The Barons' Letter of 1301 was written by seven English earls and 96 English barons to

Pope Boniface VIII Pope Boniface VIII ( la, Bonifatius PP. VIII; born Benedetto Caetani, c. 1230 – 11 October 1303) was the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 24 December 1294 to his death in 1303. The Caetani, Caetani family was of b ...

as a repudiation of his claim of feudal overlordship of Scotland (expressed in the Bull Scimus Fili), and as a defence of the rights of

King Edward I Edward I (17/18 June 1239 – 7 July 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 1272 to 1307. Concurrently, he ruled the duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony as a vassa ...

of England as overlord of Scotland. It was, however, never sent. The letter survives in two copies, known as A and B, both held in the National Archives at

Kew Kew () is a district in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Its population at the 2011 census was 11,436. Kew is the location of the Royal Botanic Gardens ("Kew Gardens"), now a World Heritage Site, which includes Kew Palace. Kew is a ...

under the reference E 26. Historically they were held amongst the documents in the

Exchequer In the civil service of the United Kingdom, His Majesty’s Exchequer, or just the Exchequer, is the accounting process of central government and the government's ''current account'' (i.e., money held from taxation and other government reven ...

, Treasury of the Receipt department.

Creation

The occasion of the letter was a meeting of the

Parliament of England The Parliament of England was the legislature of the Kingdom of England from the 13th century until 1707 when it was replaced by the Parliament of Great Britain. Parliament evolved from the great council of bishops and peers that advised t ...

held at Lincoln. It is addressed to the Pope, referred to as "most Holy Father", and dated from Lincoln on 12 February 1300.See the full text on wikisource s:Barons' Letter, 1301 (English); :la:s:Baronum epistola, 1301 (Latin) The letter explains in its text The seals of the signatories to the letter survive in excellent condition. Although they are now detached from the document, they form the earliest contemporary group of true coats of arms, the rules of

heraldry Heraldry is a discipline relating to the design, display and study of armorial bearings (known as armory), as well as related disciplines, such as vexillology, together with the study of ceremony, rank and pedigree. Armory, the best-known branch ...

having only been established at around the start of the 13th century, and were stated for that reason by

Lord Howard de Walden Baron Howard de Walden is a title in the Peerage of England. It was created by writ of summons in 1597 by Queen Elizabeth I for Admiral Lord Thomas Howard, a younger son of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, by his second wife, the Honourab ...

to be of very great value to students of heraldry. Many of the armorials also appear in the near contemporary Falkirk

Roll of Arms A roll of arms (or armorial) is a collection of coats of arms, usually consisting of rows of painted pictures of shields, each shield accompanied by the name of the person bearing the arms. The oldest extant armorials date to the mid-13th centur ...

made before the

Battle of Falkirk The Battle of Falkirk (''Blàr na h-Eaglaise Brice'' in Gaelic), on 22 July 1298, was one of the major battles in the First War of Scottish Independence. Led by King Edward I of England, the English army defeated the Scots, led by William Wal ...

in 1298 and in the near contemporaneous stained glass shields in

Dorchester Abbey The Abbey Church of St Peter and St Paul, more usually called Dorchester Abbey, is a Church of England parish church in Dorchester on Thames, Oxfordshire, about southeast of Oxford. It was formerly a Norman abbey church and was built on the s ...

, Oxfordshire. Many are also

Blazon In heraldry and heraldic vexillology, a blazon is a formal description of a coat of arms, flag or similar emblem, from which the reader can reconstruct the appropriate image. The verb ''to blazon'' means to create such a description. The vis ...

ed in verse in the

Roll of Caerlaverock Roll or Rolls may refer to: Movement about the longitudinal axis * Roll angle (or roll rotation), one of the 3 angular degrees of freedom of any stiff body (for example a vehicle), describing motion about the longitudinal axis ** Roll (aviation), ...

of 1300.

Purpose

The letter was written by English barons (mainly feudal barons and a few barons by writ) as a repudiation to the

pope The pope ( la, papa, from el, πάππας, translit=pappas, 'father'), also known as supreme pontiff ( or ), Roman pontiff () or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome (or historically the patriarch of Rome), head of the worldwide Cathol ...

of his claim to feudal overlordship of Scotland, which he had expressed in a papal bull dated 27 June 1299 at Agnani. The bull was addressed to

of England and it was delivered by

Robert Winchelsey Robert Winchelsey (or Winchelsea; c. 1245 – 11 May 1313) 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 sc ...

Archbishop of Canterbury The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. The current archbishop is Justi ...

Sweetheart Abbey The Abbey of Dulce Cor, better known as Sweetheart Abbey ( Gaelic: ''An Abaid Ur''), was a Cistercian monastery founded in 1275 in what is now the village of New Abbey, in the historical county of Kirkcudbrightshire in Dumfries and Galloway, ...

