ABSTRACT
It was during Sudbury’s pontificate that a particularly nasty challenge to the jurisdiction of the court occurred, the most serious challenge since Pecham’s pontificate, although, this time, not on a province-wide scale. It involved a case concerning the Augustinian canon, Richard Sutton, master of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Smithfield, London. Sometime in 1375, if not earlier, during an episcopal visitation of St Bartholomew’s Hospital the master was found to be incontinent with one of the sisters. Three commissaries (or vicars general in spirituals) of Bishop William Courteney suspended him ab ingressu ecclesie. They were M. John Appelby, dean of St Paul’s Cathedral; Roger Holme, chancellor of St Paul’s and M. Adam Mottrom, all acting in the absence of the bishop in remotis. Sutton appealed to the apostolic see and for protection (pro tuicione) to the Court of Arches. There the dean, M. Nicholas de Chaddesden, granted tuition and suspended the penalties. On 8 February 1376 the commissaries appealed this action to the pope and ordered Chaddesden to appear before them to answer for what he had done; instead he excommunicated them and soon they him. The lines were drawn, and in May significations were sent by both sides to the royal chancery seeking writs for the arrest of the opponents as excommunicates. Bishop Courteney’s vicars in spirituals had clearly overreacted. Courteney, who had been Sudbury’s competitor for Canterbury, once he had returned, seems to have become personally involved, and what had been a shouting match between two deans became an unseemly struggle between two bishops. Calm voices urged the London party to submit, among these voices some of the great men of the land: John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster; Edmund Mortimer, earl of March; Lord Percy; William Wykeham, bishop of Winchester and Adam Houghton, bishop of St Davids. Perhaps not coincidentally, March, Percy and Houghton were members of the intercommuning committee created in the Good Parliament on 9 May 1376. And, in the event, the London party did submit. Archbishop Sudbury, until recently bishop of London, seemed to take pleasure in recounting their submission in a letter dated 15 Jun 1376: ‘uenerabilis frater noster dominus Londoniensis episcopus magisterque… Iohannes Appelby, decanus Londoniensis, et magister Adam Mottrom nobis se reuerenter humiliassent’.
The dean of St Paul’s, John Appelby, and his right arm, Adam Mottrom, appeared in person before Sudbury ‘flexis ipsorum genibus’. The archbishop absolved them of their excommunications, remonstrated with them for their attack on the jurisdiction of his provincial court and annulled everything done by them in this matter. The archbishop and, indeed, his court had carried the day.
The article will present the relevant document for the register of Archbishop Sudbury.
