# Beaumont Palace

former palace in Oxford, England

Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

Palace. 1130 CE

## Story

• Henry I of England built the king's houses, later called Beaumont Palace, outside Oxford's north gate about 1130, close to the hunting lodge at Woodstock.
• Richard I was born on 8 September 1157, probably in these houses, and the street stone also names John, King of England, in 1167, a birth his own life places only in England at Christmastide in 1166 or 1167.
• By the middle of the thirteenth century a wall and a great gate enclosed an aisled hall, a great chamber, two chapels, a cloister, and the domestic rooms.
• Edward I of England granted the houses in 1275 to Franciscus Accursius, and Edward II granted them to the Carmelites on 1 February 1318 after his defeat at Bannockburn.
• The friary was surrendered in 1538, and the excavation of 1998 and 1999 found Bronze Age barrow ditches and a buttressed medieval building, with nothing of the palace left above the street.

## History

Henry I of England built the king's houses, later called Beaumont Palace, outside the north gate of Oxford about 1130, close to the hunting lodge at Woodstock where he kept a menagerie. One citation of the history written by Henry of Huntington places him at Easter 1132 in the new hall. Another places that feast at Easter 1133, celebrating the birth of his grandson. Henry II of England was born at Le Mans on 5 March 1133, not in Oxford, and he was crowned on 19 December 1154.

By the middle of the thirteenth century the walled site held an aisled hall and great chamber, two chapels, a cloister, rooms for the queen, the king's son, and the chaplains, kitchens, and a great gate. In 1171 the works took 40,000 oak shingles and 20 pairs of beams. The chapel and cloister are first mentioned in the 1190s, and the hall was partly wainscoted and glazed in the 1240s. The sheriff usually kept the houses, with named keepers from Ellis of Oxford in 1188 to king's chaplains in the 1260s.

Richard I was born on 8 September 1157, probably in these houses, and the street inscription says the birth was here. John, King of England, is named on that stone as born here in 1167, while his own life places the birth only in England at Christmastide in 1166 or 1167 and debates the day. Richard is not known to have visited Oxford again. John was often in the town, including Christmas 1205 and meetings in 1215, but those meetings are not described as sessions inside the houses.

Edward I of England stayed in the summer of 1275 and apparently refused to enter the town because of the legend of St Frideswide. Later that year he granted the manor of Oxford, meaning these houses, to Franciscus Accursius, the Bolognese lawyer also called Francesco Accorso and Francesco Accorsi, with his wife and household. Further grants gave the houses to Edmund Mortimer in 1276 and to Edward of St John in 1294. The lawyer's life still has him as king's secretary into the early 1280s, with a return to Bologna given both as 1282 and as 1291.

The last repairs at the king's expense were in 1289, and in 1308 the sheriff was allowed to take stone and timber for the castle, a permission another account places by the middle of the fourteenth century.

Edward II lost the Battle of Bannockburn on 23 and 24 June 1314. One account says he invoked the Virgin and vowed a house for the Carmelites if he escaped, and his own life says he vowed a Carmelite house at Oxford. On 1 February 1318, also written 1 February 1317-18 and in one record 1317, he granted them the palace. Friars came from Shene, also called Sheen, with a payment of 120 marks a year for twenty-four of them, later withdrawn under Edward III.

About Whitsuntide a scribe named Edward ordered them out. John Deydras, also called John of Powderham, claimed the palace that year, was tried at Northampton for sedition, and was hanged with his cat.

The friars had first settled near Stockwell Street in 1256. They adapted the palace chapel with a steeple and bells and made a library beside it. Henry VI stayed as in his own palace, and the house was surrendered in 1538, already ruinous, after the prior had sold an annuity and begun to fell the elms. Edmund Powell received the site in 1541, or in another account in 1542, and stone went to Christ Church and to the library of St John's College.

The last small building, thought to be the prior's oratory, was gone when Beaumont Street was laid out, a destruction dated both to 1825 and to 1829, with housing over the fields in 1822 and 1836. Digging about 1713 found burials, painted glass, and a coin of Constantine. In 1938 fifteen burials and three bronze buckles came up on the south side of the street. The excavation of 1998 and 1999, also described as 1997 and 1998, found two Bronze Age barrow ditches, rows of possible tree pits, and a buttressed east-west building that may have begun as part of the palace and served as the friars' church.

Work at 4 Beaumont Buildings in 2019 and 2020 found no palace-period remains, only a basement well and a wall that may be post-medieval. Test pits on Pusey Lane in 2023 found early features, perhaps prehistoric or Anglo-Saxon, inside the projected precinct. In 2026 the houses at 43 to 48 Wellington Square, just north of the precinct, showed Victorian fabric and possible workhouse foundations, not the king's houses. A plaque restored in 2004, after a vehicle struck it in 2003, is what a passer-by now sees of the palace.

