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The Crown, Three Benedictine Houses, and the Statute of Mortmain, 1279–1348

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Ernest D. Jones
Ernest D. Jones*
Affiliation:
University of Western Australia, Nedlands
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Extract

If not one of the pieces of Edwardian legislation which contributed to the growth of the English legal system, the Statute of Mortmain was nonetheless a most important enactment, a fact which has been realized in the not inconsiderable attention devoted to it by historians. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the crown's execution of the law in the period 1279 to 1348, with reference to the Benedictine houses of Crowland Abbey, Thorney Abbey, and Spalding Priory, and the statute's effects on the territorial policy of each of these.

Information on their territorial policies is to be found in the three chartularies relating to them. These are the Spalding Register, written c1331, numbering 801 folios in two volumes; the Red Book of Thorney, written c1326, numbering 472 folios in two volumes; and the Wrest Park Chartulary, written in the mid-fourteenth century after 1343, numbering 257 folios. No doubt there may be omissions, but a close scrutiny of the Spalding Register and the Red Book of Thorney, which both contain land acquisitions added by later clerks up to 1348, shows how faithfully, if not in the Spalding case carefully, (the original Spalding clerk tended to be rather a haphazard organiser; the original Thorney clerk was a real craftsman) recorded are the land acquisitions made by these two houses from the later thirteenth century to the middle of the fourteenth century. There are literally scores of these, with the additional evidence of the Calendar of Patent Rolls, which is useful as a check as well as a supplement to the chartularies, and which almost invariably testifies to the reliability of the clerks.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , May 1975 , pp. 1 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1975

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References

1. More particularly by Wood-Legh, K. L., Studies in Church Life in England under Edward III, (Cambridge, 1934), [hereafter Studies], pp. 60–88Google Scholar; Chew, H. M., “Mortmain in Medieval London,” English Historical Review, LX, (1945), 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Plucknett, T. F. T., Legislation of Edward I, (Oxford, 1949), pp. 94–102Google Scholar; Bean, J. M. W., The Decline of English Feudalism 1215-1540, (Manchester, 1968), pp. 49–66Google Scholar; and by Raban, S., “Mortmain in Medieval England,” Past and Present, No. 62, (February, 1974)Google Scholar, [hereafter “Mortmain”], 3-26. Raban's article appeared in print when this paper was being considered for publication, thus necessitating a certain amount of revision. I acknowledge a great debt to her excellent study, which clarified several issues on which I was in doubt and which on occasion saved me from serious error.

2. The Spalding Register is in the British Museum (BM) Add. MS 35296 and Harleian Manuscript (Harl. MS), 742; the Red Book of Thorney is in the Cambridge University Library (CUL) Add. MSS, 3020 and 3021; the Wrest Park Chartulary is now in the possession of the Spalding Gentlemen's Society (SGS) and is termed the Wrest Park Chartulary (WPC) from a former resting place.

3. For some comments on the capabilities of the Thorney scribe, see Walker, D., “The Organisation of Material in Medieval Cartularies,” The Study of Medieval Records: Essays in Honour of Kathleen Major, ed. Bullough, D. A. and Storey, R. L., (Oxford, 1971), pp. 137–39Google Scholar.

4. Page, F. M., The Estates of Crowland Abbey, Cambridge Studies in Economic History (Cambridge, 1934)Google Scholar, inset between pp. 10 and 11. None of this land appears to have been acquired between 1279 and 1281.

5. SGS, WPC, ff. 116v-117, 119v-121. After receiving 200 marks from Abbot Ralph for the sale of his manor of Gedney, which he had previously demised to the monastery for 5 years, Walter handed over his charter of enfeoffment to his wife, Leticia, and his brother, Richard, until he was satisfied of some money in arrears. His perpetual grant of the manor follows, though there is nothing to indicate that all the arrears were paid. Henry's manor was first of all demised to the Abbey in 1270 for 13 years for 320 marks, before being given for good.

6. Ibid., f. 121.

7. CUL, Add. MS 3021, ff. 344v-345, 369.

8. Ibid., ff. 344-344v 369v.

9. Ibid., ff. 343v-344. Sir Richard de Plessetis, whose land were taken into the crown's hands in 1289 after his death (Calendar of Fine Rolls, 1, p. 285), is mentioned as a defunct ex-land holder in this charter, which enables it to be dated.

