The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 1069-1215 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

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The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 1069-1215 Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought ; 4th Ser Burton, Janet E. Cambridge University Press 9780521552295 9780511003028 English Monasticism and religious orders--England--Yorkshire-History--Middle Ages, 600-1500, Monasteries--England-Yorkshire--History, Yorkshire (England)--Church history. 1999 BX2594.Y67B87 1999eb 271/.009428/109021 Monasticism and religious orders--England--Yorkshire-History--Middle Ages, 600-1500, Monasteries--England-Yorkshire--History, Yorkshire (England)--Church history.

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Page i This book explores the dramatic growth of the monastic order in Yorkshire from the foundation of the first postConquest abbey at Selby in 1069, to 1215. The first half examines the dynamics of monastic expansion, discussing the influences on both its chronological development and its geographical pattern. It demonstrates that the monastic expansion owed much to the particular political and tenurial conditions which existed in the century after 1069: the establishment of Norman political ascendancy, the extension of central government under Henry I, and the civil war of the reign of King Stephen. The second part of the book explores recruitment, patronage, economy, and cultural life. Particular attention is paid to the role of women in the religious life. Nunneries, so often regarded as second-class or failed monasteries, are here shown to have had a distinctive function in society, both in terms of recruitment and of interaction with the local community. JANET BURTON is Senior Lecturer in History, University of Wales, Lampeter. Her previous publications include Monastic and Religious Orders in Britain, 1000–1300 (Cambridge, 1994).

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Page iii Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought THE MONASTIC ORDER IN YORKSHIRE, 1069–1215

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Page iv Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought Fourth series General Editor: D. E. LUSCOMBE Leverhulme Personal Research Professor of Medieval History, University of Sheffield Advisory Editors: R. B. DOBSON Professor of Medieval History, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Christ’s College ROSAMOND MCKITTERICK Professor of Early Medieval European History, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Newnham College The series Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought was inaugurated by G. G. Coulton in 1921. Professor D. E. Luscombe now acts as General Editor of the Fourth Series, with Professors R. B. Dobson and Rosamond McKitterick as Advisory Editors. The series brings together outstanding work by medieval scholars over a wide range of human endeavour extending from political economy to the history of ideas. For a list of titles in the series, see end of book.

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Page v THE MONASTIC ORDER IN YORKSHIRE, 1069–1215 JANET BURTON

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Page vi PUBLISHED BY CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS (VIRTUAL PUBLISHING) FOR AND ON BEHALF OF THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk 40 West 20th Street, NY 10011-4211, USA http://www.cup.org 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Janet Burton 1999 This edition © Janet Burton 2001 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1999 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeset in Bembo 11/12 pt [VN] A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data Burton, Janet E. The monastic order in Yorkshire, 1069–1215/Janet Burton. p. cm – (Cambridge studies in medieval life and thought; 4th ser.) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0 521 55229 X (hardcover) 1. Monasticism and religious orders – England – Yorkshire – History – Middle Ages, 600–1500. 2. Monasteries – England – Yorkshire – History. 3. Yorkshire (England) – Church history. I. Title. II. Series. BX2594.Y67B87 1999 271’.009428’109021 – dc21 98 – 25233 CIP ISBN 0 521 55229 X hardback eISBN 0 511 00302 1 virtual (netLibrary Edition)

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Page vii CONTENTS Preface List of Abbreviations Table of Monastic Foundations in Yorkshire, by Order, Congregation, or Type Maps: 1. The Black Monks and the Regular Canons in Yorkshire 2. The Yorkshire Cistercians and Their Families 3. Nunneries in Yorkshire INTRODUCTION Yorkshire as a Unit of Study The Creation of English Monasticism Sources PART I THE DYNAMICS OF EXPANSION 1 FROM HERMITAGE TO ABBEY: THE BLACK MONKS IN YORKSHIRE 2 ALIEN MONKS AND CLUNIAC PRIORIES Holy Trinity, York, and the Dependencies of Marmoutier Cells of Aumale, St Wandrille, and Mont St Michel The Coming of the Cluniacs: Pontefract and Monk Bretton 3 THE REGULAR CANONS Founders and their charters, 1114–c. 1140 The Later Foundations, c. 1140–1215 Cultural, Ecclesiastical, and Political Contacts 4 THE SUREST ROAD TO HEAVEN: THE COMING OF THE CISTERCIANS

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Page viii 5 RELIGIOUS WOMEN The Foundation of the Yorkshire Nunneries Motives for Foundation Female Monastic Observance: Cistercian Influence PART II: THE LIFE WITHIN AND THE WORLD OUTSIDE 6 THE MONASTIC WORLD The Male Monastic Community The Female Monastic Community Monastic Discipline Yorkshire and the Wider Monastic World 7 FOUNDERS, PATRONS, AND BENEFACTORS The Founders: Consolidation of Baronial Power, and Knightly Aspirations Patronage and Penance Patronage and Politics: the Powers of Advocacy Benefactors and Benefits A Case Study: Adam Son of Peter de Birkin 8 MONASTERIES AND THE LANDSCAPE Development of Estates: location The Nature of Monastic Economic Assets 9 FINANCING THE MONASTERY: THE MANAGEMENT OF ECONOMIC RESOURCES Lords of the Manor Urban Landlords The Cistercian Grange Monastic Houses and the Market Place Economic Strengths and Weaknesses Appendix: Table of Cistercian Granges 10 CULTURAL INFLUENCES AND IDENTITIES Manuscripts and Writers Architecture Conclusion Select bibliography Index

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125 125 139 146 155 155 167 177 179 182 184 193 195 205 210 216 218 223 244 244 253 254 269 271 274 277 278 297 307 310 328

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Page ix PREFACE Many people have supported and encouraged me during the writing of this book, and it is a pleasure to be able to record my thanks to them here. My interest in medieval ecclesiastical history was first stimulated at Westfield College, University of London, by Christopher Brooke and by the late Rosalind Hill. Without their inspiration I might never have taken the first steps towards research into medieval monastic history. At York I was privileged to enjoy the company of fellow postgraduates in the Department of History and the Centre for Medieval Studies, and the encouragement of members of staff. I should particularly like to thank David Smith, Director of the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, who during my York days and ever since has been generous with his time and his support. I have benefited greatly from the opportunities offered by academic conferences and social occasions to discuss matters monastic with colleagues. Among them Brian Golding of the University of South-ampton deserves special mention; his knowledge, in particular of the Gilbertine order, and his willingness to share it with me, have enriched my own study. My colleagues in the History Department at Lampeter have allowed me the forum of the departmental research seminar to develop some of my ideas, and I am grateful to them for their interest and encouragement. I should also like to thank the ViceChancellor of Lampeter, Keith Robbins, for granting me study-leave in the Autumn term of 1997, during which I was able to complete the writing of this monograph. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the staff of libraries and archives to which my research has taken me. These are too numerous to mention, but the staff of the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, have my particular thanks for their help in recent years. I would also like to thank William Davies and the staff of Cambridge University Press for their encouragement and efficiency in seeing this book through the processes of publication.

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Page x My greatest debt is to Barrie Dobson. Years ago he directed me through the processes of research, and encouraged me towards the successful completion of my thesis. Since then he has continued to be a source of support and advice, and has cheerfully read manuscripts of books and articles, and commented on them for me. He has read the entire book, and as ever has offered invaluable insight. Needless to say, the errors and shortcomings which remain are my own responsibility. Finally, I have the great good fortune to have a husband who is willing to offer support in ways both academic and domestic. He has read this book as he does all my work—with the eyes of a fellow medievalist, and has helped me eliminate errors and ambiguities. To him I dedicate this book, with love and thanks.

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Page xi ABBREVIATIONS ASC The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. and trans. D. Whitelock, D. C. Douglas and S. I. Tucker (London, 1961); cited by year Bede, HE Baedae Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum; Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969); cited by book and chapter BI Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, York BL British Library Cal. Ch. R. Calendar of the Charter Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office, 6 vols. (London, 1903–27) Cal. Pat. R. Calendar of the Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office (London, 1891–) Canivez, Statuta Statuta capitulorum generalium ordinis Cisterciensis ab anno 1116 usque ad annum 1786, ed. J. M. Canivez, 8 vols. (Louvain, 1933–41) Cart. Brid. Abstracts of the Charters and other Documents contained in the Chartulary of the Priory of Bridlington, ed. W. T. Lancaster (Leeds, 1912) Cart. Fount. Abstracts of the Charters and other Documents contained in the Chartulary of the Cistercian Abbey of Fountains, ed. W. T. Lancaster, 2 vols. (Leeds, 1915) Cart. Guis. Cartularium Prioratus de Gyseburne, ed. W. Brown, 2 vols., Surtees Soc., 86, 89 (1889–94) Cart. Monk Bretton Abstracts of the Chartularies of the Priory of Monkbretton, ed. J. M. Walker, YASRS, 66 (1924) Cart. Pont. The Chartulary of St John of Pontefract, ed. R. Holmes, 2 vols., YASRS, 25, 30 (1899–1902) Cart. Riev. Cartularium Abbathiae de Rievalle, ed. J. C. Atkinson, Surtees Soc., 83 (1889)

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Page xii Cart. Sallay

The Chartulary of the Cistercian Abbey of Sallay in Craven, ed. J. McNulty, 2 vols., YASRS, 87, 90 (1933–4) Cart. Whitby Cartularium Abbathiae de Whiteby, ed. J. C. Atkinson, 2 vols., Surtees Soc., 69, 72 (1879–81) CCP Carta caritatis prior, in J. de la Croix Bouton and J.-Baptiste Van Damme, ed., Les plus anciens textes, pp. 89–102 CDF Calendar of Documents preserved in France, illustrative of the History of Great Britain and Ireland, I: AD 918–1206, ed. J. H. Round (London, 1899) CHJ Cambridge Historical Journal Chron. Melsa Chronica monasterii de Melsa, ed. E. A. Bond, 3 vols. (RS, 1868–8) Chron. Stephen Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, 4 vols. (RS, 1884–9) Coll. Top. Gen. Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, v, ed. T. S. (1838) DB Domesday Book seu liber censualis Willelmi primi regis Angliae, inter archivos regni in domo capitulari Westmonasterii, jubente rege augustissimo Georgio tertio praelo mandatus typis, ed. A. Farley and H. Ellis, 4 vols. (London, 1783–1816) EC Exordium Cistercii, in J. de la Croix Bouton and J.-Baptiste Van Damme, eds., Les plus anciens textes, pp. 112–16 EEA English Episcopal Acta, I: Lincoln 1067–1185, ed. D. M. Smith (London, British Academy, 1980); v: York 1070–1154, ed. J. E. Burton (London, 1988) EHR English Historical Review EP Exordium parvum, in J. de la Croix Bouton and J.-Baptiste Van Damme, ed., Les plus anciens textes, pp. 54–86 EPNS/NR/ER/WR English Place Name Society v, The Place-Names of the North Riding of Yorkshire, XIV, The PlaceNames of the East Riding of Yorkshire and York, XXX–XXXVII, The Place-Names of the West Riding of Yorkshire, ed. A. H. Smith (Cambridge, 1928–63) ER East Riding

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Page xiii EYC

Early Yorkshire Charters, vols. I-III, ed. W. Farrer (Edinburgh, 1914–16); vols. IV-XII, ed. C. T. Clay, YASRS, extra series (1935–65) EYF Early Yorkshire Families, ed. C. T. Clay and D. E. Greenway, YASRS, 135 (1973) Foundation of Kirkstall The Foundation of Kirkstall Abbey, ed. and trans. E. K. Clark, in Miscellanea, Thoresby Soc., 4 (1895), 169–208 HCY The Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops, ed. J. Raine, 3 vols. (RS, 1879– 94) Hist. Selb. Historia Selebiensis monasterii, in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Latin MS 10940, and Selby Coucher, 1, 1–54 Howden, Chronica Chronica Rogeri de Houedene, ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols. (RS, 1868–71) HRH The Heads of Religious Houses: England and Wales 940–1216, ed. D. Knowles, C. N. L. Brooke, and V. C. M. London (Cambridge, 1972) JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History Kirkstall Coucher The Coucher Book of the Cistercian Abbey of Kirkstall, ed. W. T. Lancaster and W. Paley Baildon, Thoresby Soc., 8 (1904) Knowles, Monastic Order D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1963) Life of Ailred The Life of Ailred of Rievaulx by Walter Daniel, ed. and trans. F. M. Powicke (London, 1950; repr. Oxford, 1978) Memorials of Fountains Memorials of the Abbey of St Mary of Fountains, ed. J. R. Walbran, J. Raine, and J. T. Fowler, 3 vols., Surtees Soc., 42, 67, 130 (1863–1918) Mon. Ang. W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. J. Caley, H. Ellis, and B. Bandinel, 6 vols. in 8 (London, 1817–30) Mowbray Charters Charters of the Honour of Mowbray 1107–1191, ed. D. E. Greenway, British Academy Records of Social and Economic History, NS, I (London, 1972) MRH Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales, ed. D. Knowles and R. N. Hadcock (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1971) Newburgh, Historia William of Newburgh, Historia Rerum Anglicarum, in Chron. Stephen, 1–11

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< previous page Page xiv NR PL PRO PUE Reg. Giffard Reg. Gray Reg. le Romeyn Reg. Melton Reg. Wickwane RRAN RS SCC Selby Coucher Symeon, Opera TE TCWAAS TRHS

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North Riding Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne, 217 vols. (Paris, 1844–55) Public Record Office Papsturkunden in England, ed. W. Holtzmann, 3 vols., Abhandlungen der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Phil.-Hist. Klasse, neue Folge, XXV.I–2; Dritte Folge, 24–5; 33 (Berlin and Göttingen, 1930–52) The Register of Walter Giffard, Lord Archbishop of York, 1266–1279, ed. W. Brown, Surtees Soc., 109 (1904) The Register, or Rolls, of Walter de Gray, Lord Archbishop of York, ed. J. Raine, Surtees Soc., 56 (1872) The Register of John le Romeyn, Lord Archbishop of York, 1286–1296, ed. W. Brown, 2 vols., Surtees Soc., 123, 128 (1913–17) The Register of William Melton, Archbishop of York, 1317–1340, ed. R. M. T. Hill, D. Robinson, and R. Brocklesby, 4 vols., Canterbury and York Soc., 70–1, 76, 85 (1977–97) The Register of William Wickwane, Lord Archbishop of York, 1279–85, ed. W. Brown, Surtees Soc., 114 (1907) Regesta regum Anglo-Normannorum 1066–1154, ed. H. W. C. Davies, C. Johnson, H. A. Cronne, and R. H. C. Davis, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1913–69) Rolls Series Summa cartae caritatis, in J. de la Croix Bouton and J.-Baptiste Van Damme, eds., Les plus anciens textes, pp. 117–20 The Coucher Book of Selby, ed. J. Fowler, 2 vols., YASRS, 10, 13 (1891–3) Symeonis monachi opera omnia, ed. T. Arnold, 2 vols. (RS, 1882–5) Taxatio ecclesiastica Angliae et Walliae auctoritate Papae Nicholai IV, ed. T. Astle, S. Ayscough, and J. Caley (Record Commission, 1802) Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

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The Victoria History of the Counties of England (London, 1900– , in progress) Valor ecclesiasticus, ed. J. Caley and J. Hunter, 6 vols. (Record Commission, 1810–34) West Riding Yorkshire Archaeological Journal Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series York Minster Fasti, ed. C. T. (Clay, 2 vols., YASRS, 123–4 (1958–9) 10 vols., ed. W. Brown (I–III), C. T. Clay (IV–VIII), M. J. Hebditch (IX), M. J. Stanley Price (X), YASRS, 39, 50, 63, 65, 69, 76, 83, 102, 111, 120 (1909–55)

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Page xvii TABLE OF MONASTIC HOUSES FOUNDED IN YORKSHIRE BY (OR BEFORE) 1215, BY ORDER, CONGREGATION, OR TYPE (a) Independent Benedictine houses Name

Dedication

Date of foundation

Selby

St German

Whitby

St Peter and St Hilda St Mary

1069 (hermitage) 1070 (abbey) 1077/78 (hermitage) 1109 (abbey) 1086 (St Olave; from Lastingham) 1088 St Mary)

York

(b) Benedictine house: dependencies Name

Dedication

Mother house

Date of foundation

Allerton Mauleverer Birstall

St Martin

Marmoutier/Holy Trinity, York Aumale

1105 (donatio) 1109 × 1114 1115 (donatio); by 1175 × 1195 before 1130 before 1109 c. 1100 before 1170 c. 1120 c. 1100 c. 1101 (donatio) ?c. 1156 before 1100 c. 1089

Ecclesfield Goathland Hackness Headley Middlesbrough Richmond Snaith Wath York York

St Helen St Mary St Mary St Peter St Mary St Hilda St Martin St Lawrence St Mary All Saints, Fishergate Holy Trinity, Micklegate

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St Wandrille Whitby Whitby Holy Trinity, York Whitby St Mary’s, York Selby Month St Michel Whitby Marmoutier

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Page xviii (c) Cluniac houses Name

Dedication

Mother house

Date of foundation

Monk Bretton Pontefract

St Mary Magdalene St John the Evangelist

Pontefract La Charité sur Loire

1153/4 1090 × 1099

(d) Houses of regular canons Name

Dedication

Mother house

Date of foundation

Bolton

St Mary

Augustinian

Bridlington Coverham

St Mary St Mary

Augustinian Premonstratensian

Drax Easby Egglestone

Augustinian Premonstratensian Premonstratensian Gilbertine

1199 × 1203

Guisborough Kirkham Malton Marton Newburgh

St Nicholas St Agatha St Mary and St John the Baptist St Mary and St Lawrence St Mary Holy Trinity St Mary St Mary St Mary

1121 (Embsay); 1155 before 1114 before 1187 (Swainby); before 1202 1130 × 1139 1151 before 1198

Augustinian Augustinian Gilbertine Augustinian Augustinian

North Ferriby

St Mary

Nostell

St Oswald

Temple of the Lord at Jerusalem Augustinian

1119 × 1124 (?1119) 1119 × 1124 (?1121) 1150 × 1153 before 1154 1142/3 (Hood); 1145 1160 × 1183

Tockwith

All Saints

Warter

St James

York

St Andrew

Ellerton

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Augustinian (cell of Nostell) Augustinian (Arrouaisian from 1142 to 1191 × 97) Gilbertine

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before 1114 (hermits/clerks); 1114 × 1121 before 1121 1132 before 1202

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Page xix (e) Cistercian and Savigniac houses Name

Dedication

Mother house

Date of foundation

Byland

St Mary

Furness/Savigny

Fountains Jervaulx Kirkstall

St Mary St Mary St Mary

Clairvaux Byland Fountains

Meaux Rievaulx Roche Sallay

St Mary St Mary St Mary St Mary/St Andrew

Fountains Clairvaux Newminster Newminster

1138 (Hood); 1142 (Old Byland); 1147 (Stocking); 1177 (New Byland) 1132; 1133 (Cistercian) 1145 (Fors); 1156 (Jervaulx) 1147 (Barnoldswick); c. 1152 (Kirkstall) 1151 1132 1147 1147

(f) Nunneries Name

Dedication

Date of foundation

Arden Arthington Baysdale (Basedale)

St Andrew St Mary St Mary

Ellerton on Swale

St Mary

Esholt Foukeholme (Thimbleby) Hampole Handale Keldholme Kirklees Marrick Moxby Nun Appleton Nun Monkton Nunburnholme Nunkeeling Rosedale Sinningthwaite Swine Thicket Watton

St Leonard and St Mary St Stephen St Mary St Mary St Mary St Mary St Mary and St Andrew St John St Mary and St John St Mary St Mary St Mary and St Helen St Mary and St Lawrence St Mary St Mary St Mary St Mary

1147 × 1169 c. 1155 × 1160 at Hutton Lowcross (c. 1162); to Nunthorpe (1165 × 1170); to Baysdale c. 1189 probably before 1200; before 1227 before 1184 before 1215 before 1156 1133 1154 × 1166 c. 1135 × 1140, or 1166 × 1190 1154 × 1158 before 1158 c. 1148 × 1154 1147 × 1153 before 1188 1143 × 1153 1154 × 1160 before 1155 1143 × 1153 before 1180 1150 × 1153

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Wilberfoss Wykeham Yedingham York (Clementhorpe)

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St Mary St Mary and St Michael St Mary St Clement

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1147 × 1153 before 1153 before 1158 1125 × 1133

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Map 1 The Black Monks and the Regular Canons in Yorkshire

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Map 2 The Yorkshire Cistercians and their families

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Map 3 Nunneries in Yorkshire

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Page 1 INTRODUCTION By their coming into England they rekindled the rule of monastic life in all those places in which it had perished. You might see churches in every vill, and monasteries in villages and towns, rising up in a new style of building; and the land flourished with vigorous religious observances.1 Thus wrote William of Malmesbury, around 1124, of the impact on monastic life of the coming of the Normans to England. In Yorkshire, the subject of this book, the ‘rule of monastic life’ had indeed perished, and nowhere was the rapid expansion of monasticism in England in the course of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries more dramatic. In this study I explore the growth of the monastic order in this one county—the largest in England—between c. 1069 and c. 1215, and set detailed analysis of its history in the wider context of contemporary British and European movements. The time span calls for some explanation. The year 1069 marks the reintroduction of formal monasticism to the north in the wake of the damage wrought by the Viking invasions and internal decline, after which the weakness of royal authority had prevented the monastic reforms of the tenth century in the south and midlands from reaching north of the Trent. I use the words ‘formal monasticism’ advisedly. It is tempting to write off the north as a monastic desert, but this ignores both the continuity, in some form, of the Community of St Cuthbert, first at Chester-le-Street and then at Durham; and the possibility of the existence of a monastic sub-culture, which has left little trace on the written records. As I hope to show, there is evidence to suggest the possibility that a less formally structured, eremitical monasticism continued across the traditional great divide of 1066. The terminal date is more arbitrary, but a number of reasons suggest the appropriateness of 1215. This was the year of the great Fourth Lateran Council which, among its seventy-one 1 Translated from Willelmi Malmesbiriensis de gestis regum Anglorum, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols. (RS, 1887–9), II, 306.

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Page 2 canons, placed a ban on the formation of new orders and rules, thus ending the explosion of forms of monastic life which had characterized the previous century and a half. Moreover the years around 1215 mark the emergence of a radically new concept of the religious life, that of the friars; and with Archbishop Walter de Gray (1215–55) we encounter the first archbishop of York known to have kept a register, and thus the beginning of a new type of source material. This book is divided into two parts. The first explores the dynamics of monastic expansion, discussing the influences on both its chronological development and its geographical pattern. Although the 1130s and 1140s saw both Augustinian and Cistercian foundations in the county, and the second half of the twelfth century saw the establishment of houses of canons and of nuns, the chronological sequence is clear enough to suggest that the approach should be by congregation or order, starting with the three great Benedictine houses, and ending with the establishment of female monasteries. The second part of this book explores the themes of recruitment, government, patronage, economy, and the cultural life of the communities in the forms of writing, manuscript production, and architecture. YORKSHIRE AS A UNIT OF STUDY The geographical unit of study also requires some words of explanation. Two possibilities were open to me when I chose to undertake a regional study. One was to take an ecclesiastical unit, such as the diocese of York; the other an administrative division, in this case the shire of York. I chose the latter because it offered a coherent geographical and territorial unit with a historic identity. Yorkshire is bounded to the east by the North Sea, to the south by the rivers Humber, Don, and Sheaf, to the west by the Pennines, and to the north by the river Tees.2 Historically it had been a part (Deira) of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, but was wrested from it when a Scandinavian kingdom centred on York was established in 867. When York was reconquered by the West Saxon kings in the tenth century it became once again part of Northumbria, governed by earls appointed by the king. Sometimes the earldom comprised the whole of the former kingdom; at other times it was split between Yorkshire and the region north of the Tees, the river remaining a significant political boundary. Moreover, Yorkshire was the only one of the northern counties to have been shired by the eleventh century. Eborascira was thus brought more firmly than the more remote north under the administrative umbrella of the English kings. There was something of a dichotomy in how 2 On this see David Hey, Yorkshire from AD 1000 (London, 1986), pp. 1–10.

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Page 3 Yorkshire was perceived in the Middle Ages. Although the memory of Northumbria was, and continued to be, a vital force in northern self-identity,3 historical writing frequently portrayed the people of Yorkshire as an independent, distinctive group. Hugh the Chanter put into the mouth of Archbishop Lanfranc a strong argument for the unity of the English church under the leadership of Canterbury: without that control, the Danes, the Scots, and the ‘fickle and treacherous Yorkshiremen’ might create an archbishop who would crown a rival king.4 Such a scenario might seem remote, but to Hugh the men of the shire had a distinct political identity. Significantly, when Orderic Vitalis referred to the Conqueror’s guilt for his severe punishment of Yorkshire, he referred to the way the Deiri and transhumbranae gentes, the Deirans and the men of Northumbria, had threatened to support the king of Denmark. To him, the pagus Eborachensis was a territorial unit.5 The context for Orderic’s remark was his description of the Conqueror on his deathbed, where William signalled his remorse for the harrying of the north, the punishment for Yorkshire’s resistance to the new political regime. The actions of his army in the winter of 1069 to 1070 aimed at the destruction of the agricultural infrastructure of the shire, and, if the chroniclers are to be believed, led to scenes of the dead piled high by the roadside and starving refugees streaming south. It was while William was in York over Christmas 1069 that he gave permission for the creation of a monastic foundation at Selby, an event which marked the beginning of a remarkable monastic expansion within what was until 1974 the largest county in England. THE CREATION OF ENGLISH MONASTICISM In the years from 1069 to 1215 between sixty and seventy monastic houses were established in Yorkshire, ranging from independent abbeys to small monastic cells. The first part of this book explores the nature of these foundations, and the chronological pattern of expansion. From the first generation of Norman settlement in the county there emerged the three great independent houses of Black Monks: Selby (1069), Whitby (c. 1078), and St Mary’s, York (1086). They belonged to the important tradition of autonomous houses following the Rule of St Benedict which had for centuries dominated the monastic scene, and they were part of a 3 See below, pp. 281–7. 4 Hugh the Chanter, The History of the Church of York 1066–1127, ed. C. Johnson, revised by M. Brett, C. N. L. Brooke, and M. Winterbottom, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1990), p. 5. 5 Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, ed. and transl. M. Chibnall, Oxford Medieval Texts, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1969–80), IV, 94–5.

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Page 4 general growth in monasticism which accompanied the Norman settlement in England. Their early date of foundation and their small number ensured them a dominance in northern monasticism, even if they could not rival in wealth the great abbeys of the south and midlands, the product of the tenth-century revival which had enjoyed the backing of the Anglo-Saxon kings. Before 1066 English monasteries had all been independent; there were no dependencies or cells of either native or continental monasteries. Cultural and personal contacts had existed between Anglo-Saxon houses and the wider, continental monastic world,6 but there were no constitutional ties. There were two ways in which the Norman settlement changed this. First, the remarkable increase in the English and Welsh possessions of Norman and French monasteries which followed the Conquest led to the establishment of communities dependent on continental houses, either small units usually termed cells, or larger, conventual, priories.7 The distinction between the two was that priories maintained a full monastic life, whereas cells might serve primarily an economic rather than a spiritual function. Such cells had been a feature of Norman monasticism since the middle of the eleventh century. Northern English houses too, most notably St Mary’s, York, followed the trend by creating dependencies. However, most of the two hundred and more monastic cells and dependent priories of medieval England were directly linked to continental abbeys, and were thus both a product and a symbol of foreign domination and conquest.8 The proliferation of alien dependencies was the result of the partition of English and Welsh lands among Norman barons after the Conquest; and the creation of networks of dependencies brought English monasticism into line with that of Normandy and France. The monastery of St Nicholas, Angers, added four dependencies in England to its thirty in the Loire valley; St Florent de Saumur founded four priories in England and Wales, swelling its congregation of twelve in western France; Marmoutier on the Loire established thirteen conventual priories and cells in England, nearing its number (seventeen) of dependencies in Normandy.9 6 See, for instance, F. Barlow, The English Church 1000–1066, 2nd edn (London, 1979), pp. 10–23. 7 In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries these came to be termed ‘alien priories’. 8 See, in general, Knowles, Monastic Order, pp. 134–6; MRH, pp. 83–95; D. J. A. Matthew, The Norman Monasteries and their English Possessions (Oxford, 1962), pp. 27–71; M. Morgan (Chibnall), The English Lands of the Abbey of Bec (Oxford, 1946, repr. 1968); M. Chibnall, ‘Monastic foundations in England and Normandy, 1066–1189’, in England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, ed. D. Bates and A. Curry (London, 1994), pp. 37–49. 9 Chibnall, ‘Monastic foundations’, p. 41; on St Florent see especially J. Martindale, ‘Monasteries and castles: the priories of St-Florent in England after 1066’, in England in the Eleventh Century, Proceedings of the 1990 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. C. Hicks (Stamford, 1992), pp. 135–56. For the expansion of the family of Bec see Morgan, English Lands of the Abbey of Bec, pp. 9–37.

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Page 5 In Yorkshire, estates were obtained by four continental houses: Marmoutier, which established an alien priory at Holy Trinity, York, and cells at Headley and Allerton Mauleverer; Aumale, which created a dependency at Birstall in the East Riding; St Wandrille, with a cell at Ecclesfield near Sheffield; and the Breton house of Mont St Michel, whose monks founded a small cell at Wath (North Riding). Of these new foundations, only Holy Trinity, York, maintained a full conventual life, the others being establishments which apparently housed only a handful of monks for the purposes of administration of estates. The evidence for the history of these houses is very thin. Most of the alien priories and cells in England were created between the Conquest and the death of Henry I (1135), that is, when the ties between England and Normandy were at their strongest. At the same time a second, more important, class of dependencies was being established from the Burgundian monastery of Cluny. Founded in 909/910, Cluny quickly established a reputation, not at first as the head of a new order or congregation, but, in the words of David Knowles, ‘simply as a monastery concerned to impart to others the great essentials of the liturgical monastic life as they were conceived and expressed by her’.10 The amplification of the liturgy and its dominance in the monastic horarium was a common trend in monastic life from the tenth century, but it was with Cluny that reformed or revitalized monasticism came to be most closely associated. Even before 1066 England had felt the power of Cluniac observance. The Regularis concordia (c. 972), the manifesto of the tenth-century monastic reform movement, reveals the influence of continental congregations, including Cluny.11 However, the significance of Cluny was not just liturgical. From the tenth century it became increasingly common for individual monasteries to band together. Congregations became associated with reformed houses such as Gorze and Hirsau, but it was Cluny which rose above all others to become the head of a congregation which spread throughout western Christendom. Different phases of Cluniac expansion and association can be detected. In France, for instance, ancient abbeys like Fleury and Moissac, and in Normandy a number—perhaps threequarters of the total—of the monasteries founded by its dukes in the tenth century, followed Cluniac customs without compromising their independence.12 The beginning of 10 Knowles, Monastic Order, pp. 145–58 (p. 145). 11 D. Parsons (ed.), Tenth-Century Studies (London, 1975), pp. 20–36 for a modified view of the significance of Cluny, and pp. 37–59 for influences on the Regularis concordia. 12 B. Golding, ‘The coming of the Cluniacs’, in Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies III, 1980, ed. R. Allen Brown (Woodbridge, 1981), pp. 65–77, 208–12 (pp. 65–6); D. Bates, Normandy before 1066 (London, 1982), pp. 218–25.

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Page 6 the foundation of the English Cluniac houses belongs to the abbacy of Hugh (1049–1109) whose name is linked with the creation and dispersal of what may justly be called the first of the great monastic families. Priories entering the family were directly dependent on Cluny, their monks were regarded as monks of Cluny, and the ties of family were reinforced by the payment of an annual census in recognition of the overall authority of the mother house. Therefore, Cluniac expansion and influence was in many ways of a different nature in Normandy from that in England.13 Attempts by King William I to bring Cluniac monks to England foundered,14 but in 1077 Abbot Hugh of Cluny was persuaded to send a colony to Lewes (Sussex), founded and endowed by William de Warenne. In the years which followed, Cluniac houses multiplied steadily. Lewes itself sent a colony to Castle Acre (Norfolk) in 1089; and the French abbey of La Charité sur Loire—probably the most important Cluniac foundation outside Cluny itself—dispatched five colonies to England, including Pontefract (Yorkshire), between 1090 and 1098.15 Pontefract sent forth its own daughter house to Monk Bretton in 1153 or 1154. With the sole exception of Bermondsey, the English and Welsh Cluniac houses never achieved the status of abbeys.16 They remained, in theory, dependencies of Cluny, whose abbots enjoyed supreme power. Nevertheless they ultimately fared better than other alien priories, most of which were dissolved during the French wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.17 Since Monk Bretton had left the Cluniac congregation in 1279– 80, by the Dissolution only Holy Trinity and Pontefract remained of the relatively small group of Yorkshire continental dependencies which came into existence in the wake of conquest. The first thirty years of the twelfth century were dominated by the foundation of houses of regular canons, which, apart from the nunneries, constituted the most numerous monastic group in medieval Yorkshire. They did not form an order or a congregation, since, as with the Black 13 A point made by Brian Golding, ‘Coming of the Cluniacs’, pp. 65–6; Chibnall, ‘Monastic foundations’, p. 38. 14 See F. Barlow, ‘William I’s relations with Cluny’, JEH, 32 (1981), 131–41, repr. in The Norman Conquest and Beyond (London, 1983), pp. 245–56; H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘William I’s relations with Cluny further reconsidered’, in Monastic Studies: The Continuity of Tradition, ed. J. Loades (Bangor, 1990), pp. 75–85. 15 MRH, pp. 96–103. 16 Bermondsey was raised to the status of abbey in 1399: MRH, p. 96. 17 M. Morgan (Chibnall), ‘The suppression of the alien priories’, History, 26 (1941), 204–12; B. Thompson, ‘The Statute of Carlisle, 1307, and the alien priories’, JEH, 41 (1990), 543–83, and ‘The laity, the alien priories, and the redistribution of ecclesiastical property’, in England in the Fifteenth Century, Proceedings of the 1992 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. N. Rogers (Stamford, 1994), pp. 19–41.

