asteries p leicestershire the th tury. 89 the … · monasteries of leicestershire in the fifteenth...

MONASTERIES OP LEICESTERSHIRE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 89

THE MONASTERIES OF LEICESTERSHIRE IN THE

FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

BY A. HAMILTON THOMPSON, M.A., F.S.A.

Among the detached reports of visitations of religious houses made by William Alnwick, bishop of Lincoln from 1436 to 1449, and now preserved in the diocesan registry at Lincoln, are several documents relating to Leicestershire monasteries. An edition of the original MS. of Alnwiek's visitations with a translation is now in the press, and before long it is hoped that students will thus have an opportunity of studying a work which, in spite of its almost unparalleled interest to the historian and sociologist, has hitherto been much neglected.* At the same time, a brief sum mary of the information given in these official reports with regard to the state of the Leicestershire religious houses may be of special interest to members of this Society.There was no monastery of Benedictine monks in Leicestershire,

for the small priory of Belvoir, a cell dependent upon St. Alban's abbey, was just over the border of Lincoln. The Cistercian monks of Garendon and the Premonstratensian canons of Croxton* were, like all houses of their orders and like all houses of friars, exempt from episcopal visitation. The bishop had the right of demanding procurations in food and lodging from them during his primary visitation of his diocese, but no power of judicial examination or correction of offences as ordinary. The houses visited, in addition to the secular college in the Newarke at Leicestershire, wtre thus convents of Austin canons and nunneries. Of the two abbeys and six priories of Austin canons which the county contained, all were visited with the insignificant exceptions of Bradley priory, near Medbourne, and Charley priory, in the heart of Charnwood forest. The nunneries were two in number, the Benedictine priory of Langley and the priory of Austin nuns at Gracedieu.William Alnwick was translated from the see of Norwich to that

• A general account of these visitations, with special reference to the injunctions which followed them, is given by the present writer in Proceedings Soc. Antiq. 2d. ser. XXVI., 180203. Some of them have been partially summarised in the Victoria County Histories of Bucks., Lincolnshire, and Oxon.

b Often confused with the Cistercian abbey of Croxden in Staffordshire.

90 LEICESTERSHIRE ARCHITECTURAL SOCIETY.

of Lincoln in 1436.* His new diocese embraced eight counties and part of a ninth, and there is no doubt that, like other bishops of Lincoln, he found his primary visitation of this new area in person a matter of some time and difficulty, which must have been interrupted by his business at the court of his friend and patron, King Henry VI. He does not seem to have visited Leicestershire officially until the summer of 1438. He was at Liddington until 10 July at any rate, and was back there by 2 August. The sole record of this visitation relates to Ulverscroft priory, where he arrived on 29 July. We may picture to ourselves once and for all the manner of his reception, which on these occasions was uniform.11 Travelling with his household clerks and bodyservants, he was met at the west or the principal outer doorway of the conventual church by the members of the convent with the processional cross, tapers, and incense. Kneeling at a faldstool set before the door, he was censed and sprinkled with holy water by the abbot or prior, as the case might be. Then rising, he took his place in the procession. The precentor of the convent began the anthem. " With the standard of the holy Cross borne aloft before them, while the bells rang and the organs made music," ° the bishop came to the high altar, from which he gave his blessing to the assembled people, if, as sometimes happened, local layfolk joined the convent in welcoming his arrival. If he came in the afternoon, he was probably entertained for the night in the abbot's or prior's lodging, and held his visitation at the usual hour for chapter next morning. If he came earlier, he probably proceeded straight from the altar to the chapterhouse; but not unfrequently high mass was celebrated upon his arrival, and, after he had changed his ridinghabit for his cassock and gown—bishops did not live in their copes and mitres—he proceeded to the business of the visitation with his assessors and clerks.

On 29 July, 1438, then, after some such preliminaries, the bishop tt>ok his seat, 'judicially as a tribunal'"1 in the chapterhouse at Ulverscroft. He was attended by two assessors, Dr. Thomas

"For some account of his previous history, see Visitations of Religious Houses (Lincoln Record Soc.), I., xviii., xix. Most writers give a very inaccurate account of it, e.g., the writer in Diet. Nat. Biog., who confuses him with a Benedictine monk of the same name, and J. H. Wylie, Hist. England under Henry IV., III., 149, who blends into one the careers of three totally distinct persons, the bishop, the Benedictine, and a Premonstratensian canon.

b A detailed account of bishop Gray's reception at Lincoln minster in 1432 is printed in Visitations of Rtliyious Houses, ut sup. I., 128, sqq. The proceedings at the visitation of a monastery were identical, mutatis mutandis.

c This is the procedure as formally described in various passages of Visitations of the Dioceie of Norwich, ed. Jessopp (Camden Soc.) In Alnwick's visitations, the procedure before the bishop's arrival in the chapterhouse is omitted.

11 Sedens ju.dicia.Hter pro tribmiali—ihe stereotyped phrase.

MONASTERIES OF LEICESTERSHIRE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 91

Duffeld, and John "Depyng, probably the most capable lawyer among the canons of Lincoln—and to be the most capable lawyer in a mediaeval chapter was to be one of the foremost lawyers in the realm." His two notaries were Thomas Thorpe and the aged Thomas Colstone, the servant of the bishops of Lincoln for halfa century, in whose minute and tireless handwriting the records of these proceedings are written. When all had taken their seats, the visitation sermon was preached by Duffeld from the text " Let all things among you be done in order "b a free version of 1 Cor. xiv., 40. The bishop then asked for various documents from the prior—the certificate of the writ of visitation, shewing that its requirements had been complied with, the foundation charter of the house, the prior's certificate of the confirmation of his election. The prior in this case had only imperfect evidence of the founda tion to shew, and, as we shall see, he came badly out of the whole affair; but the bishop seems to have passed what evidence he had, took his oath of obedience, and proceeded to examine him and his brethren, one by one. This examination, of course, was conducted privately. In small convents, the brethren were called into the chapterhouse separately : but in large houses, the bishop generally got through the business more quickly by deputing one of his assessors to help him, so that two brethren could be examined simultaneously.At Ulverscroft there were only seven canons and a novice. John

