“I Discovered Such a Lay Force That I Could Not Remove Them”: Sacred and Secular Space and Ecclesiastical and Secular Authority in the Parish in the Fourteenth-Century Diocese of York

Abstract

In 1309, the parish church of Harewood in Yorkshire, England, was invaded by a group of armed parishioners opposing the decisions of the church courts. The story of this invasion and the ways in which Church and State attempted and failed to remove it demonstrate how an apparently local quarrel could be part of national political events and of the intertwining of the laws of Church and State. It also demonstrates, importantly, a largely overlooked aspect of the relationship between the laity at a local level and the Church as an institution.

1. Introduction

In the early summer of 1309, the Archdiocese of York found itself with an awkward problem. A group of armed men had invaded and occupied the church of Harewood and, in so doing, were preventing the normal operations of the parish: neither parishioners nor clergy could use the building, and the essential services and rites that sacralized and sustained everyday life were suspended. Clerical authorities, prevented by canon law from becoming involved with potential bloodshed, were at a loss when dealing directly with such problems, and so bishop William Greenfield’s chancery sought to solve the situation by using a well-established protocol. They wrote to the king, Edward II, asking him to issue the writ de vi laica amovenda, a writ which instructed the local sheriff to evict the armed group and thus allowed diocesan authority space to settle the underlying dispute according to Church law without the fear that someone would be injured or killed.

In this case, the royal administration was obliging and efficient. A request in the name of Archbishop William Greenfield was written on 6 July 1309, and just six days later, on 12 July, the writ was issued.1

The result was disappointing. The sheriff went to Harewood, but he reported that the size and ferocity of the lay force were too much for him and his men. He could not, he said, remove it without special instructions and reinforcements.2

This case appears at first sight to be just another administrative attempt to deal with a local dispute that was out of control. Medieval men and women did ignore or defy the authority of the Church, and the Church’s last resort in such cases was to appeal for secular support. However, in this instance, we can dig deeply into this case to show the interlacing layers of authority and the complicating webs of influence and power that gave birth to and sustained this parochial conflict. It is a story about people in authority who lacked power and those who turned out to have power, even though they lacked authority.

The setting was an ecclesiastical building, a parish church in Yorkshire in the West Riding, about eight miles from present-day Leeds. Harewood’s church was destroyed and rebuilt in the fifteenth century, so we cannot say anything about its physical appearance. It was, by the early fourteenth century, in the patronage of the Delisle family, who lived locally in Rougemont Castle.3 The actors in these events include not just the local clergy and laity, armed or otherwise, but also other secular and ecclesiastical figures—the king, a baron, and a bishop. It is a parochial case in both senses of the word but also one that cannot be uncoupled from high politics. It involves the blurred and messy intricacies of two legal systems, ecclesiastical and secular, and exposes the weakness of both since unlawful force overrules them. The sources for this case are so rich that we can offer a multivalent construction of the versions of events at Harewood. These events can be understood through the lens of parish administration but also as part of the experience at the courts of two consecutive kings, Edward I and Edward II. It is also the story of managing the entanglements of two overlapping jurisdictions—ecclesiastical and secular. In addition, it is the story of those local men (and perhaps women) who took up arms and occupied the parish church in defiance of both secular and ecclesiastical law.

The writ de vi laica amovenda

The 1309 request for a writ was for de vi laica amovenda, which means ‘concerning the removal of a lay force,’ evolved as part of the development of the concept of trespass in secular law. The writ of trespass emerged in the 1220s as an evolution of the thirteenth-century appeal process, providing a means to bring complaints of breach of obligations (the definition of trespass at this point) before the king’s court, and by the mid-thirteenth century, it was in regular use. By the 1270s, in order to reduce the administrative burden of the substantial number of such claims coming to the King’s court, claims of trespass cases before the king’s justices also had to involve allegations of force. Thus, by the end of the thirteenth century, the writ of trespass encompassed breaches of the king’s peace ‘by force and arms’ (vi et armis) to seize property. (Palmer 1993, pp. 143–56). It focused on violations of that peace through unlawful property seizure.

De vi laica also dealt with property seizure. It first appeared amongst a proliferation of new types of writs in the second and third quarters of the thirteenth century, at the same time as writs of trespass were emerging.4 Why this writ was created we do not know, but we can see quite clearly how it was used. As its Latin name suggests, it compelled the sheriff of the relevant jurisdiction to remove a lay force. That usually meant a band of armed men who had unlawfully occupied property, thus preventing it from being used by its lawful owner or occupant. De vi laica could be used in disputes about lay secular property, but primarily, it came to be used in cases involving ecclesiastical property and was requested by diocesan administrators in a bishop’s name. By 1300, requests for the writ were also emphasizing forceful intrusion onto ecclesiastical property, usually by echoing the ‘vi et armis’ language of the writ of trespass.