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Page 7 Monk houses, there was no formal contact among the houses of canons until the Fourth Lateran Council ushered in the era of provincial chapters.18 Canons were distinguished from monks in that they followed the Rule of St Augustine rather than the Rule of St Benedict; this was a document attributed in the Middle Ages to Augustine, the doctor of the church and bishop of Hippo (died 430), but which in reality emerged much later from an amalgam of his writings and letters. The Rule of St Augustine was used to lend respectability to groups of clergy following a quasi-monastic existence.19 It is first in association with the great cathedral and collegiate churches of southern France and Italy that we encounter groups of regular clergy (those following a rule), and their growth was encouraged by the papacy which saw in them a means of reforming clerical life.20 The adaptability of the Rule of St Augustine allowed it to be used by a variety of communities, from cathedral or collegiate churches to hospitals and hermitages.21 Moreover, it came in time to be used by distinctive religious groups, notably by the Premonstratensian canons, by the male element of the Gilbertine order, and by the Dominican friars. The regular canons made their first appearance in England in the last years of the eleventh century when they are recorded as serving three institutions: Archbishop Lanfranc’s hospital of St Gregory, Canterbury, the college of St Botulf at Colchester, and the priory of St Mary, Huntingdon.22 However the main era of expansion came with the foundation, by Queen Matilda, of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, in 1107–8. Thereafter houses multiplied rapidly, aided by royal patronage and episcopal backing. The heyday of Augustinian foundations was the reign of Henry I (1100–35), the last few years of which saw the emergence of a rival for patronage in the form of the White Monks. Nevertheless, although the rate of Augustinian foundations did slacken after the middle of the twelfth century, houses continued to be founded into the thirteenth century and indeed beyond, making them the most numerous group in medieval England. 18 There were some exceptions, such as the congregation of Augustinian houses which attached itself to the French abbey of Arrouaise, on which see L. Milis, L’Ordre des chanoines réguliers d’Arrouaise, 2 vols. (Bruges, 1969). For its English houses see below, pp. 95–6. For the provincial chapters see Chapters of the Augustinian Canons, ed. H. E. Salter, Oxford Historical Society, 74 (1922). 19 See Augustine of Hippo and his Monastic Rule, ed. G. Lawless (Oxford, 1987). 20 On the connection between the canons and reform, see, for instance, Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 247–50. 21 See, for instance, C. N. L. Brooke, ‘Monk and canon: some patterns in the religious life of the twelfth century’, in Monks, Hermits, and the Ascetic Tradition, Studies in Church History, 22, ed. W. J. Sheils (Oxford, 1985), pp. 109–29. 22 See especially J. C. Dickinson, The Origins of the Austin Canons and their Introduction into England (London, 1950); David M. Robinson, The Geography of Augustinian Settlement in Medieval England and Wales, 2 vols., British Archaeological Reports, British series 80 (Oxford, 1980).

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Page 8 Yorkshire follows a rather different pattern. It boasted eleven Augustinian houses, five of which were founded by the early 1120s, four more by 1153, one in the thirteenth century, and one in the fourteenth: Bridlington was in existence by 1114; the date of foundation of Nostell is problematic but probably lay between 1114 and 1119; Guisborough was established between 1119 and 1124, probably in 1119; Kirkham appears to have been founded in 1121 or 1122 and certainly by 1124, and Embsay (later Bolton) was founded in 1121. Two houses, Warter and Drax, date from the 1130s, and the foundation of Newburgh Priory may be dated more precisely to 1142/3. Marton was in existence by 1154. To these were later added Healaugh Park, a hermitage occupied by a monk of Marmoutier, which was converted into an Augustinian house in 1218, and Haltemprice (1326).23 With the exceptions of Healaugh Park and Haltemprice—and in contrast to other areas of England—the Augustinian expansion in Yorkshire was over by 1153. However, it was at precisely this time that other groups of Augustinian canons appeared in Yorkshire. Although the Augustinians were not themselves an order, the Rule was followed by houses which enjoyed a constitutional relationship with one another. Chief among those groups was the order which owed its origins to St Norbert of Xanten, who adopted the Rule for the community which gathered, drawn by his preaching, at Prémontré. This one community grew and cohered into an order through the adoption of Cistercian governmental machinery, such as the annual General Chapter. The first Premonstratensian house in Britain was founded in 1143 at Newhouse in Lincolnshire by Peter of Goxhill. In 1147 or 1148 a colony was sent from Newhouse to Alnwick (Northumberland) at the request of Eustace Fitz John, and in 1151 a second one was dispatched to Easby, near Richmond. It may also have been in 1151 and certainly by 1153 that Eustace Fitz John brought Augustinian canons to Malton, a male house of the Gilbertine order. This coincided with his foundation of a double house at Watton which the canons of Malton may have been intended to serve. Although the purpose of the Gilbertine order was to allow women to live a religious life secluded from the world and supported by canons as well as lay sisters and brothers, after the middle of the century—with one important exception, Shouldham—Gilbertine founders established houses for canons alone. Thus the two later Gilbertine houses in Yorkshire—Ellerton (1199 × 1203) and St Andrew’s, York (by 1202)—were for men only. The Premonstratensian order in the county expanded with the addition of Coverham, first founded at Swainby before 1187, and Eggle23 The hermit of Healaugh Park, Gilbert, was probably a monk of Holy Trinity.

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Page 9 stone (by 1198). Finally, Yorkshire boasted one representative of a further small congregation which based its way of life on the Rule of St Augustine, the Order of the Temple of the Lord at Jerusalem. This was the priory at North Ferriby. By 1132 there were three Black Monk, one Cluniac, and five Augustinian houses in Yorkshire, of which the monastery of Pontefract was the only one which was linked to a wider monastic organization. The coming of the Cistercians to the north changed that, for it locked eight houses in Yorkshire into what grew to be the largest, most powerful, and most widespread of all monastic families, deriving from the mother house, Cîteaux. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to call the Cistercians the first true monastic order, in that it was the first congregation to legislate in order to enforce its ideas on the monastic life. The early history of the White Monks and the literature of the order continue to provoke debate among historians. The dating of key Cistercian documents, the Exordium parvum, and Exordium Cistercii, the narrative accounts of the origins of Cîteaux, is not easily resolved; moreover, the frequent updating of the constitution of the order, the Carta caritatis, means that the relationship of the texts which have survived to the primitive Carta known to have been presented by Abbot Stephen Harding (1109–34) to Pope Calixtus and ratified by him in 1119, is not easy to establish.24 Of the capitula (‘chapters’ or regulations) enshrined in the Exordium Cistercii, some appear to belong to the period of Abbot Alberic (1098–1109) and others to early in the abbacy of Stephen Harding.25 However, the first codification of the capitula, once assigned to 1134, may have been made as late as 1152.26 The emergence of the selfidentity of the Cistercians may, therefore, have been slower and more gradual than was once thought. The Cistercian movement began with the desire of a group of monks to live a life of poverty and simplicity, secluded from the world, where the Rule of St Benedict could be observed in its primitive form. In their aspirations the early monks of Cîteaux differed little from the founders of the congregations of Savigny, Tiron, Camaldoli, Vallombrosa, and La Grande Chartreuse. The movement beyond this simple desire to an order which demanded uniformity and conformity to its rulings on matters 24 For these documents see Les plus anciens textes de Cîteaux, ed. J. de la Croix Bouton and J.-B. Van Damme (Achel, 1974, repr. 1985), pp. 53–85 (Exordium parvum [EP]), 89–102 (Carta caritatis prior [CCP], 103–6 (Privilege of Pope Calixtus II), 108–25 (Exordium Cistercii [EC], Summa cartae caritatis [SCC], and capitula). 25 EP, chapter 17, pp. 81–2. 26 See Christopher Holdsworth, ‘The chronology and character of early Cistercian legislation on art and architecture’, in Cistercian Art and Architecture in the British Isles, ed. C. Norton and D. Park (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 40–55, which presents a convenient summary of the arguments of Le Fèvre, Knowles, Waddell, etc., and a reassessment of the problems. See also J.-B. Auberger, L’unanimité Cistercienne primitive: mythe ou réalité, Cîteaux: Studia et Documenta, 3 (Achel, 1986).

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Page 10 economic, liturgical, and artistic, was a product of the popularity which the order experienced after the first lean years, and of the controversy which this triggered between the Black Monks and the White, the old and the new, tradition and innovation. By the time the Cistercians reached England in 1128 the order had a constitution. The Carta caritatis had laid down a system of affiliation which maintained links between new abbeys and the houses from which they derived, and placed on the father abbot the duty to visit the daughter house once a year.27 This, and the introduction of an annual General Chapter, meant that the Cistercians found the means to enforce the uniformity of observance—the same interpretation of the Rule, the same books, the same dedication to the Blessed Virgin Mary—which they desired.28 And although there remains some doubt as to whether the Exordia were compiled (as the texts suggest) in the early 1120s, or whether they represent a later stage in the clarification of ideas under the influence of Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux and as the result of later controversy, and were written as late as the 1150s, the testimony of Orderic Vitalis and William of Malmesbury suggests that by the 1120s and 1130s the basis and ethos of the new order were understood by those outside it.29 By the late 1120 the name ‘Cistercian’ would have been identified by its supporters with the restoration of primitive Benedictine monasticism, with poverty, simplicity, seclusion, and removal from the manorial world of rents and services, with liturgical simplicity and the restoration of manual labour to the monastic timetable. To its opponents, aware perhaps from the Apologia of St Bernard, that masterpiece of rhetoric which appeared in 1125, and from the letter of Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, that the existence of the White Monks was a direct challenge to and explicit criticism of Cluniac monasticism, ‘Cistercian’ stood for innovation, revolutionary change, and the undermining of traditional monastic values.30 The Cistercians were not the first members of the new, reformed orders to reach Britain. In 1113, the year that Cîteaux made its first foundation at La Ferté, the Tironensians, who were to make little impact in England, settled in Wales at St Dogmaels and in Scotland at Selkirk. In 1124 the Savigniacs were established in a remote corner of Lancashire by Stephen, count of Mortain, moving three years later to their second site at Furness. Little is known of the early history of the first two Cistercian 27 CCP, pp. 93–5. 28 CCP, pp. 92–3, 95; capitula, pp. 121–2. 29 Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, IV, 311–117; Willelmi Malmesbiriensis, II, 380–5. 30 Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Cistercians and Cluniacs: St Bernard’s Apologia to Abbot William’, trans. M. Casey in Treatises I, Cistercian Fathers Series I (Spencer, Mass. and Shannon, 1970); The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. G. Constable, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), I, 52–101, II, 115–20.

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Page 11 foundations in Britain, Waverley (1128), founded by Bishop William Giffard of Winchester from the French abbey of l’Aumône, and Tintern in the Wye valley (1131), established also from l’Aumône by Giffard’s kinsman, Walter fitz Richard de Clare, lord of Chepstow.31 However, when the Yorkshire Cistercians arrived they did so in a blaze of publicity, appearing first at the court of Henry I with a peremptory message from St Bernard of Clairvaux (1131). They journeyed north, creating turmoil among the Benedictines of York, and settled in the valley of the river Rye by March 1132. The foundation of Fountains followed later that year, and in 1138 an irregular offshoot of Furness was established at Hood, the first of its four Yorkshire sites. As Byland Abbey the community, with the whole of the Savigniac order, merged with the Cistercians in 1147. These were the first generation of Cistercian houses in Yorkshire, what William of Newburgh later called the tria lumina of religion in the north.32 There followed second-generation houses at Jervaulx, 1145 (from Byland),33 Kirkstall (1147) and Meaux (1151) from Fountains, and Roche and Sallay (1147) from Newminster (1138 or 1139), the Northumbrian daughter house of Fountains. In the last twenty years or so attention has shifted to the history, previously neglected, of female monastic congregations.34 In 1069 the opportunities for women to enter organized monastic life in England were few. The nunneries that existed lay in the south and south-west (Amesbury, Romsey, Shaftesbury, Wherwell, Wilton, and Winchester), in the heartland of the kings of Wessex, and one (Chatteris) in the cluster of monastic houses in the Fens.35 In the north the resurgence in women’s monasticism came from the 1120s or early 1130s, and the number of houses eventually rose to match that of male monasteries. In general the nunneries are distinguished from many of their male counterparts by their small size and their poverty, though from this general statement there is one obvious exception, and that is the Gilbertine double house of Watton, which surpassed all other female establishments. This does not mean that nunneries were unimportant, nor that female religious experience was a pale imitation of male monasticism. On the contrary, women made a rich and distinctive contribution to the vital and varied monastic life of Yorkshire. 31 For the Cistercian expansion see Janet Burton, ‘The foundation of the British Cistercian houses’, in Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture, pp. 24–39. 32 Newburgh, Historia, I, 53. 33 Founded at Fors in 1145 and removed to Jervaulx in 1156. 34 See bibliography under: Burton, Elkins, Gilchrist, Gold, Golding, Graves, Johnson, Oliva, Thompson. 35 B. Yorke, ‘‘‘Sisters under the skin”?: Anglo-Saxon nuns and nunneries in southern England’, Reading Medieval Studies, 15 (1989), 95–117.

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Page 12 SOURCES The survival of documentary sources for English monastic history before 1215 is distorted towards the larger houses. Not only were they the generators of most of the written records emanating from monasteries themselves, but they are more likely to figure in royal records and in wider histories. Accordingly, the histories of Selby, Whitby, and St Mary’s, York, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which are the subject of chapter 1, are elucidated by both narrative accounts and charter evidence. In the Historia Selebiensis monasterii we have a detailed account of the circumstances of the foundation of Selby and of the development of the abbey up to 1174, the year in which the history was written. The Historia was evidently the work of a monk of Selby, writing at the instance of an unnamed patron and the prior of the monastery. It exists in a single manuscript, probably from Selby, of late-twelfth-century date; and this had associations with the abbey of St Germain (Germanus) of Auxerre, where Benedict, founder of Selby, had been a monk.36 The Historia is a long piece of work, and in many ways conforms to the conventions of other monastic histories. It postdates, by over a century, the origins of the abbey. It seeks to explain the foundation in terms of the divine guidance by St Germanus of the activities of the founder of Selby, Benedict of Auxerre, and the historical narrative is overlaid by accounts of visions and miracles. Nevertheless, as will be shown, there are sound arguments for accepting much of the historical account. The Historia was printed by J. T. Fowler for the Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series in 1891 from a transcript of the original, then lost, made by the Jesuit historian Philippe Labbe in 1657. The original manuscript has since been rediscovered and now exists as Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale Latin manuscript 10940. Reference is made below to both the original manuscript and to Fowler’s edition, but quotations are drawn from the former. The foundation of Selby merited only a brief mention in Symeon of Durham’s Historia regum. A monk of the great northern cathedral priory, Symeon was clearly much more concerned to explain the circumstances of the origins of his own church of Durham. In both the Historia regum and the Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius hoc est Dunelmensis ecclesie, otherwise known as the Historia Dunelmensis ecclesie, completed by 1107, Whitby and York receive more prominence than Selby, as part of that northern pilgrimage of three men—Aldwin, prior of the Benedictine 36 P. Janin, ‘Note sur le manuscrit Latin 10940 de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, contenant l‘Historia Selebiensis Monasterii et les Gesta abbatum Sancti Germani Autissiodorensis’, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes, 127 (1969), 216–24; C. Hohl, ‘Une fille de Saint-Germain d’Auxerre?’, Bulletin de la Société des sciences de l’Yonne, 106 (1974), 38, note 1. For the date see Hist. Selb., fo. 48r (p. 54).

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Page 13 abbey of Winchcombe (Gloucestershire), and Aelfwig and Reinfrid, monks of Evesham (Worcestershire)—that was designed to restore the lost centres of Northumbrian monasticism. Symeon places the establishment of Benedictine abbeys at Whitby and York firmly in the context of the revival of monastic life in the north which led to the creation of a cathedral monastery at Durham. The foundations of Whitby and York are more central to three other narrative sources. The Memorial of Foundation of Whitby is a brief narrative covering the years up to 1176, which was copied into one of the two cartularies of the abbey.37 The manuscript is a composite one, but the section containing the Memorial appears to be of a late twelfthcentury date. A second Whitby source is of more doubtful reliability, as it exists only in seventeenth-century transcripts among the Dodsworth manuscripts. This fragment bears on some aspects of the relationship between Whitby and the Percy family.38 The third narrative introduces a key figure in the monastic history of the north in the late eleventh century, Stephen of Whitby, later abbot of St Mary’s, York, and indeed is a narrative ascribed to him. There have been various opinions as to its authenticity, doubts arising because of the manuscript tradition—Dugdale transcribed the text for the Monasticon Anglicanum from a thirteenth-century manuscript which incorporated the narrative into a later work and ascribed it to Abbot Simon de Warwick—and because it is not easy to reconcile with the account given in the Memorial.39 J. C. Atkinson, editor of the Whitby cartularies, considered its statements ‘incredible, perhaps even… fictions, if not falsehoods’, and David Knowles was inclined to agree: ‘the Memorial is a fairly reliable document, whereas the account… purporting to be written by Stephen… is quite untrustworthy’.40 William Farrer, however, treated the narrative as more reliable; and a recent reassessment has not only accepted Stephen as authentic, but asserts that the ‘overall story is credible, and the details in Abbot Stephen’s narrative which are otherwise unattested fit perfectly with all that we know of the period’.41 The technical reasons for distrusting the narrative, that is, the late and confused manuscript tradition, have been overcome by Denis Bethell’s identification of two earlier 37 Cart. Whitby, 1, 1–10. The title is a modern one, used by Atkinson, editor of the cartulary. 38 The original manuscript, now lost, was formerly in the possession of the Cholmley family; printed from Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 159, fo. 115v–116r, in Cart. Whitby, 1, xxxviii–xxxix; there is another copy in Dodsworth’s Monasticon Boreale (MS 9), fos. 127–9. 39 Printed from Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 39, in Mon. Ang., III, 544–6. The text begins with an illumination of Abbot Stephen and monks of St Mary’s, which is reproduced on the front cover of this book. 40 Cart. Whitby, I, lvi; Knowles, Monastic Order, p. 168, note 5. 41 EYC, II, 198–200; Christopher Norton, ‘The buildings of St Mary’s Abbey, York, and their destruction’, The Antiquaries Journal, 74 (1994), 256–88 (p. 282).

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Page 14 manuscripts of the text.42 British Library MS Add. 38816 is a composite manuscript containing material from Hexham, Byland, and St Mary’s, York, and the section (folios 21–39) containing the St Mary’s documents—charters of William II, Henry I and Henry II, the narrative of Abbot Stephen, various anniversaries, and a list of abbeys in confraternity— dates from between 1157 and c. 1180.43 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 139, also of twelfth-century date, has an ex libris giving its medieval ownership as the Cistercian abbey of Sallay, but it may derive from Durham.44 If, as will be argued below, the narrative of Abbot Stephen can be accepted as a reliable witness, then it is the earliest monastic foundation narrative deriving from the north. Its date of composition lies before c. 1112, the death of its author and chief protagonist. Much less dramatic than these narrative sources but essential for a study of the development of the monasteries as landowning corporations are their cartularies. That of Selby Abbey is preserved as London, British Library MS Add. 37771, a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century compilation.45 It is a large volume, written in one major and several secondary hands. A contemporary table of contents occupies folios 1–7, and the cartulary proper folios 11r–222v (new foliation).46 It begins with a collection of royal charters and thereafter the material is arranged topographically. There are over seven hundred charters relating to the abbey estates. Whitby Abbey has two surviving cartularies. The earlier, now British Library MS Add. 4715, a volume of small dimensions containing 191 folios, dates largely from the thirteenth century but with later additions; the second, a composite compilation put together over the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, is preserved among the Strickland family manuscripts at Whitby Museum.47 Both are arranged under sections containing royal, papal, and episcopal documents, and thereafter topographically. In keeping with its economic pre-eminence among the religious houses of Yorkshire, St Mary’s Abbey, York, boasts five major cartularies. British Library, MS Harleian 236 is a fourteenth-century cartulary of fifty-five folios containing royal charters, compositions concerning churches and tithes, and charters relating to various manors in the possession of the abbey. York Minster Library, Dean and Chapter MSS A1 and A2 and 42 D. Bethell, ‘The foundation of Fountains Abbey and the state of St Mary’s York in 1132’, JEH, 17 (1966), 11–27 (p. 19). 43 Abbot Stephen’s narrative occupies folios 29v to 34v. On the confraternities see Janet Burton, ‘A confraternity list from St Mary’s Abbey, York’, Revue Bénédictine, 89 (1979), 325–33. 44 Norton, ‘Buildings of St Mary’s’, p. 280; Bernard Meehan, ‘Durham twelfth-century manuscripts in Cistercian houses’, in Anglo-Norman Durham 1093–1193, ed. D. Rollason, M. Harvey, and M. Prestwich (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 439–49 (pp. 440–2). See also below, pp. 282–3. 45 Printed in Selby Coucher, I-II. Selected charters from this, and the other Yorkshire cartularies here described, have been printed in EYC. 46 Later documents are copied onto folios 8r-10v. 47 Both printed in Cart. Whitby.

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Page 15 Manchester, John Rylands Library Latin MSS 220–221 form a sequence, the first two volumes containing charters and other records relating to estates in the North Riding, and the latter material concerning the East and West Ridings and the City of York.48 Finally, an important source, not just for the land holdings of the three abbeys by 1086 but for the relationship of Whitby and York, is Domesday Book. In contrast the sources for the alien dependencies, discussed in chapter 2, are sparse. There is no surviving cartulary for Holy Trinity; we have a meagre number of copies of original charters, and there are only brief mentions in the cartularies of their respective mother houses for Headley, Allerton Mauleverer, Ecclesfield, and Wath. However, both Pontefract and Monk Bretton, although failing to achieve any but the briefest of mention in contemporary chronicles or narratives, have surviving cartularies. That of Pontefract dates from the middle of the thirteenth century, and copies of a number of the early charters are suspect in form.49 A fragment (fifty folios) of a fourteenth-century cartulary of Monk Bretton survives; and a second, sixteenth-century, compilation contains copies of late-medieval deeds.50 The sources for the houses of regular canons, discussed in chapter 3, vary. Most have surviving cartularies. Two of these date from the thirteenth century, that of Nostell (BL MS Cotton Vespasian E XIX), and Guisborough (dating from the middle of the thirteenth century, and occupying folios 112–332 of BL MS Cotton Cleopatra D II);51 and three (Bridlington, BL MS Add. 40008;52 Warter, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 9; and Drax, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Top. Yorkshire C 72), from the fourteenth century. Charters entered into the fifteenth-century cartulary, or register, of Kirkham (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 7) are abstracts only. Bolton has a cartulary and a sixteenthcentury coucher book (register), both preserved at Chatsworth House. There is no surviving cartulary from Newburgh, and the main source is the transcript made in June 1638 of the charters of the priory which were then in St Mary’s Tower, York (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 91, fos. 1–67). Only Malton among the Gilbertines and Easby among the Premonstratensians are well-documented by their cartularies, respectively BL MS Cotton Claudius D XI and BL MS Egerton 2827, a thirteenth-century compilation of 325 folios, arranged by subject and topography. From the priory of North Ferriby a fragment of a four48 None of these cartularies has been edited in its entirety. 49 BL MS Add. 50754; printed in Cart. Pont. 50 BL MS Lansdowne 405, fos. 51v–100 (old foliation), 3–65v (new foliation), BL MS Add. 50755; Cart. Monk Bretton. See J. S. Purvis, ‘New light on the chartularies of Monk Bretton Priory’, YAJ, 37 (1951), 67–71. 51 For Guisborough see Cart. Guis. 52 Printed abstracts appear in Cart. Brid.

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Page 16 teenth-century cartulary (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Add. C 51 , fos. 1–8) remains. The nature of this source material means that any account of the Yorkshire houses of regular canons is likely to be biased towards a history of their estates. However, there are some narrative sources which help to throw light on the foundation and other aspects of their existence. From Bridlington there survives a fifteenth-century book of devotions which contains brief memoranda of the foundation; and quite different aspects of Augustinian life are illuminated by the tract, Colloquium magistri et discipuli in regulam Sancti Augustini de vita clericorum (‘Dialogue between a master and a pupil concerning the Rule of St Augustine on the life of clerics’), written by Bridlington’s prior, Robert the Scribe.53 Much obscurity surrounds the foundation of what could, in the twelfth century, have claimed to be the most important house of regular canons in the county, Nostell, despite the existence of an act book of its priors, De gestis et actibus priorum monasterii sancti Oswaldi, written at Nostell in the priorate of Robert of Quixley (1393–1428) and copied in its surviving form between 1489 and 1505.54 This was compiled, as were other monastic narratives, for the purposes of edification and instruction.55 However, as will be seen, it does not admit of easy interpretation or reconciliation with the early charters of the priory. It is unfortunate that, although Guisborough Priory produced a chronicler, Walter of Hemingburgh, he did not record any details of the foundation; while the brief description of the foundation of Kirkham, preserved in BL Cotton MS Vitellius F IV, is of late date and unknown provenance. The Cistercian houses (chapter 4) are remarkably well documented. First there are the narrative accounts which grew out of a Cistercian interest in their own past, the Historia fundationis of Byland and its daughter house of Jervaulx, compiled by Abbot Philip of Byland (1196–8) from the reminiscences of the retired abbot, Roger;56 and the early-thirteenthcentury foundation history of Kirkstall, which may have come from the pen of Hugh, monk of Kirkstall, author of the much longer Narratio de fundatione of Fountains Abbey, written at the request of Abbot John of 53 Robert of Bridlington, The Bridlington Dialogue: An Exposition of the Rule of St Augustine for the Life of the Clergy, ed. and trans. by a religious of the C.S.M.V. (London, 1960). Robert was prior for a brief time until his resignation, which had taken place by 1159, possibly as early as 1154: HRH, p. 154. 54 Leeds District Archives MS NP/C1. 55 ‘Ad exemplum servorum dei, illustrium gesta virorum recitare constat necessarium, quatinus de factis bonorum virtutes imitando colligant, et malorum vitia diligentius deserendo devitent. Quamobrem modum et formam fundationis sive dotationis prioratus sancti Oswaldi de Nostell necnon gesta priorum eiusdem loci in scriptis deo volente ad presens commendare dispono’ (p. 84). 56 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 63, fos. 9–31, 42–56; printed, Mon. Ang., v, 349–54 (Byland) and 568–74 (Jervaulx).

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Page 17 York (1203–13).57 The life of Ailred, abbot of Rievaulx (1147–67), written shortly after his death by Walter Daniel, monk of the house, has been one of the most influential texts in the history of northern monasticism. Knowles, for instance, wrote that ‘no other English monk of the twelfth century so lingers in the memory; like Anselm of Bec, he escapes from his age, though most typical of it, and speaks directly to us… as we read, a corner of the veil that hides the past from us seems to lift, and we catch a momentary glimpse of Rievaulx in its first eagerness’.58 The spiritual appeal of Walter Daniel’s evocative portrait has, perhaps, disguised the hagiographical aspects of his work, and left a misleading impression of both the man and his monastic environment; however, although in many ways uncritical, the Life sheds useful light on the abbey in its first three and a half decades. Finally, following his resignation in 1399 the abbot of Meaux, Thomas Burton, compiled a long chronicle which combined the history of his own monastery with that of local and national affairs.59 These narrative accounts are supplemented by a number of letters, notably those of St Bernard relating to the affairs of Rievaulx and Fountains, and to the disputed election at York in the 1140s, in which the Cistercians played a prominent role. The economic side of Cistercian history is illuminated by a series of cartularies. That of Rievaulx, London, BL Cotton MS Julius D I, dating from the late twelfth century, also contains a list of benefactions received by the abbey from 1132 to the 1180s.60 The earliest cartulary of Fountains, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson B 449, continued as University College MS 170, dates from the thirteenth century, and contains charters arranged under granges. In the fifteenth century this, and later material, was gathered into a series of five great cartularies, four of which survive, and all of which were calendared in a sixteenth-century register.61 The cartulary of Byland Abbey, dating from the fifteenth century, survives in incomplete form, the first folios containing the Historia fundationis having been lost.62 A number of its charters are suspect in form, and show signs of tampering 57 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 722, fos. 129–39, of the fifteenth century; printed as Foundation of Kirkstall; Cambridge, Trinity College, MS Gale O.1.79 (of the fifteenth century), printed in Memorials of Fountains, I. For comment, see D. Baker, ‘The genesis of English Cistercian chronicles: the foundation history of Fountains Abbey’, I, Analecta Cisterciensia, 25 (1969), 14–41, and II, ibid., 31 (1975), 179–212. 58 Knowles, Monastic Order, p. 240. For the text see Life of Ailred. 59 Chron. Melsa. 60 Cart. Riev. 61 BL MSS Cotton Tiberius C XII, Add. 40009 and 37770, and Manchester, John Rylands Library Latin MS 224; BL MS Add. 18276. English abstracts appear in Cart. Fount. 62 BL MS Egerton 2823; charters printed in EYC, and Mowbray Charters. An edition by Janet Burton is in preparation. In the seventeenth century the manuscript was in the possession of John Rushworth, Esq., of Lincoln’s Inn, where portions were transcribed by Roger Dodsworth and others (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 63).

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Page 18 and interpolation; for instance, the earliest charters, issued while the monks were at Hood (1138–42), nevertheless refer to the monachi de Bellalanda, or monachi de Beghlanda.63 The cartulary of Kirkstall, London, PRO Duchy of Lancaster Miscellaneous Books 7, dates from the thirteenth century,64 and that of Sallay, BL Harleian MS 112, is from the fourteenth century.65 There is no surviving cartulary for Jervaulx or for Roche; charters for the former are preserved in the Historia and the Dodsworth manuscripts, and for the latter in two sets of transcripts, one made by Roger Dodsworth from the charters in St Mary’s Tower, York,66 the other made in the nineteenth century at Levett Hall.67 In comparison with the documentary sources for the majority of male houses, those of the Yorkshire nunneries, the subject of chapter 5, are meagre. Thus, to write an account of their history presents some distinctive problems: for instance, only one priory of nuns, Nunkeeling, has left a cartulary, and that was badly damaged in the Cottonian fire of 1731.68 Between c. 1125 and 1215 twenty-five nunneries were founded in Yorkshire. The chronology of foundation and even the identity of the founders is not always easy to establish. In many cases a confirmation charter provides only the latest date at which a priory was known to have been in existence. The names of few Yorkshire nuns are known to us, and there is certainly no source such as the unique Life of Christina of Markyate to illuminate the nature of female monastic vocation. As with the documentary sources, so too the survival of the physical remains of the Yorkshire monastic houses has been very uneven. Some, notably at Rievaulx, Fountains, Kirkham, Whitby, and Easby, are extensive. In some cases, such as Bolton and Selby, survival of the church was ensured by its continuity, after the Dissolution, as a parish church. In contrast there are few or no traces of monastic remains at Meaux, Nostell, Warter, Drax, Marton, and North Ferriby. Recent archaeological evidence in York has added to our knowledge of the layout and nature of a small, single-sex Gilbertine house.69 The researches of Roberta Gilchrist 63 See Mowbray Charters, p. lxxv and notes to individual charters. 64 Printed in Kirkstall Coucher. 65 Printed in Cart. Sallay. 66 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 8; Mon. Ang., v, 502–5. 67 This was used by S.O. Addy for XVI Charters for Roche Abbey (Sheffield, 1878). 68 London, BL MS Cotton Otho CVIII, written between 1521 and 1536 for Prioress Joan Alanson. Few original charters have survived, but there is a collection of Nun Monkton charters among the muniments of the duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle (X series, division II, section 6) and among the FitzWilliam muniments of Wentworth Woodhouse, Yorkshire. Original charters of Marrick Priory can be found at Hull University Library among the Stapleton Family and Estate Papers. 69 R. L. Kemp with C. Pamela Graves, The Church and Gilbertine Priory of St Andrew, Fishergate, 2 vols., The Archaeology of York, vol. 11, The Medieval Defences and Suburbs, fasc. 2 (York, 1996).

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Page 19 have also brought into sharp focus the physical environment of female religious, and have utilized the Yorkshire evidence.70 The documentary traces and physical remains of the monastic order may be uneven, but the rich fusion of charter and narrative sources, as well as the remains of the physical environment of the Yorkshire monks, canons, and nuns, provides a wealth almost unparalleled in other regions of Britain, certainly outside the major and long-established Benedictine abbeys. 70 R. Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women (London, 1994).

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Page 21 Part I The dynamics of expansion

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Page 23 Chapter 1 FROM HERMITAGE TO ABBEY: THE BLACK MONKS IN YORKSHIRE The Rule of St Benedict provided a guide for the practice of cenobitic, or communal, monasticism. Yet it recognized that there was another aspiration, the eremitical life, the solitary existence of the hermit. Throughout the history of monasticism these two strands have coexisted, sometimes in tension, at others, as Benedict intended, as complementary sides of the same spiritual ambition.1 In the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries the appeal of eremiticism, and its associations with the birth-place of monasticism, that is, the deserts of Egypt and Palestine, was a powerful factor in the rise of the new orders. However, the development of monasticism was not just about the spiritual ambitions of the monk; it involved the aspirations of those who required his spiritual services: the founder. In the second half of the eleventh century, for those seeking to establish a new monastic foundation, the obvious choice was still a Benedictine abbey. The first generation of monastic growth in Yorkshire was characterized by the twin impulses of the eremitical aspirations of monks and the desire of lay patrons for full, corporate monastic communities. The fusion of these led to the establishment of three Benedictine abbeys, at Selby, Whitby, and St Mary’s, York. The major source for the foundation by Benedict, monk of Auxerre, of Selby Abbey, the first monastic house to be founded in the north after the Conquest, is the Historia Selebiensis monasterii.2 This is in some ways a conventional monastic history. The aims of its author are those of other historians of their own houses: 1 The Rule of St Benedict, ed. J. McCann (London, 1972), chapter 1. 2 See above, p. 12. For modern accounts of the foundation of Selby see R. B. Dobson, ‘The first Norman abbey in northern England’, Ampleforth Journal, 74 (1969), 161–79, and ‘Les origines de l’abbaye Bénédictine de Selby dans le Yorkshire (1069–1100) et ses rapports avec Saint-Germain d’Auxerre’, Etudes ligeriennes d’histoire et d’archéologie médiévales (Paris, 1975), pp. 157–64. In the citations of the Historia, the folios refer to Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Latin 10940, and the page numbers to Fowler’s edition. Quotations are drawn from the manuscript.

