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The Castle of St. Georges-d'Espéranche1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2011

Extract

The castle of St. Georges-d'Espéranche has a direct and immediate interest for English readers as being the place where, on 25th June 1273, Count Philip of Savoy rendered homage to his great-nephew, the as yet uncrowned King Edward I, for the Alpine passes and towns which, by an arrangement dating from 1246, were held by the counts of Savoy of the kings of England. Amongst those noted as being present with the king on that occasion were Otto de Grandison, John de Vescy, and Roger de Clifford; these men had been in Edward's company on the crusade from which he was then returning and, a few years later, were to play prominent parts in the English wars and settlement in Wales. Others who were probably there were Robert de Tibetot, the future justiciar of west Wales, and Payn de Chaworth, lord of Kidwelly, who in 1277 was to be captain of the English army in west Wales and who, at about that date, rebuilt the inner ward of Kidwelly Castle. St. Georges is interesting, however, not only as the scene of this vividly recorded incident of the king's travels, but also because the castle itself is a building which may not be unrelated, through its builders and the personal familiarity with it of Edward, Edmund of Lancaster, and their confidantes, to the new castles built in Wales in the last quarter of the thirteenth century.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1953

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References

page 33 note 2 SirPowicke, Frederick, King Henry III and the Lord Edward(Oxford, 1947), i, pp. 364–6, and ii, pp. 612–13Google Scholar.

page 33 note 3 Calendar of Papal Registers, i, p. 445.

page 33 note 4 Rymer, , Foedera (ed. Rec. Commn.), I, ii, p. 504Google Scholar.

page 33note 5 I owe this information to Dr. Saunier, who tells me the district was called the foret de Chanoz.

page 34 note 1 Ad Septimum, Octavum, Duodecimum lapidem respectively.

page 34 note 2 Chevalier, C. U. J., Régeste Dauphinois, ii, no. 11396,Google Scholar and iii, no. 11683.

page 35 note 1 Acad. Delphinale, Docts. Inédits Relatifs au , Dauphiné, Cartulaire de l'Abbaye N-D de Bonnevaux (Abbaye N-D de Tamie, Savoie, 1942), no. 169Google Scholar.

page 35 note 2 Chevalier, , op. cit. (cited henceforth as Rég. Dauph.), ii, no. 8580Google Scholar.

page 35 note 3 Grenoble, Archives de l'Isère; Série B, 3604, pacquet I, no. z, where the bounds of the grange are set out in detail.

page 35 note 4 Ibid., pacquet 4, no. 1; cf. Rég. Dauph. ii, no. 8670.

page 35 note 5 Rég. Dauph. ii, no. 8671.

page 35 note 6 Ibid., no. 8685.

page 35 note 7 He still claimed the lordship of Septême as his in 1266 (Rég. Dauph. ii, no. 10406).

page 35 note 8 According to the 15th-century Chroniques de Savoye (Monumenta Historiae Patriae, Script, ii, Turin, 1839),Google Scholar col. 171,‘Saint Gregoyre d Esperance’ was one of a group of castles in the pays de Vaud founded by Peter, not Philip, of Savoy. But the chronicle is notoriously unreliable, and has a tendency to give Count Peter credit for activities known to be assignable to other members of the family. The castle of Morges, for example, on the lake of Geneva, which record evidence (cf. Millioud, A., Le Seigneur de Vufflens et La Ville de Morges, 1286–1296, Lausanne, 1898)Google Scholar shows to have been built by Peter's nephew, Lewis of Savoy, is ascribed by the chronicle to Peter himself. It is almost certainly so in the present instance. Not only is there the confusion of St. George with St. Gregory (an addition to the instances cited in Eng. Hist. Rev., 1950, p. 444,Google Scholar note 7), but the placing of St. Georges-d'Espéranche in the Vaud is wildly inaccurate. The charter evidence, such as it is, points unmistakably to Philip as the founder. There is at Grenoble a 16th-century transcript (B. 3952, no. 2) of a charter of Count Amadeus V, dated 1 Feb. 1291, confirming an undated grant by Philip of Savoy to the ‘burgenses et habitatores ville sancti Georgii de Esperenchia’ of the liberties and franchises of the burgesses of Lyon. Such a grant would almost certainly have been the foundation charter.

page 36 note 1 This is an inference from the fact that thereis no evidence for an independent castellany of St. Georges before 1270. Until then its territory lay within the mandement of Sêpteme. The mandement is defined as ‘cette unité territoriale, la plus petite unité civile, sur laquelle s'excerce l'administration du châtelain. C'est à la fois la terre qui lui est confiée et celle où il commande, selon les deux sens de “mandare”,’ I owe this definition to M. Avezou.

page 36 note 2 Rég. Dauph. ii, nos. 9223, 9224.

