Gone Medieval - Medieval Mass Murdering Monk: Malmesbury Abbey

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

Malmesbury Abbey in Wiltshire was an institution of national significance from the late seventh century until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539. It was home to eminent writers and had strong royal connections. It housed the tomb of Æthelstan, first king of all England, and Queen Matilda, wife of Henry I, took a close interest in its affairs. But it was also home to arguably the most immoral abbot of the Middle Ages, the mass-murdering monk John of Tintern. In this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis finds out more from Tony McAleavy, author of the first full-length study of the history of Malmesbury Abbey which brings to life its colourful cast of characters.This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code MEDIEVAL - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit history hit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. When I wrote about the anarchy, there was one place that featured fairly prominently for a number of reasons, and I'd have to confess that it then slipped from my attention, but no more. Tony McAlevy has taken the story of Malmesbury Abbey and breathed new life into it. His research has thrown up some fascinating new information too. One piece is particularly shocking, so I've asked Tony Tony to pop along and talk to us about his new book, Malmesbury Abbey, 670 to 1539, patronage,

scholarship and scandal. And believe me, you want to stick around for the scandal part, which let's face it is always the best bit of any story. Welcome to God Medieval, Tony. Thanks, Matt. Great to be here. It's wonderful to have you to explore this a little bit further. I can't recommend staying till the end of this too much because it's such a fascinating, incredible story at the end. But before we get there, Tony, why did you choose to write a book about Marlesbury Abbey, what attracted you about that place? I've set out to write a kind of institutional biography of a remarkable community. So there was a religious community continuously, even through the Viking period, from the 7th century to the 16th century. And that story has never been told

before in a full-length study. And when you start looking at Marmsbury, it gives you back so much in terms of the sources, lots of sources never before published or translated into English. English. As he said, Matt, I've called it subtitled Patronage Scholarship Scandal. Patronage, because there's so many interesting royal connections in terms of the endowment and the foundation. Scholarship, because it was an incredibly important place culturally. And scandal, because I'm also quite interested by the darker side, and I've unearthed lots of scurrilous material about monks behaving badly. Without wishing to labour it, the dark side is pretty dark. We're going to get there. The first point at which it registers on my medieval radar, I guess, is the burial place

of Athelstan, the first person to call himself the king of the English. Why did Athelstan choose to be buried at Malmesbury? There were strong connections right from the beginning between Marmsbury, the Minster and the Royal House of Wessex from the 7th century onwards. Athelstan dies in 939, as you say, first king who rules over the whole of the place that we now call England. So why did he choose Mounsbury, I think a couple of reasons. I'd sum it up as piety and politics. He was extremely religious and was particularly devoted to the cult of St. Oldhelm and he wanted to be buried next to the relics of Oldhelm. And he attributed his great victory in 937 at Brunnenborough to the intervention of Oldham of Mansbury. So that was the piety bit. Politics, because Malmary is an

interesting place. It was always on the border between Wessex and Mercia. And actually, right at the beginning, it had joint sponsorship by the two royal houses, quite interestingly. And Aldhelm, I'm sure, of this, was trying to make a political statement that he was a king for all the English. So he wasn't going to be buried in Winchester, the West Saxon Heartland. He was going to be buried in this place on the border between Wessex and Mercia. That's a fascinating decision. You mentioned Oldhelm there. How does he figure in the story of Malmesbury? Oldham is amazing, and I don't think he gets enough due attention and credit. People know a lot about the venerable Bede, but Old Helm comes before Bede.

They're contemporaries, but Bede significantly younger. And Oldham has a claim to be considered as England's first writer, in that he's the first person of English ethnicity, who sets out to have a career as a writer, and whose works survive. So his Latin works survive. And he was immensely influential as a writer and as a poet. And he was almost certainly a member of the Royal House of Wessex. So he had access to some resources. And he made Malmsbury one of the leading centres of higher education and scholarship around about the year 700. The other big name chronicler writer that I associate with Malmesbury is William of Malmesbury, who in the 12th century is setting down these kind of epic,