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Page 24 qualiterque ecclesia Selebiensis fundata sit, que causa, quis modus fundationis extiterit, qui etiam fundatores fuerint, sicut ex ipsius domni prioris ceterorumque seniorum relatione inuestigare potuero, Domini Dei nostri gratia adiuvante, litteris insinuare curabo.3 (With the gracious assistance of the Lord God I shall take care to preserve in writing how the church of Selby was founded, what might have been the reason and the method of foundation, and who the founders were, just as I have been able to find out from the narrative of the lord prior and other elderly monks.) Its author writes in good Latin, his narrative peppered with biblical and classical quotations and allusions. Moreover, as was stated earlier, the Historia contains a good deal of hagiographical material, and the author is careful to include edifying tales of the intervention of St Germanus in human affairs. Indeed, at the beginning of the text the author identifies Germanus as ‘totius pene nostre narrationis causa… et materia’,4 the cause and substance of almost all our narrative’, and he shows himself to be familiar with the legends of the uncorrupt body of the saint around which the abbey of Auxerre grew up. The Historia accounts for one incontrovertible and otherwise inexplicable fact: the dedication of an abbey in the north of England to St Germanus, a dedication unparalleled in medieval Britain outside Cornwall.5 If the association of the manuscript of the Historia with Auxerre is correct, then the author’s account of Benedict’s connection with the French house may well reflect the traditions about Selby preserved there. Confidence in the Selby history, as a historical narrative, increases when we remember that its main aim is to glorify St Germanus, not Selby: no special claims are made for the abbey. The author does not assign to it the status of the premier monastery of the north. He could indeed have done so, but mistakenly gives that honour to Durham.6 Selby Abbey was an irregular offshoot of the great Benedictine abbey of St Germain of Auxerre, situated about one hundred miles south-east of Paris. Discussions of the impact of the Norman Conquest and settlement on the English church frequently focus their attention on Normandy, but an area of comparable importance in the development of monasticism was the Loire valley, whose abbeys sent numbers of monks to colonize English houses and to establish cells.7 The foundation of Selby, however, was not part of a planned campaign, nor the result of a grant of English lands by a conqueror to his home abbey. What the Historia tells us about the foundation is that about the time Duke William invaded England a 3 Hist. Selb., fo. 3v (p. 1). 4 Ibid., fos. 4v–5r (p. 3). 5 Dobson, ‘First Norman Abbey’, 167; ‘Les origines’, 160; Alison Binns, Dedications of Monastic Houses in England and Wales 1066–1216 (Woodbridge, 1989), p. 85. 6 Hist. Selb., fo. 14r (p. 14). 7 Dobson, ‘Les origines’, 157–8.

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Page 25 man named Benedict entered Auxerre as a monk. He had been brought up at the abbey, and had in a secular capacity served the abbot for some years. The time came when he had to decide whether to become a monk or a knight, and he chose the former vocation. He quickly rose through the ranks of the community, becoming sacrist with special responsibility for the abbey relics.8 Some time later he was reputed to have been visited in a vision by the patron saint of his abbey. Benedict is portrayed as Abraham: ‘Egredere’, inquit, ‘de terra tua et de cognatione tua et de hac domo patris tui et veni in terram quam monstravero tibi’ [Genesis 12:1]. Est locus in Anglia vocaturque Selebia, meo provisus honori mee laudis predestinatus obsequiis… qui super ripam Use fluminis situs non plurimum distat ab Eboraca civitate.9 (He said, ‘Go out from your land, and from your people, and from the house of your father, and come into the land which I shall show you.’ There is in England a place called Selby, set aside for my honour, predestined for the service of my praise… it is located on the bank of the river Ouse, no great distance from the city of York.) Benedict was ordered by Germanus to seek out Selby and there to found a cell in his honour, and for his protection he was to take with him the finger of the saint, which was kept on the altar at Auxerre. Benedict ignored this and also a second vision, but Germanus appeared a third time threatening him with dire consequences should he continue to delay. Benedict accordingly asked permission of the chapter to leave his abbey. This was twice refused vehemently, and Benedict then fled at dead of night, taking with him the community’s prized relic, the middle finger of the right hand of St Germanus. He took the road to the coast, leaving his fellow monks to discover their loss. They followed in pursuit, but were unable to recover the relic which Benedict had concealed, and did not prevent him from taking ship for England.10 The Historia continues with an account of how, when he reached England, having misheard or misunderstood the command of Germanus, Benedict began to inquire for Salisbury instead of Selby. There he was befriended by a local magnate, Edward, who is probably to be identified with the sheriff of Wiltshire of that name.11 Edward offered Benedict his protection, and gave him many gifts. Among these were a golden phylactery, minutely described, and a linen cloth for the altar decorated with images of Christ in majesty, the four Evangelists, and the twelve apostles, all woven in feather work, which were still allegedly preserved at 8 Hist. Selb., fos. 4v–5v (p. 6). 9 Ibid., fo. 7v (pp. 6–7). 10 Ibid., fos. 8r–9v (pp. 7–9). 11 Judith A. Green, English Sheriffs to 1154, Public Record Office Handbooks no. 24 (London, 1990), p. 85. The recorded occurrences of Edward of Salisbury as sheriff lie between 1070 and 1087.

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Page 26 Selby at the time of writing.12 Soon, however, Benedict became anxious. Germanus had told him that the site ordained for the abbey was in the vicinity of the river Ouse and of York, but Benedict could find neither. The author explains the confusion in the names: Benedict thought that Germanus had sent him to Salisbury because the name was well known to him (‘quia nomen Salesbirie percelebere fuit’) while that of Selby was not (‘Selebie vero tunc temporis satis incognitum’). It took a further vision of Germanus (who appeared surridens) to convince Benedict of his mistake, and once more he set out, this time taking with him a clerk named Theobald whom Edward of Salisbury had provided as interpreter. They set sail from Linna, probably King’s Lynn, though possibly Lyme Regis, and as his ship sailed up the river Ouse Benedict recognized the place ordained for his church. He landed, erected a cross, and constructed a dwelling beneath an oak tree which the local inhabitants called ‘Strihac’. The date given was ‘anno circiter ab incarnatione Domini millesimo sexagesimo nono qui est annus quartus Willelmi primi regis’ (‘around… 1069, which is the fourth year of King William I’);13 and 1069 was the year in which Symeon of Durham recorded that ‘coenobium Sancti Germani de Selebi sumpsit exordium’ (the monastery of St Germanus of Selby was founded’).14 The Historia describes with conventional enthusiasm the amenities of the site: the woods for timber, the fish in the rivers, the stones for building. Quid plura? What more could Benedict desire? In this place, called Selby in English, marini vituli villa in Latin, Benedict built a small oratory. It was in full view of the river, and attracted attention. Benedict was, the author reminds his audience, a rarity in the Yorkshire of 1069: Ingens etiam raritas monachorum que tunc temporis extitit, duplo ad Benedictum honorandum et colendum studia cunctorum excitavit. Per totam enim Eboraci syriam excepta Dunelmensi congregatione, nec monachus nec monachorum locus aliquis in illis diebus facile valuit reperiri.15 (As there was at that time a great shortage of monks, it stirred many both to honour and to worship Benedict. For in those days throughout the whole of Yorkshire—except for the congregation of Durham—there could scarcely be found either a monk or a place for monks.) Most important was the notice of Benedict taken by Hugh Fitz Baldric, sheriff of Yorkshire, who caught sight of Benedict’s cross while he was patrolling by ship along the Ouse.16 Here again the Historia’s account 12 Hist. Selb., fos. 9v–11r (pp. 9–10). 13 Ibid., fos. 11r–12v (pp. 10–12). 14 Symeon, Opera, II, 186. 15 Hist. Selb., fo. 14r (p. 14). 16 On Hugh see Green, English Sheriffs, p. 89.

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Page 27 rings true: the region is described as savage, and its inhabitants had rebelled against the Normans—a clear allusion to the risings of 1068 and 1069. Benedict showed Hugh the relic of Germanus and asked for his protection, describing himself as ‘a stranger and a pilgrim’ (advenam et peregrinum). Hugh gave him his own tent, or pavilion (tentorium), and then arranged for carpenters to build him a wooden chapel. Moreover it was Hugh who advised Benedict to seek out William I, on whose land, without royal permission, he had settled, and who conducted Benedict into the king’s presence.17 The most likely time for this to have taken place is the winter of 1069–70 when William spent Christmas in York following the harrying of the north, the ravaging of the countryside of Yorkshire in reprisal for the risings of 1069. When Benedict explained to the king the circumstances of his arrival in Yorkshire, William was prepared to allow him to found a monastery on his lands, and gave him, as a foundation endowment, one carucate of land, comprising Benedict’s settlement and the vill of Selby, the wood of Flaxley, the vill of Rawcliffe, half a carucate of land in Brayton, and a fishery called Whitgift.18 After the meeting with William I, Benedict returned to Selby and started to build regular offices around the chapel. He attracted company (‘infra breue tempus conventum sibi fratrum congregavit’); and an attempted theft of the relics by one of a band of thieves, led by Swain son of Sigge, which roamed the surrounding forest, was thwarted by St Germanus. Not long afterwards, on the orders of the king, Benedict was ordained as abbot by Thomas I.19 Thomas was elected archbishop of York in May 1070; and that year, 1070, the date recorded for the foundation in a twelfth-century Easter table from Selby,20 may be taken to mark the effective beginning of Selby as a formal abbey. Benedict apparently then embarked on a conscious policy of land acquisition: totis viribus ad questus et ad profectus domus sue semper attentus, ubicunque terras vel possessiones adquirere, vel prece vel pretio se posse sperabat, illuc se totis viribus et studiis inclinavit, et contulit.21 (always striving with all his strength to collect alms for, and to advance, his house, wherever he hoped to acquire lands or possessions by prayer or by price he lent his whole strength and effort, and thereby brought them in.) 17 Hist. Selb., fos. 14r–15v (pp. 14–15). 18 Ibid., fo. 15v (p. 15); see also William’s charter, BL, MS Add. 37771, fo. 11r, printed in Selby Coucher, I, no. 1, which includes also one carucate of land in Snaith. For later royal confirmations of the fishery, the boundaries of which were evidently in dispute, see BL MS Add. 37771, fo. 12v; EYC, I, nos. 477, 486; Selby Coucher, I, nos. 9–10; RRAN, I, no. 178, where the charter is dismissed as spurious. William’s endowment was a substantial one for a single hermit. 19 Hist. Selb., fos. 15v–17r (pp. 16–17). 20 BL MS Add. 36652, fo. 5r. 21 Hist. Selb., fo. 17r (p. 17).

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Page 28 He succeeded in obtaining new estates for his monastery. From Archbishop Thomas I he received the vills of Little Selby, Hillam, and Monk Fryston;22 Geoffrey de la Wirche granted, or rather sold, the vill of Crowle on the Isle of Axholme, and another leading Norman, Guy de Rannelcurt, granted the Northamptonshire vill of Stanford on Avon.23 Benedict prudently journeyed to London to obtain a charter from the king which confirmed his grant and those of others, and added that the church of Selby was to enjoy the same privileges of soc and sac, toll and team, and infangentheof, and the same protection, as the church of York. His charter was witnessed, among others, by Edward of Salisbury. Little more is recorded in the Historia of Benedict’s abbacy, but by the mid 1090s the abbey was evidently in a secure financial position. Benedict had continued to expand its fortunes. When, by means of the relics of St Germanus, he healed the son of Erneis de Burun, who had succeeded Hugh Fitz Baldric as sheriff of Yorkshire, the relieved father donated one hundred marks.24 Ilbert I de Lacy, holder of the honour of Pontefract, granted the manor of Hambleton.25 However, the abbey was then demoralized by scandal. The monks had amassed in the treasury nearly £800 of silver, and this proved to be too much of a temptation for two monks, who stole this money and fled from the abbey. Benedict had them followed to Northampton, and then arrested and castrated. The Selby monks were enraged at the abbot’s savage treatment of their colleagues, and the scandal reached the ears of William II. He ordered Stephen, abbot of St Mary’s Abbey, York, who was at court at that time, to arrest Benedict; Stephen was reluctant to do so and indeed allowed Benedict to avoid arrest, but the hostility of the monks forced Benedict’s resignation. He ended his days as a hermit, according to tradition, at Rochester, having ruled the house which he had founded for twenty-seven years, from 1069 to 1096/7.26 The account of the origins of Selby combines the miraculous with what purports to be historical narrative. But how useful is this as an account of the foundation of Selby? This is the only historical source to link Selby with Auxerre. There was no formal bond between them, and 22 For the grants of Thomas I, see BL MS Add. 37771, fos. 93r-v; EEA, v, nos. 4–5, EYC, I, nos. 41–2; Selby Coucher, I, nos. 488, 490. 23 For the charter of Geoffrey de la Wirche and a confirmation by Nigel d’Aubigny, see BL MS Add. 37771, fo. 206r; Selby Coucher, II, nos. 1196–7; Mowbray Charters, no. 1; for that of Guy de Rannelcurt, BL MS Add. 37771, fo. 199r; Selby Coucher, II, no. 1154. Both grants are mentioned in Hist. Selb. (fo. 17r; p. 17), and were held by the abbot of Selby in 1086 (DB, I, fos. 226v, 369v). 24 Hist. Selb., fos. 16v–17r (p. 17). 25 Confirmed by Robert de Lacy, Ilbert’s son, in the period c. 1094 x 1114, and by other members of the family: BL MS Add. 37771, fo. 90v; Selby Coucher, I, nos. 474–6; EYC, III, no. 1484; see also nos. 1414, 1423, 1491, 1506. 26 For this episode see Hist. Selb., fos. 18v–20v (pp. 19–21); also HRH, p. 69.

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Page 29 no indication that Auxerre ever attempted to assert any constitutional claim. However, both the devotion to Germanus attested in the Historia and the dedication of Selby suggest that the identification of Selby’s founder as a monk of Auxerre is authentic, and was accepted as such both at Selby and at Auxerre. Moreover, the description of the foundation of Selby accords with other accounts of the north around 1069: with the political and social conditions following the devastation of the countryside by the Norman army, the existence of Anglo-Saxon outlaws in the forests, the identity of the sheriffs. And there was clearly preserved at Selby the tradition of the man who befriended and aided Benedict at Salisbury and who gave the artefacts still to be seen there, that same Edward who witnessed William I’s charter for Selby. However, the narrative of the Historia still leaves many questions unanswered. What kind of man was Benedict? And why should he have left Auxerre to seek out a place in Yorkshire which, as the author states, was unknown to him? One point is clear: Benedict did not undertake his journey north at the invitation of any lay person, king or noble, or any churchman. This was a time when French monks were colonizing new abbeys founded by the conquerors, William I’s own monastery at Battle being the most celebrated, but there is no suggestion that Benedict’s journey was undertaken on any but his own initiative. The sequence of events described by the Historia suggests that we may see in his flight from Auxerre the ambition of a Benedictine monk to become a hermit: in the words of the Rule of St Benedict to enter ‘the solitary combat of the desert’.27 This is reinforced by the analogy that is drawn between Benedict and Abraham, for the leaving of one’s native land was a tradition in eremitical monasticism. But why Selby? On this we can only speculate. When Benedict left Auxerre, which was on the route taken by English pilgrims to Rome,28 he evidently went first to Salisbury, or somewhere where he was able to meet and receive help from the sheriff of Wiltshire. He may have learned that the north was a place where the monastic life was moribund—a point made by the Historia and one which would surely have appealed to a hermit. Journeying to the north by sea and into Yorkshire by river, Benedict could have come upon Selby entirely by accident. As Professor Dobson has pointed out, the isolation of Benedict’s settlement was relative.29 Selby was an existing vill; ufer Seleby eal occurs in an eleventh-century survey of the estates of the archbishops of York.30 Moreover it is 27 Rule of St Benedict, chapter 1. 28 A point made by Dobson, ‘Les origines’, 161. 29 ‘The first Norman abbey’, 171. 30 W. H. Stevenson, ‘Yorkshire surveys and other eleventh-century documents in the York Gospels’, EHR, 27 (1912), 1– 25 (p. 15).

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Page 30 clear that Benedict’s settlement was visible from the river Ouse. Nevertheless, total isolation may not have been Benedict’s aim. A hermit would always benefit from proximity to those who could give alms and offerings, and the situation at Selby, in an area of political and economic turmoil, in woods frequented by robber bands, would presumably have been uncomfortable enough for any ascetic. We may accordingly suggest that when Benedict left Auxerre and journeyed to England he was seeking his own desert, desiring to live as a hermit. But the end product of his venture was not the hermitage where he settled in 1069, but the abbey whose formal beginnings were marked by his benediction as abbot the following year, an abbey whose political and financial fortunes Benedict was to pursue energetically. What changed Benedict the hermit into Benedict the abbot? Undoubtedly the answer is royal patronage. There have, through the ages, been legends associated with William I’s foundation of Selby. In the thirteenth century Matthew Paris recorded that Selby, like Battle Abbey, was established by William in expiation for having killed Conan, a near relative, fearing that he would supplant him as king of England; and by the sixteenth century Selby had become identified as the birthplace of William’s son, Henry, and the abbey a foundation made in thanksgiving for the event.31 Neither has any contemporary basis, and the motive for William’s fostering of Selby was clearly political. When Benedict, a French monk, was brought to William by Hugh Fitz Baldric, the rebellions of the northerners and the recent harrying of the lands between the Ouse and the Tees must have been much in William’s mind. Benedict’s request to settle on royal demesne may have suggested to William the political opportunities to be gained by the creation of a religious house in the area, dependent on royal favour and loyal to the king. Selby would become the Battle Abbey of the north, a symbol of Norman might and political ascendancy. Accordingly, royal permission was given for the settlement, and further encouragement in the form of substantial lands and privileges. The close link which, it is suggested, had been envisaged between the king and the abbey was not maintained; it is possible that the foundation of St Mary’s, York, in 1086 provided the Norman kings with an even more appropriate candidate for a royal abbey. However, it is clear that royal interest in Selby did not wane entirely, and in 1093, just a few years 31 Matthaei Parisiensis Historia Anglorum, ed. F. Madden, 3 vols. (RS, 1866–9), I, 30, 34n; William Camden, Britannia, or a chorographical description of the flourishing kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the islands adjacent, from the earliest antiquity, by William Camden, translated from the edition published by the author in MDCVII, enlarged by the latest discoveries, by William Gough, 3 vols. (1789), III, 12. In a second description of Selby (p.67), it is stated that William I founded the abbey in 1069, and that it was on a visit to confirm the abbey’s privileges the following year that Queen Matilda, who had accompanied the king, gave birth to Henry.

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Page 31 before Abbot Benedict’s fall from grace, William II granted the abbey to the archbishop of York to hold ‘sicut archiepiscopus Cantuariensis habet episcopatum Rofensem’ (‘as the archbishop of Canterbury holds the church of Rochester’).32 The meaning is not entirely clear, nor is the analogy, but the intention may have been to transfer Selby to the patronage of the archbishops of York.33 Hugh the Chanter stated that the grant was intended to bribe the archbishop into relinquishing his claims to jurisdiction over the diocese of Lincoln.34 It is an obscure episode in Selby’s history, but well illustrates the power which the Norman king wielded over what was regarded as a royal foundation. Benedict of Auxerre remains an enigmatic figure. Hermit he may have been, but when assigned the role of abbot of a well-endowed abbey of Black Monks he was able to enter into it with gusto, actively promoting the cause of his house. He had, indeed, had experience of the workings of a large house in his home monastery of Auxerre. There may well have been a confusion between his aims and achievements, and an analogy will appear later in the case of the founders of Jarrow and Whitby. The pioneers of the ‘northern revival’ had not at first intended to found abbeys, but hermitages. It was political, economic, and social conditions which determined the way in which their ventures turned out. If one were to search for a continental analogy to Benedict of Auxerre, the parallel of Bernard of Tiron (c. 1060–1117) might well provide a suitable one. Bernard was a monk who at times withdrew from organized monastic life to be a hermit, at times acted as abbot of a Benedictine house. He twice retired from that post, and then founded a hermitage at Tiron, which grew into an abbey and eventually into a monastic order. Like Bernard, Benedict may have been a man seeking to embrace in his practice of the monastic life ‘religious endeavours and experience which though they could be found separately were not at that time catered for in combination in existing institutions’.35 In the case of Benedict of Auxerre the monk turned hermit became abbot, perhaps seeing in the creation of Selby less the fostering of royal power than the blossoming of the monastic desert. The combination of the eremitical aspirations of a monk and the ambitions of a lay man to patronize monastic movements which led to 32 The Registrum Antiquissimum of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln, ed. C. W. Foster and K. Major, 10 vols., Lincoln Record Society (1931–73), 1, 11–13; EYC, I, no. 126; Archbishop Thomas II issued a confirmation to the abbey ‘quia ecclesia de Seleby Eboracensis ecclesie potestati ita subdita est’ (‘because the church of Selby in this way is subjected to the authority of the church of York’) (BL MS Add. 37771, fos. 93v–94r; EYC, I, no. 43; EEA, v, no. 20; Selby Coucher, I, no. 492). RRAN, I, no. 341, questions the authenticity. 33 On later intervention by the archbishops of York in the affairs of Selby see below, pp. 158–63. 34 Hugh the Chanter, History of the Church of York, p. 15; Dobson, ‘First Norman abbey’, 174; EEA, I, xxxii–xxxiii. 35 R. B. Brooke, The Coming of the Friars (London, 1975), p. 56.

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Page 32 the foundation of Selby and thus the reintroduction of monastic life to the north has its parallels in the establishment of Whitby Abbey, the early history of which is inextricably linked with that of St Mary’s, York. Each of the three sources for Whitby’s history, described earlier, constructs its own version of the foundation. Just as Symeon of Durham was concerned with the background to the emergence of Durham, so the Memorial concentrated its attention on Reinfrid, the man who revived monastic life at Whitby. But it also told of the lay patrons of Whitby, and particularly the Norman baron, William de Percy, who is credited with the foundation. Stephen was concerned to tell of the origins of the great abbey at York. From these three we can construct the following historical narrative, and it is with Symeon that we must begin.36 Around 1074 Aldwin, prior of Winchcombe, a well-read man who was thoroughly conversant with the Ecclesiastical History of the Venerable Bede and its description of monastic life in seventh- and eighth-century Northumbria, and who realized that these monasteries now lay in ruins, conceived a plan to visit the sites. His aim was clearly stated: he was a man ‘qui voluntariam paupertatem et mundo contemptum cunctis seculi honoribus et divitiis praetulerat’ (‘who held voluntary poverty and disdain for the world above all temporal honours and riches’), and his intention was to live in the lost centres of Northumbrian monasticism in poverty, ‘ibique ad imitationem illorum pauperam vitam ducere’ (‘and there to live a life of poverty in imitation of those men’). On his journey he stopped at Evesham, and there communicated his intention and evidently his enthusiasm to two others, a priest named Aelfwig and an illiterate monk (ignarus litterarum) called Reinfrid. The Memorial adds a detail that was probably unknown to Symeon but preserved at Whitby, namely that Reinfrid had been a soldier in the army of the Conqueror that had harried the north of England, and that it was this experience which had influenced his return to the north.37 The two joined Aldwin and began their journey. They stopped at York, where they asked safe passage of Hugh Fitz Baldric, sheriff of Yorkshire,38 and then made their way to Newcastle. Their stay there was brief, and they were granted by Bishop Walcher of Durham the site of Bede’s own monastery at Jarrow. The buildings were in ruins, but the three erected a small shelter (casula) and remained there, sustained by the alms of well-wishers. As with Benedict at Selby there is no indication that their aim was to establish a full Benedictine community at Jarrow. They, too, seem to have been more interested in living as hermits. Indeed, when they began to attract 36 For this account see Symeon, Historia Dunelmensis, in Opera, I, 108–13. See also the shorter treatment in his Historia regum, ibid., II, 201–2. 37 Cart. Whitby, I, 1. 38 This detail derives from Symeon, Historia regum, in Opera, II, 201.

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Page 33 attention and gather new recruits, many of these were from the south of England. Aldwin moved on to Melrose, a site associated with St Cuthbert, where he rejoiced in the solitude (secreta illius loci habitacione). Reinfrid moved on, too, evidently to seek the solitude that eluded him at Jarrow and at a date which is not given but which must have been around 1077 settled at Whitby in the ruins of the Anglo-Saxon abbey. The narrative of events there now passes to the Memorial and to Abbot Stephen. At Whitby, which he had seen on his previous visit to the north, Reinfrid was favourably received by William de Percy, who had gained power with a grant of the confiscated estates of Earl Edwin, who had fallen in 1071. In an early example of subinfeudation William also held land in Yorkshire as a tenant of the earl of Chester.39 William granted Reinfrid the site of the ruined abbey where ‘monasteria vel oratoria paene quadraginta; tantum parietes et altaria vacua et discooperta remanserant propter destructionem exercitus piratarum’ (‘there were almost forty monasteries or oratories, but the walls and the altars had remained empty and roofless on account of the destruction of pirate bands’), and two carucates of land in ‘Prestebi’. He gathered a number of followers, and they lived a regular life of humility and poverty. The Memorial is, accordingly, very brief in its treatment of Reinfrid, and has little to say of his aims, but the narrative ascribed to Abbot Stephen stresses his desire for the hermit life. Reinfrid, he states, went to Whitby ‘solitariam vitam ducendi gratia’ (‘for the sake of leading the solitary life’), and he himself when he arrived at Whitby found ‘fratres tunc temporis heremiticam vitam ducentes’ (‘brethren living the eremitical life’, or ‘living as hermits’).40 It can be suggested, therefore, that Reinfrid’s aim was to live as a hermit, and that he was prepared, so long as he was not overwhelmed by them, to be at the centre of a group of like-minded men. Stephen may have dwelt on Reinfrid’s eremitical desires to explain why—as his narrative claims—he was elected abbot within a short time of his arrival, which was probably in 1078. This was done at the command of the king and with the assent of both archbishops.41 It is at this stage that the two accounts diverge.42 Following its descrip39 For this account see Cart. Whitby, I, 1–2. On William see Paul Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship: Yorkshire, 1066–1154 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 34–9. 40 London, BL MS Add. 38816, fo. 30r-v. For Atkinson the attribution to Reinfrid of the desire to live as a hermit was one of the points which suggested that the Narratio of Stephen was a fabrication, but as Derek Baker (‘The desert in the north’, Northern History, 5 (1970), 1–11 (p. 6)) points out, to live an eremitical life was precisely the aim of the leaders of the northern revival. 41 London, BL MS Add. 38816, fo. 30V; on Stephen at Whitby see HRH, p. 77. 42 On the relationship between the sources see Janet Burton, ‘The monastic revival in Yorkshire: Whitby and St Mary’s, York’, in Rollason, Harvey, and Prestwich, Anglo-Norman Durham, pp. 41–51.

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Page 34 tion of William de Percy’s reception of the monks, the Memorial notes that after a few years, while out on the business of the community, Reinfrid was killed in an accident at ‘Ormesbricge’ on the river Derwent. He was buried at Hackness, in the churchyard of St Peter’s, ‘in the middle of the east wall against the altar’. Reinfrid was succeeded by William de Percy’s brother, Serlo, and on his death another Percy was elected to rule the house, their nephew William, who became first abbot of Whitby; the founder, William de Percy, went on crusade to the Holy Land where he died.43 The Memorial does not seek to explain why Reinfrid should have been buried at Hackness rather than Whitby, but later speaks of ‘ecclesiam Sancti Petri ubi monachi nostri deo servierunt, obierunt, et sepulti sunt’ (‘the church of St Peter [Hackness] where our monks served God, died and were buried’).44 The most likely reason is supplied by the Dodsworth fragment: exorta est… magna tribulatio… et persecutio… Veniebant namque latrones et raptores die nocteque de nemoribus et de latibulis in quibus latitabant, et deripiebant omnem substantiam eorum et depopulabant eum sacrum locum. Ita similiter et piratae veniebant et devastabant illum locum… Qua de causa Serlo prior et monachi de Whiteby ostenderunt Willihelmo de Percy calamitatem suam et miseriam et petierunt eum ut daret eis locum manendi apud Hackenas. Dedit eis ecclesiam sancte Marie de Hackenas ut ibi construerent monasterium.45 (a great tribulation and persecution arose… Thieves and robbers came by day and night out of the woods and secret places in which they lurked, and snatched all our property and drove people away from the holy place. In the same way pirates came and laid waste that place. For this reason Prior Serlo and the monks of Whitby explained their devastation and distress to William de Percy and requested him to give them a place to stay at Hackness. He granted them the church of St Mary of Hackness so that there they might build a monastery.) As stated earlier this brief narrative presents a problem. In origin it was evidently a Whitby source—Reinfrid is called prior noster—but the late date of the surviving witness makes its authenticity difficult to assess. However, that a move to Hackness had taken place to avoid pirate and robber attacks would explain both Reinfrid’s burial there rather than at Whitby and also the reference in the Memorial to what was evidently a community of monks at Hackness. The only problem is the narrative’s assertion that the move took place under Serlo rather than Reinfrid, although it is also stated that pirate attacks had already been a problem during Reinfrid’s time. The move was clearly envisaged as a temporary 43 Cart. Whitby, I, 2. 44 Ibid., I, 3. 45 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 159, fo. 115v (see also MS Dodsworth 9, fo. 130r); Cart. Whitby, I, xxxviii.

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Page 35 one and it was supposed that the monks would return to Whitby when the danger had passed (pace facta). Stephen mentions none of this. Following his own election, so he claims, the founder of the abbey, William de Percy, seeing that the monks had vastly improved the lands which he had given them, attempted to revoke the grant which he had made. This hostility was compounded by pirate raids, and Stephen sought and obtained from the king an alternative location, the inland site of Lastingham. The monks did not transfer there immediately, but preparations were made to do so: the buildings of the monastery which had once occupied the site were restored. However William de Percy’s hostility did not diminish, a further appeal was made to the king, and Stephen and his monks removed to Lastingham. But this, too, was destined to be a temporary site, and Stephen accepted from Count Alan of Richmond the church of St Olave, just outside York, and the community had moved there by 1086. The account of Stephen adds a great deal to the history of Whitby in these first crucial years. But is it authentic or reliable, and can it be reconciled with the witness of the Memorial, which does not even mention the name of Stephen? It is important to stress that in some details both accounts are corroborated by other sources. The temporary residences at Hackness and Lastingham are both attested by the Liber vitae of Durham, whose monks entered into confraternity with both communities, and that at Lastingham has left its mark on the physical remains of the church.46 Serlo de Percy did indeed become prior, and William de Percy abbot.47 Moreover Stephen’s claim to have obtained the church of St Olave from Count Alan receives confirmation from the later charters of St Mary’s. The main inconsistencies are the claim of Stephen to have been elected abbot of Whitby, and the alleged hostility of William de Percy. Some commentators have been suspicious of Stephen’s claim to have been elected abbot, particularly only a short while after his entry into the community.48 If we allow for some telescoping of events, however, this is not so implausible. The history of the northern revival suggests that the quest of the pioneers was to live as hermits. It is not implausible, therefore, that, as Reinfrid watched his community grow as that at Jarrow had grown, he should hand over the daily administration to one more suited than him.49 We know nothing of Stephen’s previous 46 Liber vitae ecclesiae Dunelmensis, ed J. Stevenson, Surtees Soc., 13 (1841), fo. 48r–v. See also the essays by Eric Cambridge (‘Early Romanesque architecture in north-east England: a style and its patrons’) and Malcolm Thurlby (‘The roles of the patron and the master mason in the first design of the Romanesque Cathedral of Durham’), in Rollason, Harvey, and Prestwich, Anglo-Norman Durham, pp. 141–60 and 161–84. 47 HRH, pp. 77–8. 48 See, for example, Cart. Whitby, I, lii. 49 Baker, ‘Desert in the north’, 6.

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Page 36 career, but he may well have been a man of status and appears to have been known to the king. In his brief allusion to Stephen as abbot of York, Symeon of Durham refers to him as an energetic, or efficient, ruler.50 Such a man was a likely choice for abbot. And what of the alleged antagonism of William de Percy? That Symeon does not mention it need not surprise us: Whitby was not central to his concerns, and his account must have suffered from a lack of intimate knowledge of Whitby affairs. The Memorial, compiled a century or so after the foundation, which aimed primarily to record the endowments of the house, may well have suppressed any mention of Stephen or antagonism of William de Percy for fear of offending a contemporary Percy patron. The reliability of Stephen on this point receives some backing from the Dodsworth fragment. Having described the move to Hackness, the author relates how a dispute arose between William de Percy and his brother, Serlo, prior of the house, when William wished to grant to Ralph de Everley some of the endowments of Whitby. Although the Dodsworth fragment signals a different cause for the dispute with William de Percy and a different protagonist—Serlo rather than Stephen—it lends credence to Stephen’s claim concerning both pirate attacks and the vindictiveness of William de Percy. To the possible cause of this we shall return. If we accept the authenticity of Stephen’s account then we may summarize events as follows: around 1077 Reinfrid arrived at Whitby, established a hermitage under the protection of William de Percy in the ruins of the abbey, and became the centre of an eremitical band. Some time later Stephen joined the community and was elected abbot. As a result of hostility from William de Percy part of the community under Stephen moved to Lastingham, while other monks, under Reinfrid, remained at Whitby until pirate attacks forced them to move to Hackness. During the time at Hackness Reinfrid was killed, and succeeded by Serlo de Percy who subsequently led the monks back to Whitby. Stephen and his convent remained at Lastingham until they moved to the church of St Olave (by 1086) and finally to the adjacent site, St Mary’s, in 1088. The site was provided by King William II, who assumed the patronage of the abbey. It is significant that neither Stephen nor the Memorial mentions that there was a schism in the community; Stephen does not tell us that when he moved to Lastingham a group of monks remained at Whitby; and the Memorial does not mention Lastingham. But that there was indeed a split is suggested by the subsequent history of both Whitby and St Mary’s. The 50 Symeon, Opera, I, 111.