10. CUL, Add. MS 3021, f. 369.

11. CUL, Add. MS 3020, ff. 180v-181.

12. The first was on 26 May 1280. See Calendar of Patent Rolls (CPR), 1272-81, p. 372.

13. The preamble to the first deed dealing with this land mentions that William had previously received it from Abbott Robert III (1217-37) and that he restored it, with his charter of enfeoffment, to Abbot Odo in 1304. A quitclaim of her right in it by his mother, Beatrice, a few weeks later in the same year, indicates that it was rather his father Ralph who obtained the land from Abbot Robert III than William himself, which better seems to fit the facts (CUL, Add. MS 3020, ff. 123; 124-124v).

14. CPR, 1313-17, p. 199; CPR, 1396-99, p. 138.

15. Ibid., 1313-17, p. 199.

16. CUL, Add. MS 3020, f. 33. The reason for this licence might have been that it was designed as an insurance against discovery, since in 1312 the crown had permitted religious houses to offset illegal acquisitions against such licences. See Raban, , “Mortmain”, p. 15Google Scholar.

17. For more on both these two grants, made by Thorney nominees, and for the employment of nominees and groups of feofees in general, see ibid., pp. 10-14.

18. For an example, see below p. 24, note 12, though there might have been slightly more land involved than usual in this case.

19. CUL, Add. MS 3021, f. 377; CUL, Add. MS 3020, ff. 156v-157; CUL, Add. MS 3021, ff. 214v-215.

20. Ibid., ff. 379v, 363v-364, 364v-365, 368; CUL, Add. MS 3020, ff. 42v-43; CUL, Add. MS 3021, f. 359-359v.

21. Whilst agreeing with Raban's view that it was easier for a house to elude the provisions of the law in land dealings on its own demesne manors if purchases were moderate and some precautions taken (Raban, , “Mortmain”, p. 16Google Scholar), I disagree with her deduction (and Wood-Legh's, , in Studies, p. 70Google Scholar), that overall gains of this nature should not be sufficiently numerous to impair the picture of accessions to the Church provided by the Patent Rolls. Thorney Abbey's evasions, especially in the time of Abbot William II, were extremely numerous indeed, running into scores, and taken together they form a sizeable, though admittedly not the major, proportion of the volume of land acquired by this monastery between 1279 and 1348.

22. BM, Add. MS 35296, f. 145.

23. For a discussion of offoldfal, see Hallam, H. E., Settlement and Society. A Study of the Early Agrarian History of South Lincolnshire, Cambridge Studies in Economic History (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 158–61Google Scholar.

24. Hallam, H. E., “Some Thirteenth Century Censuses,” Economic History Review, Second Series, X, (1958), 340–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25. BM, Harl. MS 742, ff. 121-121v, 122; 75v, 76v-77v; 121v-122; 75-75v.

26. BM, Add. MS 35296, f. 422v.

27. Ibid., f. 147.

28. Ibid., ff. 148v; 149; 148v-149.

29. BM, Add. MS 35296, ff. 147v; 148.

30. Ibid., f. 159.

31. Whilst this second licence was obtained by Prior Walter to extend his acquisitions to lands outside the confines of the Priory's own fiefs, as well as within them, neither he nor Thomas of Nassington (1333-53) used it in this way, and the recovery in land acquisitions begun by Prior Walter did not outlast the first few years of his successor.

32. As has probably been noted by now, what the land was actually worth each year was not always what it was valued at by the crown, a consideration stressed and well developed by Raban, in “Mortmain”, pp. 20–23Google Scholar, and royal valuations of rents are not always specified, so these have sometimes to be taken at their face value.

33. BM, Harl. MS 742, ff. 222v-223; BM, Add. MS 35296, ff. 150v-151.

34. Ibid., f. 170.

35. CPR, 1334-38, p. 128.

36. BM, Harl. MS 742, f. 348-348v.

37. BM, Add. MS 35296, ff. 18-19v.

38. Ibid., ff. 422v-428.

39. Wood-Legh, , Studies, p. 72Google Scholar.

40. CUL, Add. MS 3021, ff. 208v; 208v-209. Also, in the instance of Robert, son of Reginald de Hotot of Clapton, in the time of Abbot William II, there is not infrequent reference that land was granted to him pro quadam summa pecunie.

41. By the terms of the lease, for thirty years, the Abbey paid William forty marks flat for the first ten years, and forty shillings a year thereafter. See Raban, , “Mortmain”, pp. 8–9Google Scholar.