## Photographs

- [The remains of Beaumont Palace in 1785 — Unknown author Unknown author](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Beaumont_palace_1785.jpg)
- [Plaque on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England — Owen Massey](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Beaumont_Palace_plaque.jpg)
- [An engraving of the remains in 1800 — Unknown author Unknown author](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Beaumont_palace_jewitt.jpg)
- [A photograph of a stone pillar and plaque which marks the former location of Beaumont Palace, Oxford. This palace was notable for being the birthplace the — Set in Stone Project](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Beaumont_palace_marker_2.jpg)
- [A photograph of a stone pillar and plaque which marks the former location of Beaumont Palace, Oxford. This palace was notable for being the birthplace the — Set in Stone Project](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Beaumont_palace_marker_1.jpg)
- [A photograph of a stone pillar and plaque (right) which marks the former location of Beaumont Palace, Oxford. This palace was notable for being the birthplace — Set in Stone Project](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Beaumont_palace_marker_3.jpg)
- [Le cinéma Beaumont-Palace, rue de Paris, à l'angle avec la rue Henri-Pasdeloup. — P.poschadel](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Beaumont-sur-Oise_%2895%29%2C_cin%C3%A9ma_Beaumont-Palace%2C_rue_de_Paris_-_rue_Henri-Pasdeloup.jpg)
- [North-East View of Ruin of Beaumont Palace and view of Greek College building — Unknown author Unknown author](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/North-East_View_of_Ruin_of_Beaumont_Palace_and_view_of_Greek_College_building.png)

## Sources

- [Beaumont Palace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaumont_Palace) — Wikipedia
- [Henry I of England](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_I_of_England) — Wikipedia
- [Henry II of England](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_II_of_England) — Wikipedia
- [Richard I of England](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_I_of_England) — Wikipedia
- [John, King of England](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John,_King_of_England) — Wikipedia
- [Edward I of England](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_I_of_England) — Wikipedia
- [Edward II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_II) — Wikipedia
- [Franciscus Accursius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franciscus_Accursius) — Wikipedia
- [Henry of Huntingdon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_of_Huntingdon) — Wikipedia
- [John Deydras](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Deydras) — Wikipedia
- [Battle of Bannockburn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bannockburn) — Wikipedia
- [Carmelites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmelites) — Wikipedia
- [Dissolution of the monasteries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Monasteries) — Wikipedia
- [The King's Houses](https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol4/pp304-305) — British History Online
- [Friaries: The house of White Friars](https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol2/pp137-143) — British History Online
- [Sites and Remains of Religious Houses](https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol4/pp364-368) — British History Online
- [Medieval Oxford](https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol4/pp3-73) — British History Online
- [Beaumont Palace and the White Friars: excavations at the Sackler Library](https://eprints.oxfordarchaeology.com/5876/) — Oxford Archaeology
- [Beaumont Palace](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/heritage-gateway/results/record/bcd06aaf-17ff-4ae7-9d5c-8997a7f4334f/MOX25968) — Historic England
- [Bronze Age Barrows and Beaumont Palace (Carmelite Friary), Beaumont Street](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/heritage-gateway/results/record/bcd06aaf-17ff-4ae7-9d5c-8997a7f4334f/MOX11481) — Historic England
- [Oxford Inscriptions: Beaumont Palace site](https://www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/streets/inscriptions/central/beaumont_palace.html) — Oxford History
- [Archaeology in Oxford, October 2020 to February 2021](https://www.oxford.gov.uk/downloads/file/886/archaeology-oxford-city-report---october-2020-to-february-2021) — Oxford City Council
- [4 Beaumont Buildings, Oxford: report on archaeological investigations 2019-20](https://doi.org/10.5284/1100820) — Archaeology Data Service
- [Archaeology in Oxford, June to October 2023](https://www.oxford.gov.uk/downloads/file/889/archaeology-oxford-city-report---june-to-october-2023) — Oxford City Council
- [Archaeology in Oxford, June to October 2026](https://www.oxford.gov.uk/downloads/file/4764/archaeology-oxford-city-report---june-to-october-2026) — Oxford City Council
- [Beaumont palace 1785.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beaumont_palace_1785.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Beaumont Palace plaque.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beaumont_Palace_plaque.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Beaumont palace jewitt.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beaumont_palace_jewitt.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Beaumont palace marker 2.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beaumont_palace_marker_2.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Beaumont palace marker 1.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beaumont_palace_marker_1.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Beaumont palace marker 3.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beaumont_palace_marker_3.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Beaumont-sur-Oise (95), cinéma Beaumont-Palace, rue de Paris - rue Henri-Pasdeloup.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beaumont-sur-Oise_(95),_cin%C3%A9ma_Beaumont-Palace,_rue_de_Paris_-_rue_Henri-Pasdeloup.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [North-East View of Ruin of Beaumont Palace and view of Greek College building.png](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:North-East_View_of_Ruin_of_Beaumont_Palace_and_view_of_Greek_College_building.png) — Wikimedia Commons

## Detailed history

Beaumont Palace stood outside the north gate of Oxford, in what is now Oxfordshire. It was the range of royal lodgings called the king's houses, and the name Beaumont Palace came later. Henry I of England intended it, about 1130, as a palace close to the royal hunting lodge at Woodstock. That lodge is now inside the park of Blenheim Palace. The king kept a menagerie of exotic animals at Woodstock Palace, and his court was itinerant, so a house just beyond the town wall gave him a stop between the town and the hunt. Nothing of the medieval buildings remains above ground. Their former presence is recorded in Beaumont Street. A stone set into a pillar on the north side of the street, near Walton Street, carries one inscription: near to this site stood the king's houses, later known as Beaumont Palace, and King Richard I was born here in 1157 and King John in 1167. An earlier reading of a stone on the same street names only the king's house, in the singular, and says that Richard I was born there on 8 September 1157. The stored point for the place is latitude 51.755 and longitude 1.2627 degrees west. A city record places the same palace at national grid SP 51052 06577, latitude 51.755564 and longitude 1.261790 degrees west. Those two points are not the same measurement.

