Bishops and Politics in the Reign of Edward II: Hamo de Hethe, Henry Wharton, and the ‘Historia Roffensis’

Abstract

It was a commonplace of the times, featured in royal letters despatched abroad, and of course in the chronicles, that during the reign of Edward II the ‘indiscretum regimen’ of bishops coupled with their ‘taciturnitas’ lay at the root of the manifest political troubles.In 1944 Kathleen Edwards produced two articles on Edward II's bishops, relating respectively to their ‘learning’ and to their ‘political importance’. Fifteen years later, she treated another aspect of the topic, their ‘social origins and provenance’. These articles, based on her 1937 London MA thesis, provide the point of departure for further study, in particular for any prosopographical analysis. However, apart from transcripts of parliamentary proxies (PRO, SC 10) provided by Professor Johnstone and the briefMeditacio de Statu Prelati(BL, MS Royal 5 C. iii), ascribed to Simon de Ghent, printed sources only were used.