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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2025
This paper discusses the career of Emanuel Asanes Sophianos, a Byzantine refugee who settled in Cornwall in the aftermath of the fall of the despotate of the Morea to the Ottomans. It traces his later career in England and marriage to an English widow. The unusually detailed documentation for Asanes’ later life aside, it is of particular interest on account of his association with one of the most notorious aristocratic law-breakers in the period.
I am grateful to Dr Niccolo Fattori who initially alerted me to Asanes’ likely background, and to Professor Jonathan Harris and Dr Simon Payling for their comments on a draft of this essay. I am further indebted to this journal's editors and anonymous referees for their helpful comments.
1 For an introduction to the subject and the extant literature, see Ormrod, W.M., Lambert, B., and Mackman, J., Immigrant England, 1300–1550 (Manchester 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 The National Archives (hereafter TNA), Exchequer, E 136/198/1; Lambert, B., ‘Citizenry and nationality: the participation of immigrants in urban politics in later medieval England’, History Workshop Journal 90 (2020) 52–73Google Scholar, esp. 58-9.
3 Harris, J., Greek Émigrés in the West, 1400–1520 (Camberley 1995)Google Scholar; M. Couderc, Identités subies, identités integrées: les Grecs dans l'Europe du Nord-Ouest (XVe-XVe Siècle (Paris 2023); for a recent discussion of the evidence from Scotland, Grant, A.C., ‘Scotland's “Vagabonding Grekes”, 1453–1688’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 46 (2022) 81–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for the Low Countries, Callewier, Hendrik, ‘“For help and comfort and to resist the enemy of God”: Greek refugees in the Burgundian Low Countries’, Journal of Medieval History 50 (2024) 119-39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and for lists of refugees see Necipoğlu, N., Byzantium between the Ottomans and the Latins (Cambridge 2009) 305–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Couderc, Identités subies, 434-590.
4 Bradley, H., ‘Lucia Visconti, countess of Kent (d.1424)’, in Barron, C.M. and Sutton, A.F. (eds.), Medieval London Widows (London 1994) 77–84Google Scholar; Mackman, J., ‘“Hidden gems” in the records of the common pleas: new evidence on the legacy of Lucy Visconti’ in Clark, L. (ed.), The Fifteenth Century VIII: rule, redemption and representation in late medieval England and France (Woodbridge 2008) 59-72Google Scholar; M. Cherry, ‘Courtenay, Thomas, thirteenth earl of Devon’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
5 Fahlbusch, F.B., ‘Hartung von Klux: Ritter König Heinrichs V., Rat Sigismunds’ in Fahlbusch, F.B. and Johanek, P. (eds.), Studia Luxemburgensia: Festschrift Heinz Stoob zum 70. Geburtstag (Warendorf 1989) 353–403Google Scholar; R.A. Griffiths, ‘Sir Hartung von Klux’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Moreton, C.E., ‘Sir Andrew Ogard’, in Clark, L. (ed.), The History of Parliament: The Commons 1422–61 (Cambridge 2020), V, 702–8Google Scholar.
6 Couderc, Identités subies, 274-5.
7 Couderc, Identités subies, 133-4.
8 Such letters conferred upon the recipient a legal status akin (albeit not identical) to that of a native Englishman.
9 Zakythenos, D.A., Le despotat grec de Morée, 2 vols (Paris 1932–53) I, 285–97Google Scholar, esp. 287–8; Necipoğlu, Byzantium between the Ottomans and the Latins. For Thomas in exile see Harris, Greek Émigrés, 111–12; S. Ronchey, ‘Orthodoxy on sale: the last Byzantine, and the lost crusade’ in E. Jeffreys and F.K. Haarer (eds.), Proceedings of the 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies, London 21–26 August 2006 (Farnham 2006) 313–42; [R.C. Fowler and R.F. Isaacson (eds.)], Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1467–77 (London 1900) 65.
10 An impression of Sir Emanuel's seal which might shed further light on his origins appears to be attached to Devon Record Office, Fortescue of Castle Hill MSS, 1262M/TC/79, but is preserved in a protective cloth cover. In July 2022 the seal was found by archive staff to be too fragile to be unwrapped and examined.
11 Zakythenos, Le despotat grec, I, 122, 256–60; II, 110–11, 117, 174, 212, 214; E. Trapp, R. Walter and H.-V. Beyer (eds.), Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit (Vienna 1976–2000), nos. 1484, 1490, 1508, 1510, 26396.
