Page:The History of the Church & Manor of Wigan part 1.djvu/20

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History of the Church and Manor of Wigan.

and attacked by the King's faithful servants, one of the King's clerks and special councillors, named John Maunsell, a man brave in arms and of undaunted spirit, reproached the assailants for their slothfulness and loss of time, and while he was setting an example to the others of attacking the enemy with greater energy, and endeavouring to make a road for the besiegers, one of the besieged, who was located in a higher part of the church, cast a great stone upon him which crushed his leg with the joints and marrow in his bones. But when the same man was preparing to demolish the rest of his body with stones, his friends, who were most sincerely attached to him, covered him with their own bodies, and with large shields called targets, and thus with much difficulty rescued him from the peril of death. Being severely wounded, however, he remained for a long time in a weak and languishing state,[1] and when by the skill of the surgeons he was at length restored, he was promoted to still higher honours."

He seems to have been acting as the King's Treasurer at that time; for by close writ of 7th July, 1242, dated at Xancton' (Xantoigne), John Maunsell is ordered to allow to Sir Peter Alard, Knight, whom the King had retained in his service, his stipend like the rest of the King's Knights.[2] In this year he was presented by the King to a prebend in St. Paul's Cathedral, and was advanced in the following year, 1243, to the Chancellorship of that church,[3] to which a stall in the Cathedral of Wells was added.[4] On 17th August, 1243, he was one of the witnesses to the King's Charter of Dover to his Consort Queen Eleanor, dated at Bourdeaux.[5] The King soon afterwards returned from his unfortunate expedition to Gascony, and landed at Portsmouth about the 27th September; and John Maunsell appears as witness to the King's convention, made at Westminster, with his brother Earl Richard, on the morrow of St. Andrew the Apostle, 28 Hen. III. (31st

  1. Matthew Paris, sub. anno.
  2. Rym. Fœd. vol. i. p. 247.
  3. Foss' Judges of England, vol. ii. p. 392.
  4. Hutchins' Dorsetshire, vol ii. p. 534.
  5. Rym. Fœd. vol. i. p. 253.