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12th century English Justiciar and Archbishop of Rouen

Walter de Coutances (died 16 November 1207) was a medieval Anglo Norman bishop of Lincoln and archbishop of Rouen. He began his royal service in the government of Henry II, serving as a vice chancellor. He also accumulated a number of ecclesiastical offices, becoming successively canon of Rouen Cathedral, treasurer of Rouen, and archdeacon of Oxford. King Henry sent him on a number of diplomatic missions and finally rewarded him with the bishopric of Lincoln in 1183. He did not remain there long, for he was translated to Rouen in late 1184. When Richard I, King Henry's son, became king in 1189, Coutances absolved Richard for his rebellion against his father and invested him as Duke of Normandy. He then accompanied Richard to Sicily as the king began the Third Crusade, but events in England prompted Richard to send the archbishop back to England to mediate between William Longchamp, the justiciar whom Richard had left in charge of the kingdom, and Prince John, Richard's younger brother. Coutances succeeded in securing a peace between Longchamp and John, but further actions by Longchamp led to the justiciar's expulsion from England, replaced in his role by Coutances, even though he never formally used the title. He remained in the office until late 1193, when he was summoned to Germany by the king, who was being held in captivity there. Coutances became a hostage for the final payment of Richard's ransom on the king's release in February 1194. Coutances took no further part in English government after returning from Germany. Instead he became involved in Norman affairs, including a dispute with Richard over the ownership of Andely manor, an archiepiscopal property that Richard desired as a fortress. Eventually the archbishop surrendered it to the king in return for two other manors and the seaport of Dieppe. Richard went on to build the castle of Gaillard on the former archiepiscopal manor. After Richard's death, Coutances invested Prince John as Duke of Normandy, but was forced to pay 2,100 Angevin pounds to secure contested rights from the new king. After John lost control of Normandy in 1204, the archbishop did not resist the new government of King Philip II of France. Coutances died in November 1207 and was buried in his cathedral.

Coutances was born in Cornwall, to Reinfrid and Gonilla. His brother was Roger fitzReinfrid, a layman and royal justice during the reign of King Henry II of England. Although the medieval chronicler and churchman Gerald of Wales related that his friend was descended from Trojan heroes who escaped the Sack of Troy and ended up in Cornwall, that was a flattering invention on Gerald's part. Coutances' family was of the knightly class, and probably from Normandy originally. Coutances was usually given the title of magister, which signified that he had received an education in a school; most likely he attended the schools of Paris. Gerald of Wales said that Coutances was dedicated to learning, and considered him to be a talented courtier. He probably owed the position to his brother, who was already in royal service. By 1169 Coutances held a canonry in Rouen Cathedral. Coutances was the chaplain to Henry the Young King, eldest living son of King Henry, but when the younger Henry rebelled against his father in 1173, Coutances returned to King Henry's service. He became Archdeacon of Oxford, perhaps by 1173, certainly by 14 March 1176. He was named vice chancellor when Ralph de Warneville became Chancellor of England, In 1176 and 1177, King Henry sent Coutances on diplomatic missions to Flanders and the French royal court. This happened in early 1178, but the only real evidence for this effort on Coutances' part comes from Arnulf's correspondence, and as Coutances was back in England by July 1178, it does not appear that the attempt was a sustained one. On his return to England, Coutances was given custody of the abbeys of Wilton and Ramsey, which were being held by King Henry pending the election of new abbots. In 1180 Henry sent Coutances to France on another diplomatic mission.

Coutances was elected to the see of Lincoln on 8 May 1183, at Angers by Richard of Dover, the Archbishop of Canterbury. While at Lincoln, Coutances took part in the election of Baldwin of Forde as the new Archbishop of Canterbury, which took place at a council held in Westminster in 1184. Writing about Coutances' time at Lincoln, Gerald of Wales accused the bishop of increasing the debt of the diocese of Lincoln and of squandering its resources. On 17 November 1184 Coutances was translated to the diocese of Rouen, becoming Archbishop of Rouen. In the later part of 1186, after the death of King Henry's son Geoffrey—who was Duke of Brittany—King Philip II of France demanded that Geoffrey's daughters be placed in the French king's custody, and that the duchy of Brittany, which Geoffrey had ruled in right of his wife, be surrendered into French royal custody. Coutances was one of the negotiators sent by King Henry to secure a settlement, but they had to settle for a temporary truce. In January 1188 Coutances took the cross when he pledged to go on Crusade along with King Henry and King Philip of France.

Shortly after Richard took the throne he sought absolution for his sins in rebelling against his father, from Baldwin of Forde and Coutances. The two archbishops absolved Richard in a ceremony in Sées. Coutances also invested Richard as Duke of Normandy in a ceremony held in Rouen, before accompanying Richard to England, where he participated in the new king's coronation,

