Mr Conyers Read, who edited the Bardon Papers (“Camden” ser. 1909), relating to Mary’s trial, was in 1910 engaged on an elaborate life of Walsingham, part of which the present writer was able to see in MS. (A. F. P.)
WALSINGHAM, THOMAS (d. c. 1422), English chronicler, was probably educated at the abbey of St Albans and at Oxford. He became a monk at St Albans, where he appears to have passed the whole of his monastic life except the six years between 1394 and 1400 during which he was prior of another Benedictine house at Wymondham, Norfolk. At St Albans he was in charge of the scriptorium, or writing room, and be died about 1422. Walsingham’s most important work is his Historia Anglicana, a valuable piece of work covering the period between 1272 and 1422. Some authorities hold that Walsingham himself only wrote the section between 1377 and 1392, but this view is controverted by James Gairdner in his Early chroniclers of Europe (1879).
The Historia, which from the beginning to 1377 is largely a compilation from earlier chroniclers, was published by Matthew Parker in 1574 as Historia Angliae brevis. For the “Rolls” series it has been edited in two volumes by H. T. Riley (1863–1864). Covering some of the same ground Walsingham wrote a Chronicon Angliae; this deals with English history from 1328 to 1388 and has been edited by Sir E. M. Thompson for the “Rolls” series (1874). His other writings include the Gesta abbatum monasterii St. Albani and the Ypodigma Neustriae. The Gesta is a history of the abbots of St Albans from the foundation of the abbey to 1381. The original work of Walsingham is the period between 1308 and 1381, the earlier part being merely a compilation, it has been edited for the “Rolls” series by H. T. Riley (1867–1869). The Ypodigma purports to be a history of the dukes of Normandy, but it also contains some English history and its value is not great. Compiled about 1419, it was dedicated to Henry V. and was written to justify this king’s invasion of France, It was first published by Matthew Parker in 1574, and has been edited for the “Rolls” series by H. T. Riley (1876). Another history of England by Walsingham dealing with the period between 1272 and 1393 is in manuscript in the British Museum. This agrees in many particulars with the Chronicon Angliae, but it is much less hostile to John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. Walsingham is the main authority for the history of England during the reigns of Richard II., Henry IV. and Henry V., including the rising under Wat Tyler in 1381. He shows considerable animus against John Wycliffe and the Lollards.
WALTER, HUBERT (d. 1205), chief Justiciar of England and archbishop of Canterbury, was a relative of Ranulf de Glanvill, the great justiciar of Henry II., and rose under the eye of his kinsman to an important position in the Curia Regis. In 1184 and in 1183 he appears as a baron of the exchequer He was employed, sometimes as a negotiator, sometimes as a justice, sometimes as a royal secretary. He received no clerical promotion from Henry II., but Richard I. appointed him bishop of Salisbury, and by Richard’s command he went with the third crusade to the Holy Land. He gained the respect of all the crusaders, and acted as Richard’s principal agent in all negotiations with Saladin, being given a place in the first band of pilgrims that entered Jerusalem. He led the English army back to England after Richard’s departure from Palestine, but in Sicily he heard of the king’s captivity, and hurried to join him in Germany. In 1193 he returned to England to raise the king’s ransom. Soon afterwards he was elected archbishop of Canterbury and made justiciar. He was very successful in the government of the kingdom, and after Richard’s last visit he was practically the ruler of England. He had no light task to keep pace with the king’s constant demand for money. He was compelled to work the administrative machinery to its utmost, and indeed to invent new methods of extortion To pay for Richard’s ransom, he had already been compelled to tax personal property, the first instance of such taxation for secular purposes. The main feature of all his measures was the novel and extended use of representation and election for all the purposes of government. His chief measures are contained in his instruction to the itinerant justices of 1104 and 1198, in his ordinance of 1195 for the conservation of the peace, and in his scheme of 1198 for the assessment of the carucage. The justices of 1194 were to order the election of four coroners by the suitors of each county