Annesley was prior, Thomas Flory subprior, John Whitewyke precentor, Eobert Eodyngton sacrist, John Zouche chamberlain, John Broghton fraterer. John Tamworth was the only canon without an office: the novice's name was Thomas Kynde. 0 It is clear that the discipline of the house was extremely lax. The prior admitted that it was £5 in debt, and confessed that he had not rendered an account of his administration to the convent for three years past, adding that he was prepared to do so at Michaelmas. The canons were insubordinate : they wandered about the neigh bourhood without leave and sometimes left him alone in the priory.

a This is true, at any rate, of the later thirteenth and earlier fourteenth centuries. Archdeacons and canons of a later period were not so prominent in public affairs, though they often occupied useful positions in the exchequer and other offices of central government. For an account of John Depyng see Visitations of Religious Houses, ut sup., I., 190.

* Omnia secundum ordinem fiant in vobis. •0 The surnames of religious in these visitations are interesting as showing the

relative area of the districts from which members of convents were drawn. Of the five placenames which occur in the Ulverscroft list, Broghton is too general to be identified. Whitewyke (Whitwick) is the only one from the immediate neighbourhood. Rodyngton (Ruddington) is in Nottinghamshire between Loughborough and Nottingham, but within easy distance of Ulverscroft. Annes ley is north of Nottingham, and Tamworth is on the borders of Staffordshire and Warwickshire.


Rodyngtou was in the habit of roaming in the woods, birdsnesting ' and catching other woodland beasts ' : a moreover, when he was at home, he chattered about convent business to the lay servants, and the servants told tales abroad. Tamworth had kept a cuirass* in the priory—a double offence, as not only was the article unsuit able to the religious life, but its possession by a single member of the house was against the rule of community of property. Further, he had sold it without leave to a carpenter at Bardon Hill" and kept the money. Broghton got cash from outside—from his mother and sister, he said,—and lent it to others. When guests came, the whole convent joined in entertaining them, and sat up eating and drinking and making a noise after compline, wasting the goods of the house. No one observed the rule of silence : talking went on indiscriminately in quire, at the altar, in the cloister, everywhere.The prior's complaints were certainly justified. Rodyngton and

Tamworth were found guilty of the charges brought against them : Rodyngton was told to give up his wanderings and indiscriminate chatting, while Tamworth expiated the sale of the cuirass by the recitation of seven nocturns of the psalter seven times over. But, as archbishop Peckham found throughout his province in the thirteenth century,"1 so here and elsewhere Alnwick found that the relations between the house and its head were strained by the uncontrolled command of the prior over the goods of the monastery. The prior, said Flory, was halfhearted in correcting spiritual defaults : in temporal matters he was obstinate and acted on his own advice. He had everything in his hands and would render no account : he let farms without consulting anybody : he had cut down some 500 great oaks and sold them at the rate of twopence to threepence each : he had neglected to collect timber which was due to him, because he wished to be in the good books of lord Ferrers. Meanwhile the tenements and granges of the priory went to ruin. Even though the prior favoured laymen and had two to aid him with their counsel, he would not allow them to hold courts and look after the tenants. The rectory house of Bunny6 was dilapidated. A hundred marks would not cover the necessary repairs of tenements, and the convent was twenty marks in debt.

* Disctirrit in silvis absque licencia, querendo nidos avium silvestrium et capiendo alias bestias silvestres.

b Uuam deploidem (sic) defensivam.c The locality is described as Berghdon Loge, probably a farm near Bardon Hill.4 Peckham's elaborate injunctions to religious houses in many parts of England

and Wales are printed in order of date in Registrum Epistolarum Joannis I'eckham, ed. C. T. Martin (Rolls series).

* In Nottinghamshire, not far from Ruddington. The rectory was appro priated to the prior and convent of Ulverscroft.


When anyone suggested repairs, the prior answered saucily that he would like to see all the buildings fallen to the ground. " It is enough for me that they last my time."* Broghton repeated these words and added that, when the prior consented to any repairs of the cowhouses or othei\buildings, the timber he used was ash, while he gave away the oak which he ought to have devoted to this purpose. Flory also said that the stock was so diminished that it was difficult to see how the convent could live. "By the improvi dent governance of the prior " said Zouche, " the house is almost reduced to utter nothingness : we have neither grass nor wheat, sheep nor oxen, nor anything else that can have sufficiency of pasture."1" The cowherd occasionally remonstrated with the prior, and therefore the prior was going to get rid of him and fill his place with a worthless fellow.Of the actual buildings of the priory we hear little. The

boundary wall" and other masonry were in decay. Flory said that the doors had no locks and were practically open all the time. He complained that books were taken out of the library and passed beyond the ken of the house, and that the quirebooks were almost destroyed for want of repair. The prior did not only withhold the necessary supplies with which he was bound to furnish the brethren : Kodyngton, the birdsnesting sacrist, accused him of refusing wax and oil for the lights of the church. The muniment chest was so weak that a child could break it, and the vestment and plate chests were in much the same state.The complaints were not wholly against the prior. John

Whitewyk, who, six years later, became prior of the small house of Charley,6 objected to the subprior, who had been absent from the house for some twenty years and had been readmitted by the prior without the knowledge of the convent and appointed to hear confessions. Some of the canons refused to confess to him and were therefore in mortal sin. While, however, there were these petty animosities between the subprior and canons, the prior had no more energetic opponent than the subprior; and although the single novice raised a somewhat feeble wail against prior and sub

* Et cum aliquis confrater sive quisquam sibi dixerit de . . reparacione, protervo modo respondet, dicens " Vellem quod omnia prostrata forent ad terram: satis eel michi quod durent tempore meo."* Dicit quod per improvidum regimen prioris damns est redacta quasi ad ultimatum