In 1189 Coutances held an ecclesiastical synod which legislated, among other things, that the clergy should not hold secular offices, even though Coutances himself had held and continued to hold such offices. On 9 November 1189 Richard appointed Coutances to a commission tasked with deciding the dispute between Baldwin of Forde and the monks of his cathedral chapter over Baldwin's plan to create a church dedicated to Thomas Becket, the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury, and to staff this church not with monks, but with canons. The monks of Canterbury Cathedral objected to Baldwin's plan, fearing that it was part of a plot to transfer the right of election from the monastic cathedral chapter to the new church's canons. Sitting on the commission with Coutances were Hugh de Puiset, the Bishop of Durham, Godfrey de Lucy, the Bishop of Winchester, Hubert Walter, the Bishop of Salisbury, Peter de Leia, the Bishop of St David's, Richard fitzNigel, the Bishop elect of London, William Longchamp, the Bishop elect of Ely, and some abbots. The commission travelled to Canterbury, and on 29 November 1189, managed to secure a compromise between the parties, which lasted until Hubert Walter, by then Archbishop of Canterbury, revived the plan. In the compromise, Baldwin agreed to give up the idea of a new monastic foundation around Canterbury and the monks agreed to submit to the archbishop's authority. Although the medieval chronicler Richard of Devizes accused Coutances of duplicity, and of trying to play both sides against the other, the evidence suggests that Coutances was genuinely trying to solve the dispute in the king's interest. Longchamp fled to Normandy, and he was excommunicated by Coutances. He held that power until about 25 December 1193, when Hubert Walter was appointed Justiciar. Coutances had long experience in the chancery, but little experience with judicial matters. Most of his efforts while in the justiciarship were centred on raising Richard's ransom. As evidence of this emphasis on raising money, Coutances sent out few itinerant justices during his time in power. Six groups of justices were sent out in 1192, but in 1193 none were sent out, and even the justices based in Westminster held few sessions. A new note in Coutances' administration was his custom of issuing writs not in his own name, as had previously been the practice, but in the king's name. The archbishop also stressed that his decisions were made with the advice and consent of many of the leading nobles of the realm, as well as the barons of the Exchequer. This was a reaction against Longchamp's authoritarian method of government. The archbishop supervised the election of a new Archbishop of Canterbury, as Baldwin of Forde had died while on Crusade in 1190. Although both Longchamp and Coutances were considered as possible candidates and rivals for the see, the cathedral chapter of Canterbury elected the Bishop of Bath, Reginald fitzJocelin, in November 1191. Reginald died a month later and the see remained vacant until March 1193, when the king's candidate, Hubert Walter, was elected. In February 1193 Coutances summoned a council to Oxford, to address problems of administration and defence after the recently received news of Richard's captivity in Germany. The council also took oaths of fealty to Richard. Prince John, however, hearing that Richard was in captivity, immediately went to France and swore homage to King Philip for Richard's lands, and then returned to England and raised a rebellion. Coutances proceeded to besiege Windsor Castle, which was held by Prince John's men. When John heard that Richard was going to be freed, he left England and went to France. In February 1194 Coutances was in Germany, at the court of the German emperor, along with Longchamp, who brought letters to Richard, still in captivity. On 4 February, Coutances became a hostage to the German emperor as surety for the payment of the outstanding portion of Richard's ransom, and the king was released. The king never paid the final instalment of his ransom, and the archbishop had to pay 10,000 marks for his own release. His record of charter witnessing bears this out; between 1189 and 1194 Coutances was among the most prolific of the witnesses to the king's English charters, but not after 1194.

Coutances returned to Normandy, and in December 1195 attempted to secure compensation for the losses his archdiocese had sustained in the warfare between King Richard and King Phillip. He sought compensation from both kings but obtained no satisfaction, and felt so ill treated by the kings that he abandoned his see. When Coutances returned to his diocese in July 1196, he found that the king had seized the manor of Andely independently of the treaty provisions, and when the archbishop refused to relinquish it to the king, Richard began to fortify the manor. He also built a castle there, now Château Gaillard. On 7 November 1196, Coutances set off for Rome, to protest the seizure to the pope. Richard sent a royal embassy, and eventually a settlement was reached. The archbishop was ordered to remove the interdict he had placed on the duchy, and in return for the manor received two others and the seaport of Dieppe. The various lands that Coutances' received in exchange for Andely were worth £1,405 a year. This episode marked the end of Coutances' service to the Angevin kings; for the rest of his life the archbishop focused on protecting and guarding the archiepiscopal properties and rights. In May 1202, Pope Innocent III wrote to Coutances, urging him to impose religious punishments on any rebels against King John's rule in the duchy of Normandy. When John lost the duchy in 1204, Coutances did not resist the government of King Philip II, although he did not make his complete peace with Philip until March 1207. In 1206/07, Coutances, along with his suffragan bishops, petitioned Philip for special legal procedures relating to patronage, which Philip granted.

Although Coutances was absent from Rouen for most of the period between 1190 and 1194, he remained an active archbishop. He secured the continued immunity of clergy from secular jurisdiction, and supervised the administration of the archdiocese. He began the custom of keeping records in registers of episcopal judgements from about 1200, and he appointed the first officials of Rouen. He also oversaw the rebuilding of Rouen Cathedral, which had begun in 1155, and restarted the work after a fire in 1200.

Coutances died on 16 November 1207 and was buried at Rouen Cathedral, The inventory of his personal possessions made after his death included a large number of jewels and vestments. He also owned a large library, which contained not only religious works but also legal texts on canon law and works of classical authors such as Juvenal and Ovid. Other nephews were William, successively a canon at Lincoln Cathedral and an archdeacon at Rouen, and Richard, also an archdeacon at Rouen. Two other historians have argued that it was probably Coutances' judgement and stability that persuaded the king to trust him. The medieval poet John of Hauville dedicated a satirical poem in 1184 to Coutances called Architrenius. It was on the tribulations of a poor scholar.