Simon Mepeham | |
|---|---|
| Archbishop of Canterbury | |
 Tomb of Mepeham in Canterbury Cathedral | |
| Church | Catholic Church |
| 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]
Year 1327 (MCCCXXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar.
Edward II, also known as Edward of Caernarfon or Caernarvon, was King of England from 1307 until he was deposed in January 1327. The fourth son of Edward I, Edward became the heir to the throne following the death of his older brother Alphonso. Beginning in 1300, Edward accompanied his father on campaigns in Scotland, and in 1306 he was knighted in a grand ceremony at Westminster Abbey. Edward succeeded to the throne the next year, following his father's death. In 1308, he married Isabella, daughter of the powerful King Philip IV of France, as part of a long-running effort to resolve the tensions between the English and French crowns.
Isabella of France, sometimes described as the She-Wolf of France, was Queen of England as the wife of King Edward II, and de facto regent of England from 1327 until 1330. She was the youngest surviving child and only surviving daughter of King Philip IV of France and Joan I of Navarre. Isabella was notable in her lifetime for her diplomatic skills, intelligence, and beauty. She overthrew her husband, becoming a "femme fatale" figure in plays and literature over the years, usually portrayed as a beautiful but cruel and manipulative figure.
Robert Winchelsey was an English Catholic theologian and Archbishop of Canterbury. He studied at the universities of Paris and Oxford, and later taught at both. Influenced by Thomas Aquinas, he was a scholastic theologian.
Walter Reynolds was Bishop of Worcester and then Archbishop of Canterbury (1313–1327) as well as Lord High Treasurer and Lord Chancellor.
John de Stratford was Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop of Winchester, Treasurer and Chancellor of England.
Edmund Fitzalan, 2nd Earl of Arundel was an English nobleman prominent in the conflict between King Edward II and his barons. His father, Richard Fitzalan, 1st Earl of Arundel, died in 1302, while Edmund was still a minor. He, therefore, became a ward of John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, and married Warenne's granddaughter, Alice. In 1306 he was styled Earl of Arundel, and served under Edward I in the Scottish Wars, for which he was richly rewarded.
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. Her mother was of the royal House of Lusignan. 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.
Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent, whose seat was Arundel Castle in Sussex, was the sixth son of King Edward I of England, and the second by his second wife Margaret of France, and was a younger half-brother of King Edward II. Edward I had intended to make substantial grants of land to Edmund, but when the king died in 1307, Edward II refused to respect his father's intentions, mainly due to his favouritism towards Piers Gaveston. Edmund remained loyal to his brother, and in 1321 he was created Earl of Kent. He played an important part in Edward's administration as diplomat and military commander and in 1321–22 helped suppress a rebellion.
Hugh Despenser, 1st Baron Despenser, also referred to as "the Younger Despenser", was the son and heir of Hugh Despenser, Earl of Winchester, and his wife Isabel Beauchamp, daughter of William Beauchamp, 9th Earl of Warwick. He rose to national prominence as royal chamberlain and a favourite of Edward II of England. Despenser made many enemies amongst the nobility of England. After the overthrow of Edward, he was eventually charged with high treason and ultimately hanged, drawn and quartered.
Events from the 1320s in England.
Adam Orleton was an English churchman and royal administrator. He was the Bishop of Winchester (1333–1345), Worcester (1327–1333) and Hereford (1317–1327) of the Catholic Church.
Stephen Gravesend was a medieval Bishop of London.
Hamo Hethe was a medieval Bishop of Rochester, England. He was born about 1275 in Centuries, Hythe. He was elected on 18 March 1317 and consecrated on 26 August 1319. He resigned the see early 1352 before his death 4 May 1352.
Events from the 1390s in England.
Margaret de Badlesmere, Baroness Badlesmere was an Anglo-Norman noblewoman, suo jure heiress, and the wife of Bartholomew de Badlesmere, 1st Baron Badlesmere.
Roy Martin Haines, was a British historian.
The invasion of England in 1326 by the country's queen, Isabella of France, and her lover, Roger Mortimer, led to the capture and executions of Hugh Despenser the Younger and Hugh Despenser the Elder 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.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
