Archbishop Simon Mepham 1328-1333: a Boy Amongst Men

The registers of Archbishop Mepham and his successor Stratford were apparently lost, or more likely stolen, in the later Middle Ages. Stratford had been bishop of Winchester for some ten years, consequently much more is known about his activity in the episcopal office. Mepham by contrast is somewhat of an enigma. He came into office with an academic training in the wake of Walter Reynolds, who did not attend a university but was experienced in secular affairs and had been a confidant of the king when Prince of Wales. Unusually Mepham was elected by the Christ Church chapter and not provided by the pope. Bereft of political experience, he was unlucky in the time of his promotion, a period of struggle between the Mortimer/Isabella and Lancastrian factions, with the young Edward III a pawn, virtually powerless to influence events. It was only towards the end of 1330 that the king came into his own thanks to a coup dtat. Thereafter Mephams attempts to exert his metropolitan authority and his lack of wisdom in avoiding conflict led to his sad denouement. Fortunately we know quite a lot about his more combative activities thanks to the chroniclers, particularly Dene, the reputed author of the Historia Roffensis, and the St. Augustines chronicler Thorne. In the eighteenth century Ducarel collected a large number of documents relating to the archiepiscopates of Mepham and Stratford, while others have come to light with the publication of the Episcopal registers of his contemporaries. In 1997 my article An Innocent Abroad: The Career of Simon Mepham, Archbishop of Canterbury 1328-1333, was published in the English Historical Review. The Release of Ornaments in the Archbishops chapel and some other arrangements following Simon Mephams elevation, appeared in Archaeologia Cantiana in 2002. Since that time I have examined the Canterbury Act Books relative to that period and prepared an edition of Stratfords Winchester register, which has made it possible considerably to expand the study of Mepham.

R.M.H. Clare Hall, Cambridge.