histories of England. How important was William to the story of Molesbury? William's important clearly in his own right, for the reasons you've described, after Bede, arguably the greatest historian produced in England in the Middle Ages, described as being possibly the most learned man in 12th century Europe by Rodney Thompson, because his works have got so many references to so many different works. He had access to an amazing library. So he's important in his own right, but he's incredibly important in terms of the history of Malmsbury because he was fascinated by the history of Malmsebury. And in both his great works,

the history of the bishops and the history of the kings of England, he gives us lots of really rich detail about Malmnsbury's history. So we're hugely dependent on him for our understanding of the Anglo-Saxon monastery and what happened after the conquest in Malmstabre. And he was a big champion of Athelstan as well, wasn't he? Because obviously he's at Malmbury where Atholstan is buried. So as Alfred the Great's reputation is probably steamrolling through all of the other Anglo-Saxon kings, William does try to revitalise the story of Athelstan as the man who really united

England. Yeah, he's a huge fan of Athelstan and devotes a lot of attention to Athelstan in his history of the kings. He almost certainly saw the body of Athelstan when it was reintered in the early 12th century. He describes the body of Athelstan. So we're immensely indebted to him. Some scholars think that he was involved in a poetic inscription that was placed onto the tomb of Athelstan. Sadly, it's not there anymore. We still have a tomb of Athelstan, but it's a much later medieval artifact. And without giving away the big ending that I've been building up so much, where there are lots of new things that you discovered about Malmesbury that maybe weren't expecting when you embarked on this? Lots of stuff about the famous individuals, Old Helm and William, etc.

but also about some other members of the community who've been more or less forgotten actually, but who led surprisingly interesting lives. There was a chap called Lollos, a monk who was in Malmsebury in the 730s, who went off on this extraordinary journey. He went on pilgrimage to Rome, teamed up with Boniface, became a missionary in Germany, and eventually succeeded Boniface and became the Archbishop of Mainz, and was basically in charge of the German church, and became an advisor to Charlemagne.

So I think that's so cool that story from the monk from Malmsbury who advised Charlemagne. There's a chap called Ferritzios, who around about 1100, was appointed by Henry I, to be his personal physician, because he was a monk, but he was also one of England's top doctors.

And one of my favourites, a chap called Thomas of Bromum, a 14th century chronicler, who gives us an eyewitness account of the Black Death. He was convicted that the world was about to end, but before it ended, that the Black Prince was going to have this messianic role, was going to conquer the world, not just the French, but the rest of the world. And then we would have the Second Coming of Christ, so I've written about Thomas of Bromum at a little bit of length in the book. So some, I think,

really interesting characters. Hindsight will tell us he was wrong about the Black Prince, but it's a pretty strong claim that he was about to be the Second Coming of Christ. It is an amazing story. He wrote this chronicle called Ulogium Historiarium, and I've got lots of extracts from it for the first time in translation. As I say, he was an eyewitness to the Black Death, and I think he probably joined the community because of some personal trauma associated with the black death. So an interesting character. And there was some pretty big events there as well. So I mentioned William of Malmesbury records portions of the anarchy, and I think sometimes in his writing you can get that really strong sense that he's on the frontier of the fighting, and he's

genuinely worried that someone is going to come and burn his home down and burn his monastery down or something. But there's a massacre there in 1153. Could you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, by that point, Williams died. So he breaks off from his historian novella in the early 40s. So the anarchy started and Momsbury's right at the centre of the fighting. Actually, it's right in the war zone. January 1153, Henry Plantagenet, aged 19, having just married Eleanor of Aquitaine, does this crazy thing. He invades England in the middle of winter, terrible weather. He lands in Dorset and he goes straight to Malmesbury. That was his first destination because he wanted to take the castle. The castle was held by Stephen's forces. And his army stormed the town. There were some resistance

from the town's folk. They then fled to the Abbey Church to seek sanctuary. And Henry Plantagenet's Flemish and Breton mercenaries pursued them, ignored the sanctuary and massacred monks and townsfolk in the Abbey Church. And this is a story that's only relatively recently come to light because we rediscovered the lost ending to the great chronicle, the Deeds of Stephen, that tells this tale. I must have left a bit of a scar on the community and perhaps on young Henry as well to witness that kind of massacre within the bounds of a church. Yeah, I don't think he was very happy about it. I think this mercenary army was out of control. And afterwards, I've explored the way he tries to mend fences with the community in Malmsbury.

