Adam Moleyns

Infobox bishopbiog
name =Adam Moleyns


religion =Catholic
See =Diocese of Chichester
Title = Bishop of Chichester
Period = 1446–1450
Predecessor = Richard Praty
Successor =Reginald Pecock
ordination =
bishops =
post =
date of birth =
place of birth =
date of death =9 January 1450
place of death =Portsmouth

Adam Moleyns (or Adam Molyens, Adam Molens, Adam Molins, Adam Molyneaux, Adam Molyneux, Adam de Moleyns) (died 1450) was an English bishop, lawyer, royal administrator and diplomat. During the minority of Henry VI of England, he was clerk of the ruling council of the Regent. [ [http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/exercises/combepetition/fltext2.htm Paleography Exercises A document of Adam Moleyns] accessed on 25 August 2007]

Life

He had the living of Kempsey from 1433. [ [http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/5386/priests.htm?200726 Priests of Kempsey] accessed on 25 August 2007] He was Dean of Salisbury. He became bishop of Chichester on 24 September 1445, and was consecrated bishop on 6 February 1446.Fryde "Handbook of British Chronology" p. 239] He was Lord Privy Seal in 1444, [ [http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/Documents/lord_privy_seal.htm Lord Privy Seal] accessed on 25 August 2007] Fryde "Handbook of British Chronology" p. 95] at the same time that he was Protonotary of the Holy See. In 1447 he had permission to fortify the manor house at Bexhill. [ [http://www.bexhillmuseum.co.uk/activelst.asp?rid=1&cat=25 Bexhill Museum The History Of Bexhill] accessed on 25 August 2007]

An active partisan of the unpopular William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, he was lynched in Portsmouth by discontented unpaid soldiers on 9 January 1450; [ [http://www.warsoftheroses.co.uk/chapter_37.htm Michael Miller "The Wars of the Roses" chapter 37] accessed on 25 August 2007; [http://www.the-orb.net/textbooks/muhlberger/rose_wars.html Steven Muhlberger "Beginning of the Wars of the Roses"] accessed on 25 August 2007; [http://www.hants.gov.uk/discover/places/domusdei.html The Royal Garrison Church] accessed on 25 August 2007]

Adam of Moleyns was a correspondent of the humanist Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, Pope Pius II, who complimented him in a letter of 29 May 1444: "And I congratulate you and England, since you care for the art of rhetoric". [Alessandra Petrina, "Cultural Politics in Fifteenth-Century England: The Case of " 2004:216 and note]

"The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye" ("The Little Book of English Policy"), a poem on English sea power, from c.1436, is convincingly ["doubtfully attributed", "The Oxford Companion to English Literature"; most reviewers of Warner 1926 were convinced] attributed to him by its modern editor, Sir George Warner. [ [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/top3mset/2915431 WorldCat "The libelle of Englyshe polycye", a poem on the use of sea-power, 1436] accessed on 25 August 2007] The poem, not remarkable for its poetic power, is important as the first expression of the linked conceptions that the strength of England lay in the expansion of trade, which depended on the nation's merchant fleet and mastery of the narrow seas: the English Channel, the North Sea and the Baltic. A measure of the influence of this poetical tract is expressed in the fact that of none manuscripts found by Warner, one had belonged to Samuel Pepys, father of the Late Stuart English Navy, [Now at Magdalene College, Cambridge.] another to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Queen Elizabeth's most trusted advisor, [Now in the British Library.] and yet another to the printer William Caxton. The "Libelle" was printed by Richard Hakluyt in his "Voyages", from a manuscript that is now lost.

The poem details the chief exports of England at the time, and treats at some length on the importance to England or Ireland

God forbede that a wylde Yrishe wyrling
Shulde be chosene for to been there kynge.

and of Calais and Wales. It details the dangerous decay of the English navy, the supremacy of Flemish markets and the drain of bullion to Lombardy and Venice.

Notes

References

* "Concise Dictionary of National Biography", see Molyneaux, Adam de
*
*Reeves, A.C., "Lancastrian Englishmen" (Washington: University Press of America) 1981. One of five fifteenth-century careers outlined through documents.

External links

* [http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:5RlrUuD6BZkJ:www.girders.net/Mi/Moleyns,%2520Adam,%2520(md.1450).doc+Adam+Moleyns+Salisbury&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=uk Biographical notes]

Persondata
NAME= Moleyns, Adam
ALTERNATIVE NAMES= Molyens, Adam; Molens, Adam; Molins, Adam; Molyneaux, Adam; Molyneux, Adam; de Moleyns, Adam
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Bishop of Chichester, Lord Privy Seal
DATE OF BIRTH=
PLACE OF BIRTH=
DATE OF DEATH=9 January 1450
PLACE OF DEATH=