ABSTRACT
The History does not in general worry too much about the Marshal’sspiritual state. He was a good man, and God loves good men. The Marshal’s soul only occupies the author’s attention at the point he and his paymasters would have considered appropriate: his deathbed. Nonetheless it is surprising, and unaccountable, that he does not mention any of the Marshal’s several, expensive religious foundations, save one. Curiously, the one foundation inspired by the Marshal that the author does see fit to place in his narrative is one that cost him little. After the seabattle in the Channel in 1217 that destroyed the French fleet, the Marshal expressed a wish that a hospital might be built at the port of Sandwich. It was to be dedicated to St Bartholomew on whose feast day the battle had been fought. However, it was neither built on Marshal lands nor with Marshal funds, but with the prize money taken from the French. I can only guess that the hospital’s foundation escaped the editor’s knife because it made a neat full stop to the story of the battle that saved Henry III’s throne. The Marshal’s other religious foundations were but unnecessary digressions to the author.
