Those of us obliged to observe the convulsions of the past few years, as the English and their European neighbours struggle to come to terms with ‘Brexit’, may be forgiven for casting our minds back to earlier Anglo-French ruptures. To go or to stay? That is the question now posed to many thousands of English expatriates resident in France as to their French equivalents living in England. Much the same question was posed after 1204, to those confronted by the Capetian conquest of what had previously constituted the continental dominion of the Plantagenet King John. In recent years, considerable interest has been shown in the fate of Normans and other Frenchmen living as emigrés in England after 1204. Such ‘aliens’, it is recognized, both lay and clerical, played a significant role in English politics. Not only this, but the confiscation of what had previously been English estates controlled by families now chiefly resident in France brought a vast influx of land to the English crown. In the short term this greatly boosted the King's powers of patronage. On a wider scale it destabilized longer-term patterns both of patronage and of politics, to an extent perhaps not seen again until the Dissolution of the Monasteries after 1536. So much is acknowledged. By contrast to the interest shown in the French in England, however, much less has been written of Englishmen after 1204 stranded or resident in France.

There are exceptions here. Some attention has been paid to estates in France that, after 1204, remained in the hands of English proprietors, both lay (principally William and Richard Marshal earls of Pembroke), and clerical. The monks of Canterbury continued into the fourteenth century to profit from vineyards west of Paris, at Poissy, Triel-sur-Seine, and Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, the outcome of a grant made to them by Louis VII in 1179 in honour of the recently martyred St Thomas. Further south, at Quincieux and Lyons, in the Rhône valley, Canterbury struggled to retain control of an even more distant estate, again as part of Becket's legacy.

Abstract

For popes of the High Middle Ages, peace-making was considered an essential function of their office. Peace, a central part of the Christian message, was particularly necessary within Christendom for the success of the Crusades. The papacy was deeply involved over a long period in attempts to bring about peace between France and England. This study, exploring Gregory IX's attempts to secure peace between Henry III of England (1216–1272) and Louis IX of France (1226–1270), demonstrates the manner in which the process of peace could be manipulated by the parties involved and contributes to the debate concerning whether the papacy was proactive or responsive in its government.

Keywords: Peace, Truce, France, England, Papacy

Gone are the days when the biographers of medieval popes, even of such exalted figures as Gregory VII or Innocent III, could write of them as ‘Leaders of Europe’, let alone as men who ‘shook the World’. It is increasingly acknowledged that a large part of the business of even the most autocratic of medieval popes was transacted in answer to petitions submitted to the Curia by those seeking favours. Save when specific circumstances persuaded particular popes to reshape policy, papal government was responsive rather than dynamic. In the case of Gregory IX, this would allow us to view the high politics of Church and state, especially the relations between Pope Gregory and the Emperor Frederick II, as subject to direct papal control, but much of the rest of papal policy as responsive routine.

Where, between these two extremes, active or passive, are we to place the pope's commitment to the establishment of peace as a prerequisite for the salvation of souls? Peace-making was one of the functions of the papacy, from at least the time of Leo I, and his supposed defence of Rome against Attila. However, whilst historians have paid lip-service to papal peace-making activities, very little has been written on the effects of papal diplomacy within any particular peace initiative. A notable exception is Michele Maccarrone's study of Innocent III's dealings with England and France, focused upon the decretal Novit ille and the pope's claims to jurisdiction over breaches of the peace as a matter of sin rather than of feudal jurisdiction.

University College London (UCL) is a UK ‘research-intensive’ university with a large undergraduate population. Our aim is to connect world-leading research with world-leading education, and we have achieved this by implementing a Connected Curriculum for Research-Based Education. We focus on the role played by educational developers in joining research with undergraduate education. We discuss different spheres of activity within the Connected Curriculum and show how the process brought different communities together and sparked relationships between fields such as student partnership and quality assurance that had hitherto remained separate. Most significantly, own sense of identity changed as we moved from a more traditional role where our work was almost exclusively with colleagues who taught students, to a more creative position working in partnership with a wider network of colleagues and communities.

Twenty-one new charter texts, or references to such texts now lost, add significantly to the corpus of materials that Marjorie Chibnall gathered for the biography of the Empress Matilda. In particular, this new evidence throws light upon the circumstances in which Matilda and Geoffrey Plantagenet brokered their alliance with Robert of Gloucester, for the first time properly identifying the role played here by Miles of Gloucester, subsequently promoted as earl of Hereford.