Abstract

In 1258, the English barons famously issued the Provisions of Oxford: their protests against King Henry III and their demands for curbing his use of power. At almost the same time the bishops of England also listed a collection of claims and complaints. Were these two related and if so here? This paper demonstrates that these were not directly the ecclesiastical equivalent of the barons' complaints and their existence was not the reason that the barons did not themselves talk about the Church's grievances in any but the vaguest terms. If they had been the ensuing baronial council would not have ignored or opposed their demands so consistently, Rather they were part of a longer term process of negotiating the boundaries of royal and ecclesiastical authority, and in particular as ecclesiastical courts developed set processes and personnel the ordinances of 1258 and the succeeding 1261 statutes attempted to settle details of court jurisdiction between king and bishop in the context of broader concerns about the way in which secular authority was exercised in England