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Page 37 differences between Reinfrid and Stephen, the hermit and the abbot, and their way of life, the eremitical and cenobitical, were undoubtedly what led to the parting of the ways. While Stephen, already at odds with William de Percy, saw the advantage of placing himself and his monks under royal protection, Reinfrid continued to be drawn to the eremitical life. There were two important results of the break-up of the community, one of which is demonstrated by Domesday Book. In ‘Prestebi’ and Sowerby it records that there were two carucates of land held by the abbot of York as a tenant of William de Percy.51 ‘Prestebi’ is the name given by the Memorial to the site of the abbey, and that same amount of land, two carucates, is said to have comprised the initial endowment made by William de Percy. This is more likely to have represented a grant made at the formal foundation under Abbot Stephen than at the first settlement of one hermit, Reinfrid.52 In 1086 the abbot of York was, accordingly, holding the initial endowment of Whitby. Six carucates of land in Hackness, Suffield, and Everley, were part of the ‘land of St Hilda’, and the lack of mention of a monastery at Whitby suggests that, in 1086, the community was resident at Hackness.53 The testimony of Domesday Book is that the abbey newly established at York claimed the initial endowment of Whitby and, by implication, saw itself as the legitimate successor of the community established by William de Percy. That there was perceived to be an essential continuity is reinforced by a sentence in Symeon: Reinfrid, he stated, went first to Whitby in which place he received such persons as came to him, and began to build a habitation for monks; who, after his [Reinfrid’s] death migrating to York, built a monastery in honour of St Mary ever Virgin, which at this time is under the efficient administration of Abbot Stephen.54 Although Symeon appears to have been confused about the chronology, his testimony corroborates Stephen’s evidence that the abbey of York could be seen as the successor of the Whitby community, and presumably it was on these grounds that it claimed its endowment. And here may be the key to the antagonism between Stephen and William de Percy. Is there, however, any evidence that Abbot Stephen sought a constitutional relationship with Reinfrid’s community at Whitby/Hackness? This is less clear, but it is significant that it was not until 1109 that there was an abbot of Whitby. The chronology of events at Hackness is 51 DB, I, fo. 305a. 52 A. Hamilton Thompson, ‘The monastic settlement at Hackness and its relation to the abbey of Whitby’, YAJ, 27 (1924), 388–405 (p. 395). 53 DB, I, fo. 323a. 54 Symeon, Opera, I, 111.

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Page 38 confused, and we do not know for certain when Reinfrid died and was succeeded by Serlo, or indeed when the community returned to Whitby. It may have been to mark this return or his departure on crusade in 1096 that William de Percy issued a charter confirming the monks in their considerable possessions: the churches of Hackness, the vill and port of Whitby, the vills of Newholm and Stainsacre, Northfield, Suffield, Everley, Broxa, and Thirley Cotes (in the parishes of Whitby and Hackness), and the tithes of Upleatham, Wilton, Seamer, and, from his Lincolnshire estates, those of Kirmond le Mire, Ludford, Covenham, Immingham, and Somerby.55 It was not until around 1109 when Serlo resigned to be succeeded by his nephew, William de Percy, that the abbey claimed that status. The Memorial is quite clear on this point: Post obitum vero Deo dilecti Reinfridi Prioris, Serlo frater Willielmi de Perci officium ejus suscepit, et in eo permansit donec dominus Willielmus, nepos eorum, Abbas de Witebi effectus est.56 (After the death of Prior Reinfrid, beloved of God, Serlo, brother of William de Percy, took up that office, and remained in it until Lord William, their nephew, was made abbot of Whitby.) This change in status cannot be linked to events at the York abbey, for Stephen remained in office until c. 1112, but it is clear that by 1109 the community of Whitby and its patron, Alan de Percy, felt confident enough to make a gesture, the election of an abbot, which would free it in the eyes of the world from any dependency, real or imagined, on the York abbey. Moreover, a charter issued by Alan de Percy makes it clear that the monastery at Whitby had succeeded in clawing back at least one of those estates, Sowerby, which in 1086 was held by Abbot Stephen.57 1109 appears to mark the effective beginning of the existence of Whitby as an independent Benedictine abbey, and it is from that date that there is evidence of building activity on the site. The sources accordingly suggest that, in contrast to Selby whose fortunes were made by early royal intervention, the first thirty or forty years of Whitby’s existence were precarious indeed. To some extent this may be explained by the continued eremitical aspirations of Reinfrid, whose insistence on remaining at Whitby instead of joining Stephen at Lastingham contributed towards the schism. In his initial aims Reinfrid has much in common with Benedict of Selby, although Benedict more readily abandoned the role of hermit for that of abbot. But the early 55 Cart. Whitby, I, 3 and no. 27; EYC, XI, no. 1. For confirmation by William II to St Peter and St Hilda, Whitby, and to Prior Serlo, of various lands and liberties granted by William de Percy, see RRAN, I, no. 421; Cart. Whitby, II, no. 579. 56 Cart. Whitby, I, 2. 57 EYC, II, no. 857.

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Page 39 history of Whitby shows another dimension to eremitical aspirations in the way that Reinfrid, as did Aldwin and Aelfwig, combined with them a devotion to the Anglo-Saxon past. This determined the movement of the initial enterprise, both to Jarrow and then to Whitby, but the importance of Anglo-Saxon sites persisted. Stephen in his narrative remarked on the former glory of Lastingham—alluding to the monastery of St Cedd;58 and the Dodsworth fragment remarks that when Whitby proved dangerous and William de Percy chose the alternative site of Hackness, he did so because of its Anglo-Saxon associations.59 Benedict was a hermit in the tradition of the peregrinus, one who left his home to settle far away. The northern pioneers also left their homes, but their destinations were marked out by their devotion to the Anglo-Saxon past at a time of political conquest and repression of a native population. As at Selby, what was crucial in the development of Whitby and St Mary’s was the intervention of a lay patron. At Selby, as we have seen, it was William I who fostered the fortunes of Benedict. At Whitby it was William de Percy, and the Memorial lays stress on his part in providing an endowment for the monks. Of his generosity there can be no doubt, as the charters entered into the cartulary attest. When Abbot Stephen moved to Lastingham around 1086 that transfer had important implications, for it removed the monastery from Percy lands and from Percy patronage. The abbey could be seen to be no longer a baronial but a royal foundation. To Stephen this could only be an advantage. To William de Percy it presumably lost him the particular and personal spiritual support of a monastic community he had nurtured, but his feelings must have been compounded when Stephen took with him the endowments of the house. In order to explain the deterioration in relations with his patron, Stephen claimed that William de Percy was envious of the improvements made to the estates, and indeed improvements had been made.60 Another interpretation is that William was trying to recover the lands for the rump of the community which had remained with the man whom he had first sponsored, the hermit Reinfrid. The pattern of the monastic expansion was thus determined both by the aims and aspirations of the hermit-monk founders and of those lay persons who sponsored them. For fifteen years or so after the arrival of Benedict at Selby and the reintroduction of formal monastic life to the north, the eremitical element remained dominant. However, with the 58 London, BL MS Add. 38816, fo. 31r; see also fo. 30r, where he alludes to the past glory of Whitby; Bede, HE, book 3, chapters 23 and 28. 59 On the Anglo-Saxon associations of Hackness, see Bede, HE, book 4, chapter 23. 60 Thompson, ‘Monastic settlement’, 395: in 1086 out of the 28 carucates and 6 bovates in the soke of Whitby only 6 carucates in ‘Prestebi’ and Sowerby were under cultivation.

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Page 40 removal of Stephen to Lastingham c. 1080, and even more with the transfer to York in 1086, the expansion entered a more aggressive, urban phase, one in which the link between monasticism and political power was even clearer. Around 1086 Abbot Stephen took advantage of the offer of Count Alan of Richmond to move to the church of St Olave in Marygate, which had been founded by Earl Siward of Northumbria (d. 1055), together with four acres of land, and a transfer was effected with the consent of the king. To Stephen the opportunity to move from the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors to an urban centre where the monks could attract endowments must have seemed a golden opportunity. Indeed Count Alan is alleged to have pointed this out, ‘asserens etiam cives urbis ad queque agenda nobis spe in auxilium fore’ (‘asserting that the inhabitants of the city would be of assistance to us in fulfilling our hopes’).61 However, the prominent role in the development of the York abbey was to pass from Count Alan to the king. According to Stephen, William I agreed to allow the monks to transfer from the royal demesne at Lastingham to York because wickedness abounded in the city; the king had been forced to shed blood there, and the citizens would benefit from the example of holy men.62 We have a clear reference here to the punishment inflicted on York for its resistance to the Norman regime; moreover, according to Orderic Vitalis the king, on his deathbed, recalled with particular poignancy the savage treatment meted out to the folk of Yorkshire.63 However, overlaying the pious or expiatory motive attributed to William by Stephen was a political one. In removing the monks to York William created, as he had done at Selby, a centre of political influence, a powerful institution loyal to the Norman king. To bolster the territorial base of the abbey William allowed Stephen to retain Lastingham and added lands in Appleton-le-Moors, Normanby, Spaunton, and Uncleby, and in York the churches of St Michael, Spurriergate, and St Saviour.64 Even more significant was the intervention of William II. On a visit to York in 1088 the king provided a more spacious site adjacent to the church of St Olave where a new abbey dedicated to St Mary was raised.65 A formal foundation ceremony took place, William II cutting the first turf66 in the presence of many prelates and nobles, among them Bishops 61 London, BL MS Add. 38816, fo. 32r. 62 Ibid., fo. 32v. 63 See above, p.3 64 Confirmed by William II as the grants of his father: BL MS Harley 236, fo. 2r–v; EYC, I, no. 350. DB (I, fo. 314a) records the abbot of York as the holder of lands in Lastingham, Spaunton, Dalby, and Kirby Misperton. 65 BL MS Add. 38816, fo. 33r: ‘videns quia brevis & angusta nobis ad habitandum esset’. What buildings occupied the site of the abbey before 1088 is a genuine problem. On the possibility that William II did indeed visit York in 1088, see Norton, ‘The buildings of St Mary’s Abbey’, 281. 66 For this interpretation of what took place at the ceremony see ibid., 282.

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Page 41 Odo of Bayeux, Geoffrey of Coutances, and William of St Calais of Durham, and Odo, count of Champagne and William de Warenne.67 Stephen records that the king made grants of land which he did not enumerate (‘terras etiam quas hic inserere non est necessarium’), but independent charter evidence locates these in Grimston and Emswell.68 The settlement of the monks in York had evidently created tension between the abbey and Archbishop Thomas I, who claimed that four acres of land granted to the monks by Count Alan were rightfully his. The dispute was settled when Thomas was compensated by William II with the church of St Stephen, Fishergate.69 Just before his death Count Alan of Richmond surrendered the patronage of the abbey to the king: ‘advocationem abbatie nostre in manus regis tradens ut deinceps defensor et advocatus noster existeret’ (‘handing over the advowson of our abbey into the hands of the king, so that from henceforth he might be our defender and patron’).70 William II, in what was for him an unusual role of monastic sponsor, assumed the responsibility for having founded St Mary’s. Count Alan became ‘post me et patrem meum huius abbatie inceptor et institutor’ (‘after me and my father the originator and founder of this abbey’), and Henry II spoke of William, ‘qui etiam abbatiam illam in loco ubi modo sita est… fundavit’ (‘who founded that abbey in the place in which it is now located’).71 St Mary’s commended itself to the Norman kings because of its urban location in a region of political turmoil, and was clearly regarded by them as a royal foundation. As a result of the king’s need for a loyal outpost in the most troublesome part of his conquered territories, he came to rely heavily on St Mary’s. William II entrusted to Abbot Stephen the task of arresting Abbot Benedict of Selby;72 and it is a measure of Stephen’s stature as a political figure that Archbishop Thomas II (1109–14) when embroiled in the primacy dispute with Canterbury, requested him to use his influence with the king on York’s behalf.73 In return for its support of the Norman regime, St Mary’s acquired considerable privileges, and the close connections with the royal house meant that the abbey attracted endowments from leading northern barons. At some time between 1088 and 1093 William II issued a charter of confirmation for the monks.74 In this, in addition to those grants made by himself and his father which have already been mentioned, William confirmed additional grants by Count 67 London, BL MS Add. 38816, fo. 33r–v. 68 BL MS Harley 236, fo. 2r–v; EYC, I, nos. 350, 354. 69 RRAN, I, no. 338; EEA, v, Appendix 1 (8). 70 BL MS Add. 38816, fo. 33r. 71 BL MS Harley 236, fo. 2r–v; EYC, I, nos. 350, 354. A different version of the charter of William II, with inflated preamble, survives in London, BL MS Add. 38816, fos. 21r–22r. 72 See above, p. 28. 73 Hugh the Chanter, History of the Church of York, pp. 42–3. 74 BL MS Harley 236, fo. 2r–v; EYC, I, no. 350.

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Page 42 Alan of Richmond, ‘burgum in quo ecclesia sita est a Galmou usque Cliftonam et versus aquam’ (‘the borough in which the church is located from Galmou as far as Clifton and towards the water’)—the basis of the abbey’s future dominance in the area called Bootham outside the city, Overton, the churches of Boston (Lincolnshire) with the site of a mill, Gilling (Richmond), and Catterick. The charter also makes clear that within this first five years some of the great names of the north had become benefactors, among them Berengar de Todenai, Hugh Fitz Baldric, Osbern de Arches, Gilbert de Gant, Ilbert I de Lacy. In an effort perhaps to disclaim undue royal influence William conceded that the monks ‘post obitum abbatis ejusdem ecclesie ex eadem congregatione eligatur alius’ (‘after the death of the abbot of the church another shall be elected from the same congregation’); and he further laid the basis of the abbot’s judicial powers by ordering that if the sheriff or his ministers should have any complaint against any of the abbey’s men the complaint was to be heard on a day appointed at the gate of the abbey, and not brought to the shire or hundred court. The abbot enjoyed jurisdiction over the forest on his own lands, and a host of other privileges normally reserved for the king.75 The history of St Mary’s is one of spectacular and sustained success. In its first fifty years, between 1088 and the death of its third abbot, Geoffrey, around 1138, the abbey far outstripped the expansion of either Selby or Whitby. Henry I continued the tradition of royal patronage of St Mary’s by granting it lands between Airmyn and Ousefleet, and in Haldenby.76 The interest of the counts of Richmond was sustained: they granted estates in Skelton, Gate Fulford, Foston, Shipton, Escrick, Acaster Selby, Water Fulford, Thornton-le-Clay, and Flaxton, and their honorial barons followed their lead. The most significant of their endowments was perhaps in Richmond, where an abbey cell was established in the church of St Martin, and Rumburgh (Suffolk), which also came to house an abbey cell.77 The Fossard lords were responsible for the extension of the abbey land holdings into the south of the county, in Doncaster, Marr, and Warmsworth, as well as nearer home in York itself (the church of St Crux), the church of Bainton, and lands in Hutton Cranswick, West Cottingwith, Thornton-le-Clay, and Caythorpe.78 From the Stutevilles came estates in Stillingfleet, Buttercrambe, Coxwold, Harton 75 See the comments by Anne Dawtry, ‘The Benedictine revival in the north: the last bulwark of Anglo-Saxon monasticism?’, in The Church and National Identity, Studies in Church History, 18, ed. S. Mews (Oxford, 1982), pp. 87– 98 (pp. 92–3). Stephen was also granted by Henry I custody of all the king’s forests: RRAN, II, no. 836; EYC, I, no. 351. 76 EYC, I, no. 470. 77 Ibid., iv, nos. 2, 4, and for confirmations of grants by Richmond tenants, nos. 8, 33. 78 Ibid., II, no. 1001.

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Page 43 (Bossall), Hovingham, Hutton le Hole, Kirkby Moorside, and Scrayingham; and from the Brus family the manor of Appleton Wiske, the church of Burton Agnes, and lands in Hornby and Sunderlandwick.79 The grants are too many to enumerate here, but the charter of confirmation issued by Henry II in 1155 indicates that the rapid expansion experienced by St Mary’s did not abate, even in the face of the popularity of the Cistercians, and there was scarcely a noble family which was not involved in some way with the York abbey, scarcely a corner of York-shire that was untouched by its expansion.80 Its holdings came to be dispersed still wider, and to be administered through several cells: as well as Richmond and Rumburgh these were located in St Mary Magdalene (Lincoln) and Sandtoft and Haines (Lincolnshire), which together formed one cell staffed by a single monk. Some time between 1106 and 1112 the Norman lord of Cumbria, Ranulf Meschin, sought monks of St Mary’s to found a dependent priory at Wetheral; and around 1120 his brother, William, holder of the barony of Copeland, established a sister priory at St Bees, on the Cumbrian coast.81 Within the city of York the abbey became a major landowner, with properties in many of its parishes.82 In 1088 there were three monastic houses in Yorkshire. By 1215 there were over sixty, and over the course of the twelfth century recruits and endowments were channelled away from the Benedictines to other, more fashionable, groups and congregations. St Mary’s, in particular, was in 1132 to suffer the loss of a number of senior and capable monks to the Cistercians.83 However, the early years of unchallenged dominance gave Selby, Whitby, and St Mary’s positions of supremacy which they maintained throughout the Middle Ages. From their eremitical origins they rose to be powers in the north. All three enjoyed the same privileges as York Minster; the abbots of all three were mitred, and occasionally summoned to parliament, for which the abbot of St Mary’s kept a house in London. At the Dissolution St Mary’s was the wealthiest house in the county with an assessed annual value of £2,091 clear—not vastly wealthy by southern standards, but by far the richest house in Yorkshire. Selby was less wealthy, at £819 2s 6d (clear), and Whitby reached only £437 2s 9d, but this was sufficient to place it—in Yorkshire terms—in the first league.84 What, in the end, had been the dynamic of the early success of these three houses? Are they to be seen as symbols of Norman domination, or 79 Ibid., IX, nos 1, 4, 6; II, nos 648, 680. 80 Ibid., I, no. 354. 81 R. K. Rose, ‘Cumbrian society and the Anglo-Norman church’, in The Church and National Identity, ed. S. Mews, Studies in Church History, 18 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 119–35 (p. 127). 82 On the administration of the estates of St Mary’s, see below, pp. 248–9, 251–3. 83 See below, pp. 104–7. 84 VE, V, 11, 14, 82–3.

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Page 44 the product of an eremitical impulse? The importance of the hermit life in the origins of both Selby and Whitby cannot be doubted, and Whitby also appears to have developed and retained a number of satellite hermitages.85 In another way the success of all three has to be seen in the wider context of monastic growth in England after the Conquest. The introduction of monastic houses with strong royal, archiepiscopal, and baronial patronage into the north served the same purpose as similar establishments further north at Durham, and on the Welsh borders, at Chester and Shrewsbury. However, as will be argued in a later chapter, Selby, Whitby, and York, while enjoying the kind of cultural contacts which such patronage brought, nevertheless fostered an identity which linked them firmly to the northern past. 85 Janet Burton, ‘The eremitical tradition and the development of post-Conquest religious life in northern England’, in Eternal Values in Mediaeval Life, ed. N. Crossley-Holland, Trivium, 26 (1991), 18–39.

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Page 45 Chapter 2 ALIEN MONKS AND CLUNIAC PRIORIES HOLY TRINITY, YORK, AND THE DEPENDENCIES OF MARMOUTIER The earliest and, with Pontefract, the most significant of those monasteries dependent on continental abbeys was Holy Trinity, the only monastic house in York until the coming of the friars to occupy an intra-mural site.1 Part of the nave of the present parish church of Holy Trinity, Micklegate, belonged to the priory, and the surrounding gardens show traces of the choir and a boundary wall. It has been conjectured that the monastic precinct covered a considerable area: from the (now demolished) priory gatehouse on Micklegate, to Trinity Lane on the north-east, from there via the churchyard of St Mary, Bishophill, Junior, to the city wall on the south-east.2 It would be more accurate to speak of a post-Conquest refoundation rather than the foundation of Holy Trinity: charter evidence suggests that the alien priory was preceded by an Anglo-Saxon church known as Christ Church, and this may itself have occupied the site of the eighth-century monastery of Alma Sophia.3 Domesday Book recorded that Richard, son of Erfast, held three dwellings in York, those of Alchemont, Gospatrick, and Bernulf, and the church of Holy Trinity; and several of Richard’s other estates—in Bustardthorpe, Bilbrough, Moor Monkton, and Knapton (Acomb)—are followed by the name ‘Christ Church’, giving some indication of the extent of the patrimony and the former dedication of the church.4 The 1 D. M. Palliser, ‘The topography of monastic houses in Yorkshire towns’, in Advances in Monastic Archaeology, ed. R. Gilchrist and H. Mytum, British Archaeological Reports, British series, 227 (1993), pp. 3–9 (p. 5). 2 VCH City of York, p. 360. 3 R. K. Morris, ‘Alcuin, York, and the Alma Sophia’, in The Anglo-Saxon Church, ed. L. A. S. Butler and R. K. Morris, Council for British Archaeology Research Report, 60 (1986), pp. 80–9; Palliser, ‘Topography of monastic houses’, p. 5. 4 DB, I, fos. 298a, 327a.

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Page 46 clearest indication of the character of the pre-Conquest church, however, comes from the charter of Ralph Paynel, who brought monks from Marmoutier to revitalize the church in c. 1089. Part of his charter, which survives in a late-twelfthcentury transcript possibly deriving from Marmoutier, reads: habens apud Eboraci civitatem de feudo regis Anglorum quandam ecclesiam in honorem Sancte Trinitatis constructam olim canonicis ac prediorum redditibus atque ornamentis ecclesiasticis decoratam, nunc vero peccatis exigentibus pene ad nichilum redactam.5 (having in the city of York of the fee of the king of the English a certain church built in honour of the Holy Trinity, which was at one time served by canons and adorned with revenues of plunder and with ecclesiastical furnishings, but now almost reduced to nothing through exigent sins.) Although still vague—and the phrase prediorum redditibus is particularly tantalizing—the description is vivid enough to recall a church, wealthy, well endowed, and served by secular canons. Quite when and under what circumstances the collegiate church disappeared cannot be known. It may have been a casualty of the Viking capture of York in 1066 or of the destruction of parts of the city after the rebellions of 1068 and 1069. Its demise was evidently recent enough for the church to have remained on its site, although when the name was changed from Christ Church to Holy Trinity cannot be ascertained.6 The priory which came into existence in the former Christ Church around the year 1089 was a dependency of the great church of Marmoutier, near Tours, the abbey which had sent monks to establish William the Conqueror’s monastery of Battle. Ralph Paynel, a baron of middling rank whose family probably hailed from Les Moutiers-Hubert, Calvados, was quite clear about its previous associations. His foundation charter, issued somewhere between 1090 and 1100, states: cupiens in ea servicium Dei quod deperierat reformare, tradidi eam beato Martino Majoris Monasterii ejusque monachis perpetuo possidendam.7 (wishing to restore there the service of God which had perished, I have given [the church] to the blessed Martin of Marmoutier, and to its monks to possess in perpetuity.) At least one of the ancient estates of Christ Church, Moor Monkton, 5 EYC, VI, no. 1. 6 The Augustinian priory of Kirkham was evidently also known as Christ Church: see Janet Burton, Kirkham Priory from Foundation to Dissolution, Borthwick Paper no. 86 (York, 1995). 7 I can find no support for the statement by Marjorie Chibnall, ‘Monastic foundations’, pp. 46–7, that the founders of Holy Trinity were Fulk Paynel and his son, Ralph; cf EYF, pp. 68–9.

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Page 47 passed to the reconstituted priory. However, the pattern of endowment of Holy Trinity was influenced not by its previous history but by the enfeoffment of Ralph Paynel by William I. By 1086 Paynel had become a substantial landowner in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, and his grants to Holy Trinity comprised the Lincolnshire churches of Irnham, West Rasen, Broughton, and Roxby, and the Yorkshire churches of Thurnscoe, Adel, Newton on Ouse, Moor Monkton, Leeds, Hooton Pagnell, Barton-le-Street, St Helen, Fishergate, York, and a moiety of Crambe, and tithes in Ashby de la Laund, Scawby, and Tealby (Lincolnshire), and Sturton, Arthington, and Fadmoor (Yorkshire). The predominance of spiritualia among Paynel’s initial endowment is striking—the only other asset transferred was a fishery at Drax. Four of the churches, Leeds, Adel, Barton-le-Street, and Hooton Pagnell, were authorized for appropriation at an early date.8 Apart from the desire expressed in his charter to renew the practice of religion at Holy Trinity the motives for Paynel’s refoundation are not recorded. They do not fit neatly into one conventional pattern of those who granted lands to continental abbeys, that is, the desire to share the fortunes of foreign conquest and settlement with a religious house on the patrimony, and to add English estates as ‘mere adjuncts to continental possessions’.9 The family of Paynel does not seem to have had a ‘family monastery’ in Normandy to which to grant English possessions, as the family of Montgomery did to Séez, or the Beaumonts to Preaux. It is noteworthy, however, that the foundation of Holy Trinity— just about twenty years after the subjugation of the north by the harrying of 1069—marks the first attempt on lay initiative to found a religious house. It therefore stands in stark contrast to the ventures described in the previous chapter, where secular initiative, though highly important, was secondary, in terms of chronology, to monastic. Ralph Paynel may have come into possession of the dispersed estates of his Anglo-Saxon predecessor, Merleswein, shortly after 1067, but his priorities seem to have been the restructuring of his fees in the west country; his Yorkshire estates were the last to claim his attention;10 the foundation of Holy Trinity may have been a part of his strategy of reorganization in the north. More specifically Ralph may have been influenced by the foundation of St Mary’s, York, and by the interest shown by William II in York’s religious foundations. Ralph held the position of sheriff of York at the beginning of the reign of 8 EYC, VI, no. 11 , EEA, V, no. 29, an authorization, by Th., archbishop of York, to appropriate and establish a vicarage. This may be Thomas II (1109–14) or Thurstan (1114–40). See also C. T. Clay, ‘A Worcester charter of Thomas II, archbishop of York, and its bearing on the early history of the church of Leeds’, YAJ, 36 (1947), 132–6. 9 Thompson, ‘The laity, the alien priories’, p. 22. 10 Paul Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship: Yorkshire, 1066–1154 (Cambridge, 1994), p. 69.

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Page 48 William II;11 he was evidently a benefactor of St Mary’s, granting land in Huggate, and witnessed William II’s charter for St Leonard’s, to which he himself made a grant.12 His local standing would have brought him into the orbit of those most closely involved with the nascent monastic movement. If indeed Ralph was influenced by William’s interest in St Mary’s—and, although not named by Abbot Stephen as one of those who attended the impressive foundation ceremony in 1088, the sheriff was surely likely to have been present—then this could explain why Ralph went to Marmoutier, the abbey which had supplied monks for the royal foundation at Battle, and would support the traditional date for the foundation of Holy Trinity as c. 1089.13 Little can be known of the early years of Holy Trinity. The name of the prior who brought the first monks from Marmoutier is not recorded: it may have been Prior Seward, who died before 1113, when he appears on a mortuary list, or Prior Hicmarus, who attested a charter of date between 1109 and 1114, founding a cell of Holy Trinity at Allerton Mauleverer.14 This charter provides a useful example of how the process of monastic foundation could be protracted, and of the difficulties of assigning a date to foundations. It records the grant ‘to God and the church of Holy Trinity, York, and the monks of St Martin, Marmoutier, serving God there’ by Richard Mauleverer, of his chapel of Allerton Mauleverer and one carucate of land. The grant was made at Marmoutier on the grantor’s return from St James—a reference to a pilgrimage to Compostella—in the presence of Abbot Hulgod, and placed ‘super altare Beati Martini’. Since Abbot Hulgod died in 1105, the donation must have been made at least four years before the issue of the charter.15 At a later date, ‘positisque monachis in Alvertonia ex precepto abbatis Majoris Monasterii’ (‘monks having been placed at Allerton on the command of the abbot of Marmoutier’), Richard increased his endowment to include seven and a half carucates of land in Grafton and the millpond of Allerton, his grants being confirmed by Archbishop Thomas II (1109– 14). He also granted tithes and ecclesiastical dues from his lands in other parishes, and arranged for the priests to be compensated for their losses. By this time the chapel of Allerton had been raised to the status of a mother church; like 11 Green, English Sheriffs, p. 89; the only recorded occurrence of Ralph as sheriff is in Symeon of Durham, De injusta vexatione Willelmi I (Opera I, 172), where he is stated to have refused Bishop William of Durham safe conduct to visit the king in 1088. 12 BL MS Harleian 236, fo. 6v (EYC, I, no. 354 (p. 273)); ibid., I, nos. 166, 186, from BL MS Cotton MS Nero D IV (cartulary of St Leonard’s) fos. 5r, 35v. 13 Paynel contact with Marmoutier continued, for Ralph’s son Fulk was the founder of a dependency at Tickford, Buckinghamshire, c. 1100: MRH, pp. 57, 78. 14 Rouleaux des morts du IX au XV siècle, ed. L. V. Delisle, Société de l’Histoire de France (Paris, 1866), p. 194; EYC, II, no. 729; HRH, p. 113. 15 On him see Orderic, Ecclesiastical History, II, 193.

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Page 49 Marmoutier it was dedicated to St Martin.16 A confirmation charter of Henry II issued at Tours between 1180 and 1189 indicates that the possessions of Allerton had been extended to include meadow land in Dunsforth; there is no mention of Holy Trinity, and it is possible that by that date Allerton Mauleverer had severed its connections with the York priory and become directly dependent on Marmoutier.17 In 1132 the unnamed prior of Holy Trinity came to the support of the abbot of St Mary’s in his stand against the reformers, and was present at the chapter in October which witnessed the secession to Fountains Abbey. During the reign of Henry I the monks obtained three royal confirmation charters, and a later one from King Stephen, who in addition released the monks from the payment of the tax of husgable on their tenements in York. Stephen also granted them ‘capellam illam quam Rogerus presbiter fundavit ad crucem lapideam extra portam occidentalem civitatis’ (‘that chapel which Roger the priest established at the stone cross outside the western gate of the city’), which later became known as St Thomas’s hospital.18 The Paynel family continued to show an interest in the priory; Ralph’s sons Jordan and Alexander gave and confirmed the vill of Coneysthorpe.19 Moreover, at a date before 1143 a member of the Paynel family, Elias, became prior, for in that year the Historia of Selby records his election to the abbacy.20 Following his removal from office at Selby (1152) he returned to Holy Trinity which was by then under the rule of Prior Gilbert; Gilbert himself appears to have been replaced by 1154 by Prior Philip, who ruled for a considerable period, his last occurrence being in 1176.21 So few charters survive for Holy Trinity that it is not easy to estimate the rate of growth of its estates. However, a convenient guide is the bull of Alexander III, which can be dated to between 1166 and 1179.22 By the time of issue Holy Trinity had come into possession of its second cell (cellula) at Headley, in the parish of Bramham;23 the founder is not recorded but may have been a member of the Fossard family, holders of Bramham and donors of land there to Nostell Priory. The cell was in existence by 1170, the terminal date of a charter witnessed by William, monk of Headley.24 It attracted benefactions from Apolitus de Bramham, 16 EEA, V, app. I (19). 17 EYC, II, no. 730, from Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 8, fo. 137 (original charter). 18 EYC, VI, no. 4 (Henry I); RRAN, III, nos. 985–8; EYC, I, nos. 346–8. The chapel of St James, which lay outside Micklegate Bar, and to which Stephen granted the land on which the gallows used to stand, may have been included in Ralph Paynel’s original endowment. 19 EYC, VI, nos. 4, 86. 20 Hist. Selb., fo. 30r (p. 33); see below, pp. 159–60. 21 EYC, I, no. 450; Cart. Fount., 1, 206–7; HRH, p. 113. 22 EYC, VI, no. 12. 23 Now represented by Headley Hall: EPNS WR, IV, 83. 24 EYC, III, no. 1655 .

