Last Saturday it was great to see how many people had come to Christ Church to see Tim Jones’ archive film of various Canterbury places and people from the early twentieth century. This screening will be repeated on Saturday 23 May at 2.00pm in Powell lecture theatre. Alternatively, you might want to come to the Great War and its aftermath in Kent study day, which is due to take place at Old Sessions House, also on Christ Church’s Canterbury campus. The day will include lectures and workshops, and will look at how men, women and children experienced the Great War and the years that followed. If you want to come to these events, please book online through the Centre’s webpage. If you have any problems with the system, drop me an email.

Faversham’s painted pillar showing the Crucifixion

Photo: Imogen Corrigan

Another event that will be coming up shortly is the Canterbury & Magna Carta special programme that will begin with a one-day conference on ‘Magna Carta, King John and the Civil War in Kent’ on Saturday 6 June. Tickets can be purchase through the Centre’s webpage and the conference will also take place in Old Sessions House. Other highlights will include Magna Carta Tours of Canterbury on Saturday 13 June, to book email guides@canterburytouristguides.co.uk, and on the same day a Canterbury Family Activity Day to highlight Canterbury’s place in the Magna Carta story. To find out about all the events planned for Magna Carta in Canterbury, please visit the website: www.canterbury.co.uk/magnacarta

Keeping with the theme of government, which seems highly appropriate on a day when David Cameron found out that he had another 5-year term ahead of him as Prime Minister and Scotland turned yellow for the SNP, I thought I might mention an incident that occurred in Faversham in 1300. Even though it does not deal with urban government exclusively, it does show what happens when two corporate bodies vie for control, in this case for Faversham’s parish church. I first became interested in this incident when I was researching the church’s painted pillar, but I’m going to leave that aside and just tell the story of the ongoing row between the town and St Augustine’s Abbey that held the advowson of the church. This was part of a larger dispute between the abbey and the archbishop over precedence and jurisdiction, matters that remain contentious, albeit in different arenas today.

So to events in Faversham: for the leading townsmen, the early fourteenth century marked a significant point in their continuing struggle for self-government. Although the previous generation had managed to wrest some degree of control from the abbot of Faversham Abbey in the 1250s regarding the governance of the town, and had even acquired a common seal by the 1290s, the following decade brought further conflict, coinciding with a bitter dispute over jurisdiction between Archbishop Winchelsey and St Augustine’s Abbey that again drew in the town and its parish church. Consequently while the senior men of Faversham were heavily engaged in building a judicial defence in the king’s courts against the local abbot, which seems to have involved acquiring a copy of Magna Carta in 1300 and soon after retaining the services of a lawyer to act for them, their parish church was the site of a violent incident. This was not the first time there had been bloodshed at the church: a century earlier disputes concerning the right of presentation at Faversham had resulted in the abbot of St Augustine’s and several monks being dragged out of the building and the subsequent destruction of the altars by clerics and others claiming to have acted under the authority of Archbishop Hubert Walter. During the intervening period relations between the see and St Augustine’s were less acrimonious but the appointment of Archbishop Winchelsey in 1294, a year after the papal appointment of Abbot Fyndon, led to further disputes respecting the abbey’s claim to exemption from archiepiscopal authority.

Caught between the archbishop and the Canterbury abbot, Peter de Milstead the vicar at Faversham was excommunicated and turned out of his vicarage by the abbot in the autumn of 1300 after Peter repudiated his original oath to the abbot in favour of the archbishop as his spiritual superior. Thereafter the church was served by monks and priests from St Augustine’s, the vicar retaliating by performing masses at other local churches for those remaining loyal to him, which according to the St Augustine’s chronicler William Thorne included many local townspeople. Matters came to a head following the death of a Faversham parishioner, his coffin fought over in the street by armed monks, clerks and their supporters on one side and the dead man’s friends, the mayor and other armed persons on the other, who with the vicar wished to bury the corpse at the neighbouring church in Preston It is not clear what happened next but according to St Augustine’s, which soon after brought a case against the rioters, the townsmen responded to the sounding of the common horn and in the resulting melee the monks dropped the coffin in the churchyard. They then fled into the church where they were again attacked. The townsmen, led by the mayor and vicar, ‘broke down the doors and gates, entered and climbed the bell tower, severed the ropes of the bells’ and carried away ecclesiastical ornaments and vestments belonging to the abbey. Thus as the leading townsmen prepared to defend their hard-worn civic liberties against the abbot of Faversham Abbey in 1301, they also faced the king’s justices acting on St Augustine’s behalf, the Canterbury monks continuing to celebrate Mass in St Mary’s church even though it had been placed under interdict by the archbishop.

The next few years found the senior townsmen continuing the struggle against the two abbots, while their vicar spent part of the time in prison at the instigation of St Augustine’s. The archbishop, and thus the vicar and his supporters, gained the upper hand in 1304 when the pope upheld the see against St Augustine’s, and in the same year the leading citizens faced the Faversham abbot in court where they achieved more modest results. Nevertheless it was Peter of Milstead’s successor who seems to have been the recipient of new regulations (about 1307) covering the vicarage, the responsibilities of St Augustine’s as holder of the rectory established in the same document. Amongst the abbot and convent’s commitments were repairing and any rebuilding of the chancel, which they apparently commenced at this time or soon after, and it is feasible that the leading parishioners similarly began work on their part of the church building.

It is possible such refurbishment by the parishioners included the painted pillar. I know I have included one of the scenes before in this blog, but I thought you might like to see another. As before the photo was taken by Imogen Corrigan, a freelance lecturer who specialises in medieval art and culture.