The Church’s adoption of this writ so readily needs to be understood in the context of the development of the diocesan Church courts in England as independent institutions separate from the bishop himself. In the 1220s, we can see those courts requesting writs that called upon secular power to enforce their authority in other circumstances. Through the first half of the thirteenth century, diocesan courts became less and less likely to be ad hoc institutions that gathered whenever and wherever the bishop, the judge, required them. Instead, they became institutions with their own staff, including their own judges with the delegated power of a diocesan bishop, which operated according to their own processes. (Brundage 2008, pp. 145–49; Morris 1971, pp. 115–23). As the courts explored ways to enforce their processes and bolster their authority, they began to make use of the proliferation of new thirteenth-century writs that called upon the king’s sheriffs—the ‘secular arm’—to help them. The first and most frequently used requests were for the writ de capiendo excommunicato, which asked for the seizure, by the sheriff, of obdurate excommunicates: that is, people who had been given the sentence of major excommunication by a church court because of their refusal to obey ecclesiastical law and who continued to refuse. This writ became a standard tool of the diocesan courts for centuries, targeting those who repeatedly ignored court summons and were then excommunicated.5 The other writ that the diocesan administrations found useful was the writ de vi laica amovenda, which was often called for when the court’s final judgment in a case about a Church benefice, usually a decision about who was or was not the rightful incumbent had been opposed, and it is likely that requests for the writ were similarly made in the bishop’s name and at least sometimes through the Church courts and often at the request of the bishop’s other administrators (we must be cautious of assuming that the bishop himself was aware of the content of these requests).6 However, to discover how the church of Harewood had reached a position where the writ was needed and how it responded to attempts to exercise that writ, we need first to understand the narrative of events. For the Harewood case, we are fortunate in being able to trace the story from its earliest beginnings through diocesan and government records, including archiepiscopal registers and the rolls of royal government, as well as through surviving writs and requests for writs.

2. Diocesan Administration and Clerical Appointments

To understand how the summer of 1309 found an armed group holding the parish church at Harewood, we must go back over a decade, to 1298, when the bishop instituted Humphrey de Beauchamp as rector of Harewood, at the presentation of the king, Edward I.7 This was a valuable benefice. Harewood church was worth £66 a year, even after an annual pension of £1 to St Mary’s Abbey, York.8 Usually, it would not have been given to a royal servant, as it was not one of the churches in the king’s patronage to which he had a right to appoint the rector. In 1298, though, the lay patron of the church (Robert Delisle) was currently underage and was the king’s ward. The king was entitled to make decisions on behalf of his ward, and so Edward I, at this point in time, controlled the patronage and could appoint the rector.

2.1. Appointing Parish Clergy

Edward I’s nominated rector, Humphrey de Beauchamp, was not in major orders and was only an acolyte at this point. This almost certainly meant he was not committed to a career in the Church. He could still leave the service of the church to take up a secular role, inherit a family estate, or marry; rectors in lower orders often did just that. That there should not have been rectors with the duty of pastoral care who were in lower orders is clear. In theory, bishops should have been able to refuse a completely unsuitable candidate, such as one remaining in lower orders, and Barrow has suggested that in the twelfth century, the majority were, in fact, priests: those she discusses who were not, were certainly in higher orders. (Barrow 2015, pp. 341–42). In practice, bishops in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries did have to admit some unsuitable, unordained men to benefices. There were not many who stayed in lower orders. In the diocese of Lincoln, for example, under Bishop Oliver Sutton (1280–1299), although over 160 men are presented to benefices with cure of souls as in minor orders in the archdeaconry of Lincoln alone, all are said to receive higher orders at or before institution. This is not, though, the entire story. Rectors persisting in lower orders did exist. We see institutions of twenty-seven men in lower orders in the diocese of York just in the five years of the Harewood case. Of these, only seven men, were clearly ordained to higher orders later, possibly if we are generous with identification nine. We also see similar rectors described by the chroniclers (leaving their roles as rectors to take on family estates and to marry, for example)9. A bishop faced with such an institution could request the appointment of a vicar who would be an ordained priest and would serve the church. There is no evidence of a vicar at Harewood, though we have a reference in 1310 to a parochial chaplain who was permitted to perform mass in the church.10 However, even the appointment of a vicar was regarded by at least some bishops as a second-rate performance of pastoral care. Vicars were not well remunerated. They generally received only the less valuable tithes and offerings from the parish to which they were assigned. It was acknowledged that this meant they could end up serving several parishes at once to the detriment of all the parishioners in their care. Such an institution was, then, clearly an unsatisfactory situation for the Church, and to try and mitigate this and make sure that those who were given the benefits and responsibilities of a parish were committed to serving the Church and fulfilled canon law, a rector in lower orders could only legally hold a church, with the proviso that he be ordained to higher orders at the point of his institution to a benefice, and he should rectify his unsuitable ordination within a year. (Rodes 1977, pp. 83–84). In the case of Harewood, the archbishop provided Humphrey with letters of dimissory for ordination to subdeacon (the first of the three higher orders) by any suitable bishop.11 This grant of letters was not unusual; it fulfilled the law and was designed to give Humphrey flexibility about when and where he was ordained by allowing him, though not obliging him, to be ordained outside the diocese. Nevertheless, he did not avail himself of this assistance and remained an acolyte, still uncommitted to the Church and able to change career and his state of life if it was advantageous to him. Because he had not fulfilled the condition of his institution, Humphrey’s institution lapsed. Proceedings against him for non-residence were briefly considered (perhaps unsurprisingly, Humphrey, unable to perform the duties required from a parish priest, had not made his home among his parishioners) but adjourned by Archbishop Corbridge, at the request of Humphrey’s father (Walter de Beauchamp the king’s steward).12 Then, (as was common if the patron agreed to it) Humphrey was simply re-instituted in 1300, giving him another opportunity to qualify himself13 (Maxwell Lyte 1895a, p. 486). He benefitted financially from Harewood; in 1301, the king granted him permission to sell the tithes of his church.14 The next we hear of him is in 1302, when, again at his father’s request, he received permission from the bishop to be absent from Harewood for one year to study theology at university.15 Subsequently, in January 1307, he was given a license by the archbishop to study at university for another three years. In effect, Humphrey was given permission to absent himself from these duties, which he was not qualified to perform, while still being allowed to take part of the income of his parish to support himself.16 He was not, however, left alone. In June 1308, he appeared before the archbishop’s court to explain why he remained an acolyte whilst holding a benefice. The hearing dragged on, first adjourned to September, then postponed to May 1309.17

