Alexander Bicknor

Alexander Bicknor (also de Bicknor or Bykenore ) (* after 1260; † July 14, 1349 in Dublin ) was an English clergyman. From 1317 he was Archbishop of Dublin .

Origin and studies

Alexander Bicknor was probably born in Bicknor , Gloucestershire in the 1260s and named after the place. Presumably he studied at Oxford University and graduated with a master's degree . Possibly he was promoted early in his career in England and later in Wales by Joan de Valence , the Countess of Pembroke and Lady of Wexford. Goodrich Castle , which was one of her favorite residences, is located near Bicknor.

Rise to Archbishop

Bicknor is first mentioned in the service of the Crown in 1291 when he was supposed to check weirs on the Severn . In 1301 and 1302 he raised taxes in Gloucestershire, and in 1305 he accompanied John Wogan , the Justiciar of Ireland , on his journey to Ireland . Apparently, however, he had returned quickly to England, because in 1306 he was supposed to raise taxes in Gloucestershire again. In June 1307 he was appointed administrator of failed crown fiefs in Ireland and in October 1307 treasurer of the Treasury of Dublin. At the beginning of 1311 he was elected as the new Archbishop of the Archbishopric of Dublin by the two long-quarreling cathedral chapters of St Patrick’s and Holy Trinity Cathedral in Dublin . Pope Clement V , however, rejected the election in favor of John Lech , another royal official. In June 1311 King Edward II appointed Bicknor as his representative at the Council of Vienne , but Bicknor did not take part in the council, but was treasurer in Ireland from 1311 to 1312. In May 1313 the King appointed Archbishop Lech as the new Treasurer. However, Lech died a few months later before he could take office, so Bicknor continued to exercise the office. After the death of Archbishop Lech, Bicknor was re-elected Archbishop by a majority of the cathedral chapter of St Patrick's Cathedral, while the chapter of Holy Trinity Cathedral elected Walter Thornbury , Chancellor of Ireland . Thereupon Bicknor resigned his office as treasurer on April 15, 1314 in order to represent his claim before the Curia in Avignon . He had the support of the king, and in addition his rival Thornbury had probably drowned in early 1314 when he was about to travel by ship to France to the Curia. However, when Bicknor arrived in Avignon around June 1314 , Pope Clement V had died, so that the dispute over recognition of the election could not be resolved. With the King's approval, Bicknor stayed in Avignon, but the election of a new Pope was delayed. An English embassy finally stood up in favor of Bicknor, among others. Thereupon confirmed on August 20, 1317 the new Pope John XXII. the election of Bicknor, who was finally consecrated bishop by the Pope himself in Avignon on August 25th.

Activity as archbishop, mediator and diplomat under Edward II.

In the early autumn of 1317 Bicknor had already returned to England, but he did not continue to Ireland to his diocese. Instead, he was a member of the delegation of English bishops that traveled to the Earl of Lancaster at Pontefract Castle in the autumn . There they tried to mediate between the king and Lancaster, who is indeed the king's leading domestic opponent. In September the delegation held further talks with Lancaster in York . In November 1317 Bicknor was in London's St Paul's Cathedral , where the papal bulls were proclaimed with the excommunication of the Scottish King Robert Bruce , then he traveled again on behalf of the king to Lancaster in Pontefract. From spring 1318 Bicknor took part in further, lengthy negotiations with the Earl of Lancaster. In the meantime he chaired a royal council on June 2, 1318 together with Archbishop Reynolds , the Earl of Pembroke and Hugh le Despenser . In August 1318 he testified to Leake's treaty , which was to reconcile Lancaster with the king. A few days later, on August 11th, Bicknor was appointed Justiciar of Ireland. He returned to Dublin on October 9, 1318, six years after his first election as archbishop. Bicknor stayed longer in Ireland, but in March 1319 he was replaced by Roger Mortimer as justiciar. At the beginning of 1320 he held a provincial synod during which 23 statutes were passed. These dealt with the obligation to pay tithing and the obligation to observe the feast days of St. Patrick and other Irish saints. In February 1321 he founded a university attached to St Patrick's Cathedral, which had a law and a theological faculty. The university's statutes were modeled on the Oxford University's statutes, approved by Pope Clement V in 1312. Probably due to financial problems and conflicts that Bicknor later became involved in, the university only existed for a short time. At the beginning of November 1319 Bicknor had been asked to submit his accounts as Treasurer of Ireland for examination to the English Treasury. The examination finally began in October 1323 and lasted until June 1325. In February 1324, Bicknor, along with the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, put Bishop Orleton of Hereford under his protection in a sensational action when he was to answer before Parliament. In March 1324 Bicknor was sent to France together with the Earl of Kent to mediate in the dispute over Saint-Sardos . After the failure of the negotiations, he traveled with Kent to Gascony , where war broke out with France. In October 1324 Bicknor was commissioned to negotiate a marriage between the heir apparent Eduard and a daughter of King James II of Aragon .

Indictment and conviction

In May 1325 Edward II asked Pope John XXII to suspend Bicknor . Bicknor was responsible for the conquest of La Réole by French troops in September 1324, he had allegedly accused the royal favorite Hugh le Despenser of treason and he had embezzled funds in Ireland. Although Bicknor's accounts were incomplete and partly wrong, and he had clearly committed fraud and forgery, the king's attack on the archbishop was clearly politically motivated. In October 1325, Bicknor appeared at the Treasury at Westminster and pleaded guilty. As a result, his estates, livestock and land in England and Ireland were confiscated in December and his property was valued at £ 553. When Queen Isabelle landed with an army in England in September 1326 to overthrow the rule of her husband Edward II, Bicknor immediately joined her. He is named as the first of the prelates when, on October 26, 1326, a meeting of prelates and magnates in Bristol declared the heir to the throne, Eduard, as regent in place of his fled father. Despite this support, however, the new government did not pardon Bicknor for his mismanagement as treasurer, as the new government did not want to set a precedent. Instead, Bicknor has now been prosecuted for alleged irregularities during his brief tenure as justiciar. The treasury tried for several years to hold him responsible for his mismanagement before Edward III. pardoned him in June 1344.

