Earth and Space News: Edward I 1303 Wardrobe treasury theft Westminster Abbey

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Friday, June 1, 2018

King Edward I's Letter on the Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury Raid

Summary: King Edward I may have gotten the fastest, truest answer to one of six questions in his letter June 6, 1303, on the Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid.

King Edward I looked to John de Drokensford, trusted Keeper of the King's Wardrobe, for assistance in securing answers to six critical questions for investigating the 1303 Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury Raid; tomb of John de Drokensford, Cathedral Church of St. Andrew (popular name: Wells Cathedral), Wells, Somerset, Southwest England; Wednesday, March 19, 2008, 14:30: Rodw, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A king's asking six questions June 6, 1303, about the Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid allowed royal appointees to apply an analytical approach that recovered much treasure and resulted in seven hangings.

A courier brought news of the Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid April 30-May 3, 1303, to the English royal camp in Linlithgow, Scotland, June 6, 1303. King Edward I (June 17, 1239-July 7, 1307) counted upon continuing his campaigns against the Scots through the financial combination of crown jewels and wool taxes. He defaulted on debts to Flanders and directed all available resources into a 3,500-man army, movable bridges over the Forth, 173 ships and sulphur for cannons.

Edward estimated the Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid at £100,000 in fiscal year 1302/1303 when his King's Wardrobe entered £120,520 in receipts and expended almost £140,000.

One perpetrator or many ferreted coins, gems, icons, jewels, plateware and vessels from the neighboring Abbey through Edward's Westminster Palace gates and grounds and Kings Bridge.

Henry de Cherring, Westminster Coroner, got news May 25, 1303, of Isabella/Mathilda Lovett/Lovitt glimpsing treasure around or in St. Margaret's cemetery near the Abbey and Palace. Kings Chapel, Hall, House and Wardrobe staff heard of gems, gold and silver in ditches and fields and on Colchester, London and Northampton precious metal markets. Their courier, by London to Linlithgow roads or Port of London ship, informed their king June 3, 1303, of "the testimony of faithful and loyal people."

Paul Doherty's The Great Crown Jewels Robbery of 1303 judges the informants the Constable of the Tower of London and the Keeper of the King's Wardrobe.

Edward kept documents and the Royal Treasury in Westminster Abbey and the royal storehouse in the Tower of London near royal armorer, fletcher and smith workshops.

The Abbey's Pyx Chamber lodged monastic and royal documents and monastic treasures even as the Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid looted the Abbey's Chapter House Crypt. Edward made John de Drokensford (Feb. 5, 1260-May 9, 1329) Keeper of the King's Wardrobe responsible for the Royal Treasury and Ralph de Sandwich Tower Constable. He notified Drokensford and "well beloved and faithful" John Bakewell, Roger de Southcote, Walter of Gloucester and Sandwich that he needed one investigator and four justices.

Six questions from Edward oriented London investigations and London and Middlesex and Surrey Shire inquiries toward "a hasty remedy" of the Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury.

Edward prioritized as the top three questions "Who are the malefactors? Who knew about the robbery? Who offered and gave the robbers help, counsel and assistance?"

Edward queued up next, "Who knowingly received the said treasure? How was the said treasure taken and how much? In whose hands is the treasure now?" The fifth question least resisted rapid resolution because of Drokensford's reliance upon his Cofferer Ralph de Manton's (died Feb. 26, 1303) 20-plus-page inventory from Nov. 1300. Drokensford searched the Crypt with his Cofferer, Walter de Bedwyn, May 25, 1303, and scheduled their formal audit, with Manton's ledgers for comparison, June 20-22, 1303.

It perhaps turned out fastest and truest of all to trace £100,000 in stolen treasure through a forced window during the Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid.