(sic) exterminium; et dicit quod non habent gramma neque blada, oves aut boves, vel alia aliqua ad sufficienciam pasturarum."The boundary dyke which enclosed the priory still remains in unusual

perfection : of the wall, however, little is left in situ.d His election as prior of Charley was confirmed on 2gth May, 1444 (Lincoln

Epis. Reg. Alnwick, f. 158 d).


prior alike," it was upon the prior that the complaints of the whole convent were concentrated. The bishop allowed him to continue in his office till Michaelmas, hut adjourned the visitation till that date, to consider whether he should resign or be supplied with a coadjutor. We do not hear what happened then; but the prior resigned before 14 July in the next year, when his office was filled by John Pollesworth, a canon of Laund.b It can hardly be doubted that the state of the priory was improved by this transfusion of blood from a better ordered house. It must have been within the next twenty years or so that the convent found money to build the tower of their church inside the western bay of the nave and to heighten the walls of the quire with a handsome clerestory. The basecourse of the chancel also shews signs of repair of this date ; and somewhat later the south portion of the eastern range was converted into a lodging for the prior, with a parlour on the ground floor and bedroom above, which can still be seen in the farmhouse on the site." The finances of the priory were also materially improved by its absorption of the insignificant house at Charley, which took place in 1465.dAlnwick made a prolonged visitation of Leicester archdeaconry

in 1440, when he apparently left Ulverscroft alone. On 21 November he came to Laund priory. Here there were ten canons. One old man, John Leche, over eighty years of age, who lived in the infirmary and obtained a dispensation from fasting during the coming Advent season, remembered a time when there had been eighteen persons in the priory. The house, however, if its resources were diminished, was in a fairly satisfactory state. Of its moral welfare there can be no doubt. One of the canons, as we have seen, had been promoted to be prior of Ulverscroft in the previous year. Another, William Yarum, the precentor, was chosen by Alnwick to preach the visitation sermon—an unusual compliment to the learning of a small monastery. His text was from Jer. vii., 3, ' Amend your ways and your doings,'6 but, when he came to be examined, all that he could say was that the convent had sold corrodies—that is, shares in the common rations or funds—to out siders without the bishop's licence. This improvident method of raising money, by which a convent, for the sake of ready cash, burdened itself for an indefinite period with the task of feeding

• He complained that they were indiscreti in correccionibus faciendis et penitenciis injungendis, and that the prior was nimis rigorosus in the second particular, quandoque pro levi excessive injungendo.

b Lincoln Epis. Reg. Alnwick, ."151 d." The position somewhat resembles that of the abbot's lodging at Haughmond

in Shropshire. In each case wide windows were made to secure the full advantages of a southern prospect.

* Lincoln Epis. Reg. Chedworth, Mem. f. 80 and d. e Bonas faeite vias vestras et studio, vestra.


more mouths than its resources permitted, was too general all through the later middle ages to meet with any effectual protest. 8 The prior, William Northampton, gave an account of the corrodies. His last balancesheet, however, was four years old. Thomas Asfordeby, sacrist and almoner, complained that the prior did not render an account yearly, and that the servants of the house monopolised part of the alms to the exclusion of the poor. John Northampton, the subprior, and William Lughtburghe,* the fra terer, also gave evidence as to the prior's default in accounts. Lughtburghe also said that the canons in the infirmary were not given their proper allowance of choicer food and medicines and were without a lay servant: he also complained that the canons were too intent upon outward things to maintain divine service properly. Leche asked for a lay servant in the infirmary. Women, he said, were allowed to come within the screens of the conventual church near the quiredoor ;° this was irregular, and he asked that they might hear mass in the nave outside the screens.4 Special attention should be paid to the deposition of Nicholas Holbeche, that the chancels of churches appropriated to the priory were in great ruin. I would recommend this statement—by no means isolated—to those architectural students who look upon our parish churches as in no small degree the result of the building activity of the religious orders. The parish churches which be longed to a monastery were one of its sources of income : its sole duty to their fabrics consisted in the repair of the chancel, and even this was often charged upon the stipend of their vicars. With the rest of the fabric they had absolutely nothing to do, unless they were lords of the manor as well, when they would have to contribute towards repairs of the nave. As a rule they left their repairs in the chancel until they were obliged to do something, and then they husbanded their money carefully. The splendid church of Melton Mowbray with its aisled nave and transepts falls short of being in the very first rank of English parish churches because its rectors, the distant prior and convent of Lewes, did no more to the chancel than they could afford. The churches in Leicestershire of which the prior and convent of Laund were rectors were Abkettleby, Ashby Folville, Frisby, Loddington, Oadby, Tilton and Welham; and it would be interesting to visit

a For the prominence of this topic in Alnwick's visitations see the article in Proceedings Soc. Antiq. referred to in note above.

b I.e. Loughborough.c Tanto approximant o, itltum ad vultum. The <4 Innavi ecclesie extra clausuram.

c Tanto approximant ostio chori quod canonici non possunt exire nisi rcspiciendo vultum ad vultum. The ostium chori is the doorway in the middle of the pulpitum.


these churches systematically and see in what points the work in their chancels differs from that in the rest of the church."The bishop closed his visitation by delivering a series of verbal

injunctions founded upon the comperta or details which he had discovered from the detecta, that is, the evidence disclosed by the canons. These, with the aid of timehonoured common forms, were embodied in written injunctions, which were despatched from Owston abbey next day. In the preamble of the latter he says that he has found few things that need reformation. Such injunc tions, however, were not mere forms : they were founded upon definite evidence and their force was statutory and binding. In this present case, the bishop evidently regarded stringent regula tions as necessary to the future wellbeing of a house which up to this time deserved well, but shewed signs of accessibility to small temptations.6Owston abbey, where Duffeld preached from Ps. Ixxx., 14,