But Bicknor had other difficulties as well. Due to the lack of repayment of debts, some of which his predecessor John Lech had taken on during his stay with the Curia, the Pope excommunicated Bicknor in 1325. Although Pope John XXII. apparently no further attempts to collect the debt, but his successor Benedict XII. demanded the outstanding debts in 1335, whereupon Bicknor further refused to honor the payments. Bicknor had another protracted argument with Richard Ledred , the bishop of Ossory and thus a suffragan bishop of Bicknor, over alleged sorcery and heresy of the Irish Utlagh family . Bicknor backed the family against Lendred's allegations after he returned to Ireland in 1328. The dispute was still not resolved when Clemens VI. Was elected Pope in 1342. When Bicknor refused to go to the Curia in Avignon, Archbishop FitzRalph of Armagh was commissioned in 1347 to check the conditions in the Archdiocese of Dublin. An old dispute over the primacy of Ireland existed between the Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin . Bicknor had reignited the dispute when he arbitrarily claimed the title of Primate of Ireland. Finally, in April or May 1349, at the instigation of Bicknor, FitzRalph was expelled from Dublin by royal officials. The aged Bicknor died a little later, possibly from the plague that was raging in Ireland at the time.

rating

Although Bicknor initially served well as a prelate during the reign of Edward II and was considered a capable civil servant, he failed towards the end of the king's reign. Perhaps he was too naive, unscrupulous enough or incapable of surviving the difficult political circumstances of the time. Even after the overthrow of the king he was able to under Edward III. never to restore his position despite his long life.

Bicknor has recorded a sermon in which he denounced laziness and indolence and which he delivered in the Holy Trinity Cathedral, possibly on the occasion of the Provincial Synod of 1320.

Web links

• JRS Phillips: Bicknor [Bykenore], Alexander (d. 1349). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004

Individual evidence

1. ^ Geoffrey J. Hand: The rivalry of the cathedral chapters in medieval Dublin . In: Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland , 92 (1962), p. 204.
2. ^ Aubrey Gwynn: The medieval university of St Patrick's, Dublin . In: Studies: an Irish Quarterly Review, 27 (1938), p. 208.
3. ^ ^{A b} Aubrey Gwynn: The medieval university of St Patrick's, Dublin . In: Studies: an Irish Quarterly Review, 27 (1938), p. 437.
4. ^ Aubrey Gwynn: The medieval university of St Patrick's, Dublin . In: Studies: an Irish Quarterly Review, 27 (1938), p. 438.
5. ^ Geoffrey J. Hand: The rivalry of the cathedral chapters in medieval Dublin . In: Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland , 92 (1962), p. 205.
6. ^ Aubrey Gwynn: The medieval university of St Patrick's, Dublin . In: Studies: an Irish Quarterly Review, 27 (1938), p. 439.
7. ↑ John Robert Maddicott: Thomas of Lancaster, 1307-1322. A Study in the Reign of Edward II . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1970, p. 210.
8. ↑ John Roland Seymour Phillips: Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, 1307-1324. Baronial politics in the reign of Edward II. Clarendon, Oxford 1972, ISBN 0-19-822359-5 , p. 148.
9. ↑ John Roland Seymour Phillips: Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, 1307-1324. Baronial politics in the reign of Edward II. Clarendon, Oxford 1972, ISBN 0-19-822359-5 , p. 153.
10. ↑ John Robert Maddicott: Thomas of Lancaster, 1307-1322. A Study in the Reign of Edward II . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1970, p. 217.
11. ↑ John Robert Maddicott: Thomas of Lancaster, 1307-1322. A Study in the Reign of Edward II . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1970, p. 224.
12. ^ Aubrey Gwynn: The medieval university of St Patrick's, Dublin . In: Studies: an Irish Quarterly Review, 27 (1938), p. 201.
13. ^ Aubrey Gwynn: The medieval university of St Patrick's, Dublin . In: Studies: an Irish Quarterly Review, 27 (1938), p. 451.
14. ↑ Alison Weir: Isabella. She-Wolf of France, Queen of England . London, Pimlico 2006, ISBN 0-7126-4194-7 , p. 155.
15. ↑ Seymour Phillips: Edward II . New Haven, Yale University Press 2010. ISBN 978-0-300-15657-7 , p. 464.
16. ^ Roy Martin Haines: Archbishop John Stratford. Political revolutionary and champion of the liberties of the English church . Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies, Toronto 2000, ISBN 1-4593-2927-9 , p. 174.
17. ^ ^{A b} Aubrey Gwynn: The medieval university of St Patrick's, Dublin . In: Studies: an Irish Quarterly Review, 27 (1938), p. 449.
18. ^ Aubrey Gwynn: The medieval university of St Patrick's, Dublin . In: Studies: an Irish Quarterly Review, 27 (1938), p. 448.
19. ^ JA Watt: The Church and the Two Nations in Medieval Ireland , University Press, Cambridge 2005, ISBN 0-521-61919-X , p. 209.

predecessor	Office	successor
John Lech	Archbishop of Dublin 1317–1349	John de St Paul