414 ORIGINAL PAPAL BULLS AND BRIEFS July [Clement VII (1378-94), Antipope] 196. Avignon, 23 January 1381. Confirmation, at request of priory of Friars Preachers of Geneva, of indulgence of Clement VI to those visiting churches of the order on the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas and its octave. First line. Ad futuram rei memoriam. Bulla ; silk. ' Tenorem quarundam litterarum '. Add. Ch. 12622. 197. 1 Avignon, 4 September [1392-4]. Letter of credence to [Louis], duke of Orleans, for bishop of Noyon and Jehan de Sains. Soubz nostre signet secret ; slight traces of signet, in red wax. French Paper. Add. Ch. 11321. Boniface IX (1389-1404) 198. Rome, St. Peter's, 5 June 1391. 2 Permission to Sir Gerard Braybrok, junior, and Elizabeth his wife to choose a confessor. Bonifatius. Bulla lost. ' Prouenit ex uestre Cott. Ch. xvi. 3. Mutilated. 199. Rome, St. Peter's, 1 April 1395. 3 Confirmation of grants in Wood Walton and Huntingdon by various persons named to Sawtrey Abbey. Bonifatius. Bulla lost. ' Solet annuere sedes '. Aug. ii. 114. 200. Rome, St. Peter's, 29 August 1395. Mandate to archbishop of Canterbury and bishops of London and Tuy to enforce agreement between archdeacon of London and rectors of the archdeaconry concerning payment of an annual pension by the latter to the former. 1 Contrary to the principle stated in the introduction, I have thought it well to include this letter, partly for its early date and partly because the Museum possesses so few documents emanating from antipopes. 2 Hitherto attributed to Boniface VIII and dated accordingly 1296. The hand eeems to favour the later rather than the earlier date, but a more conclusive considera- tion is the fact that from the beginning of June of his second year Boniface VIII was dating from Anagni, not from St. Peter's (see his registers, edited by G. Digard, M. Faucon, and A. Thomas, 1884, &c). The names of the addressees unfortunately are not decisive. The Braybrooks were a distinguished family of whom much is known (pedigrees, e.g., in Clutterbuck's Hertford, iii. 58 ; Davey's Suffolk pedigrees, Add. MS. 19120, fo. 100 b ; many references to members of the family in the Victoria History of Bedford, see index volume) ; but the name Gerard persisted for several generations. A Sir Gerard, son of a Gerard, died in 1359, and had a wife Isabella, a name interchangeable with Elizabeth, but he is rather late to be the person mentioned in the bull if the pope is Boniface VIII, and seems never to be referred to as ' junior '. On the other hand, a Sir Gerard Bray brook, junior, occurs constantly in records of the last third of the fourteenth century ; he was probably the Gerard aged 30 years or upward at his father's death, a.d. 1403, and still living in the seventh year of Henry VI. His wife was Eleanor, not Elizabeth ; but since no known Sir Gerard had a wife elsewhere called Elizabeth, so far as I can discover, it seems probable either that Sir Gerard, junior, married twice, one of his wives being called Elizabeth, or that the name, written as EL, was wrongly extended in the papal chancery as Elizabeth.
- 3 Hitherto attributed to Boniface VIII and dated (as on the cover of the bull
and in vol. ii of the Index to the Charters and Rolls in the . . . British Museum, s. v. ' Sawtrey Abbey ') 1300. The hand alone should be sufficient to identify the pope as Boniface IX, but the internal evidence is decisive. On p. 3 of the Cal. of Pat, Rolls, Rich. II, vol. v, is noted the licence for the alienation in mortmain to Sawtrey Abbey by the persons here mentioned of what is no doubt the property referred to in the bull. The date is 12 December 1391.