2.2. Responses to Presentation of Clergy

This prosecution was unwelcome news for Humphrey de Beauchamp; he had managed to reap the profits from a valuable benefice for a decade whilst evading the requirement to be ordained to higher orders, and this new legal challenge was a clear attempt to remove him as rector of Harewood. However, although the Church courts heard the case, the power pushing for this change was not, in fact, ecclesiastical. The May 1309 court hearing did not happen, for in January 1309, the king, now Edward II, acted pre-emptively as if the Church Courts had already declared Humphrey’s presentation invalid.18 Edward presented his own clerk, Roger de Ledes, as the new rector of Harewood (Maxwell Lyte 1894, p. 98)19. He had previously granted Roger benefices in royal patronage, but they had not been valuable ones.20 Harewood was a far more lucrative rectorship. But, as if to show the difficulties bishops and their diocesan administrators had with patrons who would not present the right kinds of men to rectories, Roger, too, was only in minor orders. At his institution, he also received letters dimissory for ordination to all orders, major and minor, from any bishop, again giving him the maximum possible opportunity to correct that irregularity.21

Humphrey would not give up Harewood. In February 1309, Roger had taken Humphrey to court over his presentation to Harewood in a case where Humphrey was described as the incumbent in possession of the church. By June, the case was over, and Roger had been declared the rector. This was, in canon law, the right and legal decision. Although we have seen there were other English medieval rectors who were not ordained to higher orders and who do not seem to have suffered for that,22 they were all potentially vulnerable to this law if anyone had chosen to pursue it, and Humphrey had been given many opportunities to take higher orders. Humphrey had to pay £20 in costs (probably the full costs of both parties, as Roger had won the case). The court ordered the archdeacon to induct Roger, that is, to put him in legal possession of the property and income of the parish church of Harewood.23

Things did not, however, go easily for Roger: A lay occupation prevented his induction, a ceremony which was required by law and which necessitated his physical entry into the building. By 6 July, the archdeacon of York, whose responsibility it was to conduct the ceremony of induction, had exasperated the diocesan administration by claiming that he could not induct Roger because anyone trying would be in peril of their life. In response, the bishop’s chancery issued orders to the archdeacon’s official.

2.3. The Composition of a Lay Force

Although the patron and the rectors would have had their own supporters, it seems to have been clear to their contemporaries that this lay force included Harewood parishioners. We would not expect a request for the writ de vi laica to make specific reference to parishioners. Those documents had a standard format, and that format involved reference to the lay force, which the writ was designed to remove. The key document to understanding the composition of the lay force, though, is not that request but the 1309 document directed to the archdeacon of York’s official.24 Both the phrasing and the timing of this document are worth careful consideration. First, it is issued on the same day as the request for the removal of a lay force. Both documents are issued in the name of the archbishop by his administration. The lay force is already there, threatening the official. The document addresses how the archdeacon should respond to ‘parishioners’ and others. He must ensure that the parishioners (parochianos) understand they must fulfill all their duties to the rector, including, for example, payment of tithe and offerings, on pain of excommunication. He must also ensure that Humphrey allows him access to the church, as must the others ‘omnes et singulos’ involved. The official should take note of the names of all those parishioners and others (de nominibus omnium et singulorum tam parochianorum quam aliorum) whom he excommunicates. The document could suggest that the parishioners are being warned about their future behavior, and the lay force is made up of people who are not parishioners. That would, however, be to consider this document out of the context of other lay forces and other episcopal complaints about the behavior of parishioners and to make a simple binary distinction about a more obviously complex situation.

First, the phrase ‘parishioners and others’ may mean that there are those who are not parishioners present, but it need not do so. In legal terms, it gives the archdeacon the right to excommunicate anyone who refuses to leave the church and who is not a parishioner. This is common caution on the part of a diocesan administration.25

Second, the parishioners themselves seem to be hostile or expected to be hostile to Roger. It would be possible to read this document as the official issuing a pre-emptive warning to the parishioners about tithes and the consequence of not treating Roger as their legitimate rector. However, elsewhere in this register, we can see that this was a real concern: such withholding did occur. There are references in this register to the excommunication of groups of parishioners for the withholding of tithes and oblations; they are either absolutions for those who have actually been excommunicated for this or excommunications of those said to be actively planning to do so.26 One at least of these is specifically said to be about ill feelings towards the current clergyman, the vicar (that at Pontefract). In the Diocese of Lincoln, we also see an example of the parishioners withholding tithes from a non-resident rector who has taken sanctuary in the parish (which he otherwise clearly does not serve) because of their dislike of his different behavior (Hill 1954, pp. 172–73). There are other reasons to suspect that the parishioners of Harewood went on to withhold those tithes. Harewood is placed under sequestration during these events, which is the response to the withholding of tithes in other York cases, too.