' Visit this vine,' 0 was, under the happy presidency of William Kylpesham,a free from complaint. The fifteen canons, whose names shew that with only three exceptions they were Lei cestershire and Rutland men"—Seusterne, Ryalle, Osoluestone, Wyssendene, Tylton, Asfordeby, Braunston, Leycestre, Querndon, Hungartone,—said unanimously that all was well. The house, however, was £66 13s. 4d. in debt, while its annual income was only £40, and the number of canons seems excessive for such small revenues.Alnwick now went northwards to visit Framland deanery, and on

24 November was at Bottesford, near Belvoir.' We have no records of his doings in these parts : the Premonstratensian abbey of Croxton was exempt from his jurisdiction, and Belvoir priory, which lay in Lincoln archdeaconry, was a cell of the exempt abbey of St. Albans. Two days later, on 26 November, he was at Kirby Bellars, on his way to Leicester. Here there was a priory of

"William Doune, archdeacon of Leicester, who died in 1361, bequeathed 100 marks to the repair of chancels in his archdeaconry, of which fifteen marks were to be set aside for churches appropriated to Leicester abbey, and five marks for those appropriated to Laund priory. Some notes upon this will, of which only one copy, in an imperfect state, is known to exist in a book of precedents now at Peterborough, were printed by the late Mr. A. P. Moore in Assoc. Archil. Reports and Papers, XXVII., part ii. (1904). A fully annotated transcript of the document is printed in the current volume of the Arcliteological Journal.

b In many cases, Alnwick's injunctions are severally prefaced by a summary of the comperta on which they are founded.

« Viiita vineam istam.a Confirmed 1421 (Lincoln Epis. Reg. Flemyng, f. 90 d)."The exceptions were Thomas Russhetone, John Lychefelde and Simon

Bostone. The abbot's name shews that he came from Clipsham in Rutland, and Kyhall, Whissendine and probably Braunston are names from the same county. ' Lincoln Epis. Reg. Alnwick, f. 152 d.


thirteen canons, founded in 1359 in place of a college of thirteen secular priests. The duty of setting forth the word of God was again entrusted to Duffeld, who preached from the commission of Jacob to Joseph, ' Go and see if all things be well with thy brethren.'" It is good to record that all things once more were tolerably well. The prior's certificates were not produced in a satisfactory form, and two days later he had to bring forward witnesses to prove to Depyng, sitting in an upper room within the precinct, that his election had been properly confirmed. Most of the examination of the canons was committed to Depyug. Henry Dalby, the prior, explained that the general custom of the house was to wear gaiters, but that he had excused John Knyvet from so doing, becauae he suffered from a great infirmity in his shins, possibly the complaint attributed by Chaucer to the Cook in the Canterbury Tales.b Robert Halifax deposed that the canons wore clasps in their long boots contrary to the custom of the house, and the young canons had started a fashion of wearing purses adorned with orphreys and silk hanging from their girdles to their knees.0 Alnwick in his brief injunctions allowed gaiters but forbade clasps and top boots, and discountenanced the decorative purses as tending to bring the honesty of religion into popular contempt. Halifax also spoke of a growing custom of absence from high mass, and two canons complained that divine service was sung too quickly, and that the proper pauses in the middle of each verse of the psalms were omitted or slurred over. It is interesting to note that the parish church of Kirby Bellars is referred to in terms which imply that it was a distinct building from the conventual church4— a fact which is amply corroborated by its plan and traces of internal arrangement. The prior was bound to supply one of his canons or a secular priest to say the mass of our Lady there every day.The short injunctions following this visitation were probably

compiled at Asfordby, where the bishop is found on 28 November. He now proceeded to Leicester, where from 1 to 3 December he held a long aud important visitation of the college of the Annuncia tion of our Lady in the Newarke." On 3 December the bishop proceeded from the Newarke college to that even more illustrious foundation, the abbey of St. Mary of the Meadows, better known as

« Vade et vide si cuncta prospera tint ergafratrcs tuos.* Cant. Tales A 386.c Item dicit quod canonici utuntur les claspes in ocreis suis contra consuetudinem

domus, et juvenes canonici jam de nova habent loculos aurifregiis et cerico ornatos dependentes a zonis suis usque ad genua in religionis denigracionem et habitus antiqui subversionem.

d It is definitely referred to as ecelesia parochialis mile.e For an account of this visitation see chapter V. of the history of the college

by the present writer in Assoc. Archit. Soc. Reports and Papers, XXXI. part ii.Q VOL. XI.


Leicester abbey. In 1143 Robert Bossu, the second earl of Lei cester of his line, founded on a site north of the town a monastery of cnnons regular in honour of the Assumption of the glorious Virgin. Here the founder, founder also of Garendon abbey and Nuneaton priory, spent the last fifteen years of his life 'fighting for Christ' as the chronicler Knighton says, in the regular habit of a canon. His tomb was in the wall of the presbytery on the right hand side of the altar. In the middle of the quire was buried bis daughterinlaw Pernell, who completed the building of the great nave of the abbey church; and, when AInwick visited the monas tery, he might have seen the twined cord made out of her hair by which one of the lamps in the quire was hung." The house, pro bably the wealthiest Augustinian house in England with the exception of Cirencester abbey, had flourished under a succession of illustrious abbots. In the fourteenth century William of Clown, the ' most famous and notable hunter of hares among all the lords of the realm,' had enriched it by his eminent business qualities and won the love of all his brethren, who, in January 1378, crowded weeping round his deathbed. In his time it had sent abbots to Missenden in Buckinghamshire and Wellow in Lincoln shire, priors to Tortington in Sussex and Mottisfont in Hamp shire.11 For a time it acquired exemption from the authority of the bishop, a privilege which few houses of Austin canons could claim; but when in 1405 its abbot, Philip Repyngdon, became bishop of Lincoln, it returned to its allegiance to a diocesan who redeemed the Lollardy of his youth by rigid orthodoxy at Leicester and Lincoln, and died a cardinal.0The abbey still contained men of learning, and a sermon was

preached before AInwick in the chapterhouse by John Pomerey, who, some eighteen months later, became abbot. The sermon is recorded as ' of a very pretty fashion' (midtum venusto scemate): the text was St. Matt, xxi., 5, 'He cometh unto thee in gentleness,'d and no doubt the bishop's visitation, after the manner of those days, was closely compared with our Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The abbot, however, was not prepared to meet him meekly. William Sadyngton, elected abbot in 1420, had completed the twentieth year of his rule. The record of the confirmations of his election is duly entered in bishop Flemyng's register at Lincoln ;e but Sadyngton either had lost his own certificates of confirmation and installation or wished to assert his independence ; for, although he exhibited the foundation charter and a balance

