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Monasteries and their Patrons at Foundation and Dissolution* (The Alexander Prize Essay, proxime accessit)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Benjamin Thompson
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Extract

IN June 1536 Thomas Starkey, a royal chaplain, humanist, and ‘commonwealth man’, wrote to Henry VIII concerning the Act passed in the spring of that year suppressing monasteries worth less than £200:

many ther be wyche are mouyd to iuge playnly thys acte of suppressyon of certayn abbays bothe to be agayne the ordur of charyte & iniuryous to them wych be dede bycause the foundarys therof & the soulys departyd seme therby to be defraudyd of the benefyte of prayer & almys dede ther appoyntyd to be done for theyr releyffe …

—to which he argued that the common weal of all took precedence over arrangements made for the private weal of the individual. Moreover, in answering those who would argue for ‘rather a just reformatyon then thys vthur ruynose suppressyon’, he went on,

for though hyt be so that prayer & almys dede be much to the comfort of them wych be departyd, & though god delyte much in our charytabul myndys thereby declaryd, yet to conuerte ouer much possessyon to that end & purpos, & to appoynt ouer many personys to such offyce & exercyse, can not be wythout grete detryment & hurt to the chrystian commynwele … & though hyt be a gud thyng & much relygyouse to pray for them wych be departyd out of thys mysery, yet we may not gyue al our possessyonys to nurysch idul men in contynual prayer for them …

Starkey was certain that the possessions of monasteries had been given to the ‘end and purpose’ of providing spiritual benefits for the ‘founders’, to help the passage of their souls through Purgatory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 4 , December 1994 , pp. 103 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1994

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References

1 Starkey's Life and Letters, ed. Herrtage, S.J. (Early English Text Society, extra ser., 32, 1878)Google Scholar, lv; cited in Youings, Joyce, The Dissolution of the Monasteries (1971), 168–9Google Scholar (no. 14).

2 Starkey's Life and Letters lvi.

3 An exception is Youings, Dissolution.

4 See Table on pages 124–5. The houses, their histories, and patrons are described in the following, heavily interdependent, works, most conveniently The Victoria History of the Counties of England (1900) [VCH], Norfolk, ii, and Knowles, David & Hadcock, R. N., Medieval Religious Houses: England and Walts (2nd edn., 1971)Google Scholar. Blomefield, Francis, An Essay towards a Topographical History of Norfolk (1805—1810Google Scholar, originally King's Lynn, 1739—75) [Blomefield]; Tanner, Thomas, Notitia Monastica (3rd edn., Cambridge, 1787)Google Scholar which gives valuable source references; Dugdale, William, Monastico Anglicanum (2nd edn. ed. Caley, J., Ellis, H., Bandinel, B., 6 vols. in 8, 1817–1830)Google Scholar. For patrons see also GEC, The Complete Peerage (ed. Gibbs, V. et al. , 12 vols. in 13, 1910–1959)Google Scholar [CF]; Sanders, I.J., English Baronies: a Study of their Origin and Descent, 1086–1327 (Oxford, 1960)Google Scholar.

5 Taxatio Ecclesiastica Angtiae et Walliae auctoritate papae Nicholai IV, circa A.D. 1291 (Record Commission, 1802)Google Scholar; Valor Ecctesiasticus (6 vols., Record Commission, 1810–1834)Google Scholar, vol. iii; see also the notes in the works above.

6 Knowles, David, The Monastic Order in England (2nd edn., Cambridge, 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar is the classic study.

7 Domesday Book: Norfolk, ed. Brown, Philippa (2 vols., Chichester, 1984)Google Scholar; landholders nos. X, XVII.

8 Matthew, D.J.A., The Norman Monasteries and their English Possessions (Oxford, 1962)Google Scholar; Morgan, Marjorie M., The English Lands of the Abbey of Bee (Oxford, 1946)Google Scholar.

9 Also Horsham St Faith to Conques. The seventh, Westacre, does not belong to this group ecclesiastically, since it was a secular college which became Augustinian later, Vincent, Nicholas, ‘The Foundation of Westacre Priory, 1102–26’, Norfolk Archaeology, XLI (1993), 490–4Google Scholar.

10 Sanders, , English Baronies, 12, 43, 46–7, 70, 117, 128Google Scholar; CP, ad loc.; Blomefield, x. 433, xi. 17; Monasticon, iii. 635, v. 59: Horsham St Faith and Bromholm were possibly founded by sub-tenants of the honour of Eye when it was vacant, 1105–13.