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Page 50 donor of land in Middleton (Ilkley), and Adam son of Peter de Birkin, who granted land in Smeathalls.25 The papal bull also confirmed Holy Trinity in possession of the York churches of All Saints, North Street and St Gregory, Micklegate, the chapel of Holbeck, and estates in Ryther, Dringhouses, Potter Newton, Sheepscar, Seacroft, Hampole, Hessay, and Ouseburn. There was a preponderance of priory property in the environs of York and Leeds.26 With expansion came the occasional need to rationalize property. Thus the priorates of Bernard and Robert (c. 1175–1208) saw the quitclaim of all rights in the church of Newton on Ouse to William de Plaiz, and the relinquishing of a moiety of Crambe to the Augustinian priory of Kirkham, holders of the other half of the church.27 It is evident that the monks encountered some difficulty in retaining their grants, and this is particularly the case with their churches. When a later member of the Paynel family, William, founded Drax Priory between 1130 and 1139 he included in its initial endowment three of the churches—Irnham, Roxby and West Rasen—which had been granted to Holy Trinity. William’s daughter, Alice, further complicated matters by granting Irnham to a third monastery, Bardney, and Roxby to a fourth, Roche. Holy Trinity succeeded in retaining only one, Hooton Pagnell, fighting off claims from both Drax and Nostell.28 They also lost all right to the church of Broughton near Brigg.29 The proliferation of religious houses and monastic estates undermined Holy Trinity’s ability to retain its property. The church of Leeds was appropriated to the priory, but the proportion of revenues to be allotted to the monks was disputed.30 The arrival of Cistercian monks at Kirkstall, near Leeds, and their acquisition of lands in West and East Headingley, Allerton, Lindley, and Mickley, resulted in conflicts about tithes, and an agreement that the White Monks would compensate Holy Trinity for the loss of tithes in the parish of Adel.31 The church of Thurnscoe was lost to Cistercian Sallay before the end of the twelfth century.32 Holy Trinity was therefore subject to fluctuating fortunes. The Taxatio of 1291 sug25 Ibid., III, no. 1733, Mon. Ang., IV, 686–7. MRH (p. 88) gives 1125 as the date for the grant by Apolitus and uses this as the latest date for the creation of the cell. However, the charter was witnessed by Prior Robert of Holy Trinity, and therefore dates from no earlier than 1175 and possibly as late as 1208: HRH, p. 113. 26 See, for example, the tithes of the mills of York, granted by Nigel d’Aubigny, and confirmed by his son, Roger de Mowbray, and by King Henry II: Mowbray Charters, no. 3; EYC, VI, no. 6; and the reference to priory property in Fishergate, York, in the 1160s: EYC, I, no. 333. 27 EYC, VI, nos. 54, 149. 28 Ibid., VI, nos. 13, 74–5, and p. 167. 29 Ibid., VI, no. 102. 30 EEA, V, nos. 29, 73; EYC, VI, nos. 82, 84–5. 31 The agreement had to be reinforced by papal mandate in 1205: Kirkstall Coucher, nos. 134, 349; EYC, III, nos. 1559– 60; further acquisitions in the parish of Adel by Kirkstall led the monks to question the right of Holy Trinity to the advowson: Kirkstall Coucher, no. 19. 32 Cart. Sallay, II, no. 623.

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Page 51 gests that from the many churches granted in the eleventh and twelfth century its monks received pensions from Tealby, West Rasen, All Saints, North Street, Adel, Hooton Pagnell, and Crambe; and an inquisition of 1379 lists the same number of churches as sources of revenue, but with Leeds and Newton on Ouse instead of Tealby and West Rasen.33 Part of the difficulty which the priory encountered in retaining property may have been due to its position as a dependency of a continental house, and its lack of capacity for independent action. Charters dating from the eleventh and twelfth centuries record grants to Marmoutier rather than Holy Trinity. A confirmation of Henry II to his clerk, Paulinus de Ledes, of the property in Leeds where he lived, granted to him by the abbot and convent of Marmoutier and held for the payment of half a mark per annum to Holy Trinity, illustrates the constitutional complexities of the situation.34 CELLS OF AUMALE, ST WANDRILLE, AND MONT ST MICHEL The continental abbeys of Aumale, St Wandrille, and Mont St Michel all came into possession of Yorkshire estates and in order to provide personnel, on the spot, to look to their administration, they established small cells. Whereas the founders of Holy Trinity and Allerton Mauleverer appear to have turned to Marmoutier either because of its reputation or because of its location on a pilgrimage route, the donation made by Stephen of Aumale which led to the foundation of Birstall was made for intensely personal, family reasons. In a charter issued at Aumale, some thirty miles north-east of Rouen, in 1115, Stephen granted to the abbey of Aumale (‘monachis Sancti Luciani Belvacensis, quibus mater mea Adeliza donavit et concessit ecclesiam Sancti Martini de Alceio, constructam et edificatam ab antecessoribus meis extra castellum Albemarlie’: ‘to the monks of St Lucien of Beauvais to whom my mother Adeliza gave and confirmed the church of St Martin d’Auchy, constructed and built by my ancestors outside the castle of Aumale’) all the churches and tithes which he held of Henry I. These included a remarkable number in Holderness, where Stephen had become a major landowner: Paull, Preston in Holderness, Skeckling, Withernwick, Wawne, North Frodingham, Aldbrough, Mappleton, Tunstall, Easington, Birstall, Kilnsea, Keyingham, Withernsea, and that of his castle of Skipsea; and in Lincolnshire the church and tithe of Carlton Scroop, the tithe of 33 TE, pp. 57, 299–300; Mon. Ang., IV, 684. 34 EYC, III, no. 1463. Moreover, acts seem to have required confirmation by the abbot of Marmoutier—for example, the release of a moiety of the church of Crambe to Kirkham (ibid., VI, nos. 102, 149).

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Page 52 Weelsby, and the church and tithe of Barrow upon Humber.35 This conforms to the pattern of other monastic endowments, the grant of a substantial number of churches near the centre, or caput, of a baronial honour.36 It was the chapel of St Helen, Birstall, once near Skeffling but long since submerged by the North Sea, that became the focus of these substantial properties and a cell of Aumale. Stephen seems to have envisaged that a settlement would be made for he conveyed hec omnia supradicta ad utilitatem monachorum in ecclesia Sancti Martini de Alceio morantium et servientium, ut libere disponant et ordinent… etiam hospitem unum ad flumen Heldone… Quinetiam transitum de Humbra ad opus monachorum et omnium illis servientium et ad omnia necessaria eorum ita libere sicut a rege teneo.37 (all the above to the usage of the monks living and serving in the church of St Martin d’Auchy so that they order them and supply them with incumbents freely… also a hospice at the river Hedon… In addition free passage over the Humber for the use of the monks and those who serve them and for all their necessary goods, as freely as I hold it of the king.) Aumale was clearly motivated by a desire to provide for the monks of the family monastery, and to give them a stake in his newly acquired lands. There is no mention of a cell at Birstall in the confirmation charter of his son, William of Aumale, earl of York, issued between 1138 and 1154;38 and the first documentary evidence for its existence is a grant, made between 1175 and 1195 by Simon de Skeffling, of land in Skeffling, pasture in West Mareis and Fosse, and meadow in Fosse with the service of four tenants and their families, ‘Deo et Beate Marie et ecclesie Sancti Martini de Albemarlia et Sancte Elene de Birstal et monachis de Albemarlia ibidem Deo servientibus’ (‘to God and the Blessed Mary and the church of St Martin of Aumale, and to St Helen of Birstall and the monks of Aumale serving God there’).39 In 1218 Archbishop Walter de Gray 35 EYC, III, no. 1304, from BL MS Lansdowne 207C, fo. 92. On Stephen, see B. English, The Lords of Holderness 1086–1260: A Study in Feudal Society (Oxford, 1979), pp. 14–16. Tithes from a number of these churches (Paull, Preston, Skeckling, Skipsea, Tunstall, Withernwick, Easington, and Carlton) amounting in value to £10 were granted to St Martin of Séez and its Welsh daughter house of Pembroke by Arnulf of Montgomery between 1098 and 1102 (EYC, III, no. 1300). The grant was evidently ineffective, probably because of the loss of power of the Montgomery family. 36 Matthew, Norman Monasteries, p. 54. Matthew further notes (pp. 27–9) that it was continental monasteries endowed with spiritualia, rather than manors, which were more likely to found prories. 37 On the location of the hospice at Hedon see English, Lords of Holderness, p. 213. RRAN, II, no. 1088, where BL MS Lansdowne 207C is calendared, renders hospitem as ‘tenant’. 38 EYC, III, no. 1307; this confirmation specifies the chapel of Hedon with the church of Preston, that of Holmpton with Withernsea, and that of Sutton and the tithes of Meaux with Wawne. Also included were the churches of Burton Gamel (Pidsea) and St Peter, Thorn. 39 Ibid., III, no. 1401, from Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 7, fo. 238, transcript of the original in St Mary’s Tower, York.

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Page 53 ordered that the monks residing at Birstall should receive the tithes of Skeffling, and that their chapel was not to be subject to the mother church of Easington.40 Not all the fifteen churches granted by Stephen to the monastery of Aumale appear to have been retained, for in 1228 the archbishop ordained vicarages in only nine of its East Riding churches; of these, three (Aldbrough, Skeckling, and Kilnsea) were to belong to the abbot and convent for their own use, while the others (Preston, Mappleton, Withernwick, Burton Pidsea, Wawne, and Tunstall) were to be held, with the abbey’s consent, by the archbishop.41 In 1275 Gilbert was described as ‘prior of Birstall and proctor of the abbot and convent in the East Riding’.42 It is not possible to assign a precise date to the initial grant which led to the establishment of a cell of the Norman abbey of St Wandrille, some twenty miles from Rouen, in the church of Ecclesfield. Farrer suggested that the original grant may have been made by Countess Judith, widow of Earl Waltheof. Waltheof held the manor of Hallamshire, including part of Ecclesfield, in 1066; it was retained by the countess and in 1086 held of her by Roger de Busli. The grant of Ecclesfield, he suggested, may have been made at the same time (before 1086) as Countess Judith granted to St Wandrille her Northamptonshire manor of Broughton.43 However, an investigation by Archbishop Melton in 1323 found that the priory was established by Roger de Luvetot, lord of Hallamshire, and that the church of Ecclesfield had been appropriated to the abbey of St Wandrille by Pope Innocent II (1130–43).44 Roger had evidently been succeeded by William de Luvetot by 1126.45 The family derived from Louvetot (Yvetot), in Normandy, where the abbey of St Wandrille was a major landowner.46 It is therefore likely that Roger, rather than the Countess Judith, brought the monks to Ecclesfield and that, as in the case of Birstall, the grant of lands in Yorkshire was intended to help maintain a family, or local, abbey in Normandy. At a date before 1161 St Wandrille had established a group of monks at Ecclesfield, for in that year Richard de Luvetot granted to St Wandrille a tithe of venison in Hallamshire monachis de Eglesfeld. This formed part of an agreement reached with Abbot Roger and the monks of St Wandrille at the abbey itself, whereby the assart, or newly cleared ground, lying to the 40 Mon. Ang., VI, 1020–1, no. III. 41 Reg. Gray, pp. 22–3. Farrer (EYC, III, no. 1304, note) commented that ‘the first ordination of this priory or cell bears date in the month of June… 1218, and shows that the abbot and convent [of Aumale] had not previously possessed in the province of York a suitable place of habitation until, at the instance of the papal legate, archbishop Gray granted to them the chapel of Burstall’. 42 Reg. Giffard, p. 254; see also Reg. le Romeyn, I, 219, 239. 43 EYC, III, pp. 2–3. 44 BI Reg. 9 (Reg. Melton), fo. 195V. 45 EYF, pp. 53–6. 46 EYC, III, p. 3.

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Page 54 right of the road from Sheffield to Ecclesfield towards Birley was to be restored to the abbey ‘sicut sepes antiquitus ante combustionem fuerunt’ (‘as the hedges used to be before the fire’), and those to the left were adjudged to belong to de Luvetot.47 The church of Ecclesfield, which formed the nucleus of the cell, became the subject of a dispute which was terminated by the issue of a royal charter in 1188. Jeremiah, clerk of Ecclesfield, had laid claim to the church, to its chapels of Sheffield, Bradfield, and Whiston, and to the abbot’s lay fee in Ecclesfield. These Jeremiah quitclaimed, together with the parsonage (personatus), in return for which the abbot and convent of St Wandrille granted him the office of perpetual vicar, with one-third of the tithes and offerings, and the remaining two-thirds for the term of his life.48 There is no mention in this charter of a monastic presence at Ecclesfield. The dispute seems to have concerned St Wandrille, as appropriator of the church, and Jeremiah, who evidently served the church, first as chaplain and then, after the settlement, as perpetual vicar. The endowment of St Wandrille in south Yorkshire contrasts unfavourably with the extensive spiritualia granted by Aumale to his Norman abbey; it may have been that the presence of other religious houses restricted further acquisitions by St Wandrille. From the middle of the twelfth century the Cistercian monks of Kirkstead (Lincolnshire) obtained the hermitage of St John in the parish of Ecclesfield, together with substantial lands, and became considerable landowners in the area.49 The grant of the manor of Wath near Ripon and the subsequent establishment of a cell may belong to a later generation of alien dependencies. It was confirmed to the Breton monastery of Mont St Michel by Conan IV, earl of Richmond and duke of Brittany, as the grant of his ancestors. The connection between the honour of Richmond and the duchy of Brittany was well established by 1086, and it is not possible to say which of the ancestors of Conan created the link with the Breton abbey. The most likely time for Conan to have issued his charter of confirmation is after September 1156 when he expelled his stepfather, Eudo, and took the town of Rennes, thereby establishing himself as duke of Brittany as well as earl of Richmond. This surely would have been an occasion, after reuniting the two parts of his estates, to reaffirm the links between them through the foundation or confirmation of an alien cell on the Yorkshire patrimony.50 The first mention of a prior comes in 1184, when Robert de 47 Ibid., III, no. 1268. 48 Ibid., III, no. 1278, from the cartulary of St Wandrille. 49 Ibid., III, nos. 1266–7, 1269. 50 Conan’s charter itself was confirmed by Pope Hadrian IV in 1155–6 and by King Henry II (possibly in 1175): CDF, I, nos. 736, 756 (the index gives the location of the cell, incorrectly, as Wath on Dearne); EYC, IV, nos. 54, 72; The Chronicle of Robert de Torigny, in Chron. Stephen, IV, 357–8. On Conan in Brittany see W. L. Warren, Henry II (London, 1973), P. 76; EYC, IV, 92, and on his assumption of the patronage of Jervaulx at the same time, see below, pp. 124, 194.

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Page 55 Torigny, abbot of Mont St Michel, granted the church of Wath to Walter, clerk of Pickhill, in return for two-thirds of the offerings of the church—in other words established a vicarage in the same way as St Wandrille did at Ecclesfield—and to Alan son of Hervey land in ‘Winburgeam’ for the sum of one mark per annum, payable to the prior of Wath.51 Mont St Michel retained the patronage of the church of Wath, which some years later rendered an annual pension of five marks; in 1196 Abbot Jordan granted it to Roger of Richmond, saving the rights of Odo of Pickhill, vicar.52 A prior of Wath named Richard occurs around 1200.53 There are only a few indications of the size of these communities. In 1239 there were two monks and a prior at Wath— evidently the usual complement—and the same number at Allerton Mauleverer in 1378. In 1295 when the convent of Birstall was forced temporarily to transfer to Ecclesfield, the number there and at Blyth reached a total of twelve monks and a prior.54 Precious little is known of them and their history, but it is clear that they continued to be regarded as continental houses, and their links, however tenuous they might have become in reality, were still sufficient to make them objects of suspicion. They survived the loss of Normandy and Anjou in 1204 to 1206 and continued in existence until the French wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. St Wandrille made an unsuccessful attempt to farm the cell of Ecclesfield to Sir John Luvetot, descendant of the founder, and it was granted by Richard II to the Carthusians of Coventry. Birstall was sold to the Cistercian monks of Kirkstall in 1395.55 The ultimate fate of Wath is not recorded. Only Holy Trinity survived, taking over the endowments of Allerton Mauleverer and Headley when they were suppressed in 1414, and successfully applying for denizen status in 1426.56 THE COMING OF THE CLUNIACS: PONTEFRACT AND MONK BRETTON The Cluniac foundation at Pontefract was the fourth house to be founded in post-Conquest Yorkshire, coming into existence in the decade after St Mary’s and Holy Trinity, York. Like Holy Trinity, but unlike the alien cells which have been discussed, it was from the begin51 CDF, I, nos. 760–1; Chron. Stephen, IV, 358–9. 52 EYC, V, nos. 317–18. 53 Ibid., V, no. 141. 54 Reg. Gray, pp. 182–3; Matthew, Norman Monasteries, p. 83. 55 Matthew, Norman Monasteries, pp. 118, 161–2; Notes on the Religious and Secular Houses of Yorkshire, I, ed. W. P. Baildon, YASRS, 17 (1895), pp. 26, 50. 56 For the later history of Holy Trinity, see Notes on Religious and Secular Houses, I, 238–42; and on the question of the election of its prior, see Barrie Dobson, ‘Richard Bell, prior of Durham (1464–78) and bishop of Durham (1478–95)’, TCWAAS, 65 (1965), 182–221 (pp. 187–90).

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Page 56 ning intended to be a full, corporate, monastic community. The complexities of the sources for the foundation of the first Cluniac house in England, Lewes (Sussex), are beyond the scope of the present study.57 However, the main points do not seem to be in contention, namely, that William de Warenne and his wife, like Richard Mauleverer, were on pilgrimage when a stay in a religious house influenced them to found a dependency in England. Unable to cross into Italy to continue their journey to Rome, William and Gundreda delayed at Cluny, where they were taken into confraternity and in return promised to found a monastery. Not without reluctance did Abbot Hugh send monks to England, to Lewes in 1077. An earlier attempt by William I to bring Cluniac monks to England had proved unsuccessful when the king ill-advisedly offered to make a payment, and subsequently he showed no warmth towards the English Cluniac foundations. The magnates, on the other hand, received Cluniac monasticism with enthusiasm, and by the end of the reign of Stephen fourteen fully conventual priories had come into existence. Lewes itself colonized a further Warenne foundation, Castle Acre in Norfolk, in 1089, and one at Thetford, established by Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk. However, it was not Cluny but the important monastery of La Charité sur Loire which became the dominant centre of expansion in the early years, sending colonies to Much Wenlock in Shropshire, a site associated with the Anglo-Saxon saint, Milburga, at the prompting of Roger of Montgomery, earl of Shrewsbury; to Bermondsey where William II himself provided land for Alwin Child’s monastery; to Daventry (founded by Hugh de Leicester, sheriff of Northampton); to Pontefract; and to Northampton (established by Simon de Senlis, earl of Northampton). We may well believe the claim of the foundation charter of Robert de Lacy, founder of Pontefract, that he was attracted ‘propter bonum odorem et honestam famam ordinis Cluniacensis’ (‘on account of the good report and honourable reputation of the order of Cluny’). The Lacy family was a near neighbour of William de Warenne, for although he founded the earliest Cluniac house on his Sussex estates he was also tenant in chief of the south Yorkshire manors of Conisborough and Wakefield. Alongside his Yorkshire properties lay the unusually large and concentrated estates of the Lacys, centred on the caput at Pontefract. In addition, the first Lacy, Ilbert I, received manors in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire from Bishop Odo of Bayeux, from whose Norman estates he had come.58 Under Ilbert and his son, Robert, the vill of Pontefract grew in importance, and the Cluniac priory of St John the 57 Golding, ‘Coming of the Cluniacs’, p. 65; Knowles, Monastic Order, pp. 151–8; EYC, VIII, 59–62. 58 W. E. Wightman, The Lacy Family in England and Normandy 1066–1194 (Oxford, 1966), pp. 17–54.

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Page 57 Evangelist, founded in the 1090s, could therefore count itself one of only a handful of urban monasteries within Yorkshire.59 There is much that is obscure about the origins of Pontefract Priory, and there are some difficulties with the early charters of the house preserved in its cartulary. The first charter entered into the volume, headed Carta Roberti de Laceio primi fundatoris loci hujus, was clearly not issued when the foundation of a daughter house from La Charité was first mooted. Robert stated that with the advice of Archbishop T.—presumably Thomas I of York who died in 1100—he had founded a religious house at Kirkby in honour of St John the Evangelist, which he had subjected to La Charité of the order of Cluny.60 With the assent of his chapter Prior Wilencus had dispatched brethren to England, where they first resided in the hospital of St Nicholas; Robert confirmed to the monks ‘plenariam custodiam hospitalis de sancto Nicholao ubi prius habitaverunt’ (‘full custody of the hospital of St Nicholas where they first lived’). He further confirmed, as his own grants, land in Brackenhill, Whitwood, Whitwood Mere, Ledston, half the vill and the church of Ledsham, Dodworth, and Altofts, a fishery, and the churches of All Saints, Pontefract, Kippax, and Darrington; and as the grants of his tenants, William Foliot and Swain Fitz Ailric, land in Kirkby and the church of Silkstone. Finally Robert granted the chapel of St Clement in the castle of Pontefract ‘ne alteri religioni detur quam predicte ecclesie Sancti Iohanni’ (‘so that it not be granted to any religious house other than the church of St John’). The chapel had been established by Robert’s father, Ilbert I de Lacy: between 1137 and 1139 Ilbert II de Lacy confirmed that his grandfather, Ilbert, had, in the time of King William I, founded a church dedicated to St Clement in his castle, and had granted and confirmed to it portions of his demesne tithes in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Nottinghamshire; these grants were enhanced by Robert de Lacy and tenants of the family.61 Although there was clearly a link between the chapel established by Ilbert I and the priory founded by his son, I can find no support for Farrer’s suggestion that ‘the original colony of monks of La Charité… may have been introduced by Ilbert de Lacy’.62 Robert’s charter was issued, not at the donatio but at a later date, by which time Lacy tenants had endowed the new house; a likely occasion would have been the move from the temporary site in the hospital to new priory buildings. Farrer, who did not print this ‘foundation charter’ in 59 Apart from the York houses there were urban houses in, or just outside, Bridlington, Malton, Richmond, Selby, and Whitby; see Palliser, ‘Topography of monastic houses’, 3–9. 60 Cart. Pont., I, no. 1. Kirkby was the former name for Pontefract. 61 EYC, III, no. 1492; R. Holmes, ‘The foundation of St Clement’s in the castle of Pontefract’, YAJ, 14 (1896), 147–57 (p. 155). 62 EYC, III, no. 1485 note (p. 179).

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Page 58 Early Yorkshire Charters, considered it ‘undoubtedly spurious’. Although he did not fully specify the grounds for his suspicion, it would seem that they lay in the common witness list which the charter shares with two other Pontefract charters about which doubts may be cast. However, there is nothing unduly suspicious about the form of Robert de Lacy’s first charter, and most of the contents can be corroborated from later ones. Ilbert II de Lacy confirmed to the church of St John of Pontefract the grants of his father, namely the site of the monastery, land in Brackenhill, the church of All Saints (here specified with the chapel of Knottingley), the churches of Kippax, Darrington (with the chapel of Stapleton), Slaidburn, and Ledston, custody of the hospital of St Nicholas, the vill of Ledsham, Dodworth, Whitwood, Mere, and land in Thorpe Audlin and in Altofts.63 Moreover, a confirmation of Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury, issued in 1153 or 1154, included ‘ex dono Roberti de Laceio tempore Willelmi secundi regis situm ecclesie ipsorum monachorum in Pontefracto et ibidem vii acras cum mansuris suis et in Brakenhil xiii acras et ecclesiam Omnium Sanctorum in eadem villa’ (‘of the grant of Robert de Lacy in the time of King William II the site of the church of the said monks in Pontefract and seven acres there with their messuages, and thirteen acres in Brackenhill and the church of All Saints in the same vill’) and the church of Ledsham and half the vill, Ledston, Whitwood, Dodworth, the waterway from Castleford mills to ‘Thornestrem’, and custody of the hospital of St Nicholas, Pontefract.64 These accord with the grants listed in the first charter of Robert de Lacy, and clearly identify him as the founder of Pontefract in the last decade of the eleventh century.65 Farrer was also suspicious of two other charters purporting to have been issued by Robert de Lacy.66 Both these share one set of five witnesses with Robert’s first charter, and include also an attestation of an archbishop of York whose name has been abbreviated to T.; they concern the grant of the vill of Dodworth, lying between Silkstone and Barnsley, the boundaries of which are given in detail, made with the advice of the archbishop and the consent of Henry I. Robert de Lacy was banished from his Yorkshire estates some time around 1114, and the most likely archbishop to have advised or witnessed was therefore Thomas II (1109–14). However, an act of ‘Archbishop T.’—who could be Thomas 63 Ibid., III, no. 1493; Cart. Pont., I, no. 6. The attribution of the grant of Slaidburn to Robert rather than Hugh de Laval is in error; for reasons why Laval’s grants might have been ignored, see below, pp. 60–2. 64 EYC, III, no. 1475; Cart. Pont. I, no. 57; A. Saltman, Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1956), pp. 423– 5, where dated ‘1150–61 but probably 1153–54’. 65 See also the confirmation of Hugh de Laval: EYC, III, no. 1486; Cart. Pont., I, no. 3. 66 EYC, III, no. 1485; Cart. Pont., I, nos. 2, 7.

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Page 59 II or Thurstan—confirming Dodworth at the request of Prior Walter (who resigned in 1137), recalled that the grant was made by Robert ex consilio nostro. Farrer followed the rubric in the cartulary of Pontefract in assigning this charter to Thurstan (1114–40), and accordingly recognized that there was a chronological difficulty, for Thurstan became archbishop in August 1114, and almost immediately went into exile. On the presence of two sets of witnesses he commented: ‘if the gift was made shortly before the forfeiture and while Robert was in Normandy, the dual attestation might be explained on the assumption that the first set of witnesses attested the gift and the second set the later certification of the boundaries. On the other hand it is doubtful if Thurstan transacted any business connected with his see prior to his restoration in 1121.’ However, Thurstan paid two visits to the north, so for him to have advised Lacy is not impossible.67 In view of the common witness lists it is not easy to treat these charters separately. They may all be genuine, or all spurious. However, it is likely that there is, at the root of all of them, a genuine charter of Robert de Lacy, and this is likely to be, or to approximate closely to, the first ‘foundation charter’. That Dodworth should have been singled out for special confirmation may indicate that the monks had difficulty retaining the vill; given the prominence assigned to the boundaries, it is likely that they suffered encroachment on their estate. It is under these circumstances that a genuine charter could have been interpolated to produce title to what was, in essence, an authentic grant.68 Despite these difficulties, there is no problem in asserting that the priory of St John of Pontefract was founded by Robert de Lacy some time after his succession to the honour, which was not earlier than 1091, and before the death of William II. It was well endowed with lands, and like the two York monasteries counted several parish churches among its early endowments.69 There was a close link between priory and the caput 67 EYC, III, no. 1468; EEA, V, no. 28, which suggests, with due caution, that the actum may be one of Thomas II. Walter is the earliest recorded prior of Pontefract, and held the office until his election as abbot of Selby (1137), when he was described as aetate bene maturus. As Clay pointed out (‘The early priors of Pontefract’, YAJ, 38 (1952–5), 456–64), he could well have held office c. 1121 if not earlier, and ‘the date… of Robert’s final forfeiture is not exactly known, though the latest date for it can be taken as 1122’. However, by the time of the Lindsey Survey, that is by 1118 at the latest, Hugh de Laval had succeeded to Lacy’s Lincolnshire estates. Wightman (Lacy Family, p. 66) gives the date of Robert’s deprivation of his English estates as ‘round about 1114’ and ‘not later than 1118’. Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, p. 95, gives 1109 × 1116. 68 Farrer suggested that ‘probably nos. 2 and 7 are also spurious, but n. 7 may be based upon a genuine charter in which several clauses were subsequently interpolated’. However, the two are so similar that to make the distinction seems unnecessary. 69 Wightman, Lacy Family, pp. 61–2; in addition to those named above, Pontefract possessed the church of Cawthorne, granted like Silkstone by Swain Fitz Ailric: EYC, III, no. 1663 (Cart. Pont., II, no. 378).

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Page 60 of the Lacy honour. The grant of the castle chapel, as well as the custody of the hospital of St Nicholas, suggests that in common with other Cluniac founders, the Lacys looked in part to the monks to staff their castle and provide immediate spiritual services.70 The connection between the Lacys and the priory of Pontefract was a close one, but the monks soon had to face a challenge from the canons of Nostell, installed on Lacy lands some time before the banishment of Robert I.71 The accumulation of lands and property from the same family of patrons posed problems for a number of religious houses of which Pontefract and Nostell are good examples. Before 1114 Pontefract’s mother house of La Charité had been forced to reach an agreement with Nostell, the point of contention being the church of Featherstone. The monks of La Charité (that is, those of the daughter house of Pontefract) and the priest of Featherstone quitclaimed to the newcomers their church of Nostell, which they had claimed lay adjacent to the parish of Featherstone, so that the canons could use their church freely and have a cemetery there for themselves and their servants. In return the canons renounced any rights they claimed from West Hardwick. The agreement was reached in the presence of, and with the consent of, Archbishop Thomas II (1109–14) and Robert de Lacy, and later confirmed by Henry I and Prior Odo of La Charité.72 The reason for the intervention of La Charité and Pontefract is not clear, for there is nowhere any record of Pontefract having come to control the church of Featherstone (in which parish both Nostell and West Hardwick lay) before 1114. What emerges from a notification of Henry I is that the monks of Pontefract granted the church of Featherstone to the canons of Nostell, and in exchange received from Nostell a moiety of the church of St Mary, Pontefract, sometimes called de foro and at others de castello.73 The priory of Pontefract fared better than its patrons. Some time around 1116 Robert de Lacy was banished from England to his Norman estates, and the honour passed to Hugh de Laval, a Norman baron of secondary status. However, the priory did not lose from this change in tenure; rather it gained, as de Laval used his position as patron to reinforce the legitimacy of his title to the honour. At the suggestion of Archbishop Thurstan he issued a charter for Pontefract 70 As at Lewes, Barnstaple, Montacute, and especially Castle Acre, initially built within the castle itself: Matthew, Norman Monasteries, pp. 56–8; Golding, ‘Coming of the Cluniacs’, p. 68; Martindale, ‘Monasteries and castles’. 71 See below, pp. 71–7. 72 EYC, III, nos. 1429–30, 1465; Cart. Pont., II, lx; BL MS Cotton Vespasian E XIX (Nostell cartulary), fos. 7, 19v, 101v; EEA, V, no. 17. 73 EYC, III, nos. 1431–2; RRAN, II, no. 1460; BL MS Cotton Vespasian E XIX (Nostell cartulary), fos. 7v, 101v.

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Page 61 pro salute domini mei Henrici Anglorum regis et uxoris sue et statu regni eorum et pro remedio animarum patris et matris et fratris sui Willelmi regis et prioris coniugis sue et Willelmi filii eorum necnon et omnium antecessorum et parentum suorum et pro salute mea et conjugis mee et liberorum meorum et pro remedio animarum antecessorum meorum.74 (for the salvation of my lord, Henry, king of the English, and his wife, and for the stability of their kingdom, and for the salvation of the souls of his father and mother and brother, King William, and for his first wife and William their son, no less for all his ancestors and kin, and for my own salvation and that of my wife and my children and for the salvation of the souls of my ancestors.) In placing him and all his family before de Laval himself in the hierarchy of prayer, de Laval showed due regard for the king who had raised his fortunes. And, he assumed almost equal status with Robert de Lacy, confirming to the monks ‘quicquid Rodbertus de Laceio… et ego postmodum… donavi monasterio Sancte Marie de Caritate ad usum monachorum… in monasterium sancti Iohannis Ewangeliste de Kyrkeby castello meo’ (‘whatever Robert de Lacy gave… and that I later gave… to the monastery of St Mary of la Charité to the use of the monks… in the monastery of St John the Evangelist in my castle of Kirkby’). The old name of Kirkby is still employed, and, it is worth noting the persistent association of the monastery with the castle of the honour. In addition to confirming the exchange with Nostell, which brought the entire church of St Mary de Foro (pro commoditate) to the monks, and other previous grants, de Laval claimed responsibility for the original Lacy endowments of the churches of Darrington and Kippax,75 and augmented them by donating a tithe of all the rents of Kirkby, the Lancashire churches of Slaidburn, Whalley, St Mary Magdalene, Clitheroe, Colne, and Burnley, and the chapel of his castle at Clitheroe—another significant link with a baronial castle chapel. He also confirmed to the monks the hospital of St Nicholas ‘quam Robertus de Laceio illis ante dederat, sicut melius et liberius habuerunt in tempore ejusdem Roberti’ (‘which Robert de Lacy previously gave them, as they held it better and more freely in the time of the same Robert’).76 As with other early Pontefract charters there are some suspect features, but these may be the result of faulty transmission or interpolation rather than outright fabrication. In the period of Hugh’s lordship other grants were received: William de Warenne, noted patron of the Cluniacs elsewhere, granted land in Middleton (Rothwell) for a rent of 3s per annum; and Ralph de 74 EYC, III, no. 1486; Cart. Pont., I, no. 3. 75 This now included a carucate of land and a house for the sick (mansura infirmorum) freed from subjection to the church of Darrington. 76 EYC, III, no. 1487 (Cart. Pont., I, no. 4).

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Page 62 Cattingwick and his son Simon conveyed half the church of Catwick.77 In 1129 Hugh de Laval died, and was succeeded by William Maltravers who paid a considerable sum of money for de Laval’s estates and his widow. Maltravers had few dealings with the priory: he granted one bovate of land in Thorpe, and paid one mark for the monks’ surrender of their rights in the church of Whalley, made without prejudicing any future claim.78 But it was to Pontefract Priory, according to Richard of Hexham, that Maltravers retired and took the habit after having been fatally wounded by a knight of the honour in 1135, on the death of Henry I and the accession of King Stephen.79 Following the murder of Maltravers the Lacy family was restored in the person of Ilbert II, son of Robert.80 During his brief tenure of the honour—he disappears from record after the Battle of Lincoln in 1141—Ilbert made no new grants to the Cluniacs, merely issuing a charter confirming the grants of his predecessors. He was succeeded by his brother Henry, who held the honour until his death in 1177. The history of Pontefract during the reign of King Stephen illustrates well how a religious house could be caught up with the affairs of its patrons.81 Some of the effects of local warfare were detrimental—the priory church was evidently damaged or destroyed—but the period between 1135 and 1154 was not all one of ill fortune. The monks received several benefactions. Henry de Lacy, patron, granted a tithe of the venison of his lands, and he was associated with Ralph de Chevrecurt in granting the vill of Barnsley.82 Alice de Gant, widow of Ilbert II, granted a carucate of land in Ingoldmells (Lincolnshire) which had been part of her marriage settlement, for her own soul and that of her deceased spouse;83 and Henry de Lacy also made a grant for the soul of his brother, of the hamlet called Kellingley and a fishery at Beal. For this the monks paid him one hundred marks.84 Although the grant does not appear to have been effective, King Stephen intended to transfer to the monks to hold in alms the York churches of St Sampson and St Benet.85 The dean 77 EYC, VIII, no. 11; ibid., III, no. 1318 (Cart. Pont., II, no. 413); see also EYC, III, nos. 1319–24 (Cart. Pont., I, no. 39, II, nos. 424, 436, 444–5, 539); EEA, V, no. 56. 78 EYC, III, no. 1489; Cart. Pont., I, nos. 57, 423. 79 Chron. Stephen, III, 140. 80 For pardons issued by Henry II to Henry de Lacy, see EYC, III, nos. 1449–50. 81 See below, pp. 203–4. 82 EYC, III, no. 1496; Cart. Pont., I, nos. 15, 18. 83 EYC, III, no. 1494 (Cart. Pont., II, no. 409); confirmed by her second husband, Roger de Mowbray, and by Henry de Lacy: Mowbray Charters, nos. 229–30; EYC, III, no. 1495 (Cart. Pont., I, no. 16). 84 EYC, III, no. 1501 (Cart. Pont., I, no. 11). 85 EYC, III, no. 1448, Cart. Pont., I, no. 70, RRAN, III, no. 664 (issued at York in 1154). This is the first record of these two churches, which at the time of Stephen’s grant were held by a royal clerk, William son of Rainer. The churches were not included in the confirmation charter of Henry II some time before 1158: EYC, III, no. 1451, Cart. Pont., I, no. 73.

