William of Cornhill

William of Cornhill († August 19, 1223 ) was an English clergyman. As a civil servant and courtier, he rose to become Bishop of Coventry under King John Ohneland .

origin

William of Cornhill came from a London merchant family. Several members of the family rose to become important officials in the service of the Angevin kings . William was probably a nephew, perhaps even a son, of Reginald of Cornhill , a close confidante of King John Ohneland.

Career as a royal official and as a clergyman

William of Cornhill embarked on a clerical career before he was often mentioned as a royal official from around 1204, mainly working in the treasury. As a reward for his services, he received the rectorate of Maidstone in Kent from the king in 1205 . As rector of Maidstone, he gave the Archbishop of Canterbury an estate in Maidstone around 1207, which was expanded into the archbishop's palace from 1348. In 1206 Cornhill became administrator of the vacant Diocese of Winchester and Malmesbury Abbey , after which he took over these duties during the vacancy of the Diocese of Lincoln . On June 30, 1207 he became archdeacon of Huntingdon and received a benefice in Chichester . Presumably for these two offices he paid the king a fee of 500 marks , but he owed his rise above all to his relatives with Reginald of Cornhill. In 1207 he served as the tax assessor in collecting the tax of the Thirteenth in Lincolnshire . In 1208 he was a royal judge, and he succeeded Hubert de Burgh and Peter des Roches Royal Chamberlain . As an important courtier, he belonged to the king's immediate retinue. After the Pope had the interdict imposed on England in March 1208 because of the dispute with the King over the installation of Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury , Cornhill served as administrator of the estates of the exiled clergy from the Diocese of Lincoln. Only after the king had submitted to the Pope in 1213 was the interdict lifted.

Bishop of Coventry

Election to bishop

The diocese of Coventry had been vacant since October 1208 after Bishop Geoffrey de Muschamp died. The election of the royal favorite Walter de Gray , which took place in 1208, was rejected by the papal legate Pandulf . As a new candidate was suggested by the influence of the King Cornhill. Before July 9, 1214 Cornhill was by the monks of Coventry Abbey and the cathedral chapter of Lichfield elected bishop. Legate Pandulf accepted this election, and after Cornhill was given the diocesan temporalities on October 20, 1214 , he resigned from his other ecclesiastical offices. On January 25, 1215 he was ordained bishop by Archbishop Langton at Reading . To celebrate his consecration, the king gave him plenty of game from Windsor Forest .

Supporter of the king

Even as bishop, Cornhill remained a loyal supporter of the king, against whose rule a powerful aristocratic opposition had formed in England. Cornhill tried in vain to negotiate to get the City of London and the Welsh princes to support the king. After all, he was one of the advisors who advised Johann in June 1215 to recognize the Magna Carta . He then left England to attend the Fourth Lateran Council in Rome . In England, despite the recognition of the Magna Carta, there was an open war between the barons and the king. After his return to England, Cornhill supported King John until his sudden death in October 1216. He then took part in the provisional coronation of John's son Henry III on October 28th . in Gloucester . He supported the new Regency Council as Baron of the Exchequer after the war of the barons .

Act as a bishop

Little is known of Cornhill's activity as bishop. This is certainly also due to the fact that the episcopal documents were not archived on Rolls during his tenure , as was the case, for example, in the Diocese of Lincoln. Cornhill granted the Lichfield Cathedral Chapter the right to elect its own Dean . Allegedly, Cornhill was so influenced by the rules of church administration adopted at the Lateran Council that after his return to England he issued statutes for his diocese, the Constitutiones cuiusdam episcopi . These Constitutiones are among the oldest known English diocesan statutes , but according to the historian CR Cheney these statutes were not issued for the diocese of Coventry, but rather by Bishop Hugh Foliot for the diocese of Hereford . In September 1221, Cornhill suffered a stroke during a church service after which he could no longer speak. He died almost two years later and was buried in Lichfield Cathedral.

Web links

• MJ Franklin: Cornhill, William of (d. 1223). 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. ^ The Rose Blog: History of Archbishops Palace - Maidstone, Kent. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on September 15, 2016 ; accessed on September 6, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ Brittania Biographies: Walter De Gray (c.1188-1255). Retrieved September 6, 2016 . 
3. ^ David Carpenter: The minority of Henry III . University of California Press, Berkeley 1990. ISBN 0-520-07239-1 , p. 53
4. ^ CR Cheney: The earliest English diocesan statutes . In: The English Historical Review, 75 (1960), p. 13

predecessor	Office	successor
vacant	Bishop of Coventry 1214-1223	Alexander Stavensby