11 Also Wymondham near the Albinis' Buckenham Castle, and Horsham and Bromholm, see n. above.

12 See Table. There were no Cistercian monks in Norfolk. See Dickinson, J.C., The Origins of the Austin Canons (1950)Google Scholar; Colvin, H.M., The White Canons in England (Oxford, 1951)Google Scholar; Graham, Rose, St Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertines (1901)Google Scholar. Full bibliographies are to be found in Knowles & Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses.

13 The friars and colleges are at VCH Norfolk, ii. 425–38, 453–62.

14 Pollock, F. & Maitland, F.W., The History of English Law before the time of Edward I (2nd edn., Cambridge 1898Google Scholar, reprinted 1968), i. 240–51; Littleton's Tenures, bk. II, ch. vi, §§ 133–8 (ed. Wambaugh, Eugene, Washington, D. C., 1903, 66–70)Google Scholar. Foundation charters are conveniently found in Monasticon; e.g. iii. 345 (Binham), referring to the grant as ‘elemosinam’; vi. 974–5 (Shouldham), developed free alms formula. The arguments in this section are elaborated in more detail now in my ‘Free alms tenure in the twelfth century’, Anglo-Norman Studies, XVI (1994), 221–43Google Scholar; see also ‘From “alms” to “spiritual services”: the function and status of monastic property in medieval England’, in Monastic Studies, II, ed. Loades, J. (Bangor, 1991), 227–61Google Scholar.

15 Ecclesiasticus, iii. 33; quoted by the bishop of Norwich to his monks c. 1100: The Life, Letters, and Sermons of Bishop Herbert de Losinga, ed. Goulbourn, E.M. & Symonds, Henry (Oxford & London, 1878), ii. 26–8Google Scholar.

16 Cowdrey, H.E.J., ‘Unions and confraternity with Cluny’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, XVI (1965), 152–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mason, Emma, ‘The Mauduits and their Chamberlainship of the Exchequer’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, XLIX (1976), 21–2Google Scholar.

17 Pollock & Maitland, i. 240; Littleton's Tenures, II. vi, § 136.

18 E.g. Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regni Anglie qui Glaiwilla vocatur, ed. Hall, G.D.G. (1965), xii. 3, p. 137Google Scholar.

19 For gift-exchange, see references in Rubin, Miri, Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge (Cambridge, 1987), 1–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 ‘ad inveniendum quemdam capellanum divina in capella sancti Winwaloei pro anima Gilberti de Clare quondam comitis Gloucestrie et animabus ipsius Elizabethae ac antecessorum ac heredum suorum ac omnium fidelium defunctorum singulis diebus celebraturum imperpetuum’; Dashwood, G.H., ‘Some early deeds relating to the priory of St Winwaloe in Wirham and lands there’, Norfolk Archaeology, V (1859), 301Google Scholar: the chantry was in fact a re-use of an alien cell, ibid., 301–3; Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1334–8, (1891–), 252–3; Norfolk Record Office, Hare MSS 4114–17; BL Add. MS 6041, fo. 86 (nos. i–vi).

21 E.g. Statutes of the Realm (Rec. Comm. 1810–1828), i. 373–4, ii–188Google Scholar. Most wills prove the point.

22 Bennet, E.K., ‘Notes on the original statutes of the college of St John Evangelist of Rushworth, co. Norfolk, founded by Edmund Gonville A.D. 1342’, Norfolk Archaeology, X (1888), 51–2Google Scholar.

23 BL Stowe MS 939, fo. 5v (no. 13).

24 Statutes, i. 82–3, 91–2; Norfolk Record Office, FLI 65.

25 Statutes, i. 106.

26 E.g. Gonville's statutes in n. 22, and Stapleton's in n. 28.

27 CPR, passim; Thompson, Benjamin, ‘The church and the aristocracy: lay and ecclesiastical landowning society in fourteenth-century Norfolk’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge, 1990), 112Google Scholar, n. 171.

28 See the long list of beneficiaries at Ingham priory/college, Norwich Episcopal Registers, v. fo. 3.

29 Bennet, , ‘The college of St John Evangelist of Rushworth, co. Norfolk’, Norfolk Archaeology, X (1888), 368–73Google Scholar. See also the argument at Raveningham in which the emphasis of the services between generations was an element: BL Stow MSS 939, fos. 23–5; 934, fos. 171—2; Calendar of Papal Registers: Papal Letters (1893–), v. 260–1; Thompson, , ‘Habendum et Tenendum: lay and ecclesiastical attitudes to the property of the church’, in Religious Belief and Ecclesiastical Careers in Late Medieval England, ed. Harper-Bill, Christopher (Woodbridge, 1991), 236Google Scholar.

