Geoffrey de Muschamp

Geoffrey de Muschamp († October 6, 1208 ) was an English clergyman. From 1198 he was Bishop of Coventry .

Rise in the wake of Geoffrey of York

Geoffrey de Muschamp began his career in the service of Geoffrey of York , an illegitimate son of King Henry II , when he was serving his father as Chancellor . According to the chronicle of Roger von Hoveden , Geoffrey is said to have fraudulently used the royal seal after the death of Henry II in 1189 to obtain Muschamp the office of archdeacon of Cleveland and two benefices in York . When Geoffrey of York had to submit to his brother King Richard in 1194 , he confessed to the abuse of the seal, whereupon Muschamp lost his offices. Muschamp is said to have received his office back only on payment of £ 100 to the king. It is more likely, however, that Geoffrey of York carried out his dying father's final orders in 1189. However, when he had both lost his brother's favor in 1194 and had fallen out with his cathedral chapter as Archbishop of York , his favorite Muschamp temporarily lost his office. Muschamp seems to have come to terms with the cathedral chapter, however, because he belonged to the three-person delegation that traveled to Rome in 1194 on behalf of the cathedral chapter. There they succeeded in having the Pope annul the excommunications and church sentences that Geoffrey had pronounced as archbishop. This led to Muschamp's break with Geoffrey of York.

Bishop of Coventry

In 1198, Muschamp was elected Bishop of Coventry by the monks of the Cathedral Priory of Coventry, probably at the behest of King Richard . He was ordained bishop on June 21 by Archbishop Hubert Walter in Canterbury . Little is known about his tenure, although he appears to have served as bishop. On May 27, 1199 he attended the coronation of John Ohneland , and in September 1200 he attended a church provincial meeting in Westminster and in October 1206 in a church council meeting in Reading . When, after the death of Hubert Walter in 1205, the election of a new Archbishop of Canterbury was controversial, Muschamp was one of the English bishops who, in a letter to the Pope, called for the bishops to participate in the election. When Pope Innocent III. because of the dispute over the election of the archbishop imposed the interdict over England in March 1208 , Muschamp stayed in England. After his death, according to the tradition of the Bishops of Lichfield and Coventry, he was buried in Lichfield Cathedral.

After his death, the election of the royal favorite Walter de Gray as the new bishop was rejected by the Pope. After the king was excommunicated in 1209, it was not until 1214 that William of Cornhill was installed as the new Bishop of Coventry.

Web links

• MJ Franklin: Muschamp, Geoffrey de (d.1208). 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

predecessor	Office	successor
Hugh de Nonant	Bishop of Coventry 1198–1208	vacant