The Chapel of Bones: (Knights Templar 18) (2 page)

This story has been in my mind for some time, ever since I first heard of the strange murder of the Chaunter at Exeter Cathedral.

The tale has all those elements which a novelist would love: intrigue, hatred, jealousy and murder, all occurring within the supposedly calm and contemplative environs of a Cathedral Close. Naturally I was drawn to it.

A good friend of mine, Susanna Gregory, author of the excellent Matthew Bartholomew series of medieval murder stories, has commented that at a time in which almost a third of the male population of the country was directly or indirectly employed by the Church, it would be astonishing if some of them weren’t unpleasant, murderous or plain mad. Well, if events at Exeter in the 1280s are anything to go by, there were many men in the Cathedral who were ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know’.

The story really began with the arrival of Bishop Quivil in 1280. He would appear to have been a thorough and responsible Bishop, who was notable for spending a lot of his time in the saddle travelling about his diocese and making sure that people were well-served by his men. Unlike Exeter’s Bishops before and after him, Quivil devoted his time to the souls under his jurisdiction, and would appear to have largely ignored the country’s politics. Sadly, though, he managed to make his Archbishop angry even before he had won his post.

Archbishop Peccham refused to consecrate Quivil
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, sending him a curt letter that read:
We should desire personally to confer on you the rite of consecration in the Metropolitan Church of Canterbury on the Sunday before St Martin’s Day; but, finding it
a little inconvenient
to be present in our own person
… Thus Peccham found it too much of a trial to attend the installation of one of his top men in his own church at Canterbury.

This was a poor start to Quivil’s rule, but matters were soon to deteriorate.

Although Quivil appears to have been an exceptionally mild-tempered Bishop for his time – he rarely excommunicated anyone, tended not to call in the secular arm of the law to chastise the disobedient, had disputes neither with laymen and clerics nor the priories and abbeys in his territory – yet he still had a series of problems with one man: John Pycot.

The Archbishop installed John (also called John of Exeter) as his Dean under Quivil. From the records, John would appear to have been ‘an unscrupulous though plausible worldling’ (Boggis). Although Quivil fought against his appointment, John had the full weight of Peccham behind him, and eventually became Dean on the death of Dean John Noble in 1281. Quivil unsuccessfully appealed to the Pope against his installation on several grounds.

The actual reason for their enmity has been lost; however there are some clues. Nicholas Orme in
Medieval Art and Architecture at Exeter Cathedral
(‘Transactions of the British Archaeological Association’, 1985), points out that Pycot was already the Treasurer of the Cathedral, but that alone hardly seems reason enough for Quivil’s violent dislike of him. There
must have been some other grounds for Bishop Quivil’s refusal to accept Pycot as his Dean.

For whatever the reason, Quivil would have nothing to do with him. He refused to acknowledge Pycot’s position, and then, when it was apparent that he was getting nowhere, he installed his own Chaunter, Walter de Lecchelade, who made it his business to obstruct the Dean whenever he could. He took over the Dean’s stall in the Cathedral, the Dean’s residence, and his income, as well as taking on all the rights pertaining to the office of Dean. As Chaunter, he had second-in-command status after the Dean, and would take control in the Dean’s absence. The fact that he was put in post in the same year in which John Pycot was elected to Dean seems to support the view that Quivil was looking to counterbalance the Dean’s authority.

In any case, two years later a terrible event took place in the Close. On 9 November 1283 – W.G. Hoskyns in
Two Thousand Years in Exeter
(Unwin, 1960) gives the date as 5 November – Walter de Lecchelade was murdered. He had attended Matins at the Cathedral and was walking the short distance home at between one and two in the morning, when he and his men were set upon by an armed gang. Lecchelade’s body was discovered early the next day, lying in the mud.

This set in train the events which I’ve outlined in my story. There was no resolution between the Dean and the Bishop, and relations must have worsened, because by 1285, two years later, the Bishop was asking the King to come and hear the matter.

King Edward I arrived on 22 December 1285 with his Queen, and they installed themselves in the moderate comfort of the castle. That was a Saturday. The next day, the royal couple attended Mass in the Cathedral, and on Christmas Eve they started hearing the case.

There were twenty-one men accused. Eleven were clerics,
and as such were spared the risk of death, but were confined in the Bishop’s gaol. Dean John Pycot was one; the Vicar of Heavitree, John de Christenestowe, and John de Wolfrington, Vicar of Ottery St Mary, were two others. Among those who had nothing to do with the Cathedral were two main citizens of Exeter: the Mayor, Alured de Porta, and the porter of the South Gate. The reason for this was that the gates had been left wide open all through the night of the killing. The Bishop contended that this proved that the city had conspired in the murder of his Chaunter.

The trial was halted during Christmas Day, naturally, and continued on Boxing Day. On this day, Alured was taken out and hanged, along with the porter at the gate. Later, the churchmen were convicted by the Bishop’s court and Dean John was imprisoned.

This wasn’t quite the end of the affair. Archbishop Peccham interested himself in the fate of his ally still, and tried to have him released along with his ten associates. It didn’t work, though, and Pycot stayed in the ecclesiastical prison until 1286, at which time he was banished to a monastery – we don’t know which one.

This was obviously an extreme case of violence in a Cathedral’s Close, but when we look back through history at the behaviour of our ancestors in the Church, we find many other examples. Men were, in the words of Henry Summerson, ‘aggressive, vindictive, acquisitive and suspicious’
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. For example, when there was an argument between a group of churchmen in 1271, the parson of Quantoxhead threatened Master Thomas de Graham that he’d be ‘revenged on him within three days’. Clearly a man
in a hurry, the parson saw to it that Master Thomas was murdered the very next day. The poor fellow was attacked at Thorverton by men who slaughtered both him and his groom, cutting out Master Thomas’s tongue as well – presumably because the insult given had been verbal.

The point is, the members of the clergy were as likely to draw a sword as any other man. Perhaps more so than the average peasant, because so many of the clergy had been raised in noble surroundings, and many would have trained with their older brothers as warriors before being sent into the Church.

Clergymen saw no problem with girding themselves with a sword. They would protect themselves and their churches with steel, if necessary, and many who were of nobler birth would have no compunction about defending their honour with a blade.
These were not the sort of men to turn the other cheek
.

Those who have some knowledge of the rebuilding of Exeter Cathedral may be surprised at my sudden improvement of the schedule of works. So far as I know, the section east of the towers was largely completed by 1310, and in 1318 there was some remodelling (increasing some parts from two storeys to three for coherence of the whole) and presumably the rest of the works were internal finishing. The impressive – in fact, quite alarming – Bishop’s throne was made between 1313 and 1319. Thomas of Witney may have designed this, and was appointed Master of the Works around 1316. He was almost certainly responsible for the pulpitum (1317–25) and the presbytery sedilia (1316–26). We know that in 1324 Thomas was ordering huge quantities of stone from Caen, as well as from more local quarries in Silverton, Salcombe and Beer among others, in order to build the new nave. At the same time he ordered fifteen poplar trees for scaffolding, as well as a hundred alder trees, forty-eight
‘great’ trees from Langford, and assorted loads of timber. The Bishop bought 13s 6d worth of timber in London.