• See Chron. Hen. Knighton, ed. Lumby (Rolls ser.), I., 62 sqq.*>Ibid. II., 117, 125.c See Cal. Papal Letters, VI., 419.d Venit tibi mansuetus.' F. 89 and d.

MONASTERIES OF LEICESTERSHIRE IN THE FIFTEENTH OENTURT. 99

sheet, he failed to produce the proofs of his lawful tenure of his office. The bishop gave him till three in the afternoon to find the missing documents. At three the abbot appeared emptyhanded, and made no offer to satisfy the bishop in the future. Alnwick therefore refused his proffer of obedience, and, on proceeding to the individual examinations, passed him over, beginning with the prior, John Hynkley.

Fifteen canons gave evidence: a sixteenth, William Seyton, was away at a university. The number was far below that which the house, if managed upon proper lines, could sustain, and the services in quire were sadly diminished in dignity. The abbot came into quire only when it was his turn to officiate, and such officers as the cellarer, who was necessarily concerned with the external business of the house, could not attend regularly. Often there were only two or three canons in quire, apart from those officiating at the altar. William Wykyngstone remembered a time when there were thirty canons: Robert Stanton, precentor and almoner, said that the customary number in old times was from thirty to forty. Now there were not enough canons in priest's orders, but Wykyngstone had often heard the abbot say that the present number was more than sufficient and that he would admit no more. Further, the number of boys educated at the expense of the convent in the almonry—an invariable feature of even small religious houses—had shrunk from 24 or 26 to six, and these were not properly nourished or furnished with the instruction in grammar which was necessary." The abbot had admitted one or two such boys for a consideration: they generally were incapable and stupid: they got no elementary instruction and ran about on the canons' business like errandboys.The abbot was the object of general complaint for the usual

reason. He had engrossed the whole temporal business of the convent. Wykyngstone, while cellarer, bad been behind in his accounts, but he explained that he was cellarer only in name. The abbot was cellarer and treasurer : the subcellarer, to whose office the fruits of St. Martin's church were appropriated, received only twothirds of the income, which passed through the abbot's hands. As treasurer, the abbot had entire control of the receipts and pocketed everything. The annual income was estimated at £1180, and it was reckoned that he must have at least a thousand pounds in hand, of which he gave no account. There is no doubt that the abbot was a capable man of business. It will be noticed that he presented his balancesheet to the bishop. No accusations of

• See Bites of Durham (Surtees Soc.). index, s.v. Almery, children of the. In the maintenance and education of such youths Alnwick found the houses of his diocese generally deficient.

100 LEICESTERSHIRE AEOHITBOTUEAL SOCIETY.

dilapidation of property, reckless sale of corrodies or extravagance in entertainment were brought against him; and in this respect he offers a favourable contrast to many abbots and priors. Bat he was avaricious and venal. One canon, Thomas Belgrave, was allowed to spend his days in the infirmary and was excused from quire on very slender grounds, while sharing fully in perquisites derived from chantry masses which he never said. Five marks for absence from quire and twenty shillings for his perquisites had brought him this privilege. It is true that the abbot now and then vouchsafed to render an account, but the prior was his only auditor. On the last occasion he had remarked that it would be much better if he did not account, for it was preferable that the convent should be in debt to him than he to the convent." And while the repairs and buildings which had been completed in his time came out of the common funds which he administered, he talked of them as if he had paid for them out of his own money.

While the abbot thus jealously guarded his business dealings from his brethren, he made no pretence of affability. William Buttre, the subchanter, said that he estranged himself from them, regarding them disdainfully and with a fierce aspect. He would not speak to them but scornfully passed them by.b When the convalescents who were undergoing their regular bleedings—the operation to which the mediaeval religions submitted at stated periods for his body's health—were taking their meals according to custom at the abbot's private table, he would not talk to them, but reserved his conversation for his lay servants. There were no less than 52 lay servingmen in the monastery, of whom several were attached to the abbot's household and met with undue favour. He maintained a clerk and a layman among his dependents. Mean while the infirmary was without its proper servants : the perpetual inmate, Belgrave, had his meals at the abbot's table, and the work of waiting on the sick, formerly entrusted to two manservants, fell on a single boy. When the abbot condescended to communicate with the canons, it was in his official capacity as corrector of defaults ; and then he was harsh and cruel. If any canon displeased him, he reproached him and reviled the culprit. The rule regarded the head of a house as its father: Sadyngton treated his sons in the Lord as strangers and foreigners. Buttre was afraid that things would be worse after the visitation than before: when the bishop made the evidence known, the abbot would trace its details to their proper sources and treat the informers accordingly, as he had done

« Quando ultimo computavit, dixit quod melius foret ut non computaret, quia pocius font sibi conventus indebitatus quam ipse conventui.