And he's well disposed. He gives charters in favour of Malmesbury. He actually rocks up in the mid-1150s a few years later with Thomas Beckett, his chancellor, and grants a charter to Marmastry. So I think he was trying to make amends. Yeah. Well, I'm not going to put it off any longer. I'm going to come to the... Yeah, I'm laboring the point, but this is such an incredible story.

This really leaped out from what is a fascinating book. This is an incredible episode in which we essentially have a mass-murdering abbot of Malmesbury. It's pretty shocking. Who was he and how did you discover him? He's a monk of Malmstbury who became Abbott called John of Tintan. I think he has a claim to be seen as the single most immoral monk from the whole of the middle ages. That's a pretty big claim. He's in a big pool of fairly immoral people there.

Show me someone who's got a worst track record. I discovered a file. It is actually literally a criminal file detailing his felonies in the National Archive in Q. And it contains all sorts of accusations against him, made by the local juries. So the legal system was a bit different then. The juries were local guys who were supposed to know who'd done bad stuff locally. And several local juries accused him of a whole series of crimes, including multiple murders.

So if we work our way through his career a little bit, when was John at Molesbury? He's called John of Tintan, so I assume he came from Tinton, the place in Monmouth Show where there is the magnificent Cistercian Abbey. He first appears on the record in 1318, and his first appearance is linked to criminality

because he's accused of being involved in a mass brawl with 40 other guys from Malmesbury in the town of Lechlead. And then he pops up a lot in the record in the 1320s. And he clearly becomes a very senior monk and a sort of man of business for the abbot. He goes to Parliament to represent the abbot as a proxy. He finally becomes Abbott in 1340. And in 1343, amazingly, he goes on the run because an arrest warrant has been issued for him. I mean, what a guy? What are the monks doing electing this guy as their abbot?

absolutely blows my mind. And you mentioned that this file was in the National Archives at Kew. Was it just one of those things that's yet to be cataloged? It was just sitting in there in a box waiting to be found. That's exactly right. It wasn't hidden away or anything. It's just there. And it's there in documents associated with the court of the King's Bench, because it was in front of this particular court that he was eventually taken. I've been massively assisted in my detective work by the amazing achievement of the University of Houston in Texas. because history folks there have digitised about 10 million images of medieval legal records from Q and they've given you ways of navigating your way through it.

So that greatly assisted me to track down this file. I had a clue that there was something going on here because one of the documents, the arrest warrant, has been published before in 1902 as part of the patent rolls. So I knew there was something going on. But the arrest warrant doesn't say what he was accused of, so I had to go looking for that. So for a guy then who arrives, most likely from Tinturn in Wales, is almost immediately in trouble for fighting and brawling. And by 1343 is an abbot who is on the run with an active arrest warrant for him. What do we know about what John actually did?

What are some of the charges that are laid against him? The charges culminate in murder. But before that, there's a backstory. He's also accused of something astonishing. Before he becomes abbot, he's accused of having a hidden treasure cash to the value of £10,000, which I calculated is about £9 million in modern money in 1326. So when he was still a relatively young monk, he apparently hid away this extraordinary hoard of treasure. Now, I've looked into this, and I'm pretty sure that what this is, the war chest of Hugh Dispenser the Elder.

So in 1326, Queen Isabella and her lover Mortimer, they invade England, they overthrow Edward II, Isabella's husband. And Edward and his advisers, the dispensers, initially they flee westward. And their plan was to organise an army, I think, by the time they got to Wales. And almost certainly they took with them this huge amount of cash, which they left in the safekeeping. of John of Tintin at Malmesbury. That seems like a pretty poor choice with the benefit of hindsight, doesn't it? I think he hid it away

and it was probably quite embarrassed and troubled because, of course, the Marmsbury monks were on the losing side. The dispensers were rather horribly put to death and they had this huge treasure trove. So that's one thing he's involved with. And then in the 1330s, the accusations of the local juries

that he was responsible for at least for murders. And the file gives very specific detail about who was killed, where they were killed, and how it took place. And he uses contract killers. So he doesn't actually kill people himself. He's accused of having hitmen. And one particular hitman, a guy called Henry of Badminton. So his name comes up over and over again. So if you fell foul of John of Tinturn, there was a chance that Henry of Madminton was going to turn up, and this was very difficult news. So there are three murders described in which Henry of Badminton's given his instruction by Tintan. He goes off, he kills the person concerned, and then he comes back for a sort of debriefing with John of Tintan.