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Page 63 and chapter of York released half the vill of Ledsham to the monks, allowing them to come into possession of the whole, and the confirmation of Archbishop Theobald, probably issued before May 1154, furnishes further evidence of expansion.86 The charter of Archbishop Theobald also contains the first mention of Pontefract’s daughter house of Monk Bretton. The final item confirmed is: Ex dono Adam filii Swani situm monasterii Beate Marie Magdalene de Lunda cum Brettona et Neuhala et Reinesberga et Lintueit et quicquid in Bramtona et quicquid habetur inter Hairam et Stainclif usque Merebroch et molendina de Dirna et Lundam patris sui, in Cumberlanda capellam Beati Andree apostoli juxta Culgaid. (Of the gift of Adam Fitz Swain, the site of the monastery of St Mary Magdalene of Lund, with Bretton and Newhill and Rainborough and Linthwaite and whatever they have in Brampton [Bierlow] and whatever they have between Harian and Staincliff as far as Mere brook and the mills of Dearne and his father’s land in Lund,87 and in Cumberland the chapel of St Andrew the Apostle near Culgaith.) This foundation is half a century and more later than those (apart from the cells) which we have considered so far, and presents a number of contrasts. First, Adam was descended from an Anglo-Saxon family, his grandfather, Ailric, being a landowner in the time of Edward the Confessor and a tenant of the Lacy family in 1086. Ailric’s son, Swain, who also obtained extensive lands in Cumberland, and his grandson, Adam, were benefactors of both Pontefract and Nostell, and it was natural, therefore, that when Adam came to found a religious house he should turn to one of those in the patronage of his lords, the Lacy family. His choice may have been dictated less by monastic or spiritual considerations—which monks or canons appeared to be most worthy of his alms—than by tenurial connections. In this Adam is typical of the class of founders of the second rather than the first half of the twelfth century; he belonged to a lower stratum of society, and his foundation was linked to those of his tenurial superiors.88 However it is clear that another crucial factor in influencing the foundation was Adam, prior of Pontefract and first prior of Monk Bretton, to whom charters accord a significant role. Both Adam Fitz 86 EYC, III, nos. 1472, 1475; Cart. Pont., I, nos. 42, 57. 87 I take ‘Lundam’ to refer to the place, Lund, rather than cognate with ‘lundum’, meaning ?grove, which is recorded in Lincolnshire in the thirteenth century: R. E. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word List (London, 1965), p. 283. 88 On nunnery founders, who share the same features, see below, chapter 5; and on the importance of tenurial connections in monastic foundations, H. M. Colvin, The White Canons in England (Oxford, 1951), pp. 27–39; Golding, ‘Coming of the Cluniacs’, pp. 69–70. However, there are indications that Adam had intended to use the endowments of Monk Bretton for a Cistercian foundation, and on the implications of this, see below, p. 191.

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Page 64 Swain and Archbishop Roger spoke of Adam as ‘ejusdem loci adquisitor et primus fundator’ (‘the man who first acquired and founded this place’) and the prior of La Charité reminded Adam of his obligation to the prior ‘cujus consilio tam salubre opus incepistis’ (‘on whose advice you began such wholesome work’). Adam Fitz Swain issued a number of charters in favour of his foundation in the years before his death in 1159. In one he confirmed to Prior Adam of Monk Bretton the Yorkshire estates already mentioned. In another he conveyed a tithe of the colts (decima pullorum) on his demesne, and the rents which his father used to receive from Raven de Halcton and which he received from Robert son of Raven. In a third he granted Carlton, and the church of Royston.89 However, it was the fourth charter which tackled what was to be, right from the outset, a thorny problem, the relationship between Monk Bretton and Pontefract. In this Adam stated that he had granted to the church of St John of Pontefract, for the foundation of a religious house, the place called St Mary Magdalene of Lund, for the souls of members of his family: Propter hoc beneficium concessum est mihi annale pro me fieri in matrice sua ecclesia de Karitate et in domo sua de Pontefracto unum annale, et singulis annis ibidem anniversarium meum, et in omnibus locis suis ubi ordo tenetur tricenarium; in aliis vero quantum pro uno monacho Cluniacensi. Adam vero prior ejusdem loci adquisitor et primus fundator cum a Pontefracto discesserit in eodem loco de Lunda manebit quamdiu vixerit custos et prior domus. Post cujus decessum prior de Pontefracto et monachi ejusdem loci consilio meo et heredum meorum alios qui idonei sint in loco ejus substituent… Hujus rei gratia unoquoque anno marcam unam argenti a domo illa de Lunda ecclesie Sancti Johannis de Pontefracto constitui debere persolvi ad recognitionem.90 (For this benefit, a year’s obit has been granted to me in their mother church of La Charité, and at Pontefract a year’s obit also, and an anniversary each year; and in all places where this order is kept, a trental, and in others prayers as for a monk of Cluny. When Prior Adam, who first acquired and founded this place, leaves Pontefract, he shall remain here in Lund as long as he shall live, as guardian and prior of the house. After his death the prior of Pontefract and the monks of the same shall, on my advice and that of my heirs, substitute others who are suitable in his place… In recognition of this matter I have laid down that each year one silver mark ought to be paid by that church of Lund to the church of St John of Pontefract.) 89 EYC, III, nos. 1665–71; Cart. Monk Bretton, nos. 6–7. 90 For this, and a similar confirmation by Archbishop Roger de Pont L’Evêque, see EYC, III, nos. 1669–70; Cart. Pont., I, no. 46, II, no. 380. Archbishop Roger stated that Monk Bretton had been founded ex consilio nostro, which would suggest a date for the foundation after October 1154. However, it is not likely that Archbishop Theobald, acting as papal legate, would have issued a charter for a northern house while there was an archbishop of York, and the likely dates for his actum are during the vacancies of October 1153 to May 1154 or June to October 1154.

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Page 65 There is much that is of interest in this charter. First, it demonstrates the demands for spiritual services which founders could make, no longer the simple expectation of prayers for the founder, kin, and king, but for specified obits and anniversaries of the type in which Cluny specialized. Second, it testifies that—perhaps unusually—the prior of the mother house himself moved to be prior of the daughter house. Finally, it shows that Adam expected the election of a prior of a dependent house to proceed along what could have been considered the usual Cluniac lines, with the appointment made by the mother house of Pontefract with the consent of the patrons. However the document does not accord with the provisions laid down in a letter written by G., prior of La Charité, to Adam Fitz Swain: Est igitur ut per latores presentium didicimus vestra voluntas ut priorem illi domui de Bretton et ceteros qui ordinis strenui propugnatores existant ex fratribus nostris tam de Pontfracto quam de aliis domibus nostris per Angliam constitutis fratres idoneos eligatis, prior autem qui ibidem semel constitutus fuerit nequaquam inde summoveatur. Concedimus vero imperpetuum monachis de Brettone ibidem Deo famulantibus post decessum prioris sui consilio capituli sui de Bretton priorem de domo suo eligere… Prior vero de Pontefracto si fuerit requisitus a conventu de Bretton veniet in propria persona apud Bretton [et] in capitulum intrabit cum advocatis ejusdem domus de Bretton ad electionem prioris et creationem. (As we have learnt from the bearers of these present letters, it is your wish that you should choose for the house of Bretton a prior and other suitable brethren, who are vigorous fighters of the order, from among our brethren whether at Pontefract or in other of our houses in England; the prior, however, once placed there shall in no way be removed. Indeed we concede in perpetuity to the monks of Bretton serving God there to elect, after the death of their prior, with the consent of their chapter, a prior from the house of Bretton… However, the prior of Pontefract, if required by the monks of Bretton, shall come in person to Bretton and enter into the chapter with the patrons of the said house for the election and creation of the prior.)91 The sequence of the two documents cannot be established, and it is only possible to assign a date of between October 1153—the earliest likely date for the charter of Archbishop Theobald—and 1159. The provisions are quite distinct: Adam Fitz Swain reserved the election for the prior and convent of Pontefract, with his consent; the prior of La Charité, contrary to usual Cluniac practice, guaranteed free election to Monk Bretton and limited the authority of the prior of Pontefract to occasions when he was requisitus. The charter of Adam Fitz Swain quite clearly reads as if it were issued before Prior Adam had left Pontefract, that is, before the 91 EYC, III, no. 1671; abstract only in Cart. Monk Bretton, pp. 218–19, from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Dodsworth 8, fo. 251r-v.

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Page 66 occupation of Monk Bretton had taken place. It is therefore tempting to assume that the letter of the prior of La Charité superseded the charter of Adam, in that it marked a divergence from a close relationship which would have existed at the first foundation of a colony. Yet other features—notably the implication that Adam was given licence to choose a convent from all the English dependencies of La Charité, not just Pontefract—suggest that this letter has a claim to priority. Whatever the sequence of these documents, the question of the election of the prior of the daughter house continued to be a difficult issue, as it was in other Cluniac houses.92 The monks of Bretton were still—130 years after the foundation—strenuously attempting to uphold their right to free election against the claims of the prior of Pontefract, who insisted on participating whether requisitus or not. The period after the accession of Henry II in 1154 marked, therefore, a late stage in the expansion of Pontefract but the early years of its daughter house. Pontefract appears to have been moderately successful in maintaining some impetus in expansion after its first half century or so. Benefactions continued to be made to the monks, mostly by the Lacy tenants.93 An even closer relationship existed between Monk Bretton and the family of the founder. In the period after Adam’s death and before 1172 his brother Henry Fitz Swain granted rents from land in Wrangbrook; Matilda, daughter and coheir of Swain, and her husband, Adam de Montbegon, confirmed the monks in possession of Carlton, and Royston church; Matilda and her second husband, John Malherbe, issued a similar confirmation; a later descendant, Roger de Montbegon, granted four bovates in Wrangbrook.94 An indication of the estates of Monk Bretton by 1186 and again in 1200 is provided by papal bulls issued in those years.95 In 1186 in addition to the grants of Adam and Henry Fitz Swain, the pope confirmed land in Cudworth (from Robert de Stapleton, Adam son of Orm, and Adam de Flinthil), and ‘Longedenesdale’ granted by William de Neville and Amabel his wife; and by 1200 the monks had added only minor acquisitions.96 92 See, for instance, Susan Wood, English Monasteries and their Patrons in the Thirteenth Century (London, 1955), pp. 56–9. 93 See, for instance, acquisitions in Ferry Fryston, Skelbrooke, Kellington, Hillam, Burghwallis, Pontefract, Smeaton, Tanshelf, Toulston, Middle Haddlesey, Darrington, Norton, Barnby, and Catton, most of them in free alms but two for the payment of a small annual rent: Cart. Pont., I, nos. 89–90 (EYC, III, nos. 1527–30), 101 (EYC, III, no. 1588), 139, 167 (EYC, III, no. 1541), 206 (EYC, III, no. 1550), II, nos. 231 (EYC, III, no. 1632), 241–2 (EYC, III, nos. 1554–5), 271 (EYC, III, no. 1660), 313–15 (EYC, III, nos. 1719–20, 1758), 427 (EYC, III, no. 1718), 454 (EYC, III, no. 1612). 94 EYC, III, nos. 1676–9 (Cart. Monk Bretton, nos. 9–12); Mon. Ang., V, 138, no. IX. 95 BL MS Lansdowne 405, fo. 62v (abstract Cart. Monk Bretton, pp. 11–12). 96 See also EYC, III, nos. 1686–7, 1691, 1716, 1750–1; ibid., VI, no. 124; VII, no. 125 (from BL Harleian charter 84 B 13).

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Page 67 There was considerable overlap between the benefactors of the two Yorkshire Cluniac houses, because of both their close geographical proximity and the tenurial connections of the founders. Monk Bretton, a later foundation by half a century and more, faced greater competition for endowments than the mother house had done in the 1090s and early 1100s, and always remained much smaller. Their different circumstances are reflected in their size and wealth: Pontefract in 1535 was valued at £337 14s 8½d (clear) and Monk Bretton at £239 3s 6d (clear).97 Both were, therefore, heavily dependent on their patrons and on local benefactors. It was the judgement of David Knowles that the alien cells were ‘unfortunate by-products of the Conquest’, and that ‘save for a few of the larger priories, they served no religious purpose whatever’; and of the Cluniacs he wrote that ‘the sporadic and gradual evolution of the group in England, its isolation from public, national life, and the insignificance of the majority of its houses prevented it from exerting any noticeable influence, as a group, upon English monastic history’.98 It is hard to quarrel with these assessments, for the alien cells and priories came into being, in part at least, as administrative units in the same way as preceptories and commanderies of the Knights Templar and Hospitaller; and the Cluniac houses did, on the whole, fail to achieve prominence. Yet the judgement is perhaps too much based on contrast with the great spiritual power houses, the independent Benedictine and Cistercian houses. The alien priories and cells were very much a reflection of the concept of the monastic life in the late eleventh century as well as a product of particular political, social, and economic circumstances. Moreover, it could be said of many religious houses in medieval England—of whatever group or order—that they failed to ‘exert any noticeable influence’ on matters of wider significance than their own routine existence and their immediate locality. Of the houses discussed in this chapter, Holy Trinity and Pontefract, both significant urban landlords, played no negligible part in the events of 1130s and 1140s. The priors of both were summoned by Abbot Geoffrey of St Mary’s, York, in 1132, to support him against radicals within his abbey who demanded reform; and it was at Pontefract following his retirement in early 1140 that Thurstan, archbishop of York, was to take the habit and die.99 The ‘alien settlements’ of monks from Norman and French monasteries on Yorkshire soil, and of houses dependent on Cluny, marked an important stage in the monastic development of the area. It may be, as Brian Golding has suggested, that the 97 VE, V, 42–3, 65–6. 98 Knowles, Monastic Order, pp. 136, 153. 99 Symeon, Opera, II, 304–5.

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Page 68 popularity of Cluniac foundations, the ‘Cluniac dynamic’, was due to the fact that there was no ‘English dimension’, that barons could mark their elevation to the nobility, or stake their claim to English land, by establishing houses which had no connections with existing Anglo-Saxon ones.100 Yet there was surely more to it than that. The foundation of Cluniac houses did not entirely supplant that of alien houses, and in Yorkshire these continued to be established alongside— chronologically—Cluniac houses. What was appealing about Cluny was the chance to belong to the great congregation which had spread its tentacles throughout Europe, had elevated its liturgical life to the height of the ‘beauty of holiness’, and offered its patrons and benefactors spiritual benefits of a unique and unprecedented kind. When Ralph de Chevrecurt and Beatrice his sister, with the consent of Ralph’s sons, granted to Pontefract the vill of Barnsley, the monks appointed one of their number to pray for their mother, a second to pray for Beatrice and a third for Ralph after his death.101 This brought one Yorkshire family into spiritual communion with a European-wide congregation. 100 Golding, ‘Coming of the Cluniacs’, pp. 76–7. 101 EYC, III, nos. 1771, 1774 (Cart. Pont., II, nos. 386–7). See also EYC, III, no. 1598 (Cart. Pont., I, no. 159), a grant for receiving the soul of the donor’s son into confraternity and for an anniversary as for a monk; EYC, III, no. 1637 (Cart. Pont., I, no. 207), for an anniversary for the donor’s parents during his lifetime and for the donor after his death; EYC, III, no. 1777 (Cart. Pont., II, no. 318) for a grant of confraternity to a whole family.

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Page 69 Chapter 3 THE REGULAR CANONS FOUNDERS AND THEIR CHARTERS, 1114– C. 1140 The regular canons were, on the basis of the number of foundations, the most popular religious group in medieval Britain. In common with canonical foundations in all parts of England and Wales, not all Yorkshire’s foundations were made de novo; some were preceded by institutions of another nature, communities either of secular clergy or hermits. There is evidence for the existence of a clerical group at Bridlington during the pontificate of Archbishop Thomas II of York (1109–14). At a date before 1114 the archbishop remitted to the church of St Mary, Bridlington, 6d which it was accustomed to render each year for chrism, and 2s for synodals. This, he stated, had been done ‘pro amore et honore sancte sanctarum domine nostre et fratrum qui in eius ecclesia deo serviunt’ (‘for the love and honour of our lady, the most holy of the saints, and for that of the brethren who serve God in her church’).1 This indicates that there was then a community serving the church of Bridlington, but does not of itself prove that it was then one of Augustinian canons. However, that a priory had come into existence by 1114 is suggested by two memoranda inserted in a Bridlington book of devotions (1510–12), preserved as Durham University Library MS Cosin U.V.19 (fo. 53r). The first reads: Anno domini xiiij regni regis Henrici primi [pontificatus Thome secundi archiepiscopi] anno 9 vite vero penultimo ex assensu et precepto ejusdem Henrici regis Anglie fundata est domus de Brydlyngton per Walterum de Gant filium Gisbricti… Ipse Walterus favente Thoma Ebor(acense) archiepiscopo 1 BL MS Add. 40008, fo. 325v (321v); printed in EEA, V, no. 13; EYC, II, 445 (abstract); calendar, Cart. Brid., p. 431. D. Nicholl, Thurstan, Archbishop of York (1114–1140) (York, 1964), p. 46, includes Bridlington among the communities of hermits which became Augustinian houses, but there is no indication that the community was of an eremitical nature.

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Page 70 canonicos regulares in ecclesia de Brydlyngton fecit institui, et ipsam terris et possessionibus et ecclesiis dotavit.2 (In the fourteenth year of the reign of the lord king, Henry I, and in the ninth year of the pontificate of archbishop Thomas II which was the next to the last year of his life, the house of Bridlington was founded by Walter de Gant, son of Gisbricht, with the assent and on the order of the same Henry, king of England. Walter himself, with the support of Thomas, archbishop of York, caused regular canons to be instituted in the church of Bridlington, and endowed the same church with lands, possessions, and churches.) The second memorandum, which is very similar, expresses the date more clearly still as the year of grace 1113. The documents are not without problems. In both the phrase relating to the archbishop of York has been partially erased, an act which Purvis suggested marked an attempt to expunge a (mistaken) reference to Archbishop Thomas Becket, but even so the ninth year of Thomas II is in error, since 1113—which was indeed the next to last year of his life—would have been his fourth or fifth year as archbishop.3 However, the tradition preserved at Bridlington, namely, that the foundation was made by Walter de Gant with the assent and close co-operation of Henry I, and with the advice of Archbishop Thomas II, is supported by Walter’s foundation charter. This refers to the foundation having been made ‘ex precepto et concencu regis Henrici’, and confirms the lavish endowment suggested in the memoranda.4 To the canons Walter granted all his property in Bridlington, amounting to thirteen carucates, and the mills of the vill, and the churches of Edenham (Lincolnshire), Witham (Lincolnshire), Filey, Grinton in Swaledale, Ilkeston (Derbyshire), and a moiety of South Ferriby, a scattered endowment which reflects the widespread interests of the Gant family.5 However, the main expansion by the time Walter’s charter was issued—between c. 1125 and 1130—was in the local Bridlington area, where his tenants supplemented his endowment by granting property in Bessingby, Hilderthorpe, Easton, Grindale, Buckton, and Reighton, and the churches of Willerby and Ganton. The interest of Henry I was not limited to mere advice and consent, for he may have issued a charter of confirmation which added his own grant of 2 J. S. Purvis, ‘The foundation of Bridlington Priory’, YAJ, 29 (1929), 241–2. The words in square brackets have been partially erased: see below. 3 The discrepancy could have been caused by an error in transmission, for instance in the use of numerals (ix for iv). 4 BL MS Add. 40008, fo. 11; EYC, II, no. 1135; calendar, Cart. Brid., p. 12. 5 Toby Burrows, ‘The geography of monastic property in medieval England: a case study of Nostell and Bridlington Priories (Yorkshire)’, YAJ, 57 (1985), 79–86, perhaps overstates the tight geographical area of Bridlington’s earliest possessions (p. 80).

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Page 71 land in Hilderthorpe and Easton.6 The community also received the support of Thomas II’s successor at York, Thurstan, who used his connections with Pope Calixtus II to secure papal confirmation for their adherence to the Augustinian rule.7 Like the priories of Holy Trinity, York, and Pontefract, Bridlington was established on baronial initiative at the centre of a magnate’s Yorkshire estates. However, the foundation of Bridlington marks a new phase in the monastic expansion in the north, for instead of looking to a continental mother house to provide a colony, Walter de Gant decided to found a house of regular canons. As is the nature of foundation charters, his tells us nothing of what prompted the choice, but we may speculate that he was influenced by the interest shown by the king in Augustinian houses. Henry I himself was credited as the founder of five houses of regular canons and assisted in seven more: the royal court was fast becoming the place of patronage for such monasteries. A more immediate formative influence may have been Archbishop Thomas II, and if the Bridlington book of devotions is correct in ascribing the foundation to 1113, then this would coincide with Thomas’s introduction of regular canons into the ancient minster church of Hexham. It is possible that the remission to Bridlington of chrism and synodals marked the foundation of the Augustinian priory, and if so this would imply that the archbishop perceived a continued parochial function for the canons. The reference to the clerici rather than canonici, however, suggests that the concession is more likely to have been to the parish church which preceded the priory, and to its clergy. If so, then what we have at Bridlington is an example of a parish church served by a group of clergy converted to the regular way of life under the influence of an archbishop. That this happened at both Hexham and Bridlington—as elsewhere in England—suggests that Thomas II, who died at an early age in 1114, had anticipated the work of his successor, Thurstan, in introducing the regular canons into existing ecclesiastical institutions in order to boost reforming activity.8 Whether or not Thomas II was also involved in the introduction of canons to Nostell in south Yorkshire, lying some five miles to the south-west of Pontefract, is more problematic. Several historians have 6 BL MS Add. 40008, fos 19r, 161v; cf. EYC, II, no. 1144 (charter of King Stephen); RRAN, II, no. 1811, and III, no. 119; calendar, Cart. Brid., p. 24; see also J. S. Purvis, ‘A foundation charter of Bridlington Priory’, YAJ, 29 (1929), 395; EYC, II, no. 806; RRAN, II, no. 1333. 7 BL MS Add. 40008, fo. 324r; Cart. Brid., p. 435; PUE, III, no. 11; Nicholl, Thurstan, p. 90. When issuing a confirmation to the canons Pope Eugenius III (1145–53) stated that he was following the example of Calixtus II: BL MS Add. 40008, fo. 324; EYC, II, no. 1154; abstract, Cart. Brid., p. 435. 8 Farrer (EYC, II, 445–6) also drew attention to the possibility that Walter was made aware of the canons by Geoffrey Bainard, a considerable landowner in the East Riding. Bainard’s family founded the priory of Augustinian canons at Little Dunmow (Essex) in 1106: MRH, p. 164.

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Page 72 attempted to unravel the complex tale woven by the Act Book and by the early charters of the house, which present problems not easily resolved.9 The matter is further obscured by the difficulties surrounding the date of the exile from Pontefract of the Lacy family, on whose land the community of Nostell developed.10 It is convenient to begin this discussion not with the narrative account, De gestis et actibus priorum, but with the early charters of the priory, in particular an act of the archbishop of York, which is crucial to our understanding of the early years of Nostell. This exists only in a thirteenth-century cartulary copy, and is a notification of an agreement, reached in the presence of the archbishop, between the church of Featherstone and that of St Oswald.11 The monks of La Charité (that is, of Pontefract) and the priest of Featherstone had claimed that the church of Nostell belonged to the church and parish of Featherstone. They now acknowledged that it was free from all customs claimed by Featherstone, so that the canons might serve God according to a rule (‘canonici regulariter deo serviant’) and have a cemetery for themselves and their servants (‘habeant cimiterium ad opus suum et servientium suorum’) at Nostell. In return the clerks (‘clerici sancti Oswaldi’) released to Featherstone customs they had claimed at West Hardwick. The confirmation of the agreement, witnessed by the archbishop (‘me Thoma archiepiscopo ii’), Robert de Lacy, Amfrey (the earliest known feoffee of Featherstone) and Bernewin, priest, probably of Featherstone, was dated to the Sunday at the dedication of the church of St Oswald. There is a problem with the document in the form in which it survives, as the name of the archbishop was given in the cartulary copy as Thurstan, but the attestation of Robert de Lacy suggests a date before 1118 at the latest and probably before 1114, that is, before Thurstan was effectively archbishop or indeed archbishop at all. Farrer suggested that ‘Thurstan’ was a later, incorrect, extension of the initial T. in an original, and amended the cartulary reading to Thomas II.12 Burrows asserted that the charter ‘was actually issued by archbishop Thurstan and must be from 1114 or later’,13 but this ignores the attestation of Robert de Lacy and indeed of Thomas himself. Moreover the style of reference to Nostell—namely that the 9 T. Burrows, ‘The foundation of Nostell Priory’, YAJ, 53 (1981), 31–5. For earlier treatments see J. Wilson, ‘Foundation of the Austin priories of Nostell and Scone’, Scottish Historical Review, 7 (1910), 141–59; A. Hamilton Thompson, History and Architectural Description of the Priory of St Mary, Bolton in Wharfedale, Thoresby Soc., 30 (1928 for 1924), pp. 24–8; Nicholl, Thurstan, pp. 129–37; W. E. Wightman, ‘Henry I and the foundation of Nostell Priory’, YAJ, 41 (1963–6), 57–60. 10 See above, pp. 59–60. 11 BL MS Cotton Vespasian E XIX, fo. 101v; EYC, III, no. 1465, Cart. Pont., II, lx; see also EEA, V, no. 17 and note; and BL MS Cotton Vespasian E XIX, fo. 7v, EYC, III, no. 1430. 12 Followed in EEA, V, no. 17, where the authenticity is questioned largely because of internal inconsistencies. 13 Burrows, ‘Nostell Priory’, 33.

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Page 73 agreement was made with the church of St Oswald, with the canons serving God according to a rule, and with the clerks —suggests an early date, before it had become common or usual to refer to such communities as Augustinian. Although, as Burrows points out, this ‘does not prove that there were canons at Nostell at that time’, it is suggestive of a community of some size.14 What might the nature of that community have been? Here we must turn to that late source, the Act Book, De gestis, described by Wilson as ‘a romantic tale of the coming of the Augustinians to St Oswald’s, which may be regarded as a pious endeavour to reconcile documentary facts with a vague tradition’.15 The hub of the story as told by De gestis is that a royal chaplain named Ralph Adlave fell ill while accompanying King Henry I north against the Scots. He spent time recovering at Pontefract, during which period he discovered a group of hermits at Nostell living around the chapel of St Oswald. He decided to join them, and on his return Henry associated himself with Ralph in establishing an Augustinian house of which Ralph became the first magister et rector.16 There is far from general agreement among historians that Ralph actually existed. Wightman accepted him as first prior of Nostell; others concluded that the author had conflated Ralph and Ethelwold, the earliest prior recorded in sources other than the De gestis, despite the clear distinction made between the two in the Nostell source.17 Burrows has set this confused account in the context of Henry I’s three recorded journeys to the north, in 1105, at an unknown date between 1108 and 1114 (possibly in 1109), and in 1122, and in the light of surviving royal charters and writs for Nostell, none of which is earlier than 1114. He suggests that of these dates 1105 is too early for the foundation of an Augustinian priory,18 1122 too late because by 1121–2 the priory of Nostell had already received substantial endowments from a circle of benefactors, and 1109 the most likely date for the account in the 14 Nicholl (Thurstan, p. 130 and note 81) suggested a date of 1114 for Henry I’s confirmation for the canons of the church of Tockwith, given by Geoffrey Fitz Pain (see ‘The chartulary of Tockwith, alias Scokirk, a cell to the priory of Nostell’, ed. G. R. Ransome, in Miscellanea III, YASRS, 80 (1931), 151–206 (no. 14)). However, there seems to be no evidence to suggest a more precise date than before 1121. 15 Wilson, ‘Priories of Nostell and Scone’, 153. 16 Leeds District Archives, MS NP/C1, pp. 84–5. 17 Wightman, ‘Henry I and the foundation of Nostell’, 58–9; Jane Herbert, ‘The transformation of hermitages into Augustinian priories in twelfth-century England’, in Monks, Hermits and the Ascetic Tradition, Studies in Church History, 22, ed. W. J. Shiels (Oxford, 1985), pp. 131–45 (p. 132); MRH, p. 169. Nicholl, Thurstan, p. 134, note, follows Thompson, Bolton Priory, p. 26, in suggesting that Ralph Adlave is a conflation of Ethelwold with Ralph, the canon to whom Nigel d’Aubigny gave the cell of Hirst (Mowbray Charters, no. 15). HRH, p. 178, does not include Ralph Adlave among the priors. 18 Queen Matilda’s influential foundation at Aldgate did not take place until 1107–8.

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Page 74 De gestis. He concludes, however, that the ‘story of Ralph Adlave should probably be dismissed as legendary and implausible’. But what of the community that preceded the Augustinian house? De gestis describes it as a group of hermits living at Nostell, ‘locum illum ubi capella Sancti Oswaldi regis et matiris modo sita est’ (‘that place where the chapel of St Oswald king and martyr is now located’). The date at which they arrived is uncertain, but they evidently had permission to settle from the local landowner, Robert de Lacy, and possibly even from his father, Ilbert I.19 Charter evidence links the name of Robert de Lacy to the hermit group, to whom he made a grant of the wood called St Oswald’s wood.20 De gestis may have been conflating or fabricating material when its author identified Ralph Adlave as a royal chaplain, and anticipated Henry I’s later interest in Nostell by assuming a personal link between the two, but to accept Ralph’s existence may explain one feature of the narrative, that is, its insistence that Ralph was not prior of Nostell but magister et rector (‘master and ruler’), a far more likely title for the head of an informal hermit group. It may be suggested that by 1114 that group, their eremitical existence organized around the chapel, or church, of St Oswald which doubtless accommodated their communal worship, had grown sufficiently for the church to have been in receipt of endowments and to have challenged the monks of Pontefract in respect of rights in the neighbouring parish of Featherstone. By this time the hermit band was in the process of being transformed into a community of ‘canons serving God according to a rule’. Burrows is undoubtedly correct to identify Henry I and Archbishop Thurstan as the prime movers in the development of Nostell, and of these he gives prominence to Thurstan. He reads literally the phrase in Henry’s charter of 1121 or 1122 which states that ‘canonici regulares ad serviendum Deo viventi per manum venerabilis Turstini… constituti sunt’ (‘regular canons were instituted to serve the living God by the hand of the venerable Thurstan’), and suggests that the archbishop founded the priory between 1114 and 1119.21 Thurstan then (1120) obtained a papal confirmation for Nostell from Calixtus II,22 the pope from whom he had received consecration in October 1119 to end his five-year anomalous position as archbishop-elect; and it was shortly afterwards that the priory received assistance from Henry I which improved its material resources at 19 Wightman, ‘Henry I and the foundation of Nostell’, 57; Herbert, ‘Transformation of hermitages’, pp. 140–1. 20 Confirmed by Henry I: Leeds District Archives MS NP/C1, pp. 85–7; BL Cotton MS Vespasian E XIX, fos. 7–8, 150; EYC, III, nos. 1425–6, 1428; RRAN, II, nos. 1286–7. 21 EYC, III, no. 1428. 22 Wilson, ‘Priories of Nostell and Scone’, 154–5; Nicholl, Thurstan, pp. 69–70. The bull was secured while Thurstan and the pope were at Tournus, that is in late January 1120: EEA, V, 115.