page 36 note 3 Chevalier, C. U. J., Invent. Arch. Dauph. 1346, no. 402Google Scholar.

page 36 note 4 Rég. Dauph. ii, no. 10406.

page 36 note 5 For a full list of these see Beyssac, J., Les Chanoines de l'église de Lyon (Lyon, 1914), p. 52,Google Scholar for a reference to which I have to thank M. René Lacour, Director of the Archives du Rhône at Lyon. Besides the archbishopric of Lyon and bishopric of Valence, they included, in England, the churches of Geddington, Wingham, and Reculver.

page 36 note 6 Chambéry, Archives de la Savoie, Inv. 135, fol. 17, pacquet 14, no. 6.

page 37 note 1 Rég. Dauph. ii, nos. 10946, 10965, 10980, 11167, 11190, and 11191.

page 37 note 2 Entries marked with an asterisk have already been printed in my paper, ‘Master James of St. George’ (Eng. Hist. Rev., 1950, pp. 433–57).Google Scholar Except for that dated 10 Aug. 1271, the remainder are here published for the first time. Unless otherwise noted, the entries are extracted from the enrolled accounts of Count Philip's household preserved in the Archivio di Stato at Turin (Inv. Savoia 38, fol. 46, nos. 2 and 4).

page 37 note 3 Chiaudano, Mario, La Finanza Sabauda nel sec. xiii (Biblioteca della Società Storica Subalpina, vols. cxxxi–cxxxiii), Torino, 1933-1938, i, pp. xiv and xviGoogle Scholar.

page 37 note 4 Rég. Dauph. ii, no. 10980.

page 37 note 5 Chiaudano, op. cit.

page 37 note 6 Ibid. ii, p. 123.

page 37 note 7 Evidence for this is contained in two undatedentries, both of which appear to refer to the first fortnight in Nov., 1273: ‘habuimus apud sanctum Georgium quando papa venit ibi de vino Guillelmi de Anziaco lxxvj. som';.’; ‘debentur pro pane sancti Georgii quando papa fuit ibi Perroto Delso, ix. lb. xvj.s.’.

page 37 note 8 Unextended, the reading is cit'nario and this can hardly represent cimentario. A Chillon account of 1266 (Arch. Stat. Turin, Inv. Sav. 69, fol. 5, i, 3 (b)) records the purchase of blue, striped, and cameline material for the robes of, inter alias, ‘magistri facientis scisternas’, with whom Master Guido citernarius may perhaps be identified. He is likely to be the same as the Guido lathomus of the Aug. 1275 entry, who in turn is probably identical with the ‘Guido lathomus de Voyrone’ who in Aug. 1274 was paid ‘pro acqua infra castrum Voyron’ aducendo'. Besides his work at Voiron and St. Georges, Master Guido was employed at Chatel d'Argent and Bard in the Val d'Aosta between 1274 and 1277 (Turin, Inv. Sav. 68, fol. 2, i, 2 and fol. 29, i, 3 respectively).He had a brother called Petrinus who was also employed on task work in 1274: ‘Petrino fratri Guidgonis lathomi de Voyrone de taschia sibi facta de conductu aque, xx. s.’ (ibid. 38, fol. 46, i, 3). He may be the Guionetus lathomus to whom work on the castle of St. Laurent-du-Pont was assignedby Master James in 1274-5 (Chambéry, Inv. Sav. 32, fol. 14, no. 66), who gave an estimate for work at Seyssel in 1278 (ibid. 51, fol. 257, Mazzo I), and who visited St. Georges in May 1275.

page 38 note 1 See footnote 8 on p. 37.

page 38 note 2 In military usage the word means ‘a miner’ (Lewis and Short, Latin Dictionary, s.v.).

page 38 note 3 Chambéry, Archives de la Savoie, loc. cit.

page 38 note 4 Rég. Dauph. ii, no. 11396.

page 38 note 5 Ibid., no. 11519.

page 38 note 6 Ibid. iii, no. 11683.

page 39 note 1 Chevalier, , Invent. Arch. Dauph. 1346, no. 351Google Scholar.

page 39 note 2 Grenoble, Archives de l'Isère B, 3952, pacquet I.

page 39 note 3 There is, indeed, much documentary evidence to support it. For an instance of a 13th-century architect being instructed to copy an existing tower in one castle when building a new tower at another, see Mortet, et Deschamps, , Recueil de Textes relatifs à l'Histoire de l'Architecture, vol. ii (Paris, 1929), p. 234.Google Scholar For later instances cf. Salzman, , Building in England (Oxford, 1952), pp. 473–4 and 548Google Scholar.

page 39 note 4 Eng. Hist. Rev., 1950, p. 456Google Scholar.

page 40 note 1 The original is one of two photographs in thepossession of Me Verrière, of St. Georges. I have to thank the curéof St. Georges, M. Galland, for bringing them to my notice, and Dr. Joseph Saunier, of Heyrieux, for kindly supplying the copy here reproduced.