42. CUL, Add. MS 3020, f. 109v.

43. Abstracts of Feet of Fines relating to Wiltshire for the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, ed. Pugh, R. B., Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, Records Branch, 1 (Devizes, 1939), xv–xviGoogle Scholar.

44. SGS, WPC, f. 166.

45. BM, Add. MS 35296, ff. 424v; 422v; 424v; 426.

46. Powicke, F. M., The Thirteenth Century, Oxford History of England (2nd ed., Oxford, 1962), p. 501 and note 2Google Scholar.

47. Lunt, W. E., Financial Relations of the Papacy with England to 1327, Studies in Anglo-Papal Relations during the Middle Ages, I, The Mediaeval Academy of America, Publication No. 33 (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), 346–66Google Scholar.

48. Ibid., pp. 394, 399-402, 404-18.

49. Lunt, W. E., Financial Relations of the Papacy with England 1327-1534, Studies in Anglo-Papal Relations during the Middle Ages, II, The Mediaeval Academy of America, Publication No. 74 (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), 75–88Google Scholar.

50. Ibid., p. 88.

51. The Spalding portion was so large because of the lucrative nature of its spiritualities, most noticeably the churches of Spalding, Weston, Moulton, and, although not directly mentioned in the survey as one of its assets, Pinchbeck. See Taxatio Ecclesiastica P. Nicholai IV, (Records Commission, 1802), p. 62Google Scholar. The valuation (including the church of Pinchbeck) is also detailed in the Spalding Register. (See BM, Add. MS 35206, ff. 40v-42.

52. Lunt, Financial Relations … to 1327, Chs. IX, X, XI, and Lunt, Financial Relations … 1327-1534, Chs. I, V, VI, VII, VIII, XIII, XIV.

53. Calendar of Close Rolls (CCR), 1307-13, p. 431.

54. CPR, 1340-43, p. 279.

55. CPR, 1345-48, pp. 338, 339, 340.

56. Raban points out as signs of this Thorney Abbey buying the manor of Clapton by leasing the demesne manor of Twywell to Sir William Hay for his lifetime, and Crowland Abbey paying for a manor in Gedney by instalments in the 1260s [Raban, , “Mortmain”, p. 24Google Scholar], But as she herself states, Clapton was probably sold to Abbot David (1238-54) [Ibid., p. 4, note 6], so the large sums expended by Abbot William I (1261-93) [see above, pp. 3, 7] belie any notion of an imminent contraction in the land market (and most likely even if Twywell was leased by him for Clapton). And if Crowland Abbey did pay for a manor in instalments in the 1260s, it was sufficiently solvent to buy numerous other properties in the 1260s and 1270s plus another manor in Gedney in 1271.

57. See article by Salzman, L. F. and Ellis, D. M. B. in V.C.H. Cambs., 2, (London, 1967), 214Google Scholar.

58. Hallam, , Settlement and Society, p. 177Google Scholar.

59. A magnificent and extremely expensive chapel built by Clement himself. Ibid., p. 177.

60. Ibid., p. 153.

61. BM, Add. MS 35296, f. 20-20v.

62. Ibid., fr. 26v-27; 21; 24-25.

63. BM, Harl. MS 742, S. 50-50v; 50v-51; 51-51v; 51v.

64. Ibid., fr. 53v-54; 53v; 54-54v.

65. Hallam has also stressed that land was still a very sound source of investment on the Spalding estates right up to the Black Death. See Hallam, H. E., “The Agrarian Economy of Medieval Lincolnshire before the Black Death,” Historical Studies, Australia and New Zealand, II, No. 42, (1964), 163–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There is very little comparable evidence for rents on the Thorney estates after 1279, but on one of the very few occasions after 1279 where an abbot is mentioned in the Red Book of Thorney granting land, Abbot Odo of Whittlesey (1293-1305) is to be discovered raising a rent of 4s to 4s 4d (CUL, Add. MS 3021, f. 252).

66. Page, , Crowland Abbey, pp. 283–312Google Scholar.

67. A solitary grant of 1323 by Abbot Simon of Luffenham (1303-24) comprising 1½ roods of land in Swineshead (Lincs.) was made for 3s 6½d a year, plus tallages and the dyking of the sea and marsh (SGS, WPC, f. 140).

