The preceding pages have highlighted the military activities of churchmen in England throughout the period from the Conquest through to the death of Peter des Roches, and that arguments persisted over the legitimacy of their military actions despite the hardening of canon law and the strengthening of the papacy. However, we do not want to interpret the choice of period of this study (Anglo-Norman and Angevin England) to indicate that warrior-clerics and the arguments they inspired were indicative of that period alone. In fact, given more space and time, one could certainly see these arguments continuing on until the fifteenth century at the least, and perhaps even further. With that in mind, I will briefly survey some avenues of future research for those later periods.

The mid to late thirteenth century saw clerics arrayed on both sides of the Barons’ Wars against Henry III, and many of the same ideological constructs seen previously were used to defend the actions of these men as they contended for control over the throne of England. James King argues that thirteenth-century England saw a conflict between two idealized clerical exemplars – St. Francis of Assisi and Friar Tuck. For him, clerical military activity was antithetical to the clerical vocation. He writes that ‘the essence of the vocation of the cleric was spiritual and therefore, non-violent in nature.’ According to King, England settled this debate by embracing the Friar Tuck model (which, ironically, he finds incongruous with the previous period). Regardless of whether King sees this as mostly a thirteenth-century phenomenon, his recognition of the broad acceptance of the warlike model reinforces the evidence seen from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Lawrence Duggan has traced what he believes is a loosening of the canonical prohibition on clerical arms-bearing to this same period, highlighting that in 1240, Bishop Walter de Cantilupe of Worcester promulgated new statutes that allowed clerics to bear defensive weapons when necessary, and Bishop Nicholas de Farnham of Durham issued statutes forbidding arms, ‘“except perhaps for defensive weapons in time of war and for compelling reasonable cause.”’ On the other hand, Bishop Robert Grosseteste (1235–53) issued statutes completely forbidding clerics to bear arms somewhere between 1239–43, possibly in reaction to the example of Peter des Roches (whom he hated), and it was his position (in favor of maintaining the ban) that was more popular among other English dioceses.