Henry I of England, also called Henry Beauclerc, lived from about 1068 to 1 December 1135 and was king from 1100. He was the fourth son of William the Conqueror. His elder brothers took Normandy and England in 1087, and he seized the English throne when William Rufus was killed in the New Forest on 2 August 1100. He defeated his eldest brother, Robert Curthose, at Tinchebray in 1106 and held him in prison for the rest of Robert's life. His court built large new houses and castles. The first pipe roll known to have survived is the roll for 1130, the year associated with the start of these Oxford houses. His own life does not name Beaumont. The palace accounts do.

The succession explains why a new hall in Oxford mattered in the early 1130s. Henry's only legitimate son, William Adelin, drowned in the White Ship off Barfleur on 25 November 1120. As many as 300 people died, and a butcher from Rouen was the only survivor. Henry collapsed when he was told. He married Adeliza of Louvain at Windsor in January 1121, hoping for another son, and the marriage was childless. He named his daughter, the Empress Matilda, as his heir and married her to Geoffrey of Anjou. The couple were betrothed in 1127 and married the next year. They separated, and they were reconciled in 1131. Matilda then bore two sons. The elder was the future Henry II of England, born at Le Mans in Maine on 5 March 1133, not in Oxford. Henry I died at Lyons-la-Forêt on 1 December 1135 after a week of illness. Henry of Huntington, the archdeacon whose name is also written Henry of Huntingdon, wrote that the king ate a surfeit of lampreys against his physician's advice. A later suggestion is that a Listeria infection is a more likely cause, and that the lampreys themselves probably did not kill him. Despite the oaths taken to Matilda, the king's nephew Stephen of Blois took the crown. The civil war that followed is called the Anarchy. Royal interest in Oxford revived with the new palace outside the north gate and with the wars of Stephen's reign.

The feast that marked the new hall is dated in two ways, and both dates are tied to the history written by Henry of Huntington. One citation of that history places Henry I at Easter 1132 in his new hall in Oxford. Another citation, of the 1879 edition at page 259, places the same pomp at Easter 1133, celebrating the birth of his grandson, the future Henry II of England. The grandson had been born on 5 March 1133. Easter 1132 falls before that birth, and Easter 1133 falls after it. The two readings are left side by side. Henry of Huntington was born about 1088 and died about 1157. He succeeded his father Nicholas as archdeacon of Huntingdon in 1110, grew up in the household of Robert Bloet of Lincoln, and began the Historia Anglorum at the request of Bishop Alexander of Lincoln. A first version appeared around 1129, and the history was carried down to 1154, the accession of Henry II of England. He was close enough to the royal court that some of his court stories may be things he saw.

Henry II of England was king from 1154 until his death on 6 July 1189. His father, Geoffrey, died in September 1151. Louis VII had his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine annulled for consanguinity, and the nineteen-year-old Henry married Eleanor, about ten years his elder, eight weeks later on 18 May. In 1153 Stephen agreed, by the Treaty of Wallingford, to leave England to Henry. Henry landed in England on 8 December 1154 and was crowned with Eleanor at Westminster Abbey on 19 December. They had eight children. Five sons were William, the Young King, Richard, Geoffrey, and John, and three daughters were Matilda, Eleanor, and Joan. Three of the sons were kings: the Young King as co-ruler, then Richard and John as sole monarchs. Henry also had mistresses, among them Rosamund Clifford. He did not spend much time in Oxford, although the king's houses and the royal apartments in the castle were kept up as residences. Councils were held in the town in 1165, 1177, 1180, and 1186, and he was also there in 1155, 1163, 1175, and 1180, the last of those for the translation of St Frideswide. The treasure was often at Oxford when the king was not. The town was not directly drawn into his rebellions, but the castle was put in a state of defence in 1173 and 1174 during the revolt of the Young King, which Richard and Geoffrey and their mother joined. Those councils and that defence are recorded for the town and the castle. They are not described as sessions inside the king's houses.

By the middle of the thirteenth century, at the height of their use as a royal palace, the houses comprised the king's hall and great chamber, two chapels, a cloister, and many rooms, including chambers for the queen, the king's son, and the royal chaplains, besides kitchens and other domestic offices. A wall defended the site, and the entrance was a great gate. A shorter inventory names an aisled hall, a kitchen, a cloister, and a chapel, and says that Henry I kept adding to the buildings. The houses were already large by the later twelfth century. In 1171, 40,000 oak shingles and 20 pairs of beams were supplied for work there. The king's chapel and the cloister are first mentioned in the 1190s. The chapel appears to have been dedicated to St Nicholas, together with a queen's chapel, and both were served by chaplains appointed by the sheriff. That dedication is not stated in so many words for a chapel inside the houses. The chaplain of St Nicholas in 1236 was probably the same man who had been appointed for life in 1232 to serve the king's chapel in his hall at Oxford. The great chamber was decorated with paintings before 1231 or 1232. The hall, apparently a large aisled building, was partly wainscoted and glazed in the 1240s. One record calls the place the principal residence of the monarch when visiting Oxford in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Another says the monarchs did not spend much time there and used the houses mainly as a stop on the way to Woodstock.