News of the 1303 Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury Raid reached King Edward I after Westminster coroner Henry de Cherring learned of treasure sightings by an elderly woman, Isabella/Mathila Lovett/Lovit, in St. Margaret's Churchyard, alongside Westminster Abbey's north entrance; St. Margaret's Church from the northwest: Edward Walford's Old and New London, vol. III (1881), page 565: Not in copyright, via Internet Archive

Acknowledgment

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

Image credits:

News of the 1303 Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury Raid reached King Edward I after Westminster coroner Henry de Cherring learned of treasure sightings by an elderly woman, Isabella/Mathilda Lovett/Lovit, in St. Margaret's Churchyard, alongside Westminster Abbey's north entrance; St. Margaret's Church from the northwest: Edward Walford's Old and New London, vol. III (1881), page 565: Not in copyright, via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/oldnewlondonnarr03thor#page/565/mode/1up

For further information:

Doherty, Paul. 2005. The Great Crown Jewels Robbery of 1303: The Extraordinary Story of the First Big Bank Raid in History. New York NY: Carroll & Graf Publishers.

Harrod, Henry. 31 March 1870. "On the Crypt of the Chapter House, Westminster Abbey." Chapter XXIII, pp. 373-382 in Archaeologia: or Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London. Vol. XIV.
Available via HathiTrust @ https://hdl.handle.net/2027/njp.32101076451788?urlappend=%3Bseq=163
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/archaeologiaopt244sociuoft#page/373/mode/1up

Keay, Anna. 2011. The Crown Jewels. London UK: Thames & Hudson Ltd.

Marriner, Derdriu. 20 April 2018. "Richard Puddlicott and the Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury Raid, 1303." Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2018/04/richard-puddlicott-and-westminster.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 4 May 2018. "Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury Raid in April and May 1303 in England." Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2018/05/westminster-abbey-royal-treasury-raid.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 11 May 2018. "Mysteries of the April-May 1303 Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury Raid." Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2018/05/westminster-abbey-royal-treasury-raid.html

Walford, Edward. 1881. Old and New London: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places. Vol. III: Westminster and the Western Suburbs. London, Paris and New York: Cassell Petter & Galpin.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/oldnewlondonnarr03thor

Friday, May 11, 2018

Mysteries of the April-May 1303 Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury Raid

Summary: The Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid May 30-Jun 3, 1303, remains mysterious in its noisy realization in a contemplative order's buildings.

The 1303 Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury Raid occurred while King Edward I was camped at Linlithgow, West Lothian, southeastern Scotland, hammering at his favorite quarry, the Scots: oil painting on north, or altar, side of Westminster Abbey sedilia (seats for priests during Mass) thought to portray King Edward I, during whose reign the sedilia were erected: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid May 30-June 3, 1303, abounds in mystery, not least of which appears in the length of time between the act and its announcement to the king.

The mysteries began with the Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raiders' "thick hempen weeds deliberately grown [in 1302] across the monks' cemetery to conceal their blasphemous handiwork." They continued for days with the "echoing rasp of hammer and chisel as the bars of the chosen window nearest in the Crypt were brutally forced." They demanded diverting such daily traffic as "farmers who had the right to pasture their cattle or those who wished to use the latrines built there."

The Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid exacted three days of extensive exposure extracting "Cups and goblets, dishes, plates, precious jewels, sacred relics, gold and silver coins."

Ferreting filched gems, icons, jewels, plateware and vessels from windows, through fields and gates, to the River Thames fanned further Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid mysteries.

Getting precious metals and stones to and from temporary hideaways before and during days of locked doors and gates April 30-May 3, 1303, goaded additional mysteries. That "the bulk was removed to the Palace or, across the wasteland and royal gardens, to barges waiting on the Thames" heralded contemporary and historical mysteries. That "Such items were now being discovered in the London money market and scattered in the fields and meadows around Westminster and elsewhere in the city" injected intrigue.

The hundreds judged as knowing about and profiting from the Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid joined with just seven judged guilty as perhaps the greatest mystery.

King Edward I (June 17, 1239-July 7, 1307) knew nothing until "the testimony of faithful and loyal people" about the month-old Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid.

The king launched battles northward against neighboring Scots and southwestward against neighboring Welsh, located "all the great offices of state" in York and lived with lag-times. Paul Doherty mentions Kings Chapel, Hall and House staff discovering the raid May 27, 1303, and their courier making it in seven-plus days to Linlithgow, Scotland. Nobody in St. Margaret's Church and Westminster Abbey's Chapel, Chapter House, cloister, dormitory, guest-house, infirmary, kitchen and refectory west of Westminster Palace noticed four noisy nights.

