Whatever happened to Hamo?

Bernard Wigan considers what became of one of Rochester’s longest-serving bishops, Hamo de Hythe (1319-1352). Extract from The Friends of Rochester Cathedral Annual Report for 1983.

Hamo of Hethe had a remarkably long reign for a medieval bishop of Rochester - longer. I think, than any other before Fisher. Thanks to the quantity of litigation and skulduggery which surrounded his appointment, we have a detailed knowledge of the events leading up to his consecration at Avignon on 26 August 1319. But it is a different matter with regard to the end of his reign and his death. Licence to elect his successor was granted on 27 December 1352. And this has led those who have written about Hamo in the past to assume that he was dead before that date. It is said that he died in office in May or October 1352, his attempted resignation having been refused by the pope in 1349. No evidence, however, was offered to support these statements. But the new edition of Le Neve's Fasti 1300-1541. (IV Monastic Cathedrals, ed. B. Jones. 1963) is more circumstantial, giving the date of death as 4 May 1352 and referring as authority to Arundel ms. 68 f.26b. This ms. is a Canterbury obit book, which gives the day and month upon which anniversaries were to be kept: but not the year of death It therefore appears that the traditional account of Hamo's end is almost entirely a fabrication supported by no evidence what-ever. The single substantiated fact is the date 4 May'. But we cannot be sure even of this. At an earlier date there are obit lists from Rochester as well as from Canterbury. Although the new Fasti has ignored the Rochester list, one would expect it to be at least as worthy of credence as Canterburv: and it does not always agree wth Canterbury. It looks as though Canterbury did not, for reasons of convenience, always observe Rochester anniversaries on the date of death: and this may also be the case with Hamo.

On the other hand there is plenty of evidence to support an entirely different account of Hamo's end. First, the Registers of Innocent VI. Far from refusing the resignation of Hamo. it is recorded that the Pope provided John of Sheppey on the resignation of Hamo - 22 October 1352; so Hamo certainly did not die in May of that year. Then, on 29 June 1353 the Pope agreed to Sheppey's request that Hamo should receive a pension of £40, saying that he had ruled the diocese for thirty years and was more than eighty vears old - which places his birth around 1270.

But there is also evidence that Hamo, supported by his pension, lived for several years more. Among the documents entered in Sheppey's Register is the will of Thomas of Alkham.

Thomas was a wealthy priest, who was Rector of Southfleet and had been Hamo's Chancellor. He made his will on 10

February 1357/8 and left to Hamo sometime Bishop of Rochester" if he is still alive at the time of my death a silver cup with hexagonal base which Hamo had given him. On 10th of the following April Thomas made a codicil, in which he disposed of many of his chattels, but made no alternative bequest of Hamo's cup. Thus Hamo was certainly alive on 10 February 1358, and probably still in April. Bishop Sheppey died in 1360.

So Hamo, far from dying in office, certainly lived through the greater part of the reign of his successor; and we cannot even be sure that he did not outlive him.

In spite of his longevity, however, Hamo did not enjoy good health. He was seriously ill during his stay at Avignon in 1319.

In 1323 he suffered paralysis and gingivitis which is painful even to read about in Latin. By 24 January 1345 he was sending his protégé John of Sheppey (then the Prior) to Avignon with the hint that he should be his successor. The last events of his reign recorded in the Register and in 'Historia Roffensis' take us only to 1350. So it looks as though Hamo suffered a long terminal illness before he died aged about ninety. Was he entirely inactive during the whole of this time? I think not. The greater part of 'Historia Roffensis' is a compilation which survives onlv in one ms. (Cotton: Faustina B. V) written a good time after we may imagine Hamo to be dead, and of unknown provenance. It is a many-lavered sandwich. Alternative lavers are devoted to national and to Hamonian affairs. The source of the national material has not so far been identified. The Hamonian material is very close to Hamo himself. In fact, although it is mostly written in the third person singular, there are places of great emotion in which Hamo is made to speak in the first person. So I suspect that this is the autobiography of Hamo himself. This suggestion is made more probable by the Latin in which the text is written. It is full of grammatical errors and almost entirely lacking in punctuation, which would be a likely result of dictation by an aged man in a language which he had been more accustomed to read than to write. A small part of the text was printed by Wharton (Anglia Sacra I pp.356-377): but it is hoped that a complete edition and translation will be published in the series 'Oxford Medieval Texts'. It is certainly a document of great interest to those who are interested in Rochester; and, like Hamo himself, it needs to be rescued from the mishandling which it has received in the past.

Bernard Wigan

Extract from The Friends of Rochester Cathedral Annual Report for 1983