Galloway Galloway ( ; sco, Gallowa; la, Gallovidia) is a region in southwestern Scotland comprising the historic counties of Wigtownshire and Kirkcudbrightshire. It is administered as part of the council area of Dumfries and Galloway. A native or i ...

, Scotland, on 26th or 27 August 1300. The bull is preserved in the National Archives at Kew under reference SC 7/6/10. The king sought the advice of

William of Sardinia William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Eng ...

, a former

Dean of Arches The Dean of the Arches is the judge who presides in the provincial ecclesiastical court of the Archbishop of Canterbury. This court is called the Arches Court of Canterbury. It hears appeals from consistory courts and bishop's disciplinary trib ...

to the Archbishop, as to what his response should be, and was presented with various options set out in a letter preserved in the National Archives (C/47/31/15). The Papal bull had been delivered to the king at a sensitive moment, just after the hard-won English victory at the Siege of Caerlaverock Castle over the Scots. Following their defeat at the

in 1298 the Scots had appealed to the pope for his protection, yet the English had fought to subject their northern neighbour and were not about to release it from under their control, perhaps only to rise up again against them. The French were the real movers of the pope's claim, having suggested the move to him as a means to effect protection of the Scots, then their allies under the

Auld Alliance The Auld Alliance ( Scots for "Old Alliance"; ; ) is an alliance made in 1295 between the kingdoms of Scotland and France against England. The Scots word ''auld'', meaning ''old'', has become a partly affectionate term for the long-lasting a ...

, and were themselves allied with the Scots against the English. An English attack on a kingdom the feudal overlord of which was the pope would be virtually unthinkable in political and religious terms. There was thus no question of the English even considering the pope's claim, and the tone of the barons' reply to him is one of anger and open defiance, devoid of almost any of the diplomatic niceties with which the papal bull was replete. In the event, the Barons' Letter was never sent to the pope, as events changed rapidly to such an extent that it appeared superfluous. A letter to the same effect from the king had however been sent to the pope; it is now held in the Vatican Archives with a copy in the National Archives at Kew under reference C 54/118. It was stored away within the archives of the Exchequer, where the two copies of it remained for several centuries until transferred to Public Record Office under the custody of the

Master of the Rolls The Keeper or Master of the Rolls and Records of the Chancery of England, known as the Master of the Rolls, is the President of the Court of Appeal (England and Wales)#Civil Division, Civil Division of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales a ...

before 1903 and more recently transferred to the National Archives at Kew.

Seals

The letter was composed and sealed at the parliament specially convened for the purpose of replying to the Pope's letter held at Lincoln between 13–20 January 1301. To it were summoned 9 earls and 80 barons, yet 7 earls and 96 barons are recorded in the letter itself as co-authors. Those barons who did not answer the summons sealed the letter later. The seals appended by hempen cords to Exemplar B were "tricked" (i.e. reproduced by drawing) by

Lancaster Herald Lancaster Herald of Arms in Ordinary is an English officer of arms at the College of Arms in London. The title of Lancaster Herald first occurs in 1347 at Calais, and to begin with this officer was a servant to the noble house of Lancaster. As a ...

Nicholas Charles in 1611. He also made a transcript of Exemplar B., which clearly was then in a better state of preservation than today. Whilst his drawings provide much detail which is otherwise difficult to see in photographs of the seals themselves, some of his transcripts of the legends are inaccurate. In 1903

published Charles' drawings and a facsimile of his transcript, and also two sets of photographic images of the seals from Exemplar A; firstly of all the surviving individual cords of seals in colour (showing one face only of each seal), and secondly black and white images of each constituent seal on the cord, obverse and reverse (where existing). The number of surviving seals (series unspecified) is given as 95 by the National Archives catalogue entry, and as 72 (7 earls and 65 barons) by Brian Timms. Photographic images were published by Brian Timms on his heraldry website.

List of the barons who sealed the letter

References

Text

See the full text on wikisource s:Barons' Letter, 1301 (English); :la:s:Baronum epistola, 1301 (Latin).

Sources

* Howard de Walden, Lord, Some Feudal Lords and their Seals 1301, published 1903 reprinted 1984. Latin transcript, English translation & photographic images of seals.
National Archives catalogue entry, Barons'LetterBrian Timms heraldry website
*Rymer, T, ''Foedera'', (Ed.), London, 1727, vol. II, p. 873, Latin transcript

External links

{{Commons category, Seals on Barons' Letter, 1301 1301 in England 1300s in law Constitutional laws of England English manuscripts Medieval charters and cartularies of England Political charters Pope Boniface VIII