68. Page, . Crowland Abbey, pp. 145–155Google Scholar.

69. BM, Add. MS 5845, ff. 32v-33v.

70. On occasion, of course, a man might grant a house land for a corrody, though none of the donors of land to Crowland Abbey from 1279 to 1348 appear to have done this.

71. BM, Add. MS 5845, ff. 22vet seq. It is hoped to make this interesting evidence the basis of a future article. Corrodies were also a drain at this time on Ramsey Abbey, which house provides an interesting parallel to the three investigated in this paper. By the early fourteenth century, Ramsey's level of regular expenses had risen tremendously over the previous century, with the main culprits being heavy vacancy charges, taxation, visits to Parliament, and royal vacations at Ramsey, as well as corrodies. However, even with this far greater expenditure, the abbot's net income was sufficient at some periods of higher revenue returns to invest monies in abbey buildings, drainage and re-stocking of manors, and estate purchases. In fact, investment in land after 1285 remained fairly heavy till 1348, though not as heavy as in the thirty years prior to 1285. See Raftis, J. A., The Estates of Ramsey Abbey, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts 3 (Toronto, 1957), 232, 239-40, 320, 109-12Google Scholar.

72. For the crown's successful detection of evasion by another house, see The Cartulary of Cirencester Abbey, 1, ed. Ross, C. D., (London, 1964), 72-77, 78–80Google Scholar.

73. Raban, , “Mortmain”, pp. 22–23Google Scholar.

74. Ibid., p. 19.

75. Bean, , Decline, p. 64Google Scholar.

76. Reasons for this might have been to combat possible under-estimates of the land's value, and because the crown's freedom of action was mortgaged until the general licences were exhausted. See Raban, , “Mortmain”, p. 21Google Scholar. The £20 a year royal licence granted to Crowland Abbey in 1327 was not fully satisfied until 1398 (CPR, 1327-30, p. 181); the £20 a year royal licence granted to Thorney Abbey in 1314 was not fully satisfied until 1392 (CUL, Add. MS 3020, ff. 161v-162), though if Thorney Abbey continued to evade the enactment after 1348 as successfully as it had done before, it would have acquired much more than this would imply. The £20 a year royal licence and the £10 a year royal licence granted to Spalding Priory in 1312 and 1329 were not fully satisfied until 1391 (CPR, 1307-13, p. 485; CPR, 1327-30, p. 472).

77. On the question of the difficulty of procuring licences, it is impossible to say one way or the other in the case of these three houses, though Raban emphasises the low number of licences for the Church as a whole between 1279 and 1299, and suggests this as a possible reason (along with the Church perhaps waiting for amelioration of the law). See Raban, , “Mortmain”, pp. 5, 6Google Scholar. On the question of cost, there is very scant information on royal fines and related expenses, though, unless they were exceptionally high, they would not have proved a determining deterrent because none of these houses was in straitened circumstances in this period. On the question of restrictions in general licences, its licence to acquire only land of its own fief did not prevent Thorney Abbey from acquiring more than Crowland Abbey, which suffered from no such handicap, and Spalding Priory's second and less restrictive licence does not appear to have been acted upon to obtain land in other fiefs.

78. The fact that after 1320, Prior Walter's time in office witnessed less heavy taxation [see above pp. 10-11] might have played a part here.

79. BM, Add. MS 35296, f. 430. It is a great pity that the clerk does not say why acquisitions should be difficiles atque graves. The offices of Abbot William II (1305-22) and Prior Clement of Hatfield (1294-1318) are very noticeable for their paucity of legal acquisitions, and Raban has pointed out that in a time of crisis and economic difficulty, such as the last years of Edward I's reign, or 1311-12, there were heavy exactions in fines (Raban, , “Mortmain”, pp. 6, 19 and note 57Google Scholar). But during the office of Prior Clement, Abbot Richard Crowland and Abbot Odo made some major acquisitions from 1299 to 1304, and both Thorney Abbey and Spalding Priory acquired general licences, whilst in addition Prior Clement certainly had the ready capital to surmount all but the greatest financial obstacles (supposing there were any).

80. Stone, E., “Profit-and-Loss Accountancy at Norwich Cathedral Priory,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fifth Series, 12 (1962), 41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81. Newstead Priory Cartulary, 1344, and Other Archices, ed. Gray, D. (Nottingham, 1940), pp. 36–42, 173–75, 198–202Google Scholar.