The houses were the sheriff's responsibility, except when they were entrusted to keepers, or on one occasion in 1239, when the mayor and bailiffs were put in charge of repairs. The first known keeper was Ellis of Oxford, described at different times as mason, carpenter, and engineer. He was paid for work on the houses in 1187 and was keeper from 1188 until Walter Buistard succeeded him in 1200. In 1215 the office was confirmed or regranted to Buistard, who was still keeper in 1219. In 1231 Gilbert Cook, servant of Godfrey of Chacombe, was appointed keeper for life and was confirmed in 1237 despite a grant to someone else in between. Keepers named in 1252 and 1254 appear to have been displaced quickly in favour of the sheriff. In 1262 and 1267 the keepership went to king's chaplains.

Richard I was born on 8 September 1157. His own life says the birth was probably at Beaumont Palace, in Oxford. The street inscription and the county account of the king's houses say he was born there in 1157, and a local account of the plaque says the birth at the palace is definite. He was the third of five sons of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, so he was not expected to become king. His elder brother William died before Richard was born. The other children were the Young King, Matilda, Geoffrey, Eleanor, Joan, and John. He also had two half-sisters, Marie and Alix, from Eleanor's marriage to Louis VII. He probably spent his childhood in England. His first recorded visit to the continent was in May 1165, when his mother took him to Normandy. His wet nurse was Hodierna of St Albans, and he gave her a pension after he became king. He probably spoke French and Occitan. Roger of Howden is the witness that he most likely understood Middle English. He wrote poetry in the language of Limousin and in French. He was king from 1189 until his death in 1199, and also duke of Normandy, Aquitaine, and Gascony, lord of Cyprus, and count of Poitiers, Anjou, Maine, and Nantes. After his accession he spent very little time in England, perhaps as little as six months. He is not known to have visited Oxford. Councils were held there in his absence in 1193 and 1197.

He was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 3 September 1189. On the Third Crusade he took Messina on 4 October 1190, married Berengaria of Navarre at Lemesos on 12 May 1191, and defeated Saladin at Arsuf on 7 September 1191. He ordered the execution of about 2,700 Muslim prisoners taken at Acre. He left for England on 9 October 1192, was wrecked near Aquileia, and was imprisoned. The emperor Henry VI demanded 150,000 marks, or 100,000 pounds of silver, before he would release him, two or three times the annual income of the English crown under Richard. John and Philip of France offered 80,000 marks to keep him prisoner until Michaelmas 1194. The emperor refused. Richard was released on 4 February 1194. He died on 6 April 1199. On 26 March, while he was besieging the small castle of Châlus-Chabrol, a crossbow bolt hit him in the shoulder and the wound turned gangrenous. The crossbowman is named in different accounts as Pierre or Peter Basile, John Sabroz, Dudo, and Bertrand de Gourdon. Some chroniclers said the siege was over a peasant's find of Roman gold. None of that later life is placed in the Oxford houses. The houses matter for him as the probable place of his birth.

John, King of England, was the youngest of those sons. He was nicknamed Lackland because, as a younger son, he was not expected to inherit much land. He was king from 1199 until his death on 19 October 1216. He was born in England around Christmastide in 1166 or 1167, and historians debate the precise date. That life does not name Beaumont Palace. The inscription and the account of the king's houses say he was born there in 1167, the same year given for his birth in Oxford in the town history. A local account of the plaque says there is some doubt that he was born here. After the revolt of 1173 and 1174 he was treated as his father's favourite. At the Council of Oxford in 1177, Henry II replaced William FitzAldelm as lord of Ireland with the ten-year-old John. As king, John lost Normandy and most of his other French lands to Philip II in 1204. He was in Oxford frequently. Councils were held in the town in 1204, 1205, and 1207, and he spent Christmas there in 1205. In 1213 four knights from each shire were summoned to meet him at Oxford. In the crisis of 1215 the town was chosen more than once as a meeting place. In July he met the barons there, and in August he refused to meet them because they were in arms. He was at Oxford again in 1216 during the civil war. Those meetings are recorded for the town. They are not described as gatherings inside the king's houses. On 15 June 1215 he met the rebel leaders at Runnymede, near Windsor, and the agreement made there became Magna Carta. In October 1216, while he was ill, one graphic account says his belongings, including the English crown jewels, were lost in a tidal estuary of the Wash, sucked in by quicksand and whirlpools. Other accounts say the loss may have been only a few pack-horses, and the place has never been confirmed. He died on 19 October 1216. Modern historians have called the military position that month a stalemate rather than a defeat.