I had a place called Cowfold, which was the country house of the Malmesbury monks just outside Marmsbury. So he's responsible for at least four murders. The jurors suggest that there were many more, but they only itemise four of them. He was also responsible, they say, for several arson attacks on his enemies. The most dramatic one takes place in about 1336, and it's in the village of Lee, L-E-A, which is just outside Marmsbury, where his forces, guess who was there, Henry of Badminton was there, burn down the manor house where there's a chap called Ralph of Coom living, and abducted Ralph's wife, Margaret of Coombe, then proceeds to.

to become John's lover. And John and Margaret live openly, so say the jury, for the next seven years in Malmsbury. So he's an adulterer, he's an arsonist, and he's a murderer. And he's a gangster because he's got a whole group of associates who are working with him, his gang. I was about to say, he sounds like something like a mafia movie, doesn't he's a full and godfather figure. He's got Henry of Badminton there as his enforcer. He's accumulating all of this wealth. They've taken other people's wives and just living openly with them. There seems to be this sense that the whole community around there kind of know what he's up to, but he's probably maybe too powerful for them to really bring down.

I think that's exactly what's happened. That's exactly right. He is part of the establishment. In some respects, he's in charge of elements of local law and order. He's also in cahoots with other locals. And yeah, that's the context. Do we know what motivates John to commit some of these crimes, particularly the murders? If he's hiring someone to go and do it, it's clearly.

premeditated hits that he's ordering, what is his motivation for these? The jury's very rarely comment on that, but there's one exception when they talk about how all his crimes were done for love of land. And he's busy doing all sorts of deals relating to the estate of the Abbey. He's trying to maximise the return from the estate. When he falls out with people, he has enemies and the people that he kills are typically tenants, senior tenants, local gentry, and he wants to get them out the wife, he's fallen out with them, but he also wants to give their land to his cronies. I think there's another part of the motivation to do with the financial pressure that the abbey was under, because if you come to Malmbury and there's a magnificent

fragment of the medieval abbey that still survives as the parish church, and it's very famous for its 12th century Romanesque work. But actually the main roof of the abbey building was rebuilt about this period. And it was an extraordinary investment and piece of work. And my theory is that it was initially going to be patronised by the dispensers. But they came to a sticky end. And the abbey was in trouble because they were trying to pay for this extraordinary rebuilding campaign. So they needed money and I think a combination of these local disputes over land and his needs to maximise the cash for the building campaign drove him to it. I wonder whether he's able to rationalise it as the ends justifying the means that he's doing all of this for the glory of

the church and for the glory of God and all of that kind of, I don't know. How do you play that in your mind? Was he just greedy? I can't see how you could possibly rationalise what you were doing and justify it in that way. One of the things I came across that I thought was interesting is that in the Vatican Archives, there's an application from him to the Pope for a plenary indulgence. In other words, he sent a messenger,

actually not to Rome, to Avignon, and paid the due fee so that he could get this piece of paper from the Pope saying, at the hour of your death, I absolve you of all your crimes. And I like to imagine that there was some sort of guilty conscience that drove him to that particular act. Yeah, so he managed to get himself a get out of jail free card to be played on his deathbed.

Yeah. It's unbelievable. Get out of hell free card, yeah. Yeah. Given that some of these crimes seem to be fairly in the open, you know, living with someone's wife for seven years, do we have a sense of what the other monks and what the wider church might have thought about what John was up to? I've come across nothing that suggests that he was in trouble with the church because of the way he lived. And everything seems to suggest that he had the support of his brethren because, as you said, they elected him as Abbott.

So he's been involved in all sorts of crimes, including these murders in the previous decade. When he isn't the abbot, he's a senior monk. And then in 1340, they choose him as their abbot. And we do know from the criminal file that he's got at least one henchman, who is a fellow monk. So there's another guy called John of Rodbourne, who is his partner in crime, who is also accused separately of other murders. So there's another murdering monk. John also has a lover. Later on it comes to light that he's got an illegitimate daughter called Denise that he tries to find a good husband for. So there's no suggestion at all. There was disapproval. I don't know. Maybe there was. Maybe they were frightened of it.

