Roger Norreis was Abbot of Evesham in England between 1223 and 1225. He was a controversial figure, installed in several offices against opposition. In his appointment he was accused of immoral behaviour and failing to follow monastic rules. In 1202 he became embroiled in a dispute with his monks and his episcopal superior the Bishop of Worcester.
About Roger Norreis in brief
Roger Norreis was Abbot of Evesham in England between 1223 and 1225. He was a controversial figure, installed in several offices against opposition. In his appointment he was accused of immoral behaviour and failing to follow monastic rules. In 1202 he became embroiled in a dispute with his monks and his episcopal superior the Bishop of Worcester; litigation and argumentation lasted until his deposition in 1213. He has been described by modern historians as being unsuited for the religious positions to which he was appointed and by one of being completely unsuitable to hold any kind of spiritual role. During his tenure of his office, his monks accused him for excessive drinking, gluttony, setting up favourites, starving monks, and appropriating monastic property for his own use. A further offence was his habit of wearing secular clothing rather than the monastic clothing prescribed by the Benedictine Rule. He is also known for ingratiating himself with those in power, including the justiciar Geoffrey fitzPeter. He owed his appointment to King Richard and Baldwin’s attempts to make the dismissal from Christ Church look like a defeat for the archbishop. There was no attempt at an election by the monks to an office which went against canon law, a lack of which was blamed on his lack of knowledge of the canon law of the time. His family was probably of Norse origin and he was a monk at Christ Church Priory, the cathedral chapter of Canterbury Cathedral; when he became a monk is unknown.
His fellow monks considered him a traitor to their cause, and his reputation was that of someone with few morals. He escaped in early 1188 by travelling through the sewer and fled to the safety of the arch Archbishop of Canterbury, who was then at Otford. In a mocking reference to his escape route, he was occasionally known as Roger Cloacarius or “Roger the Drain-Cleaner”. He then was appointed prior of Christ Church’s dependent priory of St Martin’s, Dover, but the appointment was never confirmed. In 1187 he was sent by the cathedral council to King Henry II of England to plead their case against Baldwin of Forde, theArchbishop of Canterbury. The monks resisted this appointment, and in September they appealed to the papacy, arguing that it was against the Benedictines’ Rule. King Henry died on 6 July 1189 and his son Richard I was crowned on 3 September. The succession of a new monarch eventually allowed a truce in the dispute between the Canterbury monks and their archbishop, as Henry had been a supporter of Baldwin’s scheme to found a collegiate church at Hackington. Before the truce could be hammered out, Baldwin appointed norreis as prior to Christ Church in October 1189 as another move in the quarrel over the H hackington project.
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