Discovering Malmesbury's 'gangster' medieval monk
bbc.com
bbc.com
> Discovering Malmesbury's 'gangster' medieval monk
The abbot is the gangster. So, what did he do?
> Then in the 1320s, the abbey became embroiled in a feud involving £10,000, which, by today's standards, would have been millions.
> The monasteries at the time had political allegiances and at Malmesbury they supported a local noble family called the Despensers.
> The family left a large amount of cash with the abbey for safekeeping.
> However, when the tide turned against them, the head of the family was executed and the monastery decided to keep quiet about the money they had stored.
> In the end though, the monks of Malmesbury were pardoned: "Extraordinarily, the King took the 10,000 and let him off. Basically, they all got away with it."
So, the Despensers left money at the abbey. They were then killed. Presumably there were no survivors to return the money to. Then the king comes and takes the 10k.
My question is, which person is the gangster?
The answer is the king! Not the abbot.
In what world does the king have a rightful claim to the Despensers money? Only in the one he writes the rules and calls the benefits he receives 'right'. So, gangster.
Tellingly, even now, all these centuries later, the BBC has to kowtow to this "royal" power. Because that is the BBC's job. As it is for all mainstream media.
That's my unpopular opinion anyway.
https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Despenser_War
> In February 1321 Mortimer, Hereford and Lancaster agreed on an attack on the Despenser lands in Wales.[3] Edward responded in March by mobilising his forces in Wales, demonstrating that he intended to make any attack on the Despensers an attack on the crown, and therefore treasonable.[3] The king travelled to Gloucester and called upon the Marcher Lords to join him there; Mortimer and Hereford declined.[3] Mobilising more forces, Edward marched on to Bristol, and repeated his call for the Marcher Lords to convene with him there in May.[4] They again declined.[4]
> Edward had returned to London, where he held his own parliament to discuss courses of action.[5] Mortimer led his army east towards London as well, reaching St Albans in late July.[5] The city of London refused to let Mortimer's forces in, and his forces placed the capital under effective siege.[5] Lancaster arrived in August to support him and a tense stand-off ensued, with the younger Despenser threatening the rebels from a ship on the River Thames, and the barons threatening to begin to destroy royal properties and lands outside London unless he desisted.[5]
> The Earl of Pembroke, a moderate baron with strong French links, intervened in an attempt to defuse the crisis.[6] Edward continued to refuse to negotiate or exile the Despensers, so Pembroke arranged for Queen Isabella to publicly go down on her knees to appeal to Edward to exile the Despensers.[6] This provided him with a face-saving excuse to exile the Despensers and defuse the crisis, but it was clear Edward intended to arrange their return at the first opportunity.[7]
This relates to the time period in question. So the Despensers and the king were on the same side. Lots of confusing info... But, this story is nothing about right, just power.
How can the BBC say the abbot is the gangster in this scenario?
The reason is that their job is to accommodate themselves and their audience to power. It's nothing to do with right or wrong. Even historical power from 700 years so cannot be questioned - one cannot start to unravel even that ancient ball of string.
Perhaps it was the other stuff also listed, the arsons, the assaults, the murder for hire, the kidnapping, etc.
Certainly the king would be assaulting, killing, imprisoning/kidnapping too. He would be doing it more. But he would not be characterised as a gangster.
That seems odd given history frequently characterises various monarchs as more or less thuglife than others.
Who was that villian in the tales of Robin Hood? Richard Lackland!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John,_King_of_England
Contemporary chroniclers were mostly critical of John's performance as king, and his reign has since been the subject of significant debate and periodic revision by historians from the 16th century onwards.
Historian Jim Bradbury has summarised the current historical opinion of John's positive qualities, observing that John is today usually considered a "hard-working administrator, an able man, an able general".
Nonetheless, modern historians agree that he also had many faults as king, including what historian Ralph Turner describes as "distasteful, even dangerous personality traits", such as pettiness, spitefulness, and cruelty.
These negative qualities provided extensive material for fiction writers in the Victorian era, and John remains a recurring character within Western popular culture, primarily as a villain in Robin Hood folklore.
It appears there is some balance in writing between historical accuracy, appeasing the attitudes prevalent today, and simply exaggerating in a colorful way to attract superficial readers. The heavy-handedness of the framing suggest the latter two have won here.
But media pretends that some force (the biggest one) is fine, that kings and governance structures (and the people that run them) aren't gangsters. They smear the potential threats to their racket - the abbot in this historical example, or terrorists, rogue states, or whatever.
The article is a nice historical example of this process.
As a noble house, how do you think the Despensers got their money? It's patronage all the way down, a monarch in the past granted land and title which the contemporaries inherited, and the contemporary monarch inherited the right to take stuff back if they ended up warring with him. It's gangster inasmuch as the royal state itself descended from warlordism, but the rules of the game would've been very clear to the Despensers and everyone else at the time.
e: The more I think about this the funnier and more apt it is! I imagine you imagining the Despensers as laudable entrepeneurs who built their wealth up from scratch with nothing but their own ingenuity and toil, as if the power structure that let them own all their manors and extract rent from all their tenants simply sprang perfect and fully formed into being out of nowhere, with the king a totally uninvolved interloper. Just as, no doubt, the power structure that lets you earn your money sprang perfect and fully formed into being out of nowhere, with society and taxation a totally uninvolved interloper.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/202...