Ralph Sandwich

Sir Ralph Sandwich (around 1235; † between March 24 and August 20, 1308 ) was an English judge. As a supporter of the nobility rebellion, he briefly served as Keeper of the Great Seal during the Barons' Second War in 1265 . After the end of the civil war, he managed to be fully rehabilitated by King Edward I. As a result, he served as a high-ranking judge until his death and took on numerous other high offices.

origin

Ralph Sandwich was a younger son of Sir Simon of Sandwich († around 1270) and his wife Gillian († before 1255). His father belonged to the gentry of Kent and owned properties near Preston near Wingham in Kent. Ralph's uncles included Henry of Sandwich , who became Bishop of London in 1262.

Role in the war of the barons

The Sandwich family was one of the supporters of the aristocratic rebellion, which opposed the reign of King Henry III in 1258 . had formed. Bishop Henry of Sandwich was among the leading bishops who supported the aristocratic opposition led by Simon de Montfort . This had defeated the troops of the king in the open Second War of the Barons in 1264, who then fell into the power of the rebels. Undoubtedly through the influence of his uncle, Ralph Sandwich became a member of the new Montfort-led government. Before September 1264 he belonged to the king's household and was appointed Keeper of the Wardrobe on January 1, 1265 . So he took over the supervision of the king, who was only formally English ruler. On May 7, 1265, the royal chancellor Thomas de Cantilupe presented him with the great seal. Formally, Cantilupe remained Chancellor, so Sandwich only served as Keeper of the Great Seal . He was only allowed to use the seal to authenticate routine letters, otherwise only in the presence of Peter de Montfort and two other witnesses. Nevertheless, the chronicler Thomas Wykes found it remarkable that with Sandwich a layman and not a clergyman had been entrusted with the maintenance of the large seal. On August 4, 1265, the rebel army was decisively defeated by the king's supporters at the Battle of Evesham . Montfort fell and Sandwich was captured in the battle. The freed king gave his possessions to Roger of Leybourne , and Sandwich's father's possessions at Preston to Leybourne's son William , who was married to Sandwich's niece Juliana Sandwich.

Resurgence in the service of the king

Sandwich was finally pardoned in November 1266. As a result, he remained closely linked to the Leybourne family. In 1272 he served as an attorney for Alianore, the widow of Roger of Leybourne, and in 1276 he served as her executor. In 1297 he was to vouch for the criminal Henry Leybourne, his great-nephew.

When his uncle, Bishop Henry of Sandwich died in September 1273, Sandwich took over the administration of the temporalities of the Diocese of London . Presumably he had already been entrusted with the administration of the temporalities during his uncle's long exile. Previously, Sandwich had also held the lands of the Archbishops of Canterbury . In November 1273 he was commissioned to check the accounts of the constable of the royal Dover Castle . 1274 he was invited to the coronation of Edward I participate. He was also a member of court committees in several southern English counties. In 1275 the king commissioned him to review claims against several former rebels. Edward I soon trusted the former rebel completely and entrusted him with important tasks and offices. Sandwich was now a regular member of the royal council, and when Edward I first appointed three administrators for the royal estates, Sandwich was given the management of the estates in the south and west of England in November 1275. He held this office, which meant a great deal of responsibility, until at least 1282. Sandwich had to oversee major construction works in Devizes , Banstead and Odiham , was responsible for the income, which amounted to £ 7,000 between 1,277 and 1,279 alone, and made numerous trips to inspect the goods himself. In addition he served as administrator of the port of Dover , where he was responsible for the collection of customs duties, as administrator of the Forest of Dean and after the death of Archbishop Robert Kilwardby in 1278 he was administrator of the temporalities of the Archdiocese of Canterbury until 1279. In 1280 he was commissioned to purchase the land needed to rebuild the town of Winchelsea, which was threatened by coastal erosion . When the king stayed in Kent for a long time from February 1278, Sandwich served as a judge at the court . Together with other judges he was at Westminster in October 1278 when the Scottish King Alexander III. paid homage to the English king . In September 1283 he took part in the Shrewsbury called parliament. During the king's absence during the campaign to Flanders in 1297 , Sandwich was a member of the Regency Council.

Mayor of London and Constable of the Tower

In June 1285 the King himself took over the administration of the City of London . On July 1, he appointed Sandwich as Warden to be the city's chief administrator. In addition, he became Constable of the Tower on September 10th . Sandwich moved into a house in Cornhill and, with two interruptions, was Mayor of London until 1293 . Sandwich was still issuing a series of administrative ordinances in 1285 for the administration of the city. As Constable of the Tower, which Sandwich was until his death with a brief interruption, he held the leaders of the Jewish community of London in custody in 1287, as well as numerous Welsh and Scots who had been captured as rebels against the king. In addition, in 1288 the king gave him a lion and leopard, which he had received as a gift in Gascony , for the tower's menagerie . In 1306, Sandwich asked the king to reimburse the costs he had expended to Constable, in particular for the reconstruction of the church of St Peter ad Vincula between 1285 and 1287, as well as for the costs of housing the prisoners. To this end, he asked for his £ 100 annual salary, which he had never received, to be paid. After an investigation, the king finally paid him £ 1,750 in view of his and his father's services.

Service as royal judge

Between 1286 and 1307, Sandwich held court hearings annually on Newgate in London, where particularly serious criminals were convicted not only from London but from all over England. Since the sheriffs of individual counties refused to carry out his judgments, the oath that new sheriffs had to take was changed accordingly in 1303. On September 24, 1289, the king appointed him representative of the fugitive Lord Chief Justice Thomas Weyland until he appointed a successor. Sandwich was also among the judges who tried William Wallace at Westminster Hall in 1305 . In addition to his activities in London, he also held several offices in Kent. In addition, as a feared judge, he intimidated opponents of the king several times. In 1304 the king commissioned him, a clergyman who collected money on behalf of the Pope without warning witnesses, to take the money he had collected and to ban him from England.

Sandwich was invited to the coronation of the new King Edward II on February 8, 1308. On March 24, 1308 he gave the Tower to John Cromwell , who had married the widow of the younger Roger Leybourne . He died before August 20, 1308 and was buried in the Franciscan Church on Newgate .

Web links

• Christopher Whittick: Sandwich, Sir Ralph (c.1235-1308). 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