Edward I of England, also called Edward Longshanks, lived from 17 or 18 June 1239 to 7 July 1307 and was king from 1272. He left Acre on 24 September 1272. In Sicily he learned that his father, Henry III, had died on 16 November. He landed at Dover on 2 August 1274 and was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 19 August, beside Queen Eleanor. In the summer of 1275 he spent some time at the king's houses. The town history says he seems to have visited Oxford only twice, and that on this stay he apparently refused to enter the town itself because of an old superstition, from the legend of St Frideswide, that it was dangerous for a king to do so. Later in 1275 he granted the houses, as the manor of Oxford, to Francesco Accorso, his wife, and his household, to live in. The palace account spells the lawyer Francesco Accorsi and says Edward I was the last king to sojourn at Beaumont officially as a palace. The lawyer's own name, as his life is titled, is Franciscus Accursius, in Italian Francesco d'Accorso. He was born in Bologna in 1225 and died in 1293, the son of the jurist Accursius, and the two are often confused. Edward I, returning from Palestine, brought him to England and invited him to Oxford, and he lived in the former palace, in what is now Beaumont Street. He read lectures on law in the university in 1275 or 1276. He acted as king's secretary in the late 1270s until he returned to Bologna in 1282, and one account says he practised law there until his death. Another account says he taught civil law at Bologna until 1273, was then called to Oxford, had his property in Bologna confiscated a year after he left because of the quarrel of Guelphs and Ghibellines, and received it back when he returned to the city in 1291. The return is therefore given both as 1282 and as 1291. Dante, his contemporary, places Franciscus Accursius in Hell among the sodomites, in Inferno XV at line 110. The tomb of father and son in Bologna is inscribed Sepulchrum Accursii, glossatoris legum, et Francisci, ejus filii. He had two brothers, Cervottus and Guglielmo, who also studied law with their father. The county account adds that he was a doctor of laws who served the king on diplomatic missions and may have been lecturing in Oxford at the time of the grant.

The same houses did not stay with him in every record. In 1276 the king granted them to Edmund Mortimer, who was in minor orders and perhaps studying at the university. In 1294 he granted them to Edward of St John, described as the king's kinsman. Those grants sit beside the account that Franciscus Accursius lived in the palace and served as secretary into the early 1280s. The last recorded repairs at the king's expense were in 1289. The town history says the houses were not used as a royal residence after 1275, and yet Edward I seems to have been in Oxford in 1305, when a letter and a licence were dated there. In 1308 the sheriff was permitted to take stones and timber from the houses to repair the castle. A local account of the plaque places that permission, for stone and timber to repair the castle, by the middle of the fourteenth century rather than in 1308.

Edward II was born on 25 April 1284 and died on 21 September 1327. He is also called Edward of Caernarfon. He was king from 1307 until he was deposed in January 1327, and he died at Berkeley Castle, probably murdered on the orders of the new regime. He was the fourth son of Edward I of England and became heir after his brother Alphonso died. The Battle of Bannockburn, fought on 23 and 24 June 1314, was his decisive defeat by Robert the Bruce during the First War of Scottish Independence. One account says the English summoned 25,000 infantry and 2,000 horses against 6,000 Scots whom Bruce had divided into three contingents, and that this was the largest army ever to invade Scotland. Another says Edward asked England, Wales, and Ireland for 2,000 heavy cavalry and 13,000 infantry, that no more than half the infantry are estimated to have arrived, and that the Scottish army probably numbered around 7,000, including no more than 500 mounted men. The Scots are also described as four divisions: Thomas Randolph, earl of Moray, in the vanguard near St Ninian's; the king at the New Park; Edward Bruce with the third; and Walter the Steward, with Sir James Douglas in actual command, for the fourth. On 23 June, Henry de Bohun rode at the king and Robert killed him with an axe. That night Alexander Seton deserted the English camp and told Bruce that English morale was low. On the second day the English cavalry were hemmed against the burn. The earl of Pembroke dragged the king off the field. Another account names Aymer de Valence and Giles d'Argentan as the men who seized the reins, with about 500 knights of the bodyguard behind them. Edward reached Stirling, and Sir Philip de Mowbray turned him away because the castle would soon be surrendered. James Douglas pursued him to Dunbar, and he took ship to Berwick. His own life says he retreated to Dunbar, sailed to Berwick, and went on to York, and that Stirling fell quickly in his absence. Stirling was then slighted. By 1315 only Berwick, among the major strongholds, remained outside Robert's control. The defeat opened northern England to raids. The Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton in 1328 recognised Scottish independence. Edward and the earl of Lancaster made the Treaty of Leake in August 1318, the same year as the events at the palace, after years in which Lancaster had refused to meet the king in parliament.