He seems to be a fairly scary individual. Maybe he intimidated people into electing him as an abbot. There's hints of a rigged election or potentially maybe the monks just thinking, here's a guy who can get a job done. If we don't ask how he's doing it, he's actually managing to get some things sorted. He's effective. Yeah, for sure. The Abbey was in financial trouble because of this massive building campaign.

So maybe folks saw that as a rationale. I don't know, by any possible standards, what he did was so. utterly wrong, it is very peculiar that he should have been chosen as Abbott. Yeah. And you mentioned that 1343 comes along this arrest warrant and he goes on the run. Do we know what becomes of John? Yeah. As I said, this is where the story started in terms of me coming across this arrest warrant. And it is an extraordinary document. What's happened in March 1343 is that there is an inquiry in Wiltshire into local law and order. And I wonder who crops up on their radar. Yeah, and it's that inquiry that leads to the submission of all these jury statements.

And Royal Justice is sent down from London to investigate law and order in Wiltshire. And he receives all these reports from the local juries, and he decides to act. So he goes back to London and gets the arrest warrant issued. But John goes on the run, and he goes on the run with his lover, Margaret, and her maid, Joan Chosy, and about 35 other people. There's this huge list of suspects who were named. Anyway, they go on the run, but eventually he surrenders. After a few weeks, he surrenders, and he's arrested, and he's held in custody for a while,

and then he's bailed. And then in October, he has to go to London with Henry of Badminton and John of Rodbourne. These three arch suspects are tried at the King's Bench, or rather they present themselves to the justices. But they get off. Some sort of deal has clearly been done in the background, and they are given a pardon in return for a fine of £500, which was a huge amount of money,

and he gets away with it. As far as I can see, he dies in his bed. In 1349, we know this very precisely, on the 8th of August, 1349. There's a pretty good chance that he dies of the Black Death, because that's the height of the plague. He gets away with it. So just to be clear, in the middle of the 14th century,

we've got an adulterous, racketeering, arsonist, mass-murdering, mafiosi monk, and he literally gets away with it. He just gets away with murder and goes on to live the rest of his life. Yep, that's it. That's what the record says. And I see no reason to disbelieve the juries.

I think the evidence is compelling. There's lots of circumstantial detail about what he did, and he is pardoned. But you don't get a pardon unless, in theory, you've done something wrong. You're being pardoned. So there is a suggestion of culpability in this, and he has to pay a fine. You don't usually get fined unless you've done something wrong, and he doesn't seem to challenge this. He accepts the fine, and he pays the fine.

But that was his punishment for murder and gang. gangsterism. He was fined. My mind is genuinely blown, Tony. I mean, you must have sat there looking at all of this stuff in the archives, mouth open, how much more of this can there possibly be? Because it seems endless as well. It is completely astonishing, isn't it? I think there's a context here of England at this time as actually being a terribly lawless place of a government legal system that was more preoccupied with generating cash than improving the quality of people's lives and a political context related to Edward III's early stages of the Hundred Years' War. Edward is fighting the French, and his chief priority in terms of the legal system is how far it can

generate cash for him to fund the war against the French. And if you combine that with the fact that there's clearly a corrupt local establishment in Wiltshire, where Jonathan is definitely working with the local sheriffs who were supposedly in charge of law and order in a corrupt way, then we can maybe begin to make sense of this extraordinary phenomenon. Yeah, it's incredible. A book on Malmesbury Abbey would have been something I would have read anyway as an incredible place with incredible stories to tell, but this is almost like in a weird, dark way, the icing on the cake, to have a story like this associated with it, which is just absolutely unbelievable. So thank you so much for joining us and sharing all of that with us, Tony.

It's been great. Great pleasure. Thanks, Matt. Tony's new book, Malmesbury Abbey 670 to 1539, patronage, scholarship and scandal is available now if you'd like to learn even more about the terrible John of Tinturn. There are brand new episodes of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please join us next time for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us wherever you get your podcast from and to tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. If you get a chance, please do drop us a review or rate us anywhere that you listen to podcasts to help us reach new audiences. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hits.