Third, there are other examples of lay forces where parishioners are involved. In 1300, a lay force invading Tickhill was specifically said to include parishioners, and at Berkhamsted in the thirteenth century, another lay force objecting to a new rector may possibly have included some of the local lords’ servants, but parishioners were very much active too.27 We cannot exclude parishioners by claiming a lay force worked in the interests of a local lord who was a patron. Those serving a lord locally are, in fact, directed to attendance at their parish churches, too. Appointments of private chaplains and the right to have private chapels within private houses are usually accompanied by an insistence that those in the household should attend the parish church for all major occasions and events. They are a part of the parish. At Harewood, the Delisles were a very local family; they had strong familial connections to Humphrey de Beauchamp and are the most likely provision of support to the rector in his opposition in addition to any parishioners. We rarely obtain the names of those in lay forces, but at Gosberton in 1296, for example, those involved in a lay force invasion in that parish church included the patron’s servant—who was also described as a local man of Gosberton, so was a parishioner. In addition, at Gosberton, those excommunicated for their involvement in this lay force do penance within the parish church there. Excommunicates would generally perform their penance in their own parish church.28

When the bishop’s administration contacted the archdeacon of York’s official, then, they expected trouble from the parishioners, which, in view of the sequestration of the church, seemed to have been forthcoming. We know that lay forces in other parish churches did include—maybe even were made up of—parishioners. It is hard to exclude parishioners from the lay force at Harewood. The numbers in a lay force were likely to be small and would never have included all parishioners. On the only occasion where all names are given, there are twenty-nine people in the invading force.29 That only some parishioners were involved does not, however, lessen the impact of the fact that parishioners did play a role here.

2.4. Responding to a Lay Force

As we have already seen, the sheriff received the necessary writ and tried to act upon it, but he failed. His attempts may have been forceful since there were claims of actual shedding of blood, both in the church and in the churchyard (where burial remained forbidden until 1343 when the diocesan administration accepted there had been no bloodshed here).30

By the end of July 1309, Roger had effectively lost the benefice of Harewood, even though he had a court judgment in his favor, and although he had resigned his other benefices to take on Harewood,31 In this situation, however, possession really was all the law. In December 1309, the diocesan administration still held the position that Roger was legally the rector of Harewood when they granted him a license for non-residence to study at university for four years as the rector.32 By September 1310, however, Roger had accepted defeat and resigned, and Robert de Lisle, who had in the previous year taken the king to court to prove he was no longer a minor, was instructed to present a new rector.33 The patron must have responded almost immediately as the diocese gave orders for the institution and induction of Humphrey de Beauchamp.34 Humphrey was, at least, now in higher orders, as he is described as a subdeacon. In 1311, Humphrey again received letters dimissory, allowing him to receive the additional major orders (deacon and priest) from any bishop, although he continued to be described as subdeacon from this date until he disappears from the record (where he is given any status at all) so did not take this opportunity.35 From that point, no one attempted to dislodge him, and Humphrey kept his benefice. He was still a problem in the diocese and, indeed, a thorn in the side of the parish. In 1314, the diocese fined him 40s for selling the Harewood parish tithes illegally.36 The next year, the bishop gave him another license to study at the university for three years, in part intended to keep him temporarily out of a difficult situation.37 This was not effective. On 30 July 1317, Humphrey was accused of assaulting one Richard Moyses at Harewood, and while that accusation was made in the secular courts, at around the same time, he was also summoned to the church courts. In 1318, the archbishop requested Humphrey’s arrest by the sheriff because Humphrey had remained excommunicated for over forty days (probably having failed to take notice of the authority of the Church court).38 In June 1321, the bishop’s court was asked to augment the sentence previously passed against him.39 In December 1321, he was replaced by a new rector, John de Welton.40

3. High Politics in the Parish

Disputes of this kind were rarely just local, not least because matters concerning the choice of clergy frequently lay in the hands of lay patrons who were often people of some substance. In the case of Harewood, we have already seen both men given royal presentations. It is possible to place the events at Harewood firmly in the context of the high politics of the first decades of the fourteenth century. They are part of the relationship between two successive kings and the powerful Beauchamp family, and the quarrel over the benefice of Harewood was also a skirmish in Edward II’s quarrels with the earl of Warwick.

3.1. The Beauchamps and the King

Humphrey Beauchamp, the debatable rector of Harewood, was a scion of the influential English aristocratic family, the Beauchamps, although he was not directly in the line of the Beauchamp earldom of Warwick. He was the younger son of Walter Beauchamp, Edward I’s steward, who was brother to the first earl of Warwick; thus, Humphrey was the earl’s nephew (Gemmell 2014, p. 90)41. Influential uncles aside, Walter, Humphrey’s father, was a man of mixed reputation, admired as one of the best of the king’s knights yet criticized for his pride and violence. He wielded significant power at court. (Prestwich 1997, pp. 145–46).