When Edward II was put to flight at Bannockburn, one account says he invoked the Virgin and vowed to found a monastery for the poor Carmelites, the White Friars, if he escaped. The palace account says he is said to have invoked the Virgin Mary and to have vowed a monastery for them. His own life says he made a vow to found a Carmelite religious house at Oxford if he survived, and it does not name the Virgin in that sentence. He first provided 120 marks a year from the exchequer for twenty-four friars of the order at his manor of Shene, also written Sheen, and he negotiated through the provincial and the prior of the Oxford Carmelites for twelve new friaries. On 1 February 1317-18, that is 1 February 1318, with the assent of the prelates and magnates of the council and despite the warnings of Hugh le Despenser, he granted the Carmelites of Oxford the dwelling of his manor by the north gate, beyond the walls, generally known as the palace of Beaumont, with its closes and buildings, in frankalmoin, for them and their successors celebrating for the souls of his progenitors, his own soul, and the souls of all Christians. A city record dates the same grant to 1317 and says he was fulfilling a promise given at Bannockburn. On 10 February he removed the friars from Shene to Oxford and transferred the 120 marks to the new house. One record says that after the move the house had the largest number of friars of any Carmelite friary at that time, and that it was believed to be the largest house of the order in England in the fourteenth century. The pope confirmed the gift in May 1318, and the Parliament of York confirmed it on 18 October 1318, the friars being bound to celebrate for the good estate of the king, Queen Isabella, and their children. On 28 June 1318 he gave them a small piece of vacant ground between their house and the high road, probably Stockwell Street, and allowed a passage 50 feet long and 10 feet wide under the road, joining the new place to the old. The same day he gave them two messuages on the east side of Stockwell Street, in the parish of St Mary Magdalen, which he had obtained from Oseney in exchange for a tenement in St Peter's in the East. John XXII, confirming the new seat, allowed them to sell or exchange the old one. The old Stockwell site was sold in 1321 to the Benedictines for Gloucester College. On the accession of Edward III the possession of the palace was confirmed, but the money, 5 marks a year for each of the twenty-four friars, was withdrawn. The friars asked for it again in 1330, apparently without success. In 1328 the mayor and bailiffs of Oxford, and the bailiffs outside the north gate, were ordered to remove harlots and other women of bad character from the neighbourhood, because the noise of men resorting there, night and day, hindered the divine service.

The friars seem to have taken possession at once. About Whitsuntide a scribe named Edward, asserting that he was heir to the throne, came to the royal palace of Beaumont and ordered the Carmelites to leave. The same season is the start of the affair of John Deydras, also called John of Powderham, who died in 1318. He arrived at Beaumont Palace in early 1318 and claimed it for his own. He said he was the real king. Observers noted that he resembled Edward, being tall and good-looking, but that he was missing an ear. He explained that a royal servant had let a sow attack him in a castle courtyard when he was a baby, and that she had swapped him for a carter's child to hide the injury. That story, he said, explained Edward's government and his dislike of war, and Edward's taste for ditching and farming. He offered single combat for the throne. Rumours spread. He was arrested and brought to the king at Northampton, insulted him, repeated the claim, and was tried for sedition. He confessed that he had invented the story, and he blamed his pet cat, which he said was the devil, for leading him astray while he walked across Christ Church Meadows. He and the cat were hanged, and his body was burnt. Edward II's own life calls him a mentally ill man who appeared in Oxford in 1318, claimed to be the real king, and called Edward a changeling swapped at birth, and it says he was executed. A modern reading is that John Deydras was mentally ill and that the story was not true, and that the long case deeply affected Isabella of France, Edward's wife, who felt humiliated. The palace was the stage for the claim. The trial was at Northampton.

The Carmelites had been in Oxford long before they received the palace. Hermits from Mount Carmel settled at Aylesford in Kent in 1242, and after the general chapter at Montpellier in 1287 they changed a striped coat for a white cloak, which is why they were called White Friars. Nicholas de Meules, also de Molis, formerly custodian of Oxford Castle, gave them a place near the hospital in Stockwell Street, in the parish of St George, in 1256. On 21 August the provincial prior sent Friar John of Rochester to take possession. They obtained an adjacent plot from Nicholas de Stockwell, sometime mayor. One printing dates their agreement with the canons of Oseney, who held the parish church, to 5 February 1356-7. The same account places the oath on that agreement on 15 August 1257, before Abbot Richard at Oseney, and the gifts of timber that follow begin in 1258. They were not to admit the abbey's parishioners to the sacraments or to harm the abbey's rights without consent. They were to say so publicly on certain feasts, to pay 10 shillings a year instead of tithes, and to have the prior swear to the terms every five years. They did not stop hearing confessions, and in 1280 they paid no attention when Archbishop Peckham forbade it. Henry III gave oaks for the church in 1258, 1266, 1267, and 1268, and for the houses in 1259. Edward I of England gave oaks for the church in 1276 and 1286. The church and other buildings on that first site went up between 1258 and 1268, with further work on the church in 1276 and 1286. A provincial chapter met there on 15 August 1264, and another in 1289, to which Edward I gave 6 pounds, 13 shillings, and 4 pence. In 1283 a commission inquired into men who broke the friars' door and beat some of them. That attack may be connected with the foundation of Gloucester College that year on land the Carmelites claimed. The prior brought an assize of novel disseisin against the abbot of Gloucester in 1288, and the result is not known. A gate by the hithe at Hythe Bridge, built before 1282, was presented as a nuisance by the abbot of Rewley in 1292 or 1293 and was apparently allowed to stay. Their thirteenth-century common seal shows Henry III, crowned, handing a church to two friars, and the Virgin with the Child, an estoile, a flowering tree, and an ox passing a ford. The legend names the common brothers of the order of the Blessed Mary of Carmel at Oxford.