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Page 75 the same time as encouraging other grants. By this time the canons had begun the move to a new site.23 One of these writs (1120) was witnessed by Thurstan himself in Normandy.24 Burrows makes a persuasive case for ascribing the initiative for the transformation of Nostell to Thurstan, and his motive in replacing hermits with canons as ‘the best available means of introducing a new and vigorous purity into the religious life of the north’.25 However, this raises a practical problem of when and how Thurstan might have effected this transformation, since most of his time between 1114 and 1121 was spent abroad. Thurstan was appointed archbishop in August 1114, spent a very short period in the north for his enthronement in December of that year, after which he visited Hexham and Durham, and made a second brief visit in 1117. He could have had little time to familiarize himself with the state of his diocese on these occasions; on the other hand he had been a royal chaplain and may therefore have been known to the northern barons, and he was acquainted with the work of his predecessor in introducing canons to Hexham. However, when Thurstan had received consecration at Reims in October 1119, he spent the following eighteen months in the company of the pope in Normandy and France, and it was in this period that he obtained a papal confirmation on behalf of the canons of Nostell and others. During the period from his election in August 1114 and his return to the north in February 1121 Thurstan was a stranger to his diocese, and one may pertinently ask at what stage he could have encountered and transformed the hermit community. He clearly had lines of communication with his diocese through members of his cathedral clergy26 and his acquaintance with the barons enabled him to support at least one foundation from a distance,27 but to envisage his transformation of Nostell from across the channel is less easy. The sources for Nostell are so confused that any suggested interpretation must be made with caution. In view of the difficulties in perceiving Thurstan as prime mover, however, it may be suggested that the interest 23 De gestis (Leeds District Archives MS NP/C1, pp. 87–8) states that Ralph Adlave was buried at the vetus locus (the old place). Ethelwold ‘transtulit se et socios suos… de veteri loco quo modo ecclesia parochialis est ad locum ubi nunc manemus’ (Ethelwold ‘transferred himself and his comrades from the old place which is now the parish church to the place where we now dwell’). The site of the old place ‘which is now the parish church’ may be Wragby church, the original dedication of which was to St Oswald. On the vetus locus, see EYC, III, 133–6. A notification of Henry I (1121/2) granted permission for the canons to build their church above the fishpond where they had begun to construct it: BL MS Cotton Vespasian E XIX, fo. 7; RRAN, II, no. 1285; EYC, III, no. 1427. 24 The grant of the church of St Oswald, Bamburgh (Northumberland): BL MS Cotton Vespasian E XIX, fo. 8; EYC, III, no. 1424. 25 Burrows, ‘Nostell Priory’, 35. 26 Hugh the Chanter, History of the Church of York, pp. 78–81, 86–7, 118–19. 27 Guisborough: see below, pp. 77–9.

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Page 76 of Henry I predated that of the archbishop. An alternative sequence, which fits with the available evidence, is as follows: before his exile Robert de Lacy granted to a group of hermits the woodland where the chapel of St Oswald (later Wragby church) stood. It was an informal community and posed no threat to the major Lacy foundation only a few miles away at Pontefract.28 This group was under the leadership of one Ralph, possibly surnamed Adlave, who is, however, unlikely to have been a royal chaplain. Its transformation into a house of regular canons could have been attributed to Thomas II, but it is more likely to have been by that well-known Augustinian patron, Henry I. Other historians have stressed the importance of Henry in developing the hermitage into a formal religious house for political reasons, that is, to foster the creation of a loyal institution iuxta castellum Pontisfracti, as a warning to the new regime of Hugh de Laval at Pontefract not to overstep the mark as the Lacys had done.29 This interpretation would place the ‘foundation’ of the Augustinian priory in the period in which Henry held the honour of Pontefract in his own hands, after the exile of the Lacys and before the arrival of de Laval. De Laval prudently became a benefactor of Nostell, granting no fewer than seven churches and landed property.30 In 1120 the priory received from the pope at Thurstan’s request a bull of confirmation. On his return to his diocese the archbishop visited Nostell and ‘instituted regular canons’ in the church—possibly a formal dedication of the new site to which the canons were in the process of moving at the time Henry issued a writ authorizing the transfer.31 By 1122 the prior who headed the establishment was Ethelwold, in all probability a royal chaplain, and perhaps the source of the confused identification of Ralph Adlave as a confessor of the king.32 The motives and contributions of king, archbishop, and aristocracy as well as those of the hermit/canons themselves cannot easily be separated. What the history of Nostell shows is that to draw dividing lines between the different phases of the life of a religious house is difficult. The pre-Augustinian history of Nostell shows the existence of both an eremitical and a clerical community; and the possibility that Thomas II aimed, as he had done at Bridlington and Hexham, to draw an existing 28 Burrows, ‘Nostell Priory’, 34, points out the unlikelihood of the Lacys establishing a second powerful family monastery only a few miles from Pontefract. 29 Wightman, ‘Henry I and the foundation of Nostell’, 59; Herbert, ‘Transformation of hermitages’, p. 141. In addition to the church of Bamburgh, Henry I granted to Nostell, before 1120, the right to hold a fair at Nostell on the feast day of St Oswald and the two days preceding and following: BL MS Cotton Vespasian E XIX, fo. 8; EYC, III, no. 1433. 30 BL MS Cotton Vespasian E XIX, fos. 6v–7v, 14r; EYC, III, nos. 1435, 1439, 1488. Burrows has pointed out that Nostell cannot be a de Laval foundation, since his grant of churches postdates the issue of Henry’s 1121/2 charter. 31 See above, notes 21, 23. 32 Thompson, Bolton Priory, p. 26.

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Page 77 centre of parochial activity into a tighter and more cohesive ecclesiastical organization through using regular canons should not be discounted. The combination of royal and episcopal backing brought Nostell immediate success and estates dispersed in and beyond Yorkshire.33 The rapidity of its rise is demonstrated by the request of the Scottish king, within a short space of its ‘formal foundation’ in 1120 or 1121, that Nostell send canons to convert the Culdee community of Scone—so resonant with political and religious associations—into an Augustinian house.34 In a remarkable utilization of devotion to the Northumbrian saint, Oswald, Nostell came to control churches dedicated to him: the church, later the cell of Bamburgh on the Northumbrian coast, granted by Henry I himself, and across the Pennines, the Lancashire church of St Oswald, Winwick, granted by the man who would eventually succeed Henry on the throne of England.35 In time Nostell became, arguably, the most important Augustinian house in the north, though by the sixteenth century if not before it was rivalled in wealth by Guisborough. Like Bridlington, Guisborough owed its origins to baronial initiative, in this case Robert I de Brus, one of the most prominent men in north Yorkshire. Brus’s charter stated that he was influenced ‘consilio et ammonitione Calixti papae secundi et Turstini Eboracensis archiepiscopi’ (‘by the counsel and advice of Pope Calixtus II and Archbishop Thurstan’) and this places the date of foundation between 1119 and 1124, the pontificate of Calixtus.36 Walter of Hemingburgh, writing 200 years after the event, was also aware of the influence of the two churchmen, and his date of 1129 may well have been a later scribal or copyist’s error for 1119.37 Certainly 1119 is a likely date for their collaboration, for it was between 1119 and 1121 that Thurstan was a member of the papal entourage. Again, to see Thurstan as a formative influence it is necessary to envisage him operating at a distance, but this is less of a problem with Guisborough than Nostell, since the former was a clearly defined baronial 33 See the confirmation charter of Henry I, which notes grants of estates by William and Herbert Fitz Herbert (Weaverthorpe church), Picot de Percy (Bolton Percy church), William de Warenne and Ralph de L’Isle (Woodkirk church), Robert Fossard (the churches of Bramham, Wharram, and Lythe, which were combined by Thurstan to form a prebend), Wintersett, Felkirk, Adwick on Dearne church and a moiety of Mexborough (Swain Fitz Ailric), Winwick in Makerfield, Lancashire (Stephen, count of Mortain), Archbishop Thurstan (Tickhill), and many others: BL MS Cotton Vespasian E XIX, fo. 150, EYC, III, no. 1428. 34 Wilson, ‘Priories of Nostell and Scone’, 141–59. 35 On these associations, see Nicholl, Thurstan, pp. 131–2. 36 Cart. Guis., I, nos. 1–2. These charters are of dubious authenticity. However, the grants of the founder were confirmed by his grandson, Adam II de Brus: BL Cotton MS Cleopatra D II, fo. 112v; Cart. Guis., I, no. 13; EYC, II, no. 659. 37 The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, previously edited as the Chronicle of Walter of Hemingford or Hemingburgh, ed. H. Rothwell, Camden 3rd series, 89 (1957), p. 33.

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Page 78 foundation. Robert de Brus was a member of a family brought to prominence in the north after the Battle of Tinchebrai in 1106, who by the end of the second decade of the twelfth century evidently wished to make his mark as a monastic founder. Guisborough lay at the centre of his estates, and his plantation of a religious community nearby followed what was by now becoming a familiar pattern. Robert’s choice may have been dictated by royal interest in the Augustinians, and he may, like Thurstan, have been in the company of the king in Normandy in 1118–20 and asked the archbishop’s advice. He forged an immediate and personal bond with the community by placing over it his own brother, William, who was still prior in 1132 and possibly as late as 1139.38 The endowment made by Brus to his canons was magnificent, and ensured the priory an economic dominance in the Cleveland area. This was as yet a region which was unexploited by monastic houses, since only Whitby, to the southeast, threatened its land acquisitions. The canons obtained from their founder the entire vill of Guisborough, with the exception of ‘Haia’ and ‘Asedale’, tracts of marsh and woodland in the vicinity, and the mills with soke and multure and a monopoly of milling in the region. They were to enjoy free service of certain tenants. They obtained the whole of Kirkleatham (nine carucates) and adjacent parts of Coatham, and eight churches on Brus’s demesne, that is, Marske, Danby, Upleatham, Kirklevington, Skelton (Cleveland), Kirkburn, and in county Durham, Stranton and Hart. As at Guisborough, tenants of the founder supplemented these grants. Adam II de Brus’s confirmation charters bear witness to grants by his grandfather’s contemporaries: Ormesby church and Cargo Fleet mill from Ernald de Percy; a moiety of the church of Marton in Cleveland, from Robert d’Esturmy; Acklam church from Alvered; and property in Ayresome, Lofthus, and Easington. By the end of the reign of Henry I the canons of Guisborough were in control of wide tracts of land, the service of tenants, and eleven churches, and for the purposes of building they enjoyed free access to materials from Eskdale forest.39 The Brus family continued to be patrons of the priory—one of the few families who held the patronage of a religious house from foundation to dissolution—though the relationship was not without its points of tension;40 it was, however, Robert’s initial grant and the continued support of the family that laid the foundations of the priory’s 38 On him see Memorials of Fountains, I, 24; Cart. Whitby, I, no. 271; HRH, p. 164. Robert de Brus’s obit was celebrated at Guisborough on 11 May: see F. Wormald, ‘A liturgical calendar from Guisborough Priory, with some obits’, YAJ, 31 (1934), 5–35 (p. 31). Robert’s wife, Agnes, whose anniversary was remembered on 18 November (p. 32), may have been a daughter of Geoffrey Bainard of Burton Agnes (on whom see above, note 8); EYC, II, 12. 39 Cart. Guis., I, nos. 1–2 (foundation charters), 3–7, 14–15 (royal and ecclesiastical confirmations). 40 See, for instance, EYC, II, nos. 660, 675.

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Page 79 wealth, and by 1535 it was the richest Augustinian house in the county, valued at just over £712, gross.41 The early charters of Kirkham, like those of Guisborough, suggest that the Augustinian movement in Yorkshire benefited greatly from the close association which had been built up between Archbishop Thurstan and Pope Calixtus. Kirkham, like Bridlington, Nostell, and Guisborough, received a papal bull of confirmation of its foundation, by Walter Espec, lord of Helmsley (Yorkshire), Wark (Northumberland), and Warden (Bedfordshire). As with Guisborough it is not possible to assign a more precise date than that furnished by the dates of Calixtus’s office, but we may take note of the date of 1121, recorded in a fourteenth-century calendar possibly deriving from Kirkham.42 Tradition tells that Walter Espec founded Kirkham in memory of his son who was killed while out riding.43 The provenance of this story cannot be established, and there seems to be little basis for it. Ailred, abbot of Rievaulx (1147–67), who knew Walter Espec well, merely states that the baron ‘made Christ his heir because he lacked heirs himself’—he was, in fact, succeeded by the sons of his three sisters.44 What may have more substance is the claim that Espec’s uncle, William, rector of Garton, who had become a canon at Nostell, persuaded him to found the priory, and indeed William became Kirkham’s first, though short-lived, prior. The core of Espec’s endowment and the location for the new priory buildings was the parish church of Kirkham, which had been recorded in Domesday Book; and the earliest evidence for the existence of the priory is provided by a confirmation issued by Pope Calixtus II (1119–24), which survives only in abbreviated form (‘Privilegium Calixti pape ii de possessionibus nostris in qua continetur quod dictus papa confirmavit nobis omnia que habemus de dono Walteri Espek et aliorum quorumcunque’; ‘the privilege of Pope Calixtus II concerning our possessions in which it is contained that the said pope confirmed to us all that we have of the grant of Walter Espec and others’),45 and a royal confirmation issued for Henry I between 1123 and 1127 and possibly in 1126.46 It is the latter which provides evidence of the nature of Espec’s endowment: the 41 VE, V, 80–1. 42 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson D 938, fo. 128r, evidently deriving from a northern priory dedicated to the Holy Trinity, which may be Kirkham or possibly Knaresborough. Cambridge, Emmanuel College MS 65 (fo. 2) gives a date of 1122, and that was accepted tentatively by Dickinson, Austin Canons, p. 123, MRH, p. 141, HRH, p. 168. On the foundation and later history of Kirkham, see Burton, Kirkham Priory. 43 See the account of the foundation of Kirkham printed from Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 85, in Cart. Riev., no. 370. 44 Ailred of Rievaulx, Relatio de standardo, in Chron. Stephen, III, 181–99 (p. 183). 45 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 7, fo. 95r. 46 RRAN, II, no. 1459; Cal. Ch. R., IV, 360–1.

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Page 80 church of Kirkham with one carucate of land, and twenty acres between the woodland and the river Derwent, and Espec’s new garden at the head of the church; the manor of Whitwell, the minsters (monasteria) of Garton on the Wolds (of which Walter’s uncle had been rector), and Kirbygrindalythe, and the church of Helmsley, each with one carucate of land; four carucates in Thixendale; Espec’s demesne houses in York; and in Northumberland the churches of Carham on Tweed, Newton in Glendale and Ilderton, the vill of Titlington, and the houses of Ulchil. This was a substantial endowment, and as with other Augustinian houses particularly worthy of note is the number of churches conveyed to the canons, one of which formed the basis of the priory and three in the vicinity which might be expected to be served by canons.47 Neither of the two surviving ‘foundation charters’ of Walter Espec dates from the time of the inception of regular life at Kirkham. It has been demonstrated elsewhere that the earlier of the two postdates the foundation of Rievaulx Abbey by Walter Espec in 1132 and modified the endowments of the Augustinians in the light of this event, and that the later charter was issued after the agreement (which was never implemented) by which it was intended to transfer the community of Kirkham to the Cistercians.48 A new house was to be built for those canons who did not wish to become Cistercian, comprising ‘a church, chapter house, dormitory and refectory of squared stone of sufficient size, and other necessary buildings of another material, that is, an infirmary, cellarium, guesthouse, bakery, stable, granary and barn’, and it was to be furnished with ‘the crosses and chalices, books and vestments… and the coloured glass windows’ then at Kirkham.49 In the end the coming of the Cistercians to Espec’s Yorkshire lands resulted in only minor adjustments to Kirkham’s endowment, and the widespread nature of Espec’s lands gave the Augustinians an important foothold on his Northumberland estates as well as urban property in York. The years which followed 1120 appear to have been ones of intense activity by monastic founders. It was also around this time that William Meschin, lord of Copeland, and his wife Cecily de Rumilly, lady of Skipton, two of the most powerful magnates in the north, took the first step towards the foundation of an Augustinian house at Embsay, which 47 On the significance of the monasteria, see below, pp. 92–3. 48 First charter: London BL MS Cotton Julius D I, fos. 144v–145v (151v–152v) and 175v–176v (192v–193v), printed in Cart. Riev., no. 216. Second charter: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 9, fo. 157, printed in Cart. Riev., no. 347. For discussion see Burton, Kirkham Priory, pp. 4–11, relying on D. Baker, ‘Patronage in the early twelfth-century church: Walter Espec, Kirkham and Rievaulx’, in Traditio-Krisis-Renovatio aus theologischer Sicht: Festschrift Winfried Zeller, ed. B. Jaspert and R. Mohr (Marburg, 1976), pp. 92–100. 49 Burton, Kirkham Priory, pp. 7–8.

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Page 81 would become more famous at its second site of Bolton. A memorandum inserted into the cartulary of Bolton Priory reads: Memorandum quod in anno domini millesimo centessimo vicessimo fundatum est monasterium canonicorum apud Emmesey per dominum Willielmum Meschines et dominam Ceciliam uxorem suam dominam et haeredem honoris de Skipton in honore beate Marie semper virginis et Sancti Cuthberti pontificis anno regni regis Henrici filii Willelmi Regis Bastardi vicessimo primo et anno pontificatus domini Thurstini Eborum archiepiscopi secundo.50 (Memorandum that in the year of our lord 1120 the monastery of canons at Embsay was founded by Lord William Meschin and Cecily his wife, lady and heiress of the honour of Skipton, in honour of St Mary ever Virgin and St Cuthbert, bishop, in the twenty-first year of the reign of King Henry son of King William the bastard, and the second year of the pontificate of Archbishop Thurstan of York.) The proposed location of the new priory and its endowments are made clear in a charter of the founders, which granted ‘ecclesiam Sancte Trinitatis de Skypton cum capella de Carleton et cum omnibus pertinentiis suis et totam villam de Emmesey cum omnibus pertinentiis et rectis divisis suis ad fundandum inde ecclesiam canonicorum regularium’ (‘the church of Holy Trinity of Skipton with the chapel of Carleton… and the whole vill of Embsay… to found there a church of regular canons’).51 At roughly the same time, however, and probably slightly earlier, William and Cecily had, on the advice of Archbishop Thurstan, granted the church of Holy Trinity, Skipton, to the Augustinian priory of Huntingdon. The purpose of the grant seems clear: on Thurstan’s advice the founders made a grant to Huntingdon for the foundation of a new religious house, and when that foundation had taken place the endowment was transferred to the new priory under its prior, Reginald.52 The further implications, however, are less clear: was the church of Holy Trinity to form the basis of the new priory or merely one of its endowments? Or was it to be compensation to Huntingdon for the loss of its canons? There is some support for the first suggestion in an act of Archbishop Thurstan, issued between 1135 and 1140, which gave licence for the canons to appropriate the church of Skipton which had been 50 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 9, fo. 219r; Mon. Ang. VI, 203, no. 1. The regnal and archiepiscopal dating suggests 1121 not 1120. 51 EYC, VII, no. 2 (from Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 9, fo. 219r–v; also MS 144, fos. 2, 57). 52 EYC, VII, no. 1 and note. Huntingdon Priory had, some years earlier, supplied a colony of canons for Hexham Priory. It may be noted that the foundation of Embsay coincided with William’s establishment, some time after 1120, of the priory of St Bees in Cumberland from St Mary’s Abbey, York. Nicholl (Thurstan, pp. 144–5) pointed out the close connection between Archbishop Thurstan and the family of Meschin, which, like Thurstan, hailed from Bricquassard.

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Page 82 granted ‘ad fundandam et construendam inde ecclesiam canonicorum regularium’ (‘to found and construct there a church of regular canons’).53 If this were the intention it would have placed a priory within sight of the Rumilly castle at Skipton, the caput of the honour, rather than at Embsay some six miles distant. There is, additionally, evidence to suggest that the canons of Huntingdon attempted to retain some control over the house for which it had supplied canons: in the 1190s the priors of Guisborough and Marton informed the archbishop of York that Pope Celestine III (1191–8) had declared the priory to be free of all subjection to Huntingdon.54 After the death of William Meschin, Cecily de Rumilly added to Embsay’s endowments, granting the mills of Silsden and Harewood with lucrative milling rights, the vill and church of Kildwick, and land in Stirton (Skipton), while her tenants followed with lands in Beamsley and Malham.55 William Fitz Duncan, the first husband of Cecily de Rumilly’s daughter, Alice, who inherited her mother’s Craven estates, was associated with Cecily in the grant of Stirton and Kildwick to the canons, and with Alice conveyed to them the church of All Saints, Broughton.56 However it was Alice who was responsible for transferring the canons from Embsay to Bolton in 1155.57 Two of her charters granted the canons her manor of Bolton within carefully delineated boundaries, in exchange for the manors of Stirton and Skibeden (Skipton).58 In the second she refers to the grants made by her father and mother ‘canonicis ejusdem ecclesie tunc apud Embesiam nunc apud Boelton commorantibus de dicto loco de Embesai usque Boelton de voluntate assensu et ordinacione 53 EYC, VII, no. 3, Mon. Ang., VI, 205, no. XI (from an inspeximus in the Hatton Library); EEA, V, no. 34. However too much emphasis should not be placed on this literal reading: textual similarities with the charter of the founders suggests that a sentence may have been lost during the transmission of Thurstan’s act, and that the phrase ad fundandam inde etc. should refer to Embsay. 54 Mon. Ang., VI, 205–6, no. XV. See Dickinson, Austin Canons, p. 116; Thompson, Bolton Priory, pp. 50–2. Nicholl, Thurstan, p. 179, speaking of the incidence of uncertain ownership of properties granted to religious houses, states: ‘William le Meschin confused the canons at Huntingdon and at Embsay by granting Skipton church to both of them.’ However, it seems clear that what we have is not a double grant of a church, but an attempt of one house to claim authority over what started out as a colony. 55 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 9, fos. 219v–220v; EYC, III, no. 1861; VII, nos. 4–13, 23, 57. 56 Ibid., no. 15, from MS Dodsworth 9, fo. 221v. 57 Memorandum quod in anno domini millesimo centessimo quinquagessimo primo in anno regni regis Henrici secundi primo translati fuerunt dicti canonici per assensum voluntatem et ordinationem domine Alicie de Romeli tunc advocate usque Boulton. The date of 1151, given in this version of the memorandum (Oxford, Bodleian Library Dodsworth MS 9, fo. 222r, printed in Mon. Ang., VI, 203, no. V), is almost certainly a mistake for 1155, the regnal year given (December 1154–December 1155); Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 144, fo. 58 gives 1155. The move was confirmed by Henry II: EYC, VII, no. 19. 58 EYC, VII nos. 17–18 (from Dodsworth 9, fo. 222r–v, and 144, fos 4r–v, 58r–v, and Dodsworth 8, fo. 11).

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Page 83 mea translatis’ (‘to the canons of the same church then residing at Embsay and now at Bolton, and transferred from the said location of Embsay to Bolton by my will, assent and ordnance’). This claims for Alice the initiative for the removal to Bolton, though it may rather be an expression of the power of a patron to approve such a transfer. The reason for the move is not recorded. It was certainly not, as later legend had it, to commemorate the spot on the notorious Strid where Alice’s son, the Boy of Egremont, fell to his death, since he was a witness to his mother’s first charter and was indeed still alive at a date after the transfer.59 The source of the legend has not been traced, but the similarity with the tradition associated with Kirkham suggests that both formed part of a stock of common lore. The circumstances which led to the move may have been far more practical, and related to the kind of adverse climatic conditions complained of some years later by Sallay Abbey, which was located in the same region.60 Certainly before 1140 Archbishop Thurstan approved the appropriation of Kildwick church to the canons of Embsay on account of their poverty.61 By 1122, therefore, with scarcely time for the dust to settle since Thurstan’s return to the north, there were five Augustinian houses in the county. There was a gap of several years before the next two foundations, Warter and Drax, both of which—and the order of foundation is not clear—belong to the last decade of Thurstan’s pontificate. The founder of Drax Priory provides us with an example of the tight web of monastic patronage which had developed by the 1130s, for William Paynel of Drax was the son of Ralph Paynel, founder of Holy Trinity, and second husband of Avice de Rumilly, daughter of the founder of Bolton. To Paynel and his wife was bequeathed a close working cooperation with Archbishop Thurstan, a relationship acknowledged by Paynel, who founded Drax ‘monitu et consilio domini Turstini Eboracensis archiepiscopi’ (‘with the advice and counsel of Lord Thurstan, archbishop of York’).62 The endowment included the island called Helmholm and Middleholm where the priory of St Nicholas was founded (and Helmholm remained an alternative name for the priory), the parish church of Drax, six churches (Bingley (Yorkshire), Roxby, Middle Rasen, Irnham, Swinstead (Lin-colnshire), and Saltby (Leicestershire)), and landed properties lying mostly in the vicinity of the house. The charter is not easy to date, but if, as Clay pointed out, Paynel’s interest in Saltby derived from his second 59 I. Kershaw, Bolton Priory: The Economy of a Northern Monastery, 1286–1325 (Oxford, 1973), pp. 6–7; Thompson, Bolton Priory, pp. 59–60. 60 See below, pp. 196–7. 61 EYC, VII, no. 8, where dated 1135 x 1140; however see EEA, V, no. 33. 62 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Top. Yorkshire C 72, fo. I (damaged); EYC, VI, no. 13, from Charter Roll 4 Edw. II, m. 4 (Cal. Ch. R., III, 171).

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Page 84 wife, Avice de Rumilly, then the grant cannot have predated the death of her first husband, William de Curcy, around 1130.63 It may be as late as 1139 and if so would have been one of the last foundations influenced by the energetic archbishop, Thurstan. The sources for the origins of Warter are ambiguous. The earliest documentary evidence is a papal bull of 1140, surviving in a cartulary copy, by which Innocent II confirmed Warter as an Augustinian house and enumerated as its possessions the church of Askham (Westmorland) and five bovates of land in Seaton Ross.64 Within a year or two at most had come the decision of the priory to affiliate itself to Arrouaise—the only Yorkshire house so to do65—and by January 1142, when William of Roumare issued a charter of confirmation, the canons had extended their estates to include two further churches, those of Nunburnholme in the East Riding and Barton in Westmorland, the onset of all his demesne mills, and further lands, including waste land in Seaton Ross.66 However, a fifteenth-century memorandum inserted into the rather earlier cartulary ascribed the foundation to Geoffrey Trussebut in 1132.67 This identification is likely to be an error for Geoffrey Fitz Pain, as a later holder of the fee of Warter, Geoffrey son of William Trussebut, confirmed all the grants made by Geoffrey Fitz Pain ‘predecessor meus… canonicis regularibus de Wartria’ (‘my predecessor to the regular canons 63 EYC, VI, no. 13, note; see also the confirmations of various grants to Drax by Richard de Curcy and Robert de Gant, husbands of Alice, daughter of William Paynel and Avice de Rumilly, printed ibid., VI, nos. 45–6 (from Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Top. Yorkshire C 72, fo. 75r–v). 64 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 9, fo. 21r; PUE, III, no. 34; EYC, X, no. 64: ‘ut in vestra beati Jacobi ecclesia canonicus ordo secundum Beati Augustini regulam inviolabiliter perpetuo conservetur’ (‘so that in your church of blessed James the canonical order may be maintained inviolate and in perpetuity according to the rule of the blessed Augustine’). 65 EYC, X, no. 65; see also Salter, Chapters of the Augustinian Canons, p. xliv. The petition, from the prior, subprior, and ten canons, to be allowed to join the congregation of Arrouaise, was addressed to the dean and chapter of York, and is to be dated to the vacancy which followed the death of Thurstan in January 1140, but evidently before Roumare’s charter of January 1142. The significance of the witnesses ‘Gaufrido clerico de Wartra, Ivone, Pagano, Hugone, Willelmo, Clemente, fratribus eius’, who appear among the first group of witnesses to Walter Espec’s foundation charter for Rievaulx, founded in 1132 (Cart. Riev. no. 42 (p. 21)) is not clear, since the charter is a composite one, dating from not earlier than 1145, and possibly from the 1150s: cf. Nicholl, Thurstan, p. 154. However, one may note the coincidence of four of these names with the canons who petitioned the dean and chapter in 1140 x 1142. 66 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 9, fo. 105v; EYC, X, no. 66; N. Denholm-Young, ‘The foundation of Warter Priory’, YAJ, 31 (1934), 208–13 (pp. 211–13). Roumare was created earl of Lincoln in 1139/40, and his charter of confirmation for Warter was dated ‘septimo anno Stephani regis et tercio consulatus mei’ (i.e., 1142); Denholm-Young suggested that the coda which dated the act to 31 January 1135 was a mistaken attempt by a later copyist to clarify the date. 67 Memorandum quod domus Wartrie fundata fuit a Galfrido Trussbutt anno domini tempore regis Henrici Willelmi conquestoris vid.anno regni sui xxxij: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 9, fo. 57r. See DenholmYoung, ‘Warter Priory’, 208–13; EYC, X, 110–12.

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Page 85 of Warter’).68 However the status of founder was also claimed by William de Roumare, earl of Lincoln, who confirmed the foundation as his own act; as such it was ratified by Archbishop Henry Murdac, probably in 1151.69 Clay felt that the two statements were not irreconcilable; he suggested that the priory was founded by Geoffrey Fitz Pain and that on his death in 1139 and the reversion of the fee to William de Roumare, son of Roger Fitz Gerold, William assumed the role of founder/patron. William stated that he had granted the canons ten marks’ worth of land in Warter and the land of twenty villeins in the year in which he became earl of Lincoln (1139/40). His charter granted ecclesiam sancti Jacobi de Wartria… cum omnibus sibi adiacentibus et consuetudinibus quas habet vel melius habuit in diebus patris mei Rogeri filii Gyroldi liberam et quietam ab omni exaccione seculari et servicio sicut vicine ecclesie congregacionum que liberiores sunt (the church of St James of Warter… with all that lies around it and all the customs which it has, or had in the days of my father, Roger Fitz Gerold, free and quit from all secular exaction and service as the neighbouring churches of communities are, which are freer) This does not imply, as Denholm-Young took it to indicate, that the priory of canons was already in existence in the days of Roger Fitz Gerold, that is, before 1100.70 However, it does suggest that the canons were planted in an existing parish church which, in the time of Roger Fitz Gerold, had enjoyed certain customs and which may have been the centre of wider parochial or pastoral mission. More recently Edmund King has questioned Clay’s interpretation of events.71 He has suggested that the fee of Warter was never held by Geoffrey Fitz Pain; that William Trussebut’s reference to him as founder of Warter was a deliberate attempt to stretch back his claim to Warter to the 1130s; and that Clay’s reconciliation of the evidence demanded ‘too many transfers’ of the fee. His hypothesis is that the founder was indeed William de Roumare; that Warter was crown land until early in the reign of Stephen when Roumare gained an interest there, possibly through the agency of William of Aumale whose sister his own son later married, and 68 EYC, X, 111 and no. 71 (from Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 9, fo. 7r). The mistaken identification of Geoffrey Fitz Pain as a member of the Trussebut family may be the result of confusion with the Geoffrey Trussebut who succeeded William de Roumare in the fee of Warter some time between 1154 and 1166. William Trussebut may have married the sister of Geoffrey Fitz Pain: EYF, p. 94; EYC, X, 5–8. 69 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 9, fo. 105v; EYC, X, nos. 66–7; EEA, V, no. 128; Denholm-Young, ‘Warter Priory’, 211–13. 70 Denholm-Young, ‘Warter Priory’, 208. 71 Edmund King, ‘The parish of Warter and the castle of Galchlin’, YAJ, 52 (1980), 49–58.

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Page 86 that the manor of Warter was a ‘free gift’ to the young married couple. The foundation of Warter Priory was therefore linked to the marriage alliance between the families of Aumale and Roumare, and underlined the new tenure of the estate. The association of William II de Roumare and his wife in the affairs of Warter is evident in the confirmation of Henry Murdac, for the archbishop confirmed the decision which the canons had taken on the advice of William II de Roumare, as their advocate, to transfer from Warter to Seaton Ross. King’s argument is an attractive one, but there remains a chronological problem. It has been demonstrated that the priory was in existence by 1140 at the latest. King stated that the marriage between the younger William and Agnes took place around 1145, although arrangements might have been made after the Battle of Lincoln (February 1141). The evidence suggests, however, that the interest of Roumare and the foundation of the priory predated the marriage agreement. At least one of Roumare’s grants, indeed his major benefaction, was associated with his elevation to the earldom, and may have been intended to underline and consolidate his political role. His charter of confirmation was issued in 1142, after his defection to the Angevin camp and at roughly the same time as his foundation of the Cistercian house of Revesby (Lincolnshire). Whether a reaffirmation of an earlier foundation by Geoffrey Fitz Pain, or a foundation de novo, the Augustinian priory at Warter was a manifestation of the political rise of William de Roumare. THE LATER FOUNDATIONS, C. 1140–1215 The early history of the Augustinian priory at Newburgh, founded by Roger de Mowbray, and Mowbray’s Savigniac foundation at Byland are intimately linked. In 1138 a group of monks was settled at Hood, but this was to be a temporary site only and in 1142 they transferred to Byland.72 Within a short space of time Roger asked Bridlington Priory, which was of the patronage of his wife’s brother, Gilbert de Gant, for a group of canons to colonize the vacant site. It was, indeed, in these very years that the marriage took place, and the foundation of Hood was, therefore, something of a cementing of a new alliance.73 The monks of Byland received certain rents in exchange for Hood which they demised ‘canonicis qui venerunt de Brellingtona ad construendum cenobium suum’ (‘to the canons who came from Bridlington to build their monastery’).74 72 See below, pp. 110–12. 73 For the marriage, which took place at the direction of the earl of Chester, see Mowbray Charters, pp. xxvii–xxviii. 74 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 94, fo. 77r–v; EYC, IX, no. 119.