12 Harris, J., ‘Despots, emperors and Balkan identity in exile’, Sixteenth Century Journal 44 (2013) 643–61 (646)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Zakythenos, Le despotat grec, I, 288.
14 ‘virum nobilem et ante nostre patrie ammissionem locupie tum nunc autem ob communia infortunia infelicem’: Zakythenos, Le despotat grec, I, 290. The letter is printed by S.P. Lambros, Παλαιολόγεια και Πελοποννησιακά (Athens 1912–30), IV, 238. The letter is dated at Rome, on 15 March, and thus post-dates Thomas Palaiologos’ arrival there on 7 March 1461.
15 C. Head, ‘Pope Pius II and the Wars of the Roses’, Archivum Historiae Pontificae 8 (1970) 139–78; M.M. Harvey, England, Rome and the Papacy, 1417–64 (Manchester 1993) 193–213.
16 In a recent article, Jonathan Harris has suggested that members of the Neville family, the prolific aristocratic family dominant in English politics between 1460 and 1471, may have provided a focal point for a number of Greek refugees: ‘Refugees and international networks after the fall of Constantinople (1453–1475)’, English Historical Review 137 (2022) 362–85. No direct connection between Asanes and the Nevilles has been established, but it may be at least suggestive that George Neville, chancellor of England from 1460 to 1467 was from 1455 to 1465 bishop of Exeter, the diocese that included Sir Emanuel's future home in Cornwall: M. Hicks, ‘Neville, George (1432–1476)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. In this context, it is interesting to speculate whether Asanes might have known another Emanuel, the learned scribe ‘Emanuel of Constantinople’ who is thought to have been employed by two successive chancellors of England, William Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, and George Neville, Bishop of Exeter and subsequently Archbishop of York: M.R. James, ‘The Scribe of the Leicester Codex’, Journal of Theological Studies 5 (1904) 445–7 and ‘Two more manuscripts written by the scribe of the Leicester Codex’, Journal of Theological Studies 11 (1910) 291–2; P.S. Allen, ‘Bishop Shirwood of Durham and his Library’, English Historical Review 25 (1910) 445–56 (446); H.L. Gray, ‘Greek visitors to England in 1455–56’, Anniversary Essays by Students of Charles Homer Haskins (Boston 1929) 81–116; S. Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity (Cambridge 1968) 289; J.W. Bennett, ‘John Morer's Will: Thomas Linacre and Prior Sellyng's Greek Teaching’, Studies in the Renaissance 15 (1968) 70–91 (84); D.M. Nicol, ‘Byzantium and England’, Balkan Studies 15 (1974) 173–203 (201); L. Orlandi, ‘Da Bologna all'Inghilterra: un codice di Leida, Emanuele da Costantinopoli e l'Anonymus Ly Harlfinger’, Scriptorium 73 (2019), 281–306; J. Harris, ‘Greek scribes in England: the evidence of episcopal registers’, in R. Cormack and E. Jeffreys (eds.), Through the Looking Glass: Byzantium through British Eyes (Aldershot 2000) 121–6 (125); Couderc, Identités Subies, 303.
17 J.H. Baker, The Men of Court, 2 vols [Selden Soc. suppl. ser. 18] (London 2012), I, 10–11; idem, The Inns of Chancery, 1340–1660 [Selden Soc. suppl. ser. 19] (London 2017), 34–7.
18 Baker, Men of Court, I, 129–30; TNA, Court of Common Pleas, plea rolls, CP 40/880, rot. 466; CP 40/881, rots 240, 258; CP 40/888, rot. 249; CP 40/889, rots 206, 349; CP 40/905, rot. 482.
19 For the Tregooses and Penpons, see L.S. Clark, ‘John Tregoose’ in J.S. Roskell, L. Clark and C. Rawcliffe (eds.), The History of Parliament: The Commons 1386–1421 (Stroud 1992), IV, 643–4; and the following contributions by H. Kleineke: ‘Richard Tregoose’ in Clark (ed.), The Commons 1422–61, VII, 137–42; ‘Richard Penpons’, ibid., VI, 118–23; ‘Poachers and gamekeepers: four fifteenth-century Westcountry criminals’ in J.C. Appleby and Paul Dalton (eds.), Outlaws in Medieval and Early Modern England (London 2009), 129–48 (134–6); ‘Why the West Was wild’, in L. Clark (ed.), The Fifteenth Century III: authority and subversion (Woodbridge 2003), 75–93 (83–8). The exact date of Richard Penpons’ death is not known, but his widow and son were engaged in the execution of his will by the early weeks of 1468: TNA, CP 40/826, rot. 400d.