6 Item dicit quod abbas multum extraneat se a confratribus et multum dedignanter et torvo niltu respicit eoe, nolens eis loqui led preteriens indignanter.


after previous visitations. William Coventre, the guestmaster, revealed some remarks of the abbot upon the subject of visitations. " The ordinary's visitation is a mere toy; for what ordinances are made therein I will overturn the day after."* Coventre was full of information : he, however, bore a bad reputation in the house, and as he owed his office to the abbot, his report of these words was a piece of ingratitude.This, however, was not all. The abbot's avarice and addiction

to lay society bred the suspicion that he and his friends practised alchemy in private, and that he maintained fov this purpose a " multiplier " named Robert and his servant Thomas. Further, a piece of silver had been missed from the house, and the abbot to facilitate its recovery had sent his servant William Bauastre to consult a wise woman who dealt in spells at Harborough. So said John Whytley. Wykyngstone also quoted the authority of his brother Asty for the report that the abbot had used charms to recover lost money. Buttre repeated the statements about alchemy and magic. The story elicited from Thomas Asty and formulated into a detailed charge against the abbot was that, after some money had been stolen, he had taxed his brethren in chapter with the theft. No one confessed, and Sadyngton, " either wavering in the faith or straying from the catholic faith and fixed decree of the church, contrary to such faith and fixed decree did in his own person use divination or incantations for certain moneys, some five marks or rather more, which had been stolen from his coffer, on this wise, to wit, on the eve or on the day of the feast of St. Matthew the apostle, in the year of our Lord 1439, at Ingarsby, he took to him a boy named Maurice, and, observing a damnable •superstition, did anoint the boy's thumbnail, bidding him look upon his nail and disclose to him what he saw there, and, reading or saying his incantations the while, asked the boy what he had seen."b The boy's answer does not appear, but Sadyngton, on returning to Leicester, called together the brethren in the chapter house and made a formal accusation against Asty. The accused

• Dicit quod auiivit abbatem dicere quod visitacio ordinaria non esset nisi tru/a, quia quod in ea ordinatum est in crastino vellet subvertere.

b Idem, ut vel in fide dubius vel a fide et determinacione ecclesie catholice devians, contra huiusmodi fidem et determinacionem pro certa pecunia u, cista sua ablatis circiter quinque marcis vel eo amplius exercuit in persona sua sortilegium sice incantaciones hoc modo, videlicet in vigilia vel in die festi sancti Mathei apostoli, anno Domini mccccxxxix"., apud Ingwardeby sumps it sibi unum puerum nomine Mauricium, et observata quadam supersticione dampnata unxit unyuem pollicis illius pueri, mandans eidem ut inspicitns in unguem suam revelaret sibi qualia ibi videret, et interim legeni incantaciones mas vel dicens peciit ab ipso puero quid vidisset. It is interesting to note that in 1467 one William Byg or Leche of Wombwell, Yorks., who was brought before the ecclesiastical court at York on charges of practising crystalgazing with somewhat similar ceremonies and incantations, said that he had learned his art some three years before a quodam Arthuro Mitton de Leycistre (York Epis. Reg. Geo. Nevill, f. 69 and d).

102 LEICESTERSHIRE AECHITECUUBAL SOCIETY.

under the seal of confession declared himself innocent, but the abbot refused to give him absolution and left him in anger. Afterwards the abbot made the sins confessed by Asty public property, threatened to complain to the bishop, and kept back twenty shillings of Asty's allowance for his habit. Asty had a further grievance against the abbot: his favourite pursuits were literary, and he had to find his own paper and parchment in the abbot's default.

A serious charge was brought against Sadyngton's morals, but of this we have nothing but a mere statement." He was formally chaiged, however, with the sin of witchcraft and was allowed to clear himself of it on his own statement. As he was not required to find compurgators, the bishop evidently thought little of the story, which, however, is of considerable interest, not merely for the light which it throws upon popular beliefs, but because the abbey grange at Ingarsby where the incantations were said to take place still exists. I may note that Sadyngton was not the only mediaeval abbot accused of occult dealings : nearly two centuries before a lazy and incompetent abbot of Selby, whose brother had been drowned in the Ouse, employed a wizard to discover the body.bThe only general abuse noticed in the monastery was the

number of hounds kept upon the premises—a venial fault with which that model abbot, William of Clown, and all ' outriders that loved venerye' would have been in sympathy. There was some inclination on the part of the canons to accumulate private property—a venial fault again, where allowances from the common fund were so hard to get. c The bishop's injunctions shew that he had little general fault to find, and are directed at considerable length to the abbot, dealing with the disclosures already noticed. The evidence contains one point of architectural interest. The abbot's lodging is mentioned as being within the dormitory. This can only mean that the further end of the dorter, which was no doubt in the eastern range of buildings next the river, had been converted into the abbot's lodging."1 This is precisely what

• Notatur super incestu cum quadam Eufcmia Fox, dudum manente in prioratu de Langley,

b York Ejiis. Reij. Wickwanc, ed. Brown (Surtees Soc.), p. 24." The seriousness of the offence in a normal state of affairs is obvious. Peck

ham refers to it in one passage of a set of injunctions as dampnatum vicium proprictatis.

" Much remains to be discovered of the plan of this great monastery, but the remains of the postsuppression house on the site indicate that the main block, containing the hall, is on the site of the frater and that portions of the old walls were used for the new building. In this case the frater must have formed the northern range of the cloister buildings, with the church on the south.


happened at Ulverscroft, where the south end of the east range was converted into the prior's lodging. At Leicester, however, an examination of the site makes it probable that the cloister was on the north side of the church, and the relative position of the lodging was therefore the opposite to that at Ulverscroft.Three more visitations may be briefly noticed, which took place

in the following January. The bishop spent Christmas at Liddington. In the third week of January, 1441, he was again in Leicestershire, when he visited Akeley deanery and the group of monasteries on the skirts of Charnwood forest. On 19th January, he came to Breedon priory. This was a very small house, a cell of the great priory of St. Oswald at Nostell. Like many such cells, it seems to have possessed no regular conventual buildings : a two or three canons from the parent house lived, as was usual in such cases, in the grange or small manorhouse of their convent, and used the quire of the beautiful parish church for their services. The visitation was held in the quire, and Duifeld preached upon the theme which he had used at Kirby Bellars. Depyng did the work of examination. Only two canons, a prior and an exprior, were in residence : a third had left the house for a month without leave. The priory was in debt and there was much dilapidation.Alnwick, however, made no injunctions, and, as the mother

house was in another diocese, he could exercise little compulsion to economy or repair. The apostate, however, returned to obedi ence and was confined to the priory precincts for forty days, and was restricted to one kind of meat on two fleshdays every week for a month. This was not a heavy penance, and, in the case of Breedon, the priory precincts was a phrase which allowed some latitude of interpretation.Next day the bishop came to the Benedictine nunnery of

