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122 Chapter 2
moved out and tell the delinquent to treat deserted partners with
‘marital a·ection’. A letter from the bishop of Lincoln in 1298
shows the same attitude at work at episcopal level. Robert Huthe
had married Mariot la Carter two decades before, lived with her
nine years, and had six children with her. Then he left her for Agnes
la Rus, defied excommunication by the archdeacon of Lincoln, and
moved away to the area under the archdeacon of Ely. The latter is
asked to pursue the matter. One assumes that the deserted wife
Mariot la Carter had set the process in motion.
An apparently real example of such an excommunication survives
in a miscellaneous British Library manuscript:
Formula for an Excommunication. In the year of the Lord 1309, on Friday,
27 June, I, John, parish priest in Matray, since James/Jacob son of
Hedbeigerius does not want to accept his wife Bridget, who had been
adjudged to him by the sentence of the venerable father the Lord John
bishop of Brixen (Brininen), and to treat her with marital a·ection, after
being admonished by me three times on this matter in the presence of
witnesses—and the witnesses should be named—exercising my authority
I excommunicate him with this document.
‘Contra virum recedentem ab uxore et adultere adherentem. Iud. Sua nobis
G. de . . mulier conquestione monstravit quod R. de . . laicus diocesis, ea dimissa,
propria temeritate cuidam adultere inpudenter adheret. Mandamus quatenus, si
est ita, dictum R. ut, adultera ipsa dimissa, nominatam uxorem suam recipiat et
maritali, ut tenetur, a·ectione pertractet, monitione premissa per censuram ecclesiasticam
iustitia exigente compellas’ (MS BL Lansdowne 397, fo. 154R (newer
foliation)). The double dots in papal documents mean that a proper name has
been omitted. ‘Iud.’ could be extended as ‘Iudici’ or ‘Iudicibus’. If the latter, the
last word would be extended as ‘compellatis’. Cf. P. Herde, Audientia litterarum
contradictarum: Untersuchungen •uber die p•apstlichen Justizbriefe und die p•apstliche
Delegationsgerichtsbarkeit vom 13. bis zum Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts (2 vols.;
Bibliothek des Deutschen historischen Instituts in Rom, 31–2; T •ubingen, 1970),
ii. 302.
The Rolls and Register of Bishop Oliver Sutton, 1280–1299, ed. R. M. T. Hill,
vi. Memoranda, May 19, 1297–September 12, 1299 (Lincoln, 1969), 84–5.
‘Forma excommunicationis. Anno Domini M.O CCCIX.O proxima feria sexta
post nativitatem sancti Baptiste, ego Iohannes, plebanus in Matray, quia Iacobus
filius Hedbeigerii Brigidam uxorem suam sibi adiudicatam per sententiam venerabilis
patris domini Iohannis Brixinensis episcopi non vult accipere et eam maritali
a·ectione tractare, ter per per me monitus super hoc coram testibus—et nominentur
testes—auctoritate qua fungor eum (interlined) excommmunico in hiis scriptis’ (MS
BL Add. 18347, fo. 40R). The context is a small set of models for the correct form
of an excommunication, but this one, at least, is so circumstantial that it is probably
based on a real case.