page 41 note 1 We owe it to Chabord that at any rate half the castle was spared at the French Revolution. Probably it was as a result of sympathetic reports like that on St. Georges that the Commission des Travaux Publics wanted to dismiss him for not being sufficiently radical. But the Bureau des Ponts et Chaussées of the Isère protested that the Republic could ill afford to replace experts by nobodies, and in Feb. 1795 the threat against him waswithdrawn (Grenoble, Archives de l'lsère, Série L. no. 472, fols. 39v.-42).

page 41 note 2 Mermet, , Histoire de la ville de Vienne, torn, iii, p. 525.Google Scholar One may compare the dating clause of a deed executed at St. Rambert (Ain) in 1263: ‘Actum apud Sanctum Reymbertum, in viridario subtus castrum.’ Both instruments are calendared by Chevalier (Reg. Dauph. ii, nos. 11419 and 10052 respectively). I am indebted for the Latin wording to M. Avezou, who writes as follows: ‘Le verger (viridarium) se rencontre habituellement parmi 1'énumération des annexes des châteaux dauphinois dansles quelques procès-verbaux de-scriptifsdu XIVème siècle quenousavons conservés.’

page 41 note 3 Pl X a: there is considerable distortion, which was unavoidable as the component photographs had all to be taken from one position.

page 42 note 1 First-hand investigation of the building itself has had to be limited to three short visits of a few hours each. This has precluded anything in the nature of an accurate ground-plan of the whole site, attention having been concentrated on detailed examination of the blocked window openings.

page 42 note 2 p. 39, above.

page 42 note 3 Eng. Hist. Rev., 1950, p. 457Google Scholar.

page 42 note 4 Though their names are unknown to me, I should like to record my obligation to the occupants of the tenements into which this part of the castle is now divided for their acquiescence in these somewhat unorthodox operations.

page 43 note 1 Owing to their distance from the ground I have not been able to measure the height of the Yverdon windows, but have calculatedit from the number of their horizontal courses, the three lowest of which were within measuring reach from the only ladder available to me. The calculated width of the St. Georges windows varies between 4 ft. 7 in. and 4 ft. 8 in., the measured width of the Yverdon windows between 4 ft. 9 in. and 4 ft. II in.

page 43 note 2 The tops of the voussoirs at St. Georges are rough-hewn, so as to engage the rubble-faced masonry in which they are set; at Yverdon the walls are ashlar-faced, and the tops of the voussoirs are accordingly dressed to work in with that facing.

page 43 note 3 Eng. Hist. Rev., 1950, pp. 453–4Google Scholar.

page 43 note 4 Above, p. 40.

page 44 note 1 The number may have been greater, the castlesat Flint and Aberystwyth being too damaged for certainty as to whether or not some of their arrangements in this respect may have been similar.

page 44 note 2 The word ‘garderobe’ is rejected because, in the sense in which it is used by Victorian and later antiquaries, it is liable to lead to confusion with the garderoba or wardrobe, by no meansso insignificant an element in a medieval household.

page 44 note 3 The Harlech photograph (pl. XIII, d) is printed in reverse, in order that the two views may be shown from a corresponding angle.

page 46 note 1 For St. Laurent-du-Pont, see Dubois, Marc, Le Château féodal de St. Laurent-du-Pont (Isère) (Bourg-en-Bresse, 1936)Google Scholar; for La Côte-St. André we have the 16th-century chronicler Paradin's desscription of ‘quatre corps de logis, flanqués de quatre tours rondes et tout autour un grand fossé’, quoted by Dr. Saunier in his recension of my paper on Master James of St. George in Évocations (Bull. …d'Études historiquesdu Bas-Dauphiné), vii, p. 939. Dr. Saunier tells me that the Voiron towers were also round.

page 46 note 2 The only other Welsh example is at Denbigh, a castle built on the grand scale from 1282 onwards for Edward I's close associate, Henry de Lacy, who through his mother was related to the house of Savoy.

page 46 note 3 I have set out this argument more fully in Antiquity, 1952, pp. 3334,Google Scholar where reasons are also given for believing that Caernarvon, in plan and conception, is as much James of St. George's work as the north Wales round-tower castles. It is interesting to note among the names of Caernarvon burgesses in 1298—no earlier list survives—that of Philippus carpentarius (Bull. Bd. Celtic Studies, ix, p. 239), who in 1304-5 was paid for flooring one ofthe castle towers ad tascham (ibid. i, p. 269). I am preparedto hazard a guess that he is one and the same individual as the Philip of St. George, carpenter, who was receiving gratuities at Voiron and St. Georges in 1274–5 (above, p. 38), and that he was one of a small nucleus of building masters whom Master James brought with him from Savoy to England in c. 1277.