court. These new officers were to “keep,” i.e. to register, the pleas of the crown, an important duty hitherto left to the sheriff. The juries, both for answering the questions asked by the judges and for trying cases under the grand assize, were to be chosen by a committee of four knights, also elected by the suitors of each county court for that purpose. In 1195 Hubert issued an ordinance by which four knights were to be appointed in every hundred to act as guardians of the peace, and from this humble beginning eventually was evolved the office of justice of the peace. His reliance upon the knights, or middle-class landowners, who now for the first time appear in the political foreground, is all the more interesting because it is this class who, either as members of parliament or justices of the peace, were to have the effective rule of England in their hands for so many centuries. In 1198, to satisfy the king’s demand for money, Hubert demanded a carucage or plough-tax of five shillings on every plough-land (carucate) under cultivation. This was the old tax, the Danegeld, in a new and heavier form and there was great difficulty in levying it. To make it easier, the justiciar ordered the assessment to be made by a sworn jury in every hundred, and one may reasonably conjecture that these jurors were also elected . Besides these important constitutional changes Hubert negotiated a peace with Scotland in 1195, and in 1197 another with the Welsh. But Richard had grown dissatisfied with him, for the carucage had not been a success, and Hubert had failed to overcome the resistance of the Great Council when its members refused to equip a force of knights to serve abroad. In 1195 Hubert, who had inherited from his predecessors in the primacy a fierce quarrel with the Canterbury monks, gave these enemies an opportunity of complaining to the pope, for in arresting the London demagogue, William Fitz Osbert, he had committed an act of sacrilege in Bow Church, which belonged to the monks. The pope asked Richard to free Hubert from all secular duties, and he did so, thus making the demand an excuse for dismissing Hubert from the justiciarship. On the 27th of May 1199 Hubert crowned John, making a speech in which the old theory of election by the people was enunciated for the last time. He also took the office of chancellor and cheerfully worked under Geoffrey Fitz Peter, one of his former subordinates. In 1201 he went on a diplomatic mission to Philip Augustus of France, and in 1202 he returned to England to keep the kingdom in peace while John was losing his continental possessions. In 1205 he died. Hubert was an ingenious, original and industrious public servant, but he was grasping and perhaps dishonest.
See W. Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol. i . (1897); Miss K. Norgate’s England under the Angevin Kings, vol. ii. (1887); W. Stubbs, preface to vol. iv. of Roger of Hoveden’s Chronicle (“Rolls” series, 1868–1871).
WALTER, JOHN (1738/9–1812), founder of The Times newspaper, London, was born in 1738/9, probably in London, and from the death of his father, Richard Walter (about 1755/6), until 1781 was engaged in a prosperous business as a coal merchant. He played a leading part in establishing a Coal Exchange in London; but shortly after 1781, when he began to occupy himself solely as an underwriter and became a member of Lloyd’s, he over-speculated and failed. In 1752 he bought from one Henry Johnson a patent for a new method of printing from “logotypes” (i.e. founts of words or portions of words, instead of letters), and made some improvements in it. In 1784 he acquired an old printing office in Blackfriars, which formed the nucleus of the Printing-house Square of a later date, and established there his “Logographic Office.” At first he only undertook the printing of books, but on 1st January 1785 he started a small newspaper called The Daily Universal Register, which on reaching its 940th number on 1st January 1788 was renamed The Times. The printing business developed and prospered, but the newspaper at first had a somewhat chequered career. In 1789 Mr Walter was tried for a libel in it on the duke of York, and was sentenced to a fine of £50, a year’s imprisonment in Newgate, to stand in the pillory for an hour and to give surety for good behaviour for seven years; and for further libels the fine was increased by £100, and the imprisonment by a second year. On 9th March 1791, however, he was liberated and pardoned. In 1799 he was again convicted for a technical libel, this time on Lord Cowper. He had then given
