In November 1284 Osbert Giffard, an English baron, was declared excommunicate.

In November 1284 Osbert Giffard, an English baron, was declared excommunicate. 

 In November 1284 Osbert Giffard, an English baron, was declared excommunicate. At the same time his lands were seized by Edward I.

Osbert had been accused of the rape and abduction of two nuns, Alice Russell and Anna Giffard, from the wealthy convent of Wilton. He then carried off one of the women, probably Alice, overseas to marry against her will and without royal license. 

Six months later he returned to England and returned his victims to the convent. Osbert then begged for absolution. His crime was declared a sin against the nation, and he was obliged to accept a heavy penance. First, he had to make satisfaction to the abbess and the convent. Then he had to appear before the door of Salisbury church, on Ash Wednesday, wearing mourning dress and with his head uncovered. He would then be paraded about the church, thrashed with sticks, and flogged about the market and the local churches and markets of Amesbury and Shaftesbury. 

These punishment beatings were repeated on three consecutive holy days and every Tuesday of the following month. Afterwards, Osbert was not allowed to call himself a knight or gentleman, wear armour or any clothing save that of a penitent, until he agreed to go to the Holy Land and fight the Saracens for three years.

The case was not unprecedented. In the previous reign, one of Henry III's Poitevins had smuggled a noblewoman abroad to marry against her will, apparently with the king's connivance. Henry had form in this area: for instance, he ordered the Earl of Gloucester to kidnap Margaret of Bromfield, half-sister to Prince Llywelyn of Wales, to prevent her marrying against the king's will. Simon de Montfort junior chased Isabella de Forz, the Countess of Devon, deep into Wales so he could force her to marry him (she escaped). 

The showy punishment of Osbert, public penance and all, may have been intended to show that such abuses were a thing of the past. They were not, of course: another notorious case occurred in 1288, when William Douglas 'the Hardy' abducted Eleanor de Ferrers, widow of the Baron of Groby in Leicestershire. And so it went on.