Not one of the farmers pasturing cattle, guests relying upon latrines or monks seeking God objected to four days of noisy break-ins, guards, locks and takeouts.

Doherty posits that "Some of the thieves had been drinking heavily after carousing in a local prison; others were sober, eager to move their ill-gotten wealth."

That more than "A few items were lost" between Abbey grounds, Abbey and Palace gates, Kings Bridge, the Thames and London quadrupled questions about nefarious noise. That "precious items were being hauled from the Thames as well as found in ditches and fields around Westminster," especially St. Margaret's cemetery, required royal apprisal. The Coroner of Westminster shared his suspicions on the source of the suspect stray treasure, only to be silenced by the Westminster Abbey sacristan and sub-prior.

Five justices turned up, within two years, seven for hanging from hundreds who helped, in, knew about or profited from the Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid.

Acknowledgment

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

Image credits:

The 1303 Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury Raid occurred while King Edward I was camped at Linlithgow, West Lothian, southeastern Scotland, hammering at his favorite quarry, the Scots; oil painting on north, or altar, side of Westminster Abbey sedilia (seats for priests during Mass) thought to portray King Edward I, during whose reign the sedilia were erected: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gal_nations_edward_i.jpg

Westminster Abbey's Royal Treasury raiders gained entrance through one of the Chapter House's six windows rather than by doors, which were locked; Chapter House and Pyx Chamber doors opened onto the Abbey's East Cloister; engraving of Thompson's "South East Angle of the Cloisters," with Pyx Chamber door (right), by Joseph R. Hamble (fl. 1775-1825) in William Combe's The History of the Abbey Church of St. Peter's Westminster, vol. II (1812), Plate T, opposite page 260: Public Domain, via HathiTrust @ https://hdl.handle.net/2027/gri.ark:/13960/t8x933058;
Public Domain, via HathiTrust @ https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t8x933058;view=1up;seq=429;size=75;
Public Domain, via HathiTrust @ https://hdl.handle.net/2027/gri.ark:/13960/t8x933058?urlappend=%3Bseq=429;
via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/historyofabbeych02comb/page/n428/mode/1up

For further information:

Combe, William. 1812. The History of the Abbey Church of St. Peter's Westminster: Its Antiquities and Monuments. Vol. I. London, England: L. Harrison and J.C. Leigh, MDCCCXII.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/historyofabbeych01comb

Combe, William. 1812. The History of the Abbey Church of St. Peter's Westminster: Its Antiquities and Monuments. Vol. II. London, England: L. Harrison and J.C. Leigh, MDCCCXII.
Available via HathiTrust @ https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000197240

Doherty, Paul. 2005. The Great Crown Jewels Robbery of 1303: The Extraordinary Story of the First Big Bank Raid in History. New York NY: Carroll & Graf Publishers.

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.
Available via HathiTrust @ https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015035120412
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/cu31924032413340

Keay, Anna. 2011. The Crown Jewels. London UK: Thames & Hudson Ltd.

Marriner, Derdriu. 4 May 2018. Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury Raid in April and May 1303 in England." Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2018/05/westminster-abbey-royal-treasury-raid.html

Upcott, William. 1818. "The History of the Abbey Church of St. Peter's, Westminster, Its Antiquities and Monuments: 79. South East Angle of the Cloisters." Vol. II: 868. London, England: Richard and Arthur Taylor, MDCCCXVIII.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/bibliographicala02upco#page/868/mode/1up

Friday, May 4, 2018

Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury Raid in April and May 1303 in England

Summary: Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid participants took King Edward I's treasures in London by storming a window, not locked doors, in April and May 1303.

the crypt of the Chapter House; George Gilbert Scott, Gleanings From Westminster Abbey (1863), Plate XXIX, opposite page 195: via Internet Archive

The Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid from the last day of April through the first days of May 1303 accessed the crown treasures while the king absented himself from England to Scotland.

Westminster Abbey became the Royal Treasury after the Norman Conquest Oct. 14, 1066, because it bore the body of a king beloved by 11th-century Anglo-Saxon England. It contained Saint Edward the Confessor's (Feb. 11, 1003?-Jan. 5, 1066) Anglo-Saxon coronation regalia and King Edward I's (June 17, 1239-July 7, 1307) cumulative state regalia. Texts in early 14th-century Latin and Norman French, translated into English by Paul Doherty, described the dispersal of crown coins, jewels, tableware and treasure from Westminster.