30 Dashwood, , ‘Wereham’, 306Google Scholar.

31 See n. 20. le Goff, Jacques, The Birth of Purgatory (trans. Goldhammer, Arthur, 1984), 276Google Scholar.

32 Starkey's theme, above, 1.

33 E.g. ‘Register of Crabhouse Nunnery’, ed. Bateson, M., Norfolk Archaeology, XI (1892)Google Scholar, no. 89.

34 The evidence as to whether this was common practice is thin; see Monasticon, vi. 1572–3; and Valor Ecclesiasticus, iii, where the sections including alms have some first founders in a context which suggests they were performing the norm. Thompson, , ‘Church and the Aristocracy’, 95–6Google Scholar.

35 Statutes i. 150, 316; Councils and Synods with Other Documents relating to the English Church, II, 1205–1313, ed. Powicke, F.M. & Cheney, C.R. (Oxford, 1964), ii. 1233Google Scholar.

36 Ibid., 1239–40; see above n. 24.

37 See Matthew, Norman Monasteries, chs. iii–iv; and for what follows now my ‘The laity, the alien priories and the redistribution of ecclasiastical property’, in England in the Fifteenth Century, Harlaxton Medieval Studies V, ed. Rogers, Nicholas (Stamford, 1994) 19–41Google Scholar.

38 Calendar of Close Rolls (1892–), 1288–96, 470, 1323–7, 251–2, 1337–9, 151; Monasticon, v. 54; CPR 1338–40, 505.

39 Registrum Roberti Winchelsey, ed. Graham, Rose (Canterbury & York Society, 1952–1956, ii. 703–4, 792Google Scholar; Cal. Papal Lett., i. 594–5; CPR 1307–13, 140.

40 E.g. BL Egerton MS 3137, fos. 62v, 125v–6v, 198–201; CPR 1348–50, 20, 349, 1358–61, 195, 1374–7, 13, 1391–6, 62; Blomefield, ii. 154, 244, viii. 474–5; Cal. Papal Lett., iv. 519; Catalogue of Ancient Deeds, (1890–1915), ii. A 2781–4, 2788, 2879, 3056–7. See Thompson, ‘Church and the aristocracy’, ch. 5.

41 Sanders, , English Baronies, 101Google Scholar; CPR 1334–8, 157; PRO C 143/139[9.

42 CPR 1370–4, 286; CP, i. 244; Lambeth Palace, Register of Simon Sudbury, fos. 92v–3v, 102.

43 Calendar ofFine Rolls (1911–), v. 227, ix. 129–30; CPR 1374–7, 301; Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem (1904–), xv. 249; Monasticon, v. 153.

44 CP, viii. 448–51; CPR 1391–6, 640; Monasticon, vi. 1415–16.

45 CPR 1413–16, 291–2; Cal. Papal Lett., vi. 456; Monasticon vi. 1416–17.

46 Monastkon, vi. 1417–23, esp. 1421.

47 See Matthew, Norman Monasteries, ch. iv; Thompson, ‘Laity and the alien priories’.

48 E.g. Rotuli Parliamentorum (1783), iv. 22.

49 See n. 20; the third Norfolk alien house was Horsham, saved in a process involving the patrons, Cal. Fine Rolls, ix, 261; CPR 1388–92, 366.

50 See the dissolution of the Maison Dieu hospital at Thetford by Warenne in 1335 and confirmed by Lancaster in 1347: but in doing so the latter added himself to the new spiritual services and dropped Warenne's name; CPR 1334–8, 158, 1348–50, 19; Martin, Thomas, The History of the Town of Thetford (1779), 93–4Google Scholar. Also the re-foundation of West Somerton hospital by Richard II and Henry IV, CPR 1399–1401, 114. Also the Calthorpe take-over of a chantry at Anmer, CPR 1370–4, 156; Historical Manuscripts Commission, Various Collections, iv. 316Google Scholar.

51 The exception, Molycourt Benedictine priory, is the sort which proves a rule, for it was so obscure that we know almost nothing about it.

52 VCH Norfolk, ii. 349, 391, and the works in n. 4: Monasticon, iv. 588; Tanner, Notitia Monastica, Norfolk, ad loc.; Blomefield, vii. 24, 476–7.

53 VCH Norfolk, ii. 386, 371–2; Blomefield, vii. 77; A Cartulary of Creake Abbey, ed. Bedingfeld, A.L. (Norfolk Record Society, 1966), xvi, xxii–xxiiiGoogle Scholar.

54 Blomefield, vii. 500.

55 Maxwell-Lyte, H., A History of Duster (1909), i. 138Google Scholar; Blomefield, viii. 418–19.

56 Blomefield, ii. 165–6; VCH Norfolk, ii. 375.

57 Blomefield, viii. 231; Tanner, ad loc.

58 Youings, , Dissolution of the Monasteries, is a useful supplement to Knowles, David, The Religious Orders in England iii (Cambridge, 1959)Google Scholar, part three.

