8/23/2023 0 Comments Lords manor forge of empireAdam was unusual amongst the founders of colleges in being intimately involved in the life of the university. With a license from King Edward II, Adam bought up property in Oxford whose rental income would support these scholars, including Tackley’s Inn on the High Street which is still in the college’s possession and remains in use as student accommodation. The rectory building was located opposite St Mary’s Church, on the site of the present Third Quad, and it was here in 1324 that Adam set about establishing a community of scholars under the control of himself as Rector. One of Adam’s benefices was the rectory of St Mary’s in Oxford, which he was awarded in 1320. Rather, as a royal administrator, judge, and smalltime financier, he was an absentee clergyman, paying vicars (from the Latin vice: deputy) to sing divine services and minister to his parishioners. Despite holding various rectories across the country Adam should not be imagined as a peripatetic priest. Clerks in Chancery were often presented to clerical benefices in the King’s gift, which would have given them an income from agricultural produce and tithe receipts. It is likely that Adam was ordained in minor orders at an early stage in his career, though he may never have proceeded to major orders as a priest. Not least among these is the fact that all clerks in royal service were – quite literally – clerics, men of the church. The details of Adam’s financial, legal, and administrative career might make him seem a precursor of today’s ‘revolving door’ between the worlds of politics and finance, but there were important differences that make such trans-historical comparisons a false friend to the understanding of the past. His financial acumen was sharpened dealing with other people’s money in his role as a clerk, while on the side he was also acting as a creditor, perhaps as a middle-man raising money for third parties. There is no evidence that Adam attended university, though he worked alongside several clerks who had, and their influence can be detected in the foundation of the college in 1326. An education in Common Law would have been acquired at the Inns of Court, sometimes referred to as medieval England’s ‘third university’, as well as on-the-job in royal service. It is impossible to know whether the revulsion expressed by some contemporaries at what they saw as an abuse of royal power affected Adam in any way, though his subsequent work as a tax-collector between 13 was almost certainly plain sailing by comparison.ĭuring these years Adam was also acting in a legal capacity, as an attorney at first, and then as a judge in special commissions and at the Staple, which implies some legal training coupled with knowledge of mercantile affairs. His first really high-profile commission came in the years 1297-1301 when he was given the unpopular job of overseeing forced sales of produce (at unfavourable prices) to provision the King’s armies fighting in Scotland. There, it may be surmised, he established a reputation for efficiency, perhaps bordering on ruthlessness. If this was the case, Adam must soon have quit the Earl’s household, since in the early 1290s he was a clerk in Chancery, writing documents in the service of the crown. It seems that Adam benefitted from the patronage of Edmund Earl of Cornwall and lord of the manor of Brome, a cousin of King Edward I. In those days talented young men from humble origins were sometimes educated at the expense of noble patrons, who needed clerks to write letters, keep accounts, and fight on the legal frontiers of property disputes. Little can be known about the early life and family of the college’s founder, Adam de Brome, though it is likely that he was born at Brome in Suffolk sometime in the third quarter of the thirteenth century.
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