After the move, the old royal rooms were adapted. A large room near the chapel was furnished as a library, and the chapel was enlarged with a steeple and bells. The site was enlarged in 1324 and 1337 by grants from neighbouring burgesses, and again in 1401, when Henry IV gave land he had from John Bokeland, abbot of Oseney, because the dwelling was strait and narrow. The purlieus of a palace were an awkward convent. The order's statutes of 1324, made at Barcelona, set extra payments for masters and students in the English universities. In 1336 no friar of the English province was to be sent to Oxford or Cambridge unless six brethren, some of them priors, testified to his character, and a bachelor at either university was to lecture on the Sentences for two years. John Baconthorpe, called the resolute doctor and the prince of the Averroists, studied under Robert of Walsingham, returned from Paris to Oxford, and was provincial prior from 1329 to 1333. He died in 1346. In the later fourteenth century the English province was divided into the distinctions of London, York, Norwich, and Oxford, and candidates for degrees were taken from each in turn. In 1396 Cardinal Landulph required seven years of arts, seven of theology, and a set course of lectures before a doctorate, because English friars were said to be taking the degree unfit. The university asked eight years of arts and six of theology from the religious. The Oxford Carmelites were prominent against Wyclif. John Kynyngham, John Lovey, and Peter Stokes, doctors, and John Cheselden, Stephen Patrington, and Thomas Legat, bachelors, joined the condemnation at the council of London. On 28 May 1382 the archbishop commissioned Stokes to publish that condemnation at Oxford. On 10 June, when Stokes determined against Philip Repingdon, men were seen in the school with arms under their clothes, and the friars feared for their lives. Henry VI used to stay in the Carmelite house at Oxford as in his own palace. The place had a reputation for health. John Twynning, abbot of Winchcombe, came there to recover and died among the brethren in 1488. Reginald Pole, as a student, lodged at the White Friars, perhaps because of his royal blood, though secular students may also have had rooms. In 1527 the chancellor's court mentions Katherine Newcome, a widow living inside the house. In 1512 Henry VIII gave 13 pounds, 6 shillings, and 8 pence for repair of the church. Among those buried in the church were the friars John Broxham in 1335, Robert Ormskirk about 1382, Walter Hunt in 1478, John Spyne in 1484, Peter Keninghale, prior in 1466, who died in 1494, and Richard Ferys, provincial in 1514. The only secular burial whose name was kept is William Hampton, burgess of Oxford, in 1336.

On the eve of the suppression the house was in poor condition. In 1502 a Carmelite was imprisoned by the proctor for incontinence. In 1533 the proctors found a girl of thirteen, disguised as a boy, in the room of a scholar called Browne at the White Friars. In 1534 and 1535 the old hostility with the monks of Gloucester College broke out again, and both sides were bound over to keep the peace. Of twenty-four Carmelites named in the university register between 1505 and 1538, the last to proceed toward a degree was John Hurlyston, bachelor of divinity of Cologne, who asked for a doctorate in December 1534. No Carmelite appears in the register after that. The wider suppression of monasteries, priories, convents, and friaries in England, Wales, and Ireland ran from 1536 to 1541. There were nearly 900 religious houses, among them 183 friaries, and about 3,000 friars. Friaries, unlike endowed monasteries, lived on gifts and on their gardens. No friars were pensioned. This house was not closed in the first round of small monasteries. It surrendered in 1538.

Dr London visited the Oxford friaries in 1538 and wrote on 7 July that the White Friars and the Austin Friars were the most out of order, and so poor that if they did not forsake their houses, their houses would forsake them. The White Friars' house was ruinous. The prior had already sold, for 40 pounds, the annuity of 3 pounds which the house received from Eynsham, and he had divided the money. He was in London trying to make a similar bargain with the abbot of Westminster over an annuity of 4 pounds. Their land was let for thirty years, and they had begun to sell the elms around the house. Two priors had sold nearly all the jewels and plate. Apart from copes and vestments, the rest of their goods was not worth 5 pounds. On 6 July they petitioned for licence to change their habits and surrender the house, because poverty was forcing them to sell jewels, plate, and wood, and would next force them to sell the stones and slates. They waited only for the prior to return before a formal surrender. Those desiring capacities on 31 August 1538 were Richard Chesse, the prior, also written Cheyfe; John Tyndall and Lawrence Semar, bachelors of divinity; the priests Thomas Sydall, Bartholomew Blythman, Robert Churleys, John Haynes, and John Bacon; and Anthony Fozton and Robert Eston, who were not in orders. They had still not received their capacities on 6 November 1538 and had to be found in meat and drink. The plate sent to London was three chalices, a silver ship, two silver cruets, a silver-gilt pax, and a silver-gilt censer. There was little or no lead. Dr London asked that Mr Banaster, mayor of Oxford, who had nothing but 4 pence a day from the king, might have the site for life, and that it might then go to the town. That plan was not followed.

The site was let at a rent of 3 pounds and 4 shillings until 1541, when it was granted, with the other lands, to Edmund Powell of Sandford for 388 pounds and 5 shillings and for certain lands in New Windsor which Powell had given to the king. Another account dates the grant 1542. The grant included the house, a tenement and garden by the gate, another tenement and garden inside the precinct, a way called the Entry from Magdalen parish church to the friary, a stable, a close called the timber yard of about 1 acre, 3 and a half acres called Gloucester College close, and another close of 2 acres on the south side of the church. A second description counts the main buildings, two houses and gardens, the entry from Magdalen Street, and 6 and a half acres in three closes, which is the same acreage added up. In 1560 Isabel Powell, widow, and her son Edmund granted the site to St John's College. Powell and his children pulled down most of the buildings. In 1546, 30 loads of stone were carried to St Frideswide's, which is the church of Christ Church. The great hall or refectory stood until about 1596, or in another account until 1595, and served as a poorhouse for the parish of St Mary Magdalen. It was then demolished and the materials were used to enlarge the library of St John's College. The palace account says that when the White Friars were disbanded, most of the structure was dismantled and the stone reused in Christ Church and St John's College. By 1714 only one small building remained, thought to have been the prior's oratory. It had a round window and three medieval doorways, of which one may have been of the thirteenth century. Anthony Wood described a small part of their church, as he thought, converted into a stable or cowhouse. Remains that had stood on the north side of Beaumont Street, about three quarters of the way toward Worcester College, were rebuilt as a gateway at 302 Woodstock Road, later a school. Parts of that structure were taken first to the garden of 302 Woodstock Road and in 1967 to the Carmelite priory on Boar's Hill.

