Joseph of Chauncy

Joseph of Chauncy (also Cancy ) (* before 1213, † after 1283) was an English knight . From 1273 to 1280 or 1281 he was Grand Prior of the Order of St. John in England, and from 1273 to 1280 he was royal treasurer .

Origin and promotion to treasurer of the Order of St. John

Joseph of Chauncy was a younger son of an Anglo-Norman aristocratic family who owned estates in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire . Before 1233 he joined the Order of St. John. After 1233, but no later than 1238, he came to the Johanniter settlement of Acre in Palestine . Before 1248 he became treasurer of the order and member of the chapter of the order . During this time the Christian crusader states in Palestine were pushed back by the Muslim empires. Therefore, in 1270, the English heir to the throne, Lord Eduard , undertook a crusade to support the oppressed crusader states. To meet the high costs, Eduard had to borrow large sums of money. The Order of St. John vouched for part of the money, and Eduard probably came into contact with Chauncy. Around 1271 Chauncy resigned from the office of treasurer of the order.

Grand Prior of England and Royal Treasurer

While Eduard was still on the way back from his crusade, he learned that after the death of his father he had now become King of England. Even before his return to England, he appointed Chauncy as his new treasurer in October 1273, who also became Grand Prior of the Order in England. While Eduard initially traveled to France, Chauncy has now returned to England. For March to September 1274 he received a royal letter of protection for a trip abroad, presumably he took part in the council in Lyon . As early as the spring of 1273, during the fair in Provins , he had paid the king's debts to foreign merchants, and before 1275 he had paid further debts at another place called Myli . During Parliament in Westminster in April 1275, Parliament passed a tariff on wool exports. The proposal for this came from Chauncy, who took up an idea of ​​the Italian merchant Poncius de Ponto . The customs were collected directly from Italian merchants in the ports. The income from customs, which until 1279 amounted to about £ 10,000 annually, was directly offset against the debts the crown owed to Italian merchants. During Chauncy's tenure as Treasurer, the English Jews were further burdened. On December 9, 1273, he ordered all English Jews to come to the chief towns of the counties and stay there until Easter 1274. If he did not show up, he threatened them with the death penalty and expropriation, presumably demanding a high tax from the Jews, the valley location . The Statute of Jewry , issued in 1275, forbade Jewish moneylenders from charging usurious interest . In the run-up to the coin reform of Edward I, 29 Christians, but 269 Jews, were executed in London alone between 1278 and 1279 for alleged coin deterioration . The extent to which Chauncy was partly responsible for this policy cannot be proven. Above all, he was probably an able administrator, but was also one of the highest-ranking officials in the empire. Thus he had close contact with the king, who was also encouraged in this attitude by his anti-Jewish wife Eleanor of Castile , by his mother Eleanor of Provence and by his chancellor Robert Burnell . Chauncy himself acted as a moneylender to Christians on a small scale. As the Grand Prior of the Order of St. John, he had a chapel built in the branch of the Order in Clerkenwell .

Return to the Holy Land

In England, too, Chauncy, like the king, was concerned with the question of how to help the oppressed crusader states in the Holy Land . Around 1280 he resigned his offices as Treasurer and Grand Prior of England and returned to Acre. In letters he reported to Eduard I about the situation on site. In 1281 he wrote a detailed report on the victory of the Mamlukes over the Mongols in the Battle of Homs . In 1283 he described the difficult situation of Christians in the Holy Land in a letter to Edward I. The year of his death is unknown.

literature

• Zefira Entin Rokéah: A hospitaller and the Jews: Brother Joseph de Chauncy and English Jewry in the 1270s . In: Jewish Historical Studies , 34 (1994-96), pp. 189-207

Web links

• Zefira Entin Rokéah: Chauncy [Cancy], Joseph of (b. In or before 1213, d. In or after 1283). 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. ^ Michael Prestwich: Edward I. University of California, Berkeley 1988, ISBN 0-520-06266-3 , p. 100
2. ↑ Robin Mundill: England's Jewish solution. Experiment and expulsion, 1262-1290 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2002, ISBN 0-521-52026-6 , p. 80
3. ^ Michael Prestwich: Edward I. University of California, Berkeley 1988, ISBN 0-520-06266-3 , p. 234

predecessor	Office	successor
Philip of Eye	Lord High Treasurer 1273-1280	Richard of Ware