When Humphrey received the benefice of Harewood, Walter’s influence with the king was at its peak, and as we have seen, Walter intervened to ensure that his son kept the benefice. Walter’s death in 1303, however, weakened Humphrey’s position. That year, the king tried to persuade Humphrey to resign Harewood voluntarily so he could reward one of his clerks, but Humphrey resisted and kept the church.42 Upon his accession, Edward II made a more determined effort to secure the benefice. His motivation was likely that of any new king wanting to reward his own supporters. At Harewood, Edward’s legal advisors used that part of canon law about the necessity for a rector to be in higher orders, often overlooked, to remove Humphrey on the grounds he was still in minor orders. He also kept Robert Delisle, the patron of Harewood, under his wardship, disputing that Robert had reached adulthood for some time after Robert claimed he had, thus enabling Edward to keep control of the disposition of this valuable benefice.43

This maneuvering by Edward II was a dubious tactic, driven by the desire to have gifts with which to reward loyal servants, but this kind of royal stratagem was by no means uncommon. However, the backlash to his decision to replace the rector of Harewood needs to be understood in the national political context; there was more to that lay invasion than simply the desire of Harewood’s parishioners to have one unqualified, non-resident clergyman rather than another.

Edward II had a difficult relationship with the Beauchamp family, which would ultimately culminate in the earl of Warwick’s, Guy de Beauchamp’s, involvement in the beheading of royal favorite Piers Gaveston in 1312 (Pierre Chaplais 1994, p. 88) but there were tensions even before Edward’s coronation. In fact, Guy had the distinction of being the only English noble who opposed Gaveston consistently from Edward II’s coronation to Gaveston’s death. He had been one of the earls enjoined by a dying Edward I to look after his son, which included preventing Piers Gaveston from returning to England. (Prestwich 1997, p. 557). Those earls failed; Gaveston was recalled as soon as Edward I was dead, but the earl of Warwick’s seal is notably absent from the document of that year creating Gaveston earl of Cornwall, and he was amongst the earls involved in forcing Gaveston’s second exile in August 1308. (Seymour Phillips 2012, pp. 127, 146–51). During the rest of that summer, the king attempted reconciliation with the Beauchamps, but in January 1309, those moves seemed to have been at an end, as Edward was already trying to exercise his authority and engineer Gaveston’s return to England. By the April Parliament of that year, the king thought that he had enough support to recall Piers. He was wrong. Parliament rejected his petition to end Gaveston’s exile, and his request for taxation to pursue his wars led to the famous Eleven Articles of Reform. (Phillips 2012, pp. 152, 156–57). Nevertheless, in June 1309, Gaveston returned to England. (Chaplais 1994, pp. 67–68; Phillips 2012, pp. 158–59). Edward was clearly afraid that this would lead to more than just discontent. That month, the Earl of Warwick was among those banned from taking part in tournaments to limit the chances of them bringing armed retainers to Parliament when it met on 27 July. (Phillips 2012, p. 158).

3.2. Edward II, the Beauchamps and Harewood

Amidst these events, the bestowal of a lucrative Yorkshire benefice upon a royal servant through a subtle maneuver might not have held significant importance to Edward II. However, to the Beauchamp family and their allies, it would have carried considerable weight. It was another instance of Edward II’s questionable leadership and a slight to their family. The violent confrontation at Harewood parish church occurred during a period of heightened tensions following Gaveston’s return in 1309, which had strained the relationship between the king and the earls.

While the lay invasion stemmed from Humphrey’s legal defeat in the church courts rather than Gaveston’s return, it also opposed the perceived arbitrary exercise of royal authority. Who instigated the invasion of Harewood church remains unclear, but one plausible answer is the Delisle family, who had links with the Beauchamps. They obtained the manor and advowson only in the thirteenth century,44 but nevertheless, the family established itself in Rougemont Castle nearby, solidifying their presence. Robert Delisle was married to Margaret de Beauchamp, Humphrey’s sister. Robert’s marriage was granted to the queen for the use of Walter de Beauchamp, king’s steward, in 130145.

In 1309, Edward II’s appointment of a new rector to Harewood prompted Robert to contest his rights through legal channels. By 1310, the king’s courts had recognized Robert as of age and confirmed the possession of his property, including the manor and advowson of Harewood. Moreover, his first action as patron was the re-presentation of Humphrey de Beauchamp, who was re-instituted into the parish church of Harewood.46 At this point, the Beauchamp faction was not prepared to accommodate the king with regard to his appointment of Harewood’s rector.

Although seemingly the work of parish residents, objecting to the imposition of a new rector, at another level, the lay invasion of Harewood was undoubtedly a small but definite defiance of Edward II. If one source of this opposition were Robert Delisle, a member of the Beauchamp faction, they would only have confirmed what was well known at court: that the Beauchamps and the king were not on good terms.

4. Laws of Church and State in Crisis

This dispute would ultimately be settled by direct action, but Roger de Ledes was by no means the only loser. Neither ecclesiastical law nor secular law, nor both acting in concert, were able to impose on Harewood the correct legal outcome; patrons, clergy, and others, including parishioners, apparently cared little for the legal provisions which governed the institution of rectors.