Langley. Latin was imperfectly understood in nunneries, and French, largely spoken in them in the fourteenth century, had gone out of fashion.* The sermon was therefore preached in English by Dr. John Beverley, who was frequently chosen by the bishop to preach in nunneries, and used apt texts from the Song of Songs to apply the relationship between Christ and the church to that between the bishop and his daughters in Christ. Here he preached from Romans xii., 1. 'Present your members as a living victim, a holy victim, a victim pleasing to God.'c Margery Pole,

" The engraving in Nichols' Hist, of Leicestershire shews, however, that there were eastern and western processional doorways in the north wall of the nave, which may afford evidence that a cloister had been planned.

b Injunctions delivered to nunneries in the earlier part of the fourteenth century were occasionally composed in French. Such injunctions occur in Lincoln Epis. Reg. Gynewell, Memoranda. Alnwick's injunctions to nunneries are in English.

e Exhibeatis membra vestra hostiam vivam, hostiam sanctam, hostiam Deo placentem.


the prioress, had found some difficulty in comprehending the bishop's Latin summons, and the chaplain of the convent—of course, a secular priest—could give her little help. The bishop, however, dealt gently with her, although she was deficient in the other necessary documents and confessed her illiteracy. She confessed that she did not render yearly accounts, with the usual addition that she was ready to do BO. Her evidence shewed that the priory was poor. Rents had fallen everywhere : for 40s. a year due from Belgrave they now got nothing, and did not even know where the land lay from which it was collected. The income was £20 a year, the debt £50. The nuns, eight in number, were divided into four familiae or households, two and two, a wasteful practice not uncommon in nunneries, which naturally led to much extra expense in cooking. They all took their meals in the frater, apparently in common, and had nothing from,the common funds of the house but meat and drink, providing their garments from their own resources, which was contrary to the whole spirit of monasticism. Cecily Pole and Margaret Fox wore silken veils. Much waste and dilapidation, it would appear, was due to the last prioress, who had burdened the house with a corrody for the sake of twenty marks in ready money. The present prioress, however, had sold timber to the value of £20 : the underwood was not used for the proper purposes of fuel, and the woods which had been felled were left unfenced so that cattle got in and trampled down the saplings. The prioress, said Margaret Montgomery, came seldom to chapter and slept, not in the dorter, but in her own lodging. On her own confession, she had three female boarders in her household; while the subprioress, Joan Etone, had one. This one appears to have been the dowager lady Audley, who paid 40s. yearly for her lodging and undertook repairs. Two of the prioress' boarders appear to have been married, and their husbands came to meals—a most undesirable practice. Lady Audley was also something of a nuisance. She kept a quantity of dogs; when she came to church, she was followed by a dozen of her pets, who barked in church, hindering the singing and frightening the nuns.8 Cecily Folgeham corroborated this statement of the prioress, and the registrar made a special memorandum for a monition requiring lady Audley to keep her dogs out of church and quire.The bishop left a set of injunctions in English for the use of the

convent, as was his habit after visitations of nunneries. They shew some apprehension of the danger of too much contact with layfolk; but no one who is in the habit of making allowances for

'Item dicit quod domino, de Audeley ibidem perhendinans habet magnam multitu ilini'in catntin, in tantttm quod cum venit ad ecclesiam sequuntw earn xii, canes, gui fae'uuit may/mm stni>ilimi in ecclesia, impcdiendo psattentes, et moniales ex hoc rcdduntur attonite.


human frailty could see much harm in the petty weaknesses of the ladies of Langley, and in his preamble the bishop, or rather, his secretary, alludes merely to " certayn defautes." In the case of Gracedieu priory, which he visited next day, he found " certeyn and notable defautes." The nuns of Gracedieu followed the rule of St. Austin, and cardinal Gasquet lias made them familiar to many readers by the literary skill with which in his popular book on English Monastic Life he has used their early fifteenthcentury accountbooks.* It is a curious thing that an author with some repu tation for mediaeval learning should refer to Gracedieu as the only religious house of Austin nuns in England. It was one of fourteen, which included houses so famous as Burnham and Lacock. It may also be doubted whether from the accounts kept from 1414 to 1418, which afford a very valuable picture of the economy of the monastery, a candid historian is justified in drawing flattering conclusions as to its moral and spiritual welfare. The convent may have been a home of peace and piety in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, but the only trustworthy evidence to be drawn from accountbooks is financial and material, and its use for any other purposes is illogical and misleading.In the twentythree years between 1418 and 1441, eleven out of

fifteen nuns had died or left the convent. Four remained, the prioress, Alice Dunwyche, elected in 1418, Elizabeth Jurdone, Alice Rowby and Philippa Jecke. There were altogether fourteen nuns who met the bishop in the chapterhouse whose walls are still standing, and heard Dr. Dufleld preach on a text which is a variant of that chosen by Beverley at Langley.b While the Langley nuns were all of gentle birth, the names of the Gracedieu nuns indicate a plentiful middleclass sprinkling, which may partly account for the general antipathy shewn to the cellaress, Margaret Belers, evidently a member of the knightly family of that name. And, if cardinal Gasquet sees in such items as payments for dried fish and pork and "mustard bought at Ashby " a " picture ... of charming, peaceloving ladies; good practical Christian women ... taking a personal interest in the welfare of their tenants and dependents ; occupied, over and above their conventual duties, in works of genuine charity,"0 the impartial student cannot be blind to the other side of the picture as Alnwick's visitation shews it to UB. Alice Dunwyche, we have seen, had become prioress in 1418, the year in which the accounts cease : d on her own confession, she found the house £48 in debt, which is certainly over £600 in our

