Robert Burnell - Chancellor and Bishop

Chancellor and Bishop

On 23 January 1275 Burnell was elected to the see of Bath and Wells. He received the temporalities of the see on 19 March 1275 and was consecrated on 7 April 1275. Three years later Edward once more tried to secure the see of Canterbury for his favourite. Burnell was elected to the archbishopric in June or July 1278, but the election was quashed by Pope Nicholas III in January 1279. King Edward sent a deputation, including the eventual appointee, John Peckham, to secure Nicholas' confirmation of the election. The pope named three cardinals as investigators, and then appointed Peckham instead. The bishop's second failure to obtain the archbishopric was probably a consequence of his lifestyle, which included keeping a mistress. Edward made one final attempt to promote his friend to a wealthier see in early 1280, when Burnell was nominated to become Bishop of Winchester, but Pope Nicholas III quashed the election on 28 June 1280.

Burnell was the chief and most influential of Edward I's advisers during the first half of his reign. As part of his duties Burnell spent most of his time in attendance on the king. He heard many requests and petitions from those who desired patronage or other advancements, and was diligent and active in dealing with routine business. Burnell played a leading role in the legislation introduced by King Edward. The king's major legislative acts mainly date to Burnell's tenure of the office of chancellor, from 21 September 1274 until Burnell's death in 1292. Burnell was instrumental in the enforcement of royal writs and enactments, including the Statutes of Westminster, enacted in 1275, 1285, and 1290. Those of 1275 attempted to deal with the usurpation of royal rights. Keeping the peace in the realm and the extension of royal jurisdiction to cover rape was dealt with in the statutes from 1285, along with a number of other issues. The last statute, from 1290, regulated land law, the result of pressure from the magnates, the leading laymen of England.

During Burnell's time in office Edward and his royal officials made great efforts to reassert royal rights that were felt to have been usurped by the king's subjects. These efforts were made under writs of Quo warranto, which asked the recipient what royal grant or warrant gives the recipient the authority for a right or a power. They were first issued in 1278, after earlier attempts to recover royal rights through parliament unintentionally resulted in too much work for that body. Through these writs, attempts were made to enforce the rule that the only correct way to receive a privilege or grant of land was through a written charter, which might have deprived most of the magnates of England of their lands and rights. Most lands at that time were held not by documentary grants, but by the force of custom. By the 1290s the government was forced to back down and permit rights as they had been allowed from "time out of mind".

The distinction between the king's personal household department of the Wardrobe and the governmental department of the Chancery, which was headed by the chancellor, disappeared almost entirely during Burnell's period of office. The Wardrobe had developed as a less formal department for the collection and distribution of money, but under Edward had effectively become a treasury for warfare. There was no rivalry between the holders of the Great Seal, the official seal of government and used for formal documents, and the Privy Seal, used to authenticate the king's less formal letters. During Burnell's time in office the king only used a Privy Seal warrant, or an informal set of instructions for the chancellor to issue a letter from the Chancery under the Great Seal, when the king and Burnell were apart; after Burnell's death the number of Privy Seal warrants increased greatly.

Edward had such trust in his chancellor and the chancellor's clerks that Burnell and the clerks were allowed to dispense with the hanaper system, which required fees for sealing charters to be paid into the hanaper department of the Chancery for disbursal. Robert and his clerks were permitted to enjoy the profits from the fees of their office. Burnell was also responsible for the decision to force the Court of Chancery to settle in London, rather than following the king and his court around the country. A Chancery memorandum of 1280 records that the chancellor, along with the other ministers, now had the duty of sorting the many petitions that came into the government and only passing on the most urgent to the king.

As bishop, Burnell built a wall around the cathedral at Wells, which helped to improve the security of the cathedral and its outlying buildings. He left the court each year at Lent, when he returned to his diocese and attended to its affairs. Peckham appointed Burnell to be his deputy when the archbishop went to Wales in 1282. It was probably Burnell who suggested a compromise in 1285 over the jurisdictions of the royal and ecclesiastical courts, which allowed royal officials to return cases involving only religious matters to the church courts.