Simon Mepeham | |
|---|---|
| Archbishop of Canterbury | |
 Tomb of Mepeham in Canterbury Cathedral | |
| Elected | 11 December 1327 |
| Installed | 22 January 1329 |
| Term ended | 12 October 1333 |
| Predecessor | Walter Reynolds |
| Successor | John de Stratford |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 21 September 1297 |
| Consecration | 5 June 1328 |
| Personal details | |
| Died | 12 October 1333 |
Simon Mepeham (or Meopham or Mepham; died 1333) was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1328 to 1333.
Mepeham was educated at Oxford between the years 1290 and 1296 at Merton College where he devoted himself to the study of theology. He was ordained priest on 21 September 1297 in Canterbury Cathedral by Archbishop Robert Winchelsey, who gave Simon the rectory of Tunstall in Kent.
Mepeham became a prebendary of Llandaff in 1295 and soon afterwards a canon of Chichester but took no interest or part in public affairs. [1]
Mepeham was the candidate of the Earl of Lancaster against the candidate supported by Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer. [2] Elected to the Archbishopric of Canterbury on 11 December 1327, Simon Mepeham was consecrated on 5 June 1328, and received the temporalities of the see of Canterbury on 19 September 1328. [3] That winter, he supported a rebellion against the rule of Roger Mortimer that was led by the Earl of Lancaster and supported by the Earl of Norfolk, Earl of Kent and others. [4]
Archbishop Mepeham's register is lost [5] and as a result what we know of his governance of his see is gleaned from the chroniclers William Thorne and William Dene. [5] Mepeham was considered to be a "man of no great ability and with scanty knowledge of ecclesiastical tradition and propriety, and the maintenance of the rights of his See caused disputes on every side." [1]
Mepeham became involved in a dispute about the juridical rights of churches that had been appropriated by St Augustine's Abbey. The monks made an appeal against the Archbishop, and a Papal nuncio and canon of Salisbury, Icherius de Concareto, was appointed to mediate. Mepeham was cited to give evidence before him, but refused to attend. The suffragans of Canterbury were in support of Mepeham, but his refusal to submit to the judicial process of the Church led to his excommunication by Pope John XXII in 1333. [6] Concoreto had issued an order suspending Mepham from presiding at Divine Services on 22 January 1333 with the condition that should the Archbishop continue to refuse to resist the will of the Pope and court he was to be excommunicated 30 days later. [7]
Mepeham's excommunication was posthumously rescinded, allowing him to be buried in Canterbury Cathedral.
Mepeham died on 12 October 1333. [3] He is buried in a tomb made of black marble located beneath the entrance arch to the Chapel of St. Anselm in Canterbury Cathedral. [1]
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Roger Mortimer, 3rd Baron Mortimer of Wigmore, 1st Earl of March, was an English nobleman and powerful Marcher lord who gained many estates in the Welsh Marches and Ireland following his advantageous marriage to the wealthy heiress Joan de Geneville, 2nd Baroness Geneville. In November 1316, he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1322 for having led the Marcher lords in a revolt against King Edward II in what became known as the Despenser War. He later escaped to France, where he was joined by Edward's queen consort Isabella, where they may have begun an affair although there is no proof of that. After he and Isabella led a successful invasion and rebellion, Edward was deposed; Mortimer allegedly arranged his murder at Berkeley Castle. For three years, Mortimer was de facto ruler of England before being himself overthrown by Edward's eldest son, Edward III. Accused of assuming royal power and other crimes, Mortimer was executed by hanging at Tyburn.
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Events from the 1320s in England.
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Events from the 1390s in England.
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The invasion of England in 1326 by the country's queen, Isabella of France, and her lover, Roger Mortimer, led to the capture of Hugh Despenser the Younger and the abdication of Isabella's husband, King Edward II. It brought an end to the insurrection and civil war.
The Despenser War (1321–22) was a baronial revolt against Edward II of England led by the Marcher Lords Roger Mortimer and Humphrey de Bohun. The rebellion was fuelled by opposition to Hugh Despenser the Younger, the royal favourite. After the rebels' summer campaign of 1321, Edward was able to take advantage of a temporary peace to rally more support and a successful winter campaign in southern Wales, culminating in royal victory at the Battle of Boroughbridge in the north of England in March 1322. Edward's response to victory was his increasingly harsh rule until his fall from power in 1326.
The Parliament of 1327, which sat at the Palace of Westminster between 7 January and 9 March 1327, was instrumental in the transfer of the English Crown from King Edward II to his son, Edward III. Edward II had become increasingly unpopular with the English nobility due to the excessive influence of unpopular court favourites, the patronage he accorded them, and his perceived ill-treatment of the nobility. By 1325, even his wife, Queen Isabella, despised him. Towards the end of the year, she took the young Edward to her native France, where she entered into an alliance with the powerful and wealthy nobleman Roger Mortimer, who her husband previously had exiled. The following year, they invaded England to depose Edward II. Almost immediately, the King's resistance was beset by betrayal, and he eventually abandoned London and fled west, probably to raise an army in Wales or Ireland. He was soon captured and imprisoned.
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