An engraving of 1785, published by S. Hooper and engraved by Sparrow, shows the remains. A sketch of 1800 shows the inside of the forebuilding. The last of those remains were destroyed in the laying out of Beaumont Street in 1829, according to the palace account. Another account says the street was built in 1825 and that the work destroyed the remaining building. Housing in 1822 and 1836, on two fields called Beaumont Close and the Beaumonts, covered the area of the former palace of the White Friars. During the building of the street, burials were found west of the junction with St John Street, presumably the friars' graveyard, and the foundations of a wall were uncovered running north and south across the west end of Beaumont Street. Records of the 1820s also note burials uncovered while the houses along St John Street and Beaumont Street were built, and while the street itself was made. Those burials are from the Carmelite cemetery.

Earlier digging had already cut the ruins. About 1713, when the remains were being dug up, many burials were exposed, with painted glass, stones, and bricks, and a coin of Constantine. Workmen digging a trench across Beaumont Street for an extension of the Ashmolean found a foundation wall at SP 5112 0651, running along the line of the street 9 feet out from the edge of the southern pavement. On the north side of the wall, at a depth of 7 feet, a shallow pit held a cache of thirteenth-century pottery, later kept at the Ashmolean. In 1938, during excavations for the Repertory Theatre on the south side of Beaumont Street, fifteen burials, possibly of the fourteenth century, were found at SP 5111 0678. They are taken to belong to the Carmelite burying ground. Three bronze buckles were found with the skeletons.

The excavation ahead of the Sackler Library is the largest modern look at the eastern limit of the precinct. An evaluation in 1997 was followed by open excavation in 1998 and 1999. The published summary of that dig speaks of 1998 and 1999. The volume's own abstract speaks of 1997 and 1998. The grid given for the library site is SP 5110 0655. Two probable Bronze Age barrow ditches were found. One lay largely inside the project area and enclosed about 28 metres. The abstract calls the mound some thirty metres across. Neither ditch produced artefacts or burials, and both are read as part of the barrow cemetery in the University Parks. Above them, medieval pits lay in rows and may have been dug as tree planters. Their dates suggest a formal garden of the palace. Orchards and bowers were a common feature of royal houses in the medieval period, and the pits are the evidence offered here. A substantial stone building, aligned east to west and buttressed, may have begun as part of the palace and in the end formed part of the friary. It may have been the friars' church. A second medieval building, known from slighter evidence, stood a short distance to the north-east. Painted window glass of both the royal and the monastic occupations was recorded, with pottery and writing instruments. The upper layers were the back gardens, pits, and privies of the stone houses built along St John Street and Beaumont Street by nineteenth-century developers, and stone-lined garden features of that early nineteenth-century terrace. The site was not classed for protection as a monument because it was judged destroyed. Nothing of the medieval structures still stands above the street.

Later small investigations have not produced a new palace building. Between November and December 2020, a watching brief at 4 Beaumont Buildings, inside the precinct, recorded a garden wall whose quoins may belong to a post-medieval building, and it found no remains of the palace period. A separate report on work there in 2019 and 2020, for St John's College, describes a building record in November 2019 that found no visible features of interest inside the house, a test pit in which levels of archaeological interest lay almost a metre down and mostly below the reach of the extension, and a watching brief that found a well in the basement and nothing further. In June 2023, thirteen small test pits along the west side of Pusey Lane and in the basements of 19 and 20 St John Street found early features filled with reddish redeposited loess, read tentatively as Anglo-Saxon or earlier, perhaps prehistoric. That ground is close to the known late Neolithic and early Bronze Age barrows and inside the projected precinct. The same note says the friars took over the palace in the thirteenth century, which does not match the grants of 1317 and 1318. Between May and June 2026, work at 43 to 48 Wellington Square, just north of the walled precinct and just south of the former post-medieval workhouse, recorded original softwood floorboards, lath and plaster, former hearths, post-medieval soil, and foundations that may belong to the workhouse, together with early twentieth-century wallpaper from the roof space. Those are not remains of the king's houses.

The plaque on the pillar was understood to have been set up by Alan Brown, a former vice-provost of Worcester College. A vehicle hit it in 2003 and left it in the hedge of 24 Beaumont Street. Worcester College restored it in 2004. The king's house, in the older singular, was the range that contained the king's lodgings. What the ground still holds is the Bronze Age ditches, the rows of planting pits, the buttressed foundation, the friary burials, and the contradictory paperwork of a palace that was a birthplace, a lawyer's house, a quarry for the castle, and then a White Friars' church.

Canonical page: https://getsitesee.com/places/beaumont-palace