4.1. The Application of Two Laws

The failure of legal procedures to bring about a solution was certainly not for the want of trying. The bishop imposed ecclesiastical law at the institution of both clergymen; he placed them under legal obligation to qualify themselves. It could be argued that the legal provision allowing a delay in taking major orders and the ability of bishops to legally exempt clergy from residence whilst studying at university was not ultimately to the advantage of parishioners. They were, however, lawful, and failure to fulfill his obligations, or to conduct himself properly, did lead Humphrey into the church courts on a number of occasions. The exercise of ecclesiastical law was not, however, confined to bishops and their clerks. Edward II (or his legal advisors) apparently knew enough canon law to know that Humphrey’s refusal to take major orders had left him vulnerable to be ousted from Harewood’s rectory, although they acted as if they could administer this law without waiting for the ecclesiastical court to formerly void Humphrey’s presentation. When the dispute threatened to turn violent, the diocesan response was an appeal to secular, common law; the sheriff’s intervention was requested to remove the armed occupiers of the Church. Although the sheriff’s men proved unequal to the task, this strategy, in which a bishop asks the king to tell the sheriff to help the bishop, was, by this date, a strategy that a competent diocesan lawyer would have attempted.

Attempts to settle the Harewood quarrel, then, show us both the amount of legal work parish disputes could create and the way in which the Church, despite its voluminous canon of law, its many courts, its hosts of professional lawyers, and its extensive jurisdiction over both clergy and laity, was vulnerable: to the intransigence of powerful patrons; to the simple resistance of lay people; and to clergy who ignored legal instruction. In narrating the relationship between the laws of the Church and the State, it is not uncommon to conclude that without the support of the state, the Church’s claim to authority was rather thin. However, in this case, it was not only the Church’s authority that was fragile. The sheriff, the representative of the king in the shire, failed here, too, as they did in similar situations across the country. Medieval men of law would then perhaps tell us that the problems at Harewood stemmed from the failure of both State and Church to be able to enforce their laws. At heart, the Delisles, Humphrey, and those parishioners involved in the lay invasion of Harewood knew that there was little chance that any legal process would ultimately restrain them from acting as they wished.

By 1309, when the lay force at Harewood was keeping Edward II’s candidate Robert out of the benefice, the difficult relationship between secular and ecclesiastical law in England looked to have obtained a sort of balance. Disputes over which court should try advowson law or disputes over tithes had standard answers. Felonious clerks were handed to the bishop’s representative, but only with the preliminary judgment of the king’s court. There were exceptions, and clergy could find ways to maroon cases they did not want to answer between two courts mired in technicalities. (Millon 2009, p. lxx; Cheney 1950, pp. 108–18; Helmholz 2004, pp. 477–81). Legal jurisdictions around wills, defamation, and slander were also divided between secular and ecclesiastical courts, which reflected civil and canon law. (Helmholz 2004, pp. 409–14, 575–90). As Harding has pointed out, though, the two laws could be positive reinforcements of each other, with the Church describing as a sin what the State described as a felony. (Harding 2002, p. 137).

There were still points of tension and conflict between the two laws. Sometimes, disputes were proxies for cases that the Church could not hear. Church courts ruling over defamation (part of the diocesan courts until the 1840s) heard cases of accusations of murder and theft, and while they ruled only on whether this was defamation, doing so also often involved deciding if the accusation was true. Moreover, the cases between two men who both claimed to be rectors of one parish were heard by the Church, even though, in essence, these were often disputes about patronage, which were usually heard in the secular courts.

The writ de vi laica amovenda was often a last resort in disputes over benefices, as at Harewood.47 Presentation to a benefice was a valuable resource. The patron received no pay for it, but they could use it to reward loyal service (from a member of the household or a useful lawyer, for example) or to support a relative. For the rector, they were a direct form of payment and upkeep. Lay invasion arising from such disputes was a direct challenge to the Church’s authority, as in Harewood, where it is a refusal to accept the judgment of the Church courts. It is not surprising that the Church attempted to regain its position. However, doing so put it in a particularly difficult situation.

4.2. Secular Law in Sacred Spaces

The most dangerous issue was that of the exercise of secular authority within sacred space. The Church’s request to the king already acknowledged a failure to enforce its jurisdiction. The invaders of the church were questioning the Church’s authority to decide the legitimate rector of a parish. It is tempting to dismiss these lay forces as legal fiction (Dodd and McHardy 2010), but medieval lay forces were very real. They set up weaponry on church roofs, aimed arrows through windows, dug trenches, received food deliveries, ran to avoid the sheriff, threatened, and fought.48 The remedy requested to deal with them, though, was also dangerous.

Sacred spaces have always been highly contested, for they are valuable spiritual and secular resources. They are points of powerful connection with the divine, and the possibility of harnessing that power for themselves also attracts secular authority. (Hassner 2009, pp. 2–4). Asking the king to issue a writ to enforce the Church’s authority in a sacred building was, therefore, risky for the Church. The attempt to regain its authority in one arena meant significantly reducing it in another.

This could be seen as an example of Harding’s claim. The two forms of law, secular and ecclesiastical, work together to enforce judgments and uphold the authority of both courts mutually. However, from a less optimistic perspective, this situation highlights a significant risk to the Church’s claim to authority.

By treating an ecclesiastical building (often a parish church) similar to a piece of secular property, a bishop’s or, in this case an archbishop’s administration took a risk. The Church consistently asserted that secular authority could not be exercised within sacred property. In sanctuary cases, for instance, the sheriff could not arrest the person claiming sanctuary in or around the parish church. However, by requesting the use of the writ de vi laica, the diocesan administration invited the sheriff into church property to exercise royal secular authority.

