid off their obligations; and if they were not satisfied with ar-
rangements, at least they were not irate. The clerks, as a whole, were not
more exacting or pernicious than others who loaned commercially. In an age
when sources of credit were so limited they performed probably not a
welcome, but a needed function.

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI

40 Beardwood, Records of the Trial of Walter Langton, pp. 2 and n., 243-46.
41In January 1292 Burnell gave Richard Fitz Alan, earl of Arundel, ?1,819 3s. for a twelve-
year gage on foulr of the earl's manors and the advowsons of the church of Mileham, Norfolk.
For the extent of his temporal holdings see Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, Edward I,
3:44-51. During his lifetime Burnell gave his nephew Philip title to lands he had acquired. For
Philip's holdings see ibid., 3:116-26.

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