» English Monastic Life, pp. 158—76.^Exhibeatis corpora vestra hostiam Domino.c English Monastic Life, p. 174,|> Lincoln Epis. Reg. Repyngdon, Inst., f. 198 and d.


money—a very large debt for a convent in an idyllic condition. She claimed to have reduced it to .£38 in her time. Her evidence was entirely in the nature of admissions, not of complaints. Common meals in the frater were abandoned. The nuns ate their meals side by side with layfolk in the prioress' hall, while three formed a household in the infirmary. She sometimes allowed nuns to leave the house on six days' furlough. Nuns who held obediences were allowed to go to the convent offices—the bakehouse, granary, and so on—where layfolk worked, without companions. Three corrodies had been sold in her time. No one sat in cloister for meditation and reading, nor, she added, had this been the custom of old. Finally, the whole revenues of the house were administered by the cellaress aud subcellaress.This was a definite confession of weakness on which Agnes

Roteby, the subprioress; supplied a convincing commentary. The prioress, she said, was old and impotent: she had abdicated her temporal rule aud took no part in divine service : if she corrected nuns, she reviled and abused them : she made favourites, who called themselves the prioress' disciples and were at liberty to chatter with undesirable layfolk. There were no yearly accounts : the plate of the house was in pawn. The prioress told the secrets of the house to the layfolk who fed at her table. Margaret Belers had the whole temporal governance of the house in her hands. She never came to church, even on Sundays and feastdays. Her character was not above suspicion. She made a familiar friend of the convent chaplain, Henry,8 who bore a bad reputation in Loughborough. Henry did not say the hours and behaved himself irreverently at the altar. He cleaned the stables and said mass without washing his hands or shewing the customary marks of reverence before and after service.Elizabeth Jurdone, a survivor frona earlier days, accused the

prioress of appropriating a yearly benefaction which belonged to the infirmaress. She complained against the servants. A French woman of evil repute was employed in the brewhouse : the servants set the nuns at naught, and refused to obey the nun set over the kitchen. Philippa Jecke, who probably lived in the infirmary with Jurdone, sighed that all corrections were made with such harshness and so'much ado that love and charity were banished from the house. The infirmary was ruinous and disagreeable to live in. Margaret Chesham, the subcellaress, looked after the infirm nuns: she could not go to church for want of a serving woman to take her place. She said that the servants took their

a Sola cum domino Henrieo exit ad autumpnalia, Hie metcndo mestes tt ilia facicndo ligaturas, et ilia equitando post cum sero in eodem equo. Nimis familiar is est cum eo etfuit citra predicts,.


meals when and where they liked, with the usual wasteful results, one or two people being served with meat enough for four. There is thus good reason for cardinal Gasquet's remark that the domestics ' were fed certainly as well, and sometimes apparently better than were the ladies themselves.'"Four nuns said that all was well; but two of these, at any rate,

were the prioress' disciples, and one, Agnes Poutrell, carried tales of the nuns to the prioress. The bishop dealt leniently with these young ladies and with Henry the chaplain; but the visitation closes with a long list of comperta and a special series of articles drawn up against Margaret Belers ; and the injunctions issued to the monastery shew that Alnwick regarded its state as serious. " We found " he writes " that love, charity, peace and concord are utterly excluded and exiled from you, and nothing among you but privy hate, envy, similations, discords, upbraids and rebukes." Here, as elsewhere, he condemns the practice of taking unlicensed boarders. Boys under nine and girls under thirteen might be received with a licence; but the only indication at Gracedieu of those nunnery schools of which so much that is mere conjecture has been said and written is the presence of a boy of seven years old. We have seen how at Leicester the almonry school languished, and the case of Leicester was that of many other houses—the great abbey of Thornton, for instance.With Gracedieu the Leicestershire visitations end. On his way

to the southern deaneries the bishop enjoyed the hospitality of the famous Cistercian house of Garendon, and here his injunctions to Gracedieu were written. Garendon was an exempt house, but one record of his visit remains in the shape of a leaflet on which is written his bond to return a book borrowed from the Garendon library—the commentaries of Origen on certain books of the Old Testament.What has been set down in these pages is a plain statement of

facts derived from the personal statements of male and female religious. It reflects the spirit of an age of decaying ideals, and it is clear that the atmosphere of religious houses at this time was unfavourable to spirituality. The cases of Ulverscroft and Gracedieu are painful to contemplate: the state of things at Leicester was not very satisfactory. But on the whole the Leices tershire houses survived the searching test of the bishop's visitation well. There is absolutely no hint of that general laxness of life which made the great abbey of Ramsey at this time a byword in the countryside and made Bardney abbey a subject of gossip in London. While, in the secular college of the Newarke, the visita tion brought to light general corruption and one case of hideous

'•English Monastic Life, p. 168.


crime, the Leicestershire monasteries preserved their respectability. If in these records there is too much evidence of petty frivolity and mutual jealousy, we must not judge these too hardly. Not all who were professed in a religious house were suited for the life they had chosen. Even those who were most contented with and loyal to their vocation must have felt the attractions of the outer world from time to time and yielded to weariness of spirit. Financial depression and the methods taken to overcome it for the time being did not encourage spirituality. It should also be remembered that the object of a visitation was not the collection of examples of virtue, but the reformation of abuses. If such abuses were prominent, it does not follow that virtues were wholly excluded by them. In examining the evidence of these documents, such circumstances as these should be kept in mind, with due allowance for the strength of imperfect human nature, even in lives which had taken shelter from it behind the barrier of monastic vows.

asteries p leicestershire the th tury. 89 the … · monasteries of leicestershire in the fifteenth...

Documents