59 For Wolsey, see also Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII, ed. Brewer, J.S., Gairdner, J., & Brodie, R.H. (1862–1910),Google Scholar[LP], iv/2. 3538.

60 Youings, 32. See the statutes in nn. 24, 35 above, which assume that much of the land was given by the king, as does the Act in Restraint of Appeals, 24 Henry VIII, c. 12, Statutes, iii. 427. See below for crown patronage.

61 Youings, 40–1; Knowles, iii. 291.

62 LP, viii. 76; x. 364 (pp. 137–43); Youings, 38; see also much of the Valor for Suffolk, iii. 412–47.

63 Knowles, iii. 289–90.

64 LP, viii. 76 [3]; also Youings, 152.

65 Some of the applications for monastic property in early 1536 were from founders: Knowles, iii. 292–3 and references to LP, e.g. x. 531; Youings, 41–2.

66 27 Henry VIII, c. 28 (Statutes, iii. 575 ff): section iii.

67 Ibid., sec. xvi.

68 Youings, 160–3; Jessopp, A., ‘The Norfolk monasteries at the time of the suppression by Henry VII’, Norfolk Antiquarian Miscellany ii. (ed. Rye, W., Norwich, 1883)Google Scholar, prints the returns at 450–63.

69 Henry VIII, c. 13 (Statutes, iii. 733 ff.).

70 LP, xiv/2. 430, 815–16; VCH Norfolk, ii. 368; Blomefield, ii. 106–7. For similar requests see Scarisbrick, J.J., The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984), 70–2Google Scholar; Miller, Helen, Henry VIII and the English Nobility (Oxford, 1986), 227–8Google Scholar; LP, x. 552.

71 Weever, J., Ancient Funerall Monuments (1631 edn.), 828–30Google Scholar; MacCulloch, D., Suffolk and the Tudors (Oxford, 1986), 60, 69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blomefield, i. 215.

72 Martin, , Thetford, 145–6, 159–60 & 54–8*Google Scholar; Blomefield, ii. 107, 116. The claimants in n. 70 equally bought the lands.

73 See n. 57; Norfolk himself had Bungay (Suffolk) in 1535 when the nuns fled, and Woodbridge by surrender, , MacCulloch, , Suffolk, 66Google Scholar; LP, x. 599.

74 VCH Norfolk, ii. 373.

75 Anne, countess of Oxford/Blackborough: VCH Norfolk, ii. 351, Valor, iii. 395; Rutland/Pentney: VCH Norfolk, ii. 390, CP, xi. 97–108; Knyvet/Buckenham: VCH Norfolk, ii. 378; Calthorpe/Burnham friars; VCH Norfolk, ii. 425–6; earl of Sussex/Attleborough: Blomefield, i. 516, 540/1; for Suffolk picking from his own houses, MacCulloch, , Suffolk, 66–7Google Scholar f. Less direct connections may be found between patrons and grantees; e.g. the grantee of Crabhouse, father-in-law of the half brother of the patron, Blomefield, ix. 169, 174–5, CP ix. 92, 93 n ‘i’ 97, xii/i. 118, 122 n. ‘a’.

76 LP, ix. 785, 849; VCH Norfolk, ii. 411–12.

77 See the Table below. Information on patronal descents is mostly drawn from Blomefield, Sanders, English Baronies, and CP.

78 See the listing of monatic advowsons amongst the perquisites of land in the inquisitions post mortem, eg n.43.

79 McFarlane, K.B. suspected this, The Nobility of Later Medieval England, (Oxford, 1973), 59, 136–41. 151–3, 155–6, 172–6Google Scholar.

80 See the Table. The trend is all the more striking because statistical bias would go the other way, because of the ‘fall of the gentry from the nobility’ in the fourteenth century, McFarlane, , 122–5, 142, 268–9Google Scholar.

81 See above, n. 55.

82 The most long-lived in Norfolk, apart from the Plantagenets, were the Scales (c. 1150–1460); CP, xi. 496–7–507.

83 VCH Essex, ii. 104, 122–3.

84 Swales, T.H., ‘Opposition to the suppression of the Norfolk monasteries’, Norfolk Archaeology, XXXIII (1962–1965), 254–65Google Scholar; Elton, G.R., Policy and Police (Cambridge, 1972), 144–51Google Scholar.

85 Above, n. 66; 31 Henry VTII, c. 9, Statutes, iii. 728.

86 John, xvii. 11, 18.

87 Status categories are: 1, Crown; 2, Titled nobility; 3, Lesser tenants-in-chief/lesser nobility; 4, Sub-tenants/gentry

88 These figures include four houses whose status is uncertain between the crown and the titled nobility: so 10 actually represents a minimum of 8, a maximum of 12.