Godfrey Giffard

Window in memory of Godfrey Giffard and the coat of arms of the Diocese of Worcester. Stained glass in the Chapel of the Holy Cross Guild in Stratford-upon-Avon

Godfrey Giffard OFM (* uncertain: 1235; † January 26, 1302 ) was an English official and clergyman. From 1266 to 1268 he was first royal chancellor before he was bishop of Worcester for over 33 years from 1268 .

origin

Godfrey Giffard was probably the second son of Hugh Giffard and his wife Sybil, a daughter and co-heir of Walter de Cormeilles . His father was a royal judge and lived in Boyton , Wiltshire . His father Hugh Giffard temporarily held the office of Constable of the Tower and was responsible for the education of the heir to the throne, Lord Eduard . Godfrey's mother, Sybil, was the tutor to the other royal children and had helped Queen Eleanor with the birth of her children. So they belonged to the royal household, where Godfrey also spent his childhood. Godfrey probably studied together with his probably older brother Walter at Cambridge , where the brothers graduated together as a Master of Arts in 1251 . Like Godfrey, Walter became a clergyman and entered the service of King Henry III. Her sisters Mabel and Juliana became nuns and eventually abbesses of Shaftesbury and Wilton Abbey, respectively .

Advancement as a clergyman

In the 1260s, Giffard rose to serve as a clergyman and official in the king's service. After the victory of the royal party in the Second War of the Barons , Giffard was first Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1266 , before he succeeded his brother Walter as royal chancellor at the end of the year . His brother Walter had become Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1264 and Archbishop of York in 1266 and obtained benefices for his younger brother in these dioceses . However, there have been complaints because of this nepotism , because of Godfrey's accumulation of offices, and because of his alleged lack of education and spiritual discipline. Therefore, Archbishop Boniface of Canterbury initially hesitated in May 1268 to approve the election of Godfrey as Bishop of the Diocese of Worcester . The king rewarded Godfrey in June by leaving him the income from the vacant diocese of Worcester that should have been granted to the king. After Godfrey was ordained bishop in Canterbury on September 23, 1168 , he was enthroned in Worcester for Christmas .

Bishop of Worcester

In the service of the king

With his elevation to bishop Godfrey had resigned his previous ecclesiastical and secular offices. Nevertheless, he was still active in the service of the king on various occasions in the 1270s. In 1270 and 1271 he traveled as an envoy to the Welsh princes. In 1272 he was tasked with settling a dispute between the Chancellor of Oxford University and the students, the mayor and the citizens of Oxford . In May 1273 he set out with the bishops Nicholas of Winchester and Walter of Exeter for France, where they wanted to greet the new King Edward, who was returning from the crusade. Godfrey did not return to Worcester for six months. In 1278 he was to serve as royal judge in Hertfordshire and Kent , but he did not take this office. In 1279 he was a member of the Regency Council, which formed the government for the king who had traveled to France.

Act as a bishop

Giffard devoted himself zealously to the administration of his diocese. An extensive register of documents has been preserved from his tenure, which is the oldest in the Diocese of Worcester. It shows Godfrey's work as a pastor, administrator, and ecclesiastical judge. Godfrey had a survey of the possessions of the diocese carried out, and he had the episcopal residences in Withington , Hartlebury Castle and Worcester Cathedral expanded and rebuilt. Godfrey is said to have been energetic and spirited, increasingly suffering from gout in both feet. Because of illness he did not take part in the Council of Lyon in 1274 . At the end of the 1270s he developed an increasing interest in the mendicant orders . In 1279 he was appointed keeper of the rights of the Dominican Order in England, and after he had been invited to join the Franciscan order in 1277 , he joined it in 1282. After the death of his brother Walter in 1279, he inherited his extensive estates.

In the 1280s Giffard had disputes with the Benedictine priory of Great Malvern and with the collegiate church of St Mary's in Warwick , which claimed exemption from episcopal suzerainty. Giffard also had a long argument with the cathedral priory of Worcester when he wanted to transfer the patronage rights of some of the bishops' churches to the collegiate church of Westbury-on-Trym in order to create new benefices. Fearing that the Westbury Collegiate Chapter would compete with them, the monks of the Cathedral Priory consistently refused to agree to Giffard's plan. Giffard therefore put pressure on the monks, and only after mediation by the royal chancellor Robert Burnell could an understanding be reached in 1291. Giffard's plan to transfer the patronage rights to Westbury was expressly excluded from the agreement between Giffard and the cathedral priory, with which his plan had in fact failed. Like numerous other bishops, Giffard also rejected the claim of Archbishop John Pecham of Canterbury to intervene as metropolitan in the jurisdiction of the suffragan dioceses . After the death of Bishop Thomas de Cantilupe of Hereford in 1282, Giffard took over the leadership of the opposition to the archbishop. The conflict between Giffard and Pecham could only be resolved in March 1284.

Aside from a few ongoing lawsuits, the last few years of Giffard's tenure have been relatively peaceful. This was probably mainly due to his increasingly deteriorating health. From 1295 he was increasingly represented as a bishop, and after 1297 he commissioned Bishop John Monmouth of Llandaff with the completion of numerous duties. When Archbishop Winchelsey made a Metropolitan visitation to Worcester in 1301 , he found Giffard sick and blind. Nevertheless, Giffard insisted on his rights, tirelessly had visitations carried out himself and tried to prevent the archbishop from visiting. Winchelsey criticized the magnificent tomb that Giffard had already made for himself, and deposed several officers of the cathedral priory. Giffard tried to reverse this. By August 1301 at the latest, however, Giffard was unable to exercise his office. He made his will on September 13, 1301 in Kempsey , but did not die until four months later. On February 4, 1302, under the guidance of his friend John Monmouth, he was buried in his prepared tomb in Worcester Cathedral. The tomb was later removed from the church.

literature

• Rose Graham: Metropolitical visitation of the diocese of Worcester by Archbishop Winchelsey in 1301 . In: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , 2 (1919), pp. 59-93 ·

Web links

• Susan J. Davies: Giffard, Godfrey (1235? -1302). 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
Walter Giffard	Lord Chancellor of England 1266–1268	John of Chishall
Nicholas of Ely	Bishop of Worcester 1268-1302	William Gainsborough