The Date of a Town’s Foundation as an Argument in the Debates on Its Status: the Case of St Albans

Abstract

The article investigates one possible argument in a dispute about the (burghal) status of a medieval settlement typical for seigneurial towns of medieval England. It is the date of the foundation or appearance of the town in question. Having a burghal status implied that the settlement would have certain right sand privileges, that’s whyt owns people usually tried to proveit by different means, while their lord, especially if it was a monastic one, refused to acknowledge it. The temporal factor appeared to be significant in such discussion, considering that if the appearance of the town preceded the foundation of the monastery (that was its seigneur), then it would allow the former to claim the status of a royal town, even if only it the past. This fact also gave the townspeople opportunity to accuse their monastic lord in usurpation of royal powers. In the article, this issue is analyzed on the example of St Albans, a monastic town, situated in the county of Hertfordshire. This town had a very antagonistic relationship with its seigneur – the local abbey. The fact that this monastery possessed an extensive historiographical tradition allows us to determine how the monastic house constructed the history of the monastery and that of its town within the context of their adversarial relationship. It is remarkable that the references to an ancient foundation appeared at a certain point of the struggle between the town and the monastery, in the 14th century, but had already disappeared by the end of the century from the townspeople’s discourse.