Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury Raid: Puddlicott Confession Dec. 3, 1303

Summary: Richard Puddlicott's confession Dec. 1303, tied Dec. 17, 1302, to Westminster Abbey refectory raid plunder and Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury plans.

Richard Puddlicott's confession Dec. 3, 1303, cast major blame on himself for the 1303 Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid and the 1302 Westminster Abbey refectory raid and removed blame from Westminster monks as Thieving Lane thieves; Westminster's Thieving Lane allowed for transporting the accused to Westminster Abbey Gate House prison without passing through the precinct of Westminster Abbey, thereby preventing the accused from claiming the right of sanctuary; illustration of Thieving Lane, with Westminster's Towers in background, by English antiquarian and engraver John Thomas Smith (1766–1833) in Edward Walford's Old and New London (1881), vol. III, page 481: Not in copyright, via Internet Archive

Richard Puddlicott associated Dec. 17, 1302, with selling the last of the Westminster Abbey refectory raid silver and starting the digging for the Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid April 30-May 3, 1303.

Nothing bore dates for the Westminster Abbey refectory raid beyond Richard Puddlicott's confession broaching "About the same time the King departed towards Barnes, the night following." Paul Doherty, in The Great Crown Jewels Robbery of 1303 for Carroll & Graf Publishers, Sept. 26, 2005, calculates November 1302 for the refectory raid's commencement. He delivers an English translation of the description, designated Le dit Richard de Podelecote ("Richard Puddlicott Said It"), in Norman French for "a high-ranking King's clerk."

The clerk never entered the date even though the Puddlicott confession exists attached to John de Rippinghale's confession Dec. 3, 1303, in National Archives at Kew.

Puddlicott furnished a self-description as "itinerant trader in wool, cheese and butter who was arrested in Flanders for the King's debt in the city of Bruges."

Puddlicott, self-presented as Richard de Puddlicott, gave up from his own money "fourteen pounds and seventeen shillings because of the King" reneging on debts to Flemings. He had "sued for this in the court of the King at Westminster around the beginning of August, the thirty-first year of Edward I" in 1302. He never identified royal writs Aug. 10 and 23, 1302, impelling Ghent's Mayor to release "merchants of London who had been arrested together with their merchandise."

Ghent's Mayor judged arrests "security for the payment of 730 marks due from the mayor, sheriff and commonality of the city of London to certain burgesses."

Edward (June 17, 1239-July 7, 1307) kept 730 marks from Ghent burgesses "to be distributed amongst such English merchants who had lost their goods in Flanders."

Royal correspondence listed nothing about Puddlicott's languishing just before then in a jail from which law enforcement let him loose only after liquidating his own loads. Page 248 of The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough edited by Harry Rothwell in 1957 for Camden Society Volume LXXXIX mentions another motive for Puddlicott's raids. Sixteen commissioners netted "debased coinage which the Crown wished to destroy" from the Midlands' and western England's parish church and religious house deposit chests summer 1294.

Puddlicott's family operated as Oxford landowners with occupational overlaps as charter witnesses and money-disbursers for Abingdon's, Evesham's and Waverley's Benedictine monasteries from the 12th century onward.

Perceiving refectory "hampers of silver, dishes and mazers" prompted pondering "how he might acquire such goods, for he was poor due to the losses in Flanders."

Puddlicott queued a ladder and a knife to force a Chapter House window and the refectory door to six silver-filled hampers, 30-plus dishes and drinking cups. Westminster Abbey refectory raid revenues ran out "eight days before Christmas" despite Puddlicott's selling "the feet [base] of the cups, the dishes and hampers of silver." The spent sales started the Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid since Puddlicott "knew his way around the precincts of the Abbey and where the Treasury was."

The Westminster Abbey refectory raid thwarted logic except as trial-running the Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid and turning thoughts from monks as Westminster's Thieving Lane thieves.

In his Dec. 3, 1303, confession, Richard Puddlicott admitted not only to masterminding the 1303 Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid but also to a previous raid of Westminster Abbey's refectory (upper left), starting in November 1303; plan of Westminster Abbey and Palace drawn in 1303, the 31st year of the reign of King Edward I (June 17/18, 1239-July 7, 1307); Hubert Hall's The Antiquities and Curiosities of the Exchequer (1891), page 31: via Internet Archive

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

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Richard Puddlicott's confession Dec. 3, 1303, cast major blame on himself for the 1303 Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid and the 1302 Westminster Abbey refectory raid and removed blame from Westminster monks as Thieving Lane thieves; Westminster's Thieving Lane allowed for transporting the accused to Westminster Abbey Gate House prison without passing through the precinct of Westminster Abbey, thereby preventing the accused from claiming the right of sanctuary; illustration of Thieving Lane, with Westminster's Towers in background, by English antiquarian and engraver John Thomas Smith (1766–1833) in Edward Walford's Old and New London (1881), vol. III, page 481: Not in copyright, via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/oldnewlondonnarr03thor#page/480/mode/1up

In his Dec. 3, 1303, confession, Richard Puddlicott admitted not only to masterminding the 1303 Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid but also to a previous raid of Westminster Abbey's refectory (upper left), starting in November 1303; plan of Westminster Abbey and Palace drawn in 1303, the 31st year of the reign of King Edward I (June 17/18, 1239-July 7, 1307); Hubert Hall's The Antiquities and Curiosities of the Exchequer (1891), page 31: via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/cu31924032413340#page/n52/mode/1up

For further information:

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Available via HathiTrust @ https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/012503906

Besant, Walter. 1902. Westminster. New edition. London, England: Chatto & Windus.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/westminster00besauoft

Doherty, Paul. 2005. The Great Crown Jewels Robbery of 1303. New York NY: Carroll & Graf Publisher.

Gough, Henry. 1900. Itinerary of King Edward the First Throughout His Reign, A.D. 1272-1307, Exhibiting His Movements From Time to Time, So Far as They Are Recorded. Vol. II: 1286-1307. Paisley, Scotland: Alexander Gardner.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/itineraryofkinge02gouguoft

Hall, Hubert. 1891. The Antiquities and Curiosities of the Exchequer. With Illustrations by Ralph Nevill. The Camden Library. New York NY: A.C. Armstrong & Son; London, England: Elliot Stock.
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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2018/06/king-edward-is-letter-on-westminster.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2018/06/westminster-abbey-royal-treasury-raid.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2018/11/westminster-abbey-royal-treasury-raid.html

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