How the Church reconciled its use of this writ with its claims to absolute authority over sacred space and the parish clergy is unclear. However, we know that there would have been tensions as there were about the use of other writs invoking secular power, similar to those asking for the arrest of stubborn excommunicates. Arguments over whether these were claimed by the Church’s right or through the king’s grace continued through the thirteenth century and into the fourteenth.49

This did not mean, though, that this writ allowed the successful exercise of secular power. The sheriff’s attempts to implement it also revealed the failures of secular law. It is rare that the sheriff’s intervention in such cases had any long-term effect. In the cases we can track, there is only one instance of a successfully removed lay force, and in that case, the sheriff arrived late, the interlopers had already been ousted, only for the sheriff to replace the legitimate party once more with their rivals (Maxwell Lyte 1906, p. 154)50. In most cases, then, secular law also failed. The resolutions of lay invasions usually followed one of two tracks. Either the party with the law on their side resorted to increasing violence themselves, for example, kidnapping and imprisoning a recalcitrant head of a religious house,51 or as at Harewood, the administration adapted to the status quo.

5. Parish Churches and Parishioners

If, in theory at least, Church and State, bishop and king, were where authority resided in these cases, those who took up arms, occupied the Church, threatened violence against a lawfully instituted rector and the archdeacon, and then resisted the sheriff’s armed men, knew that the exercise of that authority was no easy matter. Neither, it appears, did they fully accept that the Church as an institution and through its courts had an ultimate say in the choice of the clergy, and although they cannot have been unaware that the physical building of a church, through its ritual consecration to God and its staging of the magical rite in which the priest turned bread into the body of Christ, should be regarded as sacred, or that only certain types of behavior were considered by the Church as appropriate in the consecrated space and that they could be punished by the church courts for misbehavior in church. Nevertheless, they took physical occupation of the building, prevented those with a legal right from entering, and eventually participated in a fracas that led to the shedding of blood, thus desecrating their own church and preventing its use for divine service for a period. Instructed or recruited as they may have been by the Delisle family, it is important to remember, in this case, that the armed invaders complained of in law were parishioners. They may well have been parishioners of Harewood. Even those who were not parishioners of this particular parish church were certainly parishioners of another with all the views of parish churches, their status, and their ownership, which that implied. Viewing their actions through the ecclesiastical lens, as a result of ignorance and sin, is a barrier to understanding these micro-resistances against patrons, bishops, clergy, and the rights that ecclesiastical law afforded them.

The fact that some parishioners were willing to take weapons into their Church and then threaten violence against a new rector (the representative of the patron), the archdeacon (the representative of the bishop), and then the sheriff (the representative of the king), suggests that how parishioners viewed the Church, both as building and institution was part of their own views of ecclesiastical power and authority.52

The personal animosity of the parishioners should not be overstated. They might also follow the directions of a discontented patron or local lord. At Harewood, the dissatisfied Delisles lived locally. However, the willingness of the laity to use a parish church as a place for an organized dispute and to spill blood there, even if at a local lord’s direction, deserves attention—can we come close to understanding how they saw the situation, and to their attitude to their parish church.

5.1. The Clerical View of the Parish Church

Theoretically, theologically, a church building was the local embodiment of the universal, eternal Church, a sacred place where heaven touched earth.53 It was consecrated, or given over, to God. It was where bread was transformed into the body of Christ during mass. In and around it, the dead were buried, serving as a reminder that the Christian Church included both the living and the dead (as Bossy describes it, the triumphant army of the Church resurrected). (Bossy 1983, pp. 36–38, 44–45). These dead were the family and friends of the living, still residing in the penumbra of the community, many still lively in imaginations.

The Church as an institution—the pope, bishops, and parish clergy—was aware of the discrepancies between their idealized view of the physical building of the Church and the actual conduct of the laity in it throughout Western Europe. The laity, they said, gossiped, conducted business negotiations, gambled, quarreled, fought, and danced in the church and churchyard, engaged in quarrels and physical altercations, and only attended when they wished to. (Murray 1984, pp. 92–95; Helmholz 2004, pp. 384–86). These behaviors were criticized in sermons and penitential texts. This disciplinary approach extended beyond mere behavioral lapses and also encompassed suspicions of active hostility towards the Church’s authority and, in later periods, accusations of heresy.54 Historians, in turn, have repeated these clerical viewpoints when explaining the reasons why parishioners behaved ‘badly’ in the Church. These explanations are rooted in the contemporary clerical perspective that frames parishioners as deviating from the Church’s expectations and norms.

5.2. The Lay View of the Parish Church

However, this oversimplifies the complex motivations and attitudes of medieval parishioners. Their behavior in the parish church might equally well stem from pragmatic considerations, social dynamics, or alternative spiritual practices that coexisted alongside formal Church teachings. Understanding behavior in medieval churches thus requires a nuanced approach that considers clerical ideals but also pays attention to alternative but equally valid views of the men and women who had invested heavily in terms of time and resources in the creation and maintenance of what was almost certainly the largest, safest, weather-proof, communal space available to them.