20 TNA, Court of King's Bench, plea rolls, KB 27/854, rot. 27.
21 J. Stevenson (ed.), Letters and Papers illustrative of the Wars of the English in France during the Reign of Henry the Sixth, King of England, 2 vols in 3 (London 1861–4), II(2), [783].
22 Kresen Kernow, Arundell manuscripts, AR2/434; William Worcestre, Itineraries, ed. J. Harvey (Oxford 1969) 23.
23 TNA, Court of Chancery, ancient petitions, C 1/55/103–104. Curiously, the suit calls Asanes’ wife Joan, rather than Amy or Amice.
24 TNA, C 1/51/199–200.
25 TNA, C 1/53/99, 168.
26 TNA, CP 40/887, rot. 98.
27 L.S. Clark, ‘John Mone (Mohun), in Clark (ed.), The Commons 1422–61, V, 499–503 (502).
28 For Bodrugan, see Kleineke, ‘Poachers and gamekeepers’, 136–42; A.L. Rowse, ‘The turbulent career of Sir Henry de Bodrugan’, History 29 (1944), 17–26; J. Whetter, The Bodrugans (St Austell 1995), 135–91.
29 L.M. Matheson (ed.), Death and Dissent: The Dethe of the Kynge of Scotts and Warkworth's Chronicle (Woodbridge 1999), 122–3.
30 TNA, C 1/55/42–44; C 1/58/34; C. Given-Wilson et al. (eds.), The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, 1275–1504 (Woodbridge 2005), XIV, 281–96.
31 Matheson (ed.), Death and Dissent, 122.
32 Kleineke, ‘Why the West was wild’.
33 Kresen Kernow, AR/2/1337/7; TNA, KB 27/854, rot. 27.
34 TNA, KB 27/854, rot. 59.
35 The standard discussion of the impact of long-lived dowagers on the prospects of the heirs of landed estates remains R.E. Archer, ‘Rich old ladies: the problem of late medieval dowagers’ in A.J. Pollard (ed.), Property and Politics: Essays in Later Medieval English History (Gloucester 1984) 15–35.
36 I owe this point to my colleague Dr Simon Payling.
37 Devon Record Office, 1262M/TC/79; TNA, CP 40/925, rot. 323d.
38 Devon Record Office, 1262M/TC/79; J.S. Vivian, The Visitations of Cornwall (Exeter 1887) 258. By 1484 Joan was widowed and had descendants of her own.
39 TNA, Court of Common Pleas, feet of fines, CP 25(1)/34/44/32; Vivian, Visitations of Cornwall, 6.
40 [R.C. Fowler and R.F. Isaacson (eds.)], Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1476–85 (London 1901) 198; TNA, KB 27/875, rex rot. 2d.
41 TNA, CP 40/887, rots 97, 98.
42 TNA, CP 40/905, rot. 482.
43 Harris, J., ‘Two Byzantine craftsmen in fifteenth-century London’, Journal of Medieval History 21 (1995) 387–403CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On London's immigrant community, see e.g. Lutkin, J., ‘Settled or fleeting? London's medieval immigrant community revisited’, in Allen, M. and Davies, M. (eds.), Medieval Merchants and Money: Essays in Honour of James L. Bolton (London 2016) 137–55Google Scholar, and the literature cited there.
44 Harris, ‘Despots, emperors and Balkan identity’, 657; Adams, J. H., ‘Theodore Palaeologus’, Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall 6 (1970) 103–4Google Scholar; Zakythenos, Le despotat grec, I. 295–7; Jago, V., ‘Some observations on a monumental inscription in the parish church of Landulph, Cornwall’, Archaeologia 18 (1817) 83–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The passing mention in the parish records of St. Columb Major of a ‘Grecian’ in receipt of a payment in 1615 to date remains unexplained: Peter, T., ‘The St. Columb Green Book’, Supplement to the Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall 19 (1912–14), 1–90 (89)Google Scholar.