The ensuing interviews and investigations established by the king June 6, 1303, elicited many confinements, much of the extracted treasure back and some confessions and executions.

London's Constable and New York's Carroll & Graf Publishers furnished means, motives and opportunities in 2005 with Paul Doherty's The Great Crown Jewels Robbery of 1303.

Doherty gives the means as the sixth barred, chamfer-jammed, square-headed window right of the 2-foot (0.61-meter-) round column in the center of the Westminster Abbey Crypt. The sixth window to this day has no stone sill even though the other five barred, chamfer-jammed, otherwise similar, square-headed windows have bottom sills of stone. Absence of the bottom stone sill is physical evidence of the imperative to loosen the window bottom- to window top-embedded steel rods to infiltrate the crypt.

Infiltrators judged the window the only way to enter the subterranean octagon with 9-yard- (8.23-meter-) wide floors and 17- to 18-foot- (5.18- to 5.49-meter-) thick walls.

The Westminster Abbey Crypt keeps its stone-vaulted ceiling with chamfered ribs that radiate from the central, rounded, column with molded base and top and tiled flooring.

The Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid looked to the sixth window to let raiders loot Crypt chests and coffers since the entryway lacked a complete staircase. Standard entry meant moving down a turret-staircase in-between the ground-level Chapter House and the underground Crypt walls' series of six heavy, thick doors with fortified locks. It necessitated the keys of Walter de Bedwyn, King's Wardrobe Cofferer, and a wooden bridge for the 2-yard (1.83-meter) gap between the Crypt door and floor.

Window access obviated obtaining the bridge and the keys and offered organizational options of relaying objects between Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid participants inside and outside.

The leftmost and rightmost windows respectively patrolled the pathway to the Royal Palace and grounds between the Chapter House and the Infirmary of the Black Monks.

Cresset torches in iron sconces, oil lamps, wax candles and the sixth window quit of its wooden shutters quadrupled the light levels in the gloomy Crypt. The sixth window registered eastward routes across the monks' cemetery, Palace gateways, the new and old Palace yards and the king's steps to the River Thames. Whoever staged the Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid secured the scene by shutting Abbey and Palace gates against farmland-leasers and latrine-users and sowing cemetery-screening hempen weeds.

Labor-, noise- and time-intensive means other than legitimately through heavy, locked, thick doors tilted the Westminster Abbey Royal Treasury raid toward anti-monarchist motives and monarchy-unfriendly opportunities.

plan of the crypt of Westminster Abbey's chapter house; George Gilbert Scott, Gleanings From Westminster Abbey (1863), Plate XXIX, opposite page 195: via Internet Archive

Acknowledgment

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

Image credits:

the crypt of the Chapter House; George Gilbert Scott, Gleanings From Westminster Abbey (1863), Plate XXIX, opposite page 195: via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/gleaningsfromwes00scot_0#page/n275/mode/1up

plan of the crypt of Westminster Abbey's chapter house; George Gilbert Scott, Gleanings From Westminster Abbey (1863), Plate XXIX, opposite page 195: via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/gleaningsfromwes00scot_0#page/n275/mode/1up

For further information:

Doherty, Paul. 2005. The Great Crown Jewels Robbery of 1303: The Extraordinary Story of the First Big Bank Raid in History. New York NY: Carroll & Graf Publishers.

Harrod, Henry. 31 March 1870. "On the Crypt of the Chapter House, Westminster Abbey. Read March 31, 1870." Archaeologia: Or, Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, vol. 44, issue 2 (1874): 373-382. London, England: Nichols and Sons, MDCCCLXXIII (1873).
Available via HathiTrust @ https://hdl.handle.net/2027/njp.32101076451788?urlappend=%3Bseq=163
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/archaeologiaopt244sociuoft#page/373/mode/1up

Keay, Anna. 2011. The Crown Jewels. London UK: Thames & Hudson Ltd.

Scott, George Gilbert. 1863. Gleanings From Westminster Abbey. Oxford and London, England: John Henry and James Parker.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/gleaningsfromwes00scot_0