The laity neither accepted nor rejected what the clergy said about the church as a building. Medieval men and women viewed their parish churches as both sacred spaces imbued with spiritual significance and as practical assets that served practical needs. They understood the church as a sanctuary, a place where individuals could seek refuge in times of danger.55 That the violation of sanctuary met with objection from the laity, demonstrates their awareness of its sacred nature. During mass, they would have fully acknowledged the sacredness of the space in which the priest performed the miracle of transubstantiation, bread becoming the body of God.

Simultaneously, parishioners recognized the practical aspects of the church building. They bore the financial burden of supporting a large part of it, funding repairs, and ensuring the upkeep of the roof and nave. (Cragoe 2010, pp. 11–17). Parish gilds undertook the upkeep of altars and provision of lights. (Farnhill 2001, pp. 102–17; Hoskin 2007, pp. 7–33; Crouch 2000, pp. 31–33, 102–3). This financial investment surely contributed to their sense of ownership over the building. This communal building offered them a place of security during local conflicts or adverse weather. Parish churches were ideal venues for markets,56 and served as secure repositories for important documents or even weapon stashes for local militias, highlighting their utility beyond liturgical functions.57 The bells of the church, paid for by the parishioners, marked the passages of the day. (Arnold and Goodson 2012, pp. 112–18, 121–22). They were spaces where community gatherings took place, business deals occurred, and conflicts over those dealings could escalate to physical altercations. Just as with those forming parts of lay forces, none of these activities would have involved all the parishioners.

The laity also had a stake within the parish church in matters of religious authority and leadership. Their tithes paid the clergy who served in the churches; their money repaired its structure. That could involve invasion of the parish church, on their own initiative, or at the instigation of others. Moreover, these disputes could, as at Harewood, escalate to actual violence. For the laity, this violence was legitimate because it was in pursuit of justice as they perceived it. It followed the model of violent self-help depicted in, for example, the late-medieval Robin Hood ballads (Green 2003, pp. 268–74). They were swayed neither by the Church’s teaching on the sin of anger and violence nor by the threat of excommunication—separating them from the sacraments and community of the Church but not able to separate them from the parish church as a building. From the point of view of the clergy, although they taught that this violence was a desecration of the sacred, their success in transferring their ideas was only partial and did not prevent it from happening. The frequent need for ceremonial ecclesiastical reconciliation following such incidents underscores the difficulty in reconciling the sacred and secular uses of church space.

Medieval parishioners navigated their relationship with the church building through a lens that simultaneously recognized its spiritual significance and its practical utility, reflecting a complex interplay between sacred space, communal ownership, and secular needs. The Church, as an institution, aimed to maintain a clear distinction between the sacred and secular. It tried to dictate how this space should be used. This hierarchical approach was meant to ensure uniformity in religious practice and keep ecclesiastical control over religious affairs.

However, the effectiveness of these laws depended heavily on the consent and acceptance of the parishioners themselves. As has been noted, it was a place built on relationships between secular and ecclesiastical powers (Hamilton and Spicer 2006, pp. 5–22). but also part of that negotiation was the laity. Despite the Church’s efforts to keep parish churches as exclusively sacred spaces, medieval parishioners often asserted their own interpretations and kept in mind the practical uses of these buildings. Their actions, including conducting secular activities in the church, showed a broader understanding of the church building as a communal resource rather than solely a place of worship. Although the Church and the sheriff worked together to remove them from the parish church, it was these laymen and women who were, in fact, the church’s natural residents.

6. Conclusions

This story of the invasion of a parish church is, then, complicated. Even a basic piece of diocesan administration, the institution and induction of a suitable rector within a parish church, could become part of competing interests and imperfectly aligned views about the extent of legal authority. The records of courts and government demonstrate how events at Harewood had two legal systems, ecclesiastical and secular, both of which asserted comprehensive, exclusionary rights but competed over jurisdictions. They were labyrinthine in process and, in the parishes, inefficient and sometimes impossible to enforce without recourse to physical force. The lawful but self-interested exercise of church patronage by the king and powerful laymen could easily, in a time of simmering discontent and shifting loyalties at court, lead to proxy confrontations at the local level, in which ordinary people were caught up. The points of view we have seen have revealed the complex situations and assumptions within which the Church worked. The case of Harewood has demonstrated the ways in which the laws of Church and State continue to intertwine in the fourteenth century and how events that seem to involve only the politics of the Church can be a part of the high politics of King and Parliament. We can clearly see the difficulties of the medieval English Church in appointing clergy qualified to provide pastoral care, in upholding the authority of the newly professionalized church courts, and in the eyes of the common law. Sometimes, their failure to maintain ecclesiastical authority meant they needed to rely upon secular power. However, this is not a simple case of state authority either bolstering or challenging the power of the Church, although there are hints of both. The lay invasion at Harewood demonstrates the weakness of both laws in action. This is not because the lay force was physically stronger, although they may well have been so, but because they too had a view of their place within the parish church—and thus with the Church as a whole—which was complex, built on consent but also on ownership and a particular view of justice. The parishioners and others invading the parish church may never have heard of Piers Gaveston. The changing rectors of Harewood were never to their advantage—the appointed men were unqualified to provide the pastoral care and services the parishioners could have expected. We cannot know if they seized the parish church from conviction or a sense of injustice or whether they were responding to a promise of reward. Nonetheless, their role here was essential. The failure of the diocese and the sheriff is because of the necessity for the consent of the parishioner, the laity who are not necessarily directly opposed to the Church but whose relationship with it is both distinct and important.