Jocelin of Wells

Jocelin of Wells, bishop of Bath from 1206 to 1242, was remembered in c.1408 by the author of the Historia Maior of Wells as ‘one who had no predecessor like him and who to this day has been matched by no successor’. Some 600 years later, and viewed from a less partial perspective, Jocelin might be judged, rather, as an astute and capable opportunist, a financially secure royal bureaucrat (his father, Edward of Wells, was a successful local worthy) who profited from being in the right job (royal chancery clerk) in the right place (the circles of Geoffrey FitzPeter and Hubert Walter) and at the right time (when King John needed solid episcopal support). Throughout his life, Jocelin was to remain conspicuously close to his family. His career and that of his brother Hugh, bishop of Lincoln from 1209, ran almost uncannily on parallel tracks: each was a canon in the other's Church and royal custodian of the other's vacant see. Jocelin was also loyal to whichever king happened to be holding the power and the purse strings

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