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Page 87 Although an agreement reached between Byland and Hood laid down that the convent should remain there in perpetuity, Hood was occupied by the Augustinians for a mere three years at most before they moved, around 1145, to Newburgh.75 The reasons may be the same as those for which the Savigniac monks found Hood unsuitable—it was too restricted for the building of an abbey—and instead it was retained by the Augustinians and developed as a grange.76 The priory received a generous series of endowments from Roger de Mowbray. The earliest, made while the convent was still at Hood, consisted of the church of St Andrew, Fishergate, York.77 There followed the grant of seven churches—Masham, Kirkby Malzeard (Yorkshire), Langford (Nottinghamshire), Haxey, Owston, Epworth, and Belton (Lincolnshire)—and numerous lands. Associated with the grants of churches was Roger’s relative, Samson d’Aubigny, who later entered Newburgh as a canon.78 Detailed instructions were attached to the grants, however: the churches were not to pass immediately to the canons; Samson was to hold them for the term of his life or until he entered a religious house, and only if his son were to predecease him were the canons to hold the churches libere et quiete. Marton Priory was distinctive from those so far discussed in that it was the only Yorkshire Augustinian house for both men and women. It is therefore particularly unfortunate that the sources are so sparse. The founder was evidently Bertram de Bulmer, lord of the castle of Sheriff Hutton and sheriff of Yorkshire between 1128 and 1130, and again from 1155.79 It was, apparently, in the intervening period that he founded Marton, for Ernisius, prior of Marton, witnessed an act of Archbishop William Fitz Herbert, which can be dated quite precisely to between April and June 1154.80 His attestation, around 1180, that he had been present when Geoffrey, prior of Kirkham, was presented for benediction to Archbishop Henry Murdac (1147–53) indicates that he may have been prior as early as 1147.81 It is from a confirmation charter of Bertram’s grandson, Henry de Nevill, that knowledge of the foundation grant derives: the town and church of Marton, thirty acres of land in Burnsall 75 ‘in eodem loco fundabitur abbatia eorum canonicorum et ibi perpetuo permanebit’ (‘an abbey of their canons will be established in that same place and will remain there in perpetuity’): EYC, IX, no. 120, from Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 94, fo. 77v; Mowbray Charters, no. 194. 76 Mon. Ang., V, 350. It was also described as a cell: see EYC, IX, no. 122 (1202 x 1210). 77 EYC, IX, no. 118, from Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 7, fo. 168r; Mowbray Charters, no. 195. This was not retained and became a Gilbertine priory; see below, p. 91. 78 Mowbray Charters, nos. 196–7; Mon. Ang., V, 351. 79 Green, English Sheriffs, p. 90. 80 EEA, V, no. 91, from York, Borthwick Institute, cause paper, CP F 307, a late-fifteenth-century copy. HRH, p. 166, note 1, suggests that the date of 1141 in a Hexham charter attested by Ernisius may be a scribal error for 1161; Ernisius occurs elsewhere as a witness as late as 1185 and possibly 1191: HRH, p. 175. 81 EYC, X, no. 106.

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Page 88 and Thorpe in Craven with pasture sufficient for 300 sheep and thirty cows.82 A royal charter issued in or before 1158 indicates that as a double house Marton was short-lived, for by that date the nuns had been removed to Moxby.83 A later charter of Henry II, confirming land in Huby to both the canons and nuns of Marton, was clearly issued retrospectively. Exemption from the land is recorded in the Pipe Rolls from 1167 only, and the charter may have been issued as late as 1181.84 It is possible that the two houses continued to enjoy common endowments even after the female congregation had been removed. The impulse which led Bertram de Bulmer to found a double house can only be conjectured. The foundation of Marton would appear to be roughly contemporary with Eustace Fitz John’s establishment of a double house of the Gilbertine order at Watton,85 or the model for Marton may have been Arrouaise, whose congregation included a number of female houses, though only one of them in England. In addition, in their early days a number of female houses of the Premonstratensian order exhibited close links with male houses of the order, so close that Sally Thompson suggested that they might almost be regarded as double houses.86 There is no evidence to suggest any direct influence on Bertram de Bulmer by any of these; what we can say, however, is that at the time Marton was founded there was a trend among the canonical orders to associate men and women in the same, or neighbouring communities. It was a trend, in England as on the continent, that was short-lived.87 The Premonstratensians made their first appearance in Yorkshire in the early 1150s when they were introduced into the ancient minster of St Agatha, Easby, a mile and a half from Richmond, by Roald, constable of the castle from 1145 or 1146 until his death in 1158.88 He was one of only a handful of non-baronial founders of monasteries for men in the county.89 The Premonstratensians, or White Canons, as we have seen, observed the 82 Ibid., II, no. 784, from BL Cotton charter XI. 42 (original charter). 83 EYC, I, no. 419. Henry II granted the nuns land in ‘Risebergh’ which formerly rendered 30s, and this was recorded in the Yorkshire Pipe Rolls from 1158 onwards. 84 Ibid., I, no. 420; Farrer argued convincingly for the date. The sentence ‘quae quidem sanctimoniales ab eodem loco ad quendam locum qui vocatur Molesbii postmodum translatae fuerunt et ibidem jam habitant’ (‘which said nuns afterwards were removed from that place to the place called Moxby, and there they now live’) derives from the inspeximus of Edward II in which the charter is preserved. 85 On this and the associated house for canons only at Malton, see below, pp. 89–90, 135–8. 86 S. P. Thompson, Women Religious: The Founding of English Nunneries after the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1991), pp. 133–44. 87 Janet Burton, Monastic and Religious Orders in Britain 1000–1300 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 106–8. 88 1152 was the year of foundation which the canons of Easby themselves gave in response to a fifteenth-century visitation: Collectanea Anglo-Praemonstratensia, ed. F. A. Gasquet, 3 vols., Camden 3rd series, 6, 10, 12 (1904–6), II, 3. 89 On the founders of nunneries see below, pp. 139–46.

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Page 89 Rule of St Augustine, but added to it a governmental and constitutional framework derived from Cistercian practice. Roald’s charter gives no hint as to why the White Canons should have felt his patronage, but it is worth noting that they tended to benefit from the deliberate halt to further expansion of the order which the Cistercians attempted to introduce in 1152, and that as a Cistercian himself, Archbishop Henry Murdac to whom Roald addressed his foundation charter, would have been well aware of the restriction. Roald’s charter reveals that the initial endowment of Easby comprised the minster (monasterium) of St Agatha ad abbatiam construendam (‘in order to build an abbey’) with two carucates of land.90 The monasterium was evidently still in use, for in 1135 Nisan son of Other had granted to the parish church of St Agatha certain tithes from Thorndale for a period of fifteen years, and when the grant was renewed in 1151—just a short time before the introduction of the regular canons—Walter, prior of Carlisle, and Robert, archdeacon of Cleveland, requested the prior of Richmond that brethren (fratres) of Easby be allowed to hold the tithes in peace.91 However, whereas Augustinian houses such as Bridlington and Kirkham seem to have used the parish church as the nucleus of the monastic church, with the result that the nave assumed a parochial status,92 at Easby the minster was retained, within the monastic precinct, and a separate priory church constructed. The effect was to retain a parochial role for St Agatha’s, but to distance it from monastic worship within the priory church. St Agatha’s appears to have been served by a canon of Easby although it was not formally appropriated until the late thirteenth century.93 The Premonstratensians soon acquired modest endowments from the earls of Richmond and their tenants.94 The foundation of the male Gilbertine house at Malton by Eustace Fitz John marks a ‘fundamental shift in the order’s orientation’.95 The coincidence with the foundation of the double house of Watton, also by Fitz John (both can be placed between 1150 and 1153), suggests that Malton was intended as a training ground for those canons who would serve the nuns at Watton. However, this may not be the full picture, for with only one exception all Gilbertine houses founded after 1155 were for men only. This is, in part, a manifestation of the growing suspicion of 90 BL MS Egerton 2827, fo. 2; EYC, V, no. 231. 91 BL MS Egerton 2827, fo. 289; EYC, V, no. 169. 92 On Kirkham see Janet Burton, ‘Priory and parish: Kirkham and its parishioners, 1496–7’, in Monasteries in Medieval Britain, Proceedings of the 1994 Harlaxton Medieval Symposium, ed. B. Thompson (Stamford, forthcoming). 93 Reg. le Romeyn, I, 340. 94 See, for instance, BL MS Egerton 2827, fos. 149, 289, 307; EYC, V, nos. 233, 235, 238. 95 Brian Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertine Order c. 1130 to c. 1300 (Oxford, 1995), pp. 219–21. On Yorkshire’s double house at Watton see below, pp. 135–8.

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Page 90 double communities which led to the segregation of men and women—as we have seen at Marton. It seems, as well, as though founders such as Fitz John perceived an eleemosynary function for the canons, since Malton, like the male Gilbertine house of St Katherine’s, Lincoln, was entrusted with the care of hospitals at Malton, Broughton, and Norton, and the cartulary records grants made specifically for the sustenance of the poor and sick.96 The final years of the twelfth and the early years of the thirteenth century saw a cluster of foundations of modestly endowed and poorly documented houses of canons. Coverham Abbey was originally founded at Swainby in the parish of Pickhill some time before 1187, when the rector of Pickhill granted the canons the right to have a burial ground and a chapel (cantaria).97 The canons appear not to have had any interest in the church of the parish in which their monastery was located. It may have been tensions caused by this unusual circumstance which led to their transfer to a second site at Coverham, the church of which was confirmed to them by Henry II at the request of Waleran, son of Helewise, widow of Robert son of Ralph of Middleham; and in the later Middle Ages tradition at the abbey associated Helewise with the foundation. Other benefactions included lands in Yorkshire and further afield, which Helewise had purchased.98 It was by 1198 at the latest that Egglestone Abbey was founded. So poorly documented is the house that even the identity of the founder is uncertain, though it may have been Ralph de Muleton, who paid Ralph de Lenham fifteen marks for confirming his grant to the canons.99 Before 1215 the canons had secured the manor of Kilvington, near Thirsk, and the patronage of Startforth church, but by the sixteenth century the abbey was distinguished only by being the poorest Premonstratensian house in England and Wales.100 The reason for the foundation of the Gilbertine house of canons at Ellerton (ER) seems to have had little to do with the female ethos of the order. The foundation charter of William Fitz Peter granted to the order of Sempringham land in Ellerton for the foundation of a priory of canons 96 Ibid., pp. 220, 229; London, BL MS Cotton Claudius D XI, fos. 34, 57v. 97 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 76, fo. 52 (original charter); EYC, V, no. 263. 98 Helewise was the daughter of the royal justiciar, Ranulf Glanville, a noted patron of the Premonstratensians. It is likely that she and Waleran are to be regarded as joint-founders of Coverham. See Colvin, White Canons, pp. 126–9; EYC, V, 302. For the confirmation of Henry II, see EYC, V, no. 359; Cal. Ch. R., V, 73. The transfer had been approved by 1202: EYC, V, no. 124; Cal. Ch. R., V, 76. 99 Colvin, White Canons, pp. 162–5; EYC, V, 316; J. F. Hodgson, ‘Eggleston Abbey’, YAJ, 18 (1905), 129–82. 100 EYC, V, no. 313; VE, V, 236–7.

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Page 91 and for feeding there (ad pascuendum ibidem) thirteen poor persons.101 The same formula—the sustenance of canons and thirteen poor folk—in charters such as that of Alan de Wilton for Ellerton suggests that by the late twelfth century male Gilbertine houses had an eleemosynary function rather than as feeder houses for the larger double communities.102 Whether the same kind of purpose was envisaged for the small suburban house of St Andrew’s, York, is not clear from the surviving charters.103 A recent study of English nunneries has perpetuated the notion that St Andrew’s was founded to serve the nuns of St Clement’s. There is no evidence for this; moreover, St Andrew’s did not enjoy a situation ‘next to the community of nuns’ or ‘adjoining the nunnery’, but was separated from it by two rivers.104 The founder of St Andrew’s was Hugh Murdac, a relative of Archbishop Henry Murdac, a canon of York Minster and a former royal justice and clerk. Some time after 1195 but before 1202 Hugh granted to the Gilbertines the church of St Andrew, Fishergate, which had previously been granted both to the Augustinians of Newburgh and the Benedictines of St Mary’s, York, but retained by neither house. The new priory, lying near to the rivers Ouse and Foss, took over some of the York tenements which the parish church of St Andrew had enjoyed, and obtained other properties both urban and rural. Hugh was one of a circle of Gilbertine founders. He was known to the founder of Ellerton: William Fitz Peter’s foundation was made for the souls of Hugh Murdac and Geoffrey Fitz Peter, founder of Gilbertine Shouldham Priory; and William witnessed the foundation charter of St Andrew’s.105 Finally mention must be made of a small house in the East Riding served by Augustinian canons, and save for the houses of White Canons and Warter’s membership of the congregation of Arrouaise the only Yorkshire house of canons to belong to a wider order. This was the priory of North Ferriby, a dependency of the abbey of the Temple of the Lord at Jerusalem. The priory may have been established by 1160—the earliest possible date for a charter issued for the abbey by John de Hessle—and was certainly in existence by 1183.106 Its founder cannot be identified beyond doubt, but North Ferriby appears to have formed part of the estate of Eustace Fitz John through his wife Beatrice de Vescy, and to have passed to his heirs who took the name of Vescy.107 The likelihood is that Eustace (d. 1157) or one of his descendants was responsible for the 101 EYC, II, no. 1133; Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, pp. 233–4. 102 Mon. Ang., VI, 977–8, no. VII; EYC, II, no. 788. 103 J. E. Burton, ‘Historical evidence’, in Kemp and Graves, Church and Gilbertine Priory of St Andrew, I, 49–67. 104 Thompson, Women Religious, p. 77. From the sixteenth century at least writers described the two communities as joined by an underground tunnel. 105 Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, p. 233. 106 EYC, XII, no. 23. 107 Ibid., III, 501.

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Page 92 foundation. In a sense North Ferriby belongs to an account of the Augustinian canons; in another it illustrates the enthusiasm which saw men join the crusades, and donate their estates in the West for the support of the military orders in the East.108 Little is known of the priory but the fragment which survives from its fourteenth-century cartulary gives a vivid glimpse of the canons’ piecemeal acquisitions in Hessle and Tranby from men of modest means, grants such as those made by John de Hessle’s tenant Maxelinus when he entered the house (‘quando venit ad conversionem’), and that which John granted himself by a charter which he handed to Petribricus, prior of the order of the Temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, at the siege of Acre in 1190–1.109 The coming of the regular canons covered Yorkshire with a web of monasteries. There was no area in which the houses were particularly dense, although, as we have noted, the Premonstratensian houses were clustered towards the north of the county. It is striking that of the sixteen monasteries, occupying twenty sites,110 which were founded before 1215, half had enjoyed a previous existence of some kind, some as a house of secular clerks or canons (Bridlington, Easby) or as a hermitage (Nostell), or as a parish church (Kirkham, Warter, Guisborough, Bolton, Marton, St Andrew’s, York). Parish churches, it is quite clear, formed an important part of the endowments of the canons. Indeed the nomenclature, monasteria, applied to a number of churches which formed the nucleus of a new priory and part of its endowments, suggests that the canons were intended to take over the parochial function of the ancient minster churches.111 This, alongside the clear involvement of Archbishop Thurstan, and, to a lesser extent, Thomas II, in the expansion of the regular canons, suggests that their rise in the north, as elsewhere, should be understood in terms of the function that was perceived for them by those churchmen. Thomas II introduced canons to Hexham and Bridlington, and Thurstan influenced the foundations of Nostell, Guisborough, Embsay (Bolton), and Drax, as well as the Nottinghamshire priory of Worksop which fell within his diocese. Although Newburgh came into existence only after Thurstan’s death, the archbishop had been a major influence on its founder, the youthful Roger de Mowbray, persuading 108 Janet Burton, ‘The Knights Templar in Yorkshire in the twelfth century: a reassessment’, Northern History, 27 (1991), 26–40; see below, pp. 246–8. 109 See EYC, XII, nos. 22–40; a witness to John’s charter was the Yorkshire chronicler, Roger of Howden. 110 Abandoned sites were Nostell I, Embsay, Hood, and Swainby. 111 On minsters see, for example, J. Blair (ed.), Minsters and Parish Churches: The Local Church in Transition 950– 1200, Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, monograph no. 17 (Oxford, 1988).

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Page 93 him to patronize the Savigniac monks, and it is not unlikely that he had already planted the idea of an Augustinian priory in Roger’s mind. Thurstan was clearly an important influence in the decision of the Yorkshire barons to found Augustinian priories, and he was doubtless influential, too, in suggesting the type of resource with which to endow them. The prominence of parish churches among the endowments suggests that Thurstan saw in the canons agents of reform, and their role as a pastoral and spiritual one as well as the intercessory one normally assigned to members of the monastic order. This was an era in which ecclesiastical, secular, and canonical interests coincided. The church hierarchy aimed to eradicate, where possible, secular influence in the church, from the highest level of lay investiture of bishops to the lowest rungs of patronage of the parish church. The transfer of advowsons from lay to monastic hands fulfilled an important stage in the programme of church reform. In some cases, where a parish church became a priory, part of the conventual church was given over to parochial use.112 In others where such an arrangement appears not to have worked, the original parish church was retained as a kind of capella ante portas for the laity.113 The canons might be expected to provide pastoral service in the parish churches of which they held the advowson. Clear evidence from the twelfth century is not easy to obtain, but several Yorkshire Augustinian houses received licence to appropriate parish churches, and may have taken advantage of the financial benefits and at the same time fulfilled the spiritual obligations of such an arrangement.114 Even without formal appropriation, it might be hoped that the Augustinians, as patrons of parish churches, would act as wise stewards to aid in the work of reform. Nostell gathered to it not only a string of parish churches and a prebend in York Minster, but also a network of widespread churches distinguished by their dedication to St Oswald. Here we have a clue as to the interest shown by Thurstan and his episcopal colleagues: those Augustinian houses that, like Kirkham, took over existing parish churches, were intended to fit into a pattern of ecclesiastical reform and to make a spiritual contribution to the diocese at grass roots level. The early phase of Augustinian expansion in Yorkshire was dominated by the influence of the archbishops, who secured for the canons papal confirmation (Calixtus II issued charters of protection for Bridlington, Nostell, Kirkham, and Guisborough), and royal cooperation (Henry I for Bridlington, Nostell, and Kirkham). However, they could not have 112 For example, at Kirkham: Burton, ‘Priory and parish’. 113 For example, at Guisborough: see D. H. Heslop et al., ‘Excavation within the church at the Augustinian priory of Gisborough, Cleveland 1985–6’, YAJ, 67 (1995), 51–126 (p. 119). 114 See below, pp. 238–40.

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Page 94 succeeded in furthering Augustinian expansion without tapping the aspirations of those members of the baronage who became founders. To them, the advantages of founding a house of regular canons, rather than Benedictine monks (and this was the choice for the founders of the 1120s and earlier), might have been quite compelling. It may well have been the alternative advocated by the archbishop. To endow a house of canons with the patronage of parish churches would be to rid a baron of ecclesiastical assets, the possession of which was beginning to be frowned on by the church authorities. It also fulfilled the ambitions of a baron who wished to found a religious house and one with a social function as well as one that would pray for the soul of the founder. The regular canons were admirable recipients of such pious and practical ambitions. It was the contention of R. W. Southern that the popularity of the houses of Augustinian canons lay in the modest outlay needed to endow them, which brought them into the reach of the novi homines of Henry I, those men raised to prominence through royal service as opposed to the magnates who were distinguished by wealth and antiquity. Such an interpretation contains a number of assumptions which may be questioned. First, not all the founders of the first generation Augustinian houses in Yorkshire were novi homines: the families of the lay founders of Bridlington, Bolton, and Drax had been in the north since its conquest, and the curiales, Walter Espec and Robert de Brus, had, by the time of their foundations, slipped into the class of magnates. Nor were the endowments of their houses overly modest. Indeed, although founders used the opportunity to rid themselves of the embarrassment of their parish churches, they often added lands, manors, mills, and rights which put the canons on a sound financial footing. The novi homines, it can be suggested, did not found Augustinian houses because they were cheap to establish. Their choice was determined by ecclesiastical pressure, by the desire to found a monastery as a mark of status—the passage from newcomer to established family—without the need to maintain links with a family monastery in Normandy or France as a sign of group identity,115 and by the attraction of a type of ‘monk’ with a social as well as intercessory function. Moreover the Yorkshire barons who founded Augustinian houses were influenced by family and peer pressures, for there was a clear marriage, kin, and tenurial network lying behind many of the foundations. The second phase of Augustinian expansion, from 1140 onwards, was distinctive in a number of ways. It was marked by minimal archiepiscopal intervention, for this was a disrupted time, with no secure archbishop 115 D. Bates, ‘Normandy and England after 1066’, EHR, 104 (1989), 851–80.

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Page 95 until 1147, and after that a Cistercian one. The foundations were more eclectic: the double house of Marton, the male Gilbertine houses, the Premonstratensians, and North Ferriby with its Holy Land connections. In many cases the houses were less well-endowed, and this reflects the lesser status of founders, men such as Roald, constable of Richmond, William Fitz Peter, and Hugh Murdac. It was also a period in which members of the baronage added second or third houses to the roll of family monasteries: just as under ecclesiastical influence Walter de Gant had added Bridlington to Benedictine Bardney, and the Paynel foundation at Drax joined Holy Trinity, so now Eustace Fitz John added two, possibly three, houses of regular canons to the Augustinian house which he had established at Norton in Cheshire. The flexibility of the regular canons was one of the keys to their successful expansion. CULTURAL, ECCLESIASTICAL, AND POLITICAL CONTACTS As we have seen, the first thirty-five years or so of the expansion of the houses of regular canons in Yorkshire were characterized by influence at a high ecclesiastical level, by popes and archbishops. The orientation of ecclesiastical influence was on an axis from York to Rome, not York to the southern province of the English church: of the northern houses, only two, Hexham and Bolton, are known to have been colonized from a southern house, Huntingdon, and colonization appears to have been internal to the county, with Nostell acting as the spiritual power house. Most of the Augustinian houses were, by their nature, independent, but some enjoyed other kinds of contacts. The first of these was by order. The Yorkshire house of Warter was one of a number of English Augustinian houses that associated themselves with the austere congregation of Arrouaise. Another was the cathedral of Carlisle, founded in 1133 by Henry I, whose first bishop, Ethelwold, was prior of Nostell. It is not entirely clear what prompted these houses to join Arrouaise. J. C. Dickinson suggested that the link was to be found in the person of Malachy, archbishop of Armagh, who visited both Arrouaise and the north of England in 1140, just a year or so before Warter petitioned to become Arrouaisian.116 However the preponderance of Arrouaisian houses in the diocese of Lincoln—priories such as Bourne, Dorchester, Harrold, and Missenden—suggests that the prime influence may have been Thurstan’s episcopal colleague at Lincoln, Alexander the Magnifi116 J. C. Dickinson, ‘The origins of the cathedral of Carlisle’, TCWAAS, NS, 45 (1946), 134–43, and Austin Canons, pp. 80–1, 86–7; H. S. Offler, ‘A note on the early history of the priory of Carlisle’, TCWAAS, 65 (1965), 176–81.

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Page 96 cent, who also had a hand in the foundation of Lilleshall.117 Carlisle remained Arrouaisian throughout the first phase of its history, that is, to 1156. At Warter the connection persisted to 1185, and possibly to 1197.118 The severing of the links may have been prompted by an internal crisis at Arrouaise during the time of Abbot Gauthier.119 The Augustinian expansion also brought Yorkshire into a Scottish orbit, in a way which anticipated later Cistercian connections. The Scottish kings Edgar (1097–1107) and Alexander I (1107–24) must have been aware of the important Augustinian foundation in London made by their sister, Queen Matilda, at Holy Trinity, Aldgate, in 1107 or 1108. However, it was not to Aldgate but to that northern Augustinian house, Nostell, which it has been argued can be regarded as a royal foundation, that Alexander turned for canons to convert the hallowed site of Scone, ancient seat of the Scottish kings, into a house of Augustinians. A date of 1114, once proposed, is too early for such a foundation, but it is clear that it followed close on the seal set on the greatness of Nostell by Henry I’s charter of 1122. A canon of Nostell, Robert, was brought north to head the new priory, and in 1124 when he was appointed bishop of St Andrews by Alexander, a second prior for Scone was drawn from Nostell. Robert’s appointment to St Andrews was part of a scheme to convert the ancient Culdee church into an Augustinian cathedral, and although Alexander failed to achieve this plan—which he conceived at the same time as Henry I founded an Augustinian priory at Carlisle as the first step in the creation of a new see there—it was completed by his brother and successor David I (1124–53). And, in a reversal of the lines of communication, when David’s stepson, Waldef, left the Scottish court to take up the life of a regular canon, it was not to Scone or St Andrews that he journeyed, but to Nostell, and from there, in the 1130s, to be head of Walter Espec’s priory of Kirkham.120 David made a further three Augustinian foundations north of the border, one of which, Cambuskenneth in the royal burgh of Stirling, became, like Carlisle and Warter, a member of the family of Arrouaise. Nor did Scottish influence on the northern Augustinians end there, for Robert de Brus, founder of Guisborough, was lord of Annandale in Scotland as well as lord of Cleveland in England. 117 A. G. Dyson, ‘The monastic patronage of Bishop Alexander of Lincoln’, JEH, 26 (1975), 1–24. 118 During its Arrouaisian phase Warter assumed the title of abbey. Hence the fifteenth-century memorandum of foundation: Huius domus fuerunt rectores isti: Ioseph prior 1us, Radulphus prior 2us, Ricardus abbas 1us, Yuo abbas 2us et ultimus, Necholaus prior 3us etc: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 9, fo. 57r; see also HRH, pp. 188–9. The head of Warter was still described as abbot in 1181 x 1185, but as prior in 1191 x 1197: EYC, X, no. 73; Cart. Guis. II, no. 923. 119 Milis, L’Ordre des chanoines réguliers, p. 282. 120 Waldef (Waltheof) was the son of Simon I de Senlis, earl of Huntingdon and Northampton, whose widow, Matilda, married David I. It was in her right that David held these earldoms of Henry I.

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Page 97 The priory benefited from having support on either side of the border, and its later calendar showed clear Scottish influence in its observance of the feast of St Ninian.121 The northern Augustinians came therefore within the political orbit of Scotland. They also came, in a short space of time, within the orbit of reformed monasticism. In the affair of the disputed election to the see of York which followed the death of Thurstan in 1140, the priors of Guisborough and Kirkham came out firmly on the side of the Cistercians who set themselves up as the voice of reform. The affair had, as we shall see, a political dimension. The patron of Guisborough, Robert de Brus, declared for the Scottish king; and the prior of Kirkham was that same Waldef, stepson of the Scottish king, who was proposed as Thurstan’s successor but vetoed by King Stephen because of his political connections.122 Waldef was to leave the Augustinians and become a Cistercian, ending his life as abbot of Melrose, founded by his stepfather and patron. The Yorkshire regular canons were a product of cultural and political contacts which looked north across the Scottish border as well as south to the court of Henry I, and of ecclesiastical contacts which drew their inspiration from the continental experiences of Archbishop Thurstan as well as the new reformed orders. 121 Wormald, ‘A liturgical calendar’, 5–35. 122 For the view that Waldef was not, in fact, a candidate see D. Baker, ‘Legend and reality: the case of Waldef of Melrose’, in Church, Society and Politics, Studies in Church History, 12, ed. D. Baker (Oxford, 1975), pp. 59–82.

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Page 98 Chapter 4 THE SUREST ROAD TO HEAVEN: THE COMING OF THE CISTERCIANS The Cistercian order was undoubtedly the most successful of all the great monastic experiments of the twelfth century. For fifteen years, from 1098 to 1113, Cîteaux showed no signs of outshining other reformed houses which grew from a desire for a life of poverty and a more primitive monastic observance. In 1113, however, began the great years of expansion: the first daughter house of La Ferté (1113) was followed by Pontigny (1114), Clairvaux (1115), and Morimond (1115). By 1152 its family throughout Europe numbered around 340 abbeys. It was Clairvaux under perhaps the most famous of all Cistercians, St Bernard, which was to be the mainspring of expansion in Yorkshire. Although the chronology of the creation of a distinctive Cistercian identity through the statuta of the order remains a subject of debate, it is certain that by the time the Cistercians settled in Yorkshire the regulations for the process of foundation were well established. Before a site was occupied it had to be inspected to ensure that it was adequate, and that it was remote, ‘non in civitatibus, nec in castellis aut in villis, sed in locis a frequentia populi semotis’ (‘not in cities, nor in castles nor in vills, but in places far from those where people gather’).1 Official approval for a new house would be followed by the construction of certain rudimentary buildings, an oratory, refectory, dormitory, guest house, and gatehouse; and the provision of certain books.2 The buildings could then be occupied by twelve monks and an abbot. The endowments for a new house would be expected to conform to certain requirements and not include revenue from spiritualia (churches and tithes), vills, labour services, manorial revenues, and mills.3 1 EP, p. 78; enshrined in capitula, p. 121. Holdsworth (‘Early Cistercian legislation’, in Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture) dates the capitulum to between 1098 and c. 1100; see also Christopher Norton, ‘Table of Cistercian legislation on art and architecture’, ibid., p. 318. 2 Capitula, p. 121. Dated by Holdsworth (‘Early Cistercian legislation’) to between 1098 and 1113: see also Norton, ‘Table of Cistercian legislation’, in Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture, pp. 318–20. 3 EP, pp. 77–8; enshrined in Capitula, p. 124.

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Page 99 Some time in the summer of 1131 a group of men arrived at the court of Henry I of England, and presented the king with a letter from Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux: In terra vestra tenetur praeda Domini mei atque vestri, et illa praeda, pro qua maluit mori quam carere illa. Ego eam sequi disposui, et mittere de nostra militia, qui in manu valida, si vobis non displicet, requirant, recuperent et reducant. Et nunc huius rei gratia praemisi hos quos presentes cernitis exploratores, qui esse rei indagent sagaciter, renuntientque fideliter. Assistite eis tanquam nuntiis Domini vestri, et in ipsius feudum vestrum deservite.4 (In your land there is booty of my lord and your lord, booty which he has preferred to die for rather than lose. I have proposed to seize it, and to send men from our army who will, if it is not displeasing to you, claim it, recover it, and restore it with a strong hand. For this purpose I have sent these men whom you see before you to reconnoitre. They will investigate the situation carefully and report back to me faithfully. Help them as messengers of your lord, and in their persons fulfil your duties as a vassal.) This terse command is the only strictly contemporary source for the coming of the Cistercian monks to Yorkshire, and its brevity masks what must have been a series of complex negotiations; it is this prehistory of monastic foundations which is the most difficult phase to recover. The north of England was not unknown territory to Bernard, for before the Cistercians were sent from Clairvaux to Yorkshire there had been communication in the other direction. The monk William who led the colony to Rievaulx as its first abbot was a Yorkshireman who had entered the monastic life at Clairvaux and as early as 1119 had been Bernard’s secretary.5 Richard, later to be abbot of Fountains, was another Yorkshireman to become a monk at Clairvaux, as was Henry Murdac, master of the schools, who succumbed to Bernard’s persuasion that ‘woods and stones will teach you what you can never hear from any master’.6 It is clear, therefore, that Bernard would have known of the north, and that its terrain and scattered population made it ideal Cistercian territory. Moreover, a network of communication at a high political level also existed. The Cistercians were careful not to offend the sensibilities of local bishops, and requested their consent before settling in their dioceses.7 Archbishop Thurstan, therefore, must have been 4 PL, 182, cols. 224–5 (letter 92); modified translation from The Letters of St Bernard of Clairvaux, ed. and transl. B. Scott James (London, 1953), no. 95. 5 Scribe of letter I, written to Bernard’s nephew, Robert of Châtillon. 6 Letters of St Bernard, no. 107. Thomas, provost of Beverley, was less inclined to be moved, and resisted Bernard’s rhetoric: ibid., nos. 108–9. 7 CCP, p. 89. For what happened when one Devon community failed to seek permission see C. J. Holdsworth, ‘The Cistercians in Devon’, in Studies in Medieval History presented to R. Allen Brown., ed. C. Harper-Bill, C. J. Holdsworth, and J. Nelson (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 179–91 (p. 179).

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Page 100 consulted about the foundation. Thurstan had met Bernard at the Council of Reims in 1119, and indeed had been present at Saulieu when Calixtus II ratified the Cistercian constitution in December of that year; from the early days of the order, therefore, he had been aware of its aspirations and its strengths.8 Moreover the arrival of the monks at court is unlikely to have been the first time that Henry I had been aware of the project. Bernard had had contacts with Henry: for a year or two since the double election to the papacy Bernard had set himself as the advocate of Innocent II—it was this event which gave him his European status—and Bernard it was who persuaded Henry to recognize Innocent. The coming of the Cistercians to Yorkshire was, it must be remembered, the result of Cistercian initiative, and the conditions for their coming were negotiated at the highest political and ecclesiastical level. What is less clear is when Walter Espec became involved. As we have seen, the Cistercian statutes came to demand that before a site was occupied it had to be provided with rudimentary buildings.9 Although we cannot be certain at what date this was formally enshrined in the statutes of the order, we can be confident that Bernard had a destination in mind when he dispatched the colony, and that Walter Espec, founder of Rievaulx, must have been a party to the scheme at an early stage. The Narratio de fundatione of Fountains, which admittedly treats the foundation of Rievaulx only as a prologue to momentous events at York, does not mention him at all, but merely states that the monks were sent from Clairvaux ‘seeking fruit among that people’ (querens fructum in gente illa). John of Hexham records that Walter Espec ‘monachos… directos a Bernardo abbate Clarevallis recepit et posuit in solitudine Blachoumos’ (‘received the monks sent by Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, and placed them in the solitude of Blachoumos’).10 Of the twelfth-century sources only William of Newburgh states that Espec issued a direct invitation, and his version probably represents the sequence of events: a nobili viro Waltero Espec invitati, et a felicis memoriae abbate Bernardo directi, monachi Clarevallenses in Eboracensem provinciam venerant, et in loco qui nunc dicitur Rievallis tunc autem locus erat horroris et vastae solitudinis, mansionem acceperant, praefato viro tradente, et venerabili Turstino episcopalem cum affectu paterno favorem praebente.11 (Invited by the noble man Walter Espec, and sent by Abbot Bernard of blessed memory, monks of Clairvaux came to the province of York, and received a dwelling from the aforesaid man in the place which is now called Rievaulx, and 8 Nicholl, Thurstan, p. 71. 9 Capitula, p. 121. 10 Memorials of Fountains, I, 3; Symeon, Opera, II, 285. 11 Newburgh, Historia, I, 50.

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Page 101 which was then a place of terror and solitary waste, the venerable Thurstan affording them favour with paternal affection.) Walter Espec was known to Thurstan as the founder of Augustinian Kirkham, and it may well have been the archbishop who introduced him to Cistercian monasticism, suggested to him the possibility of founding a Cistercian house, and acted as an intermediary in the negotiations. Bernard would not have risked dispatching a group of monks before he was certain that there was a patron to provide lands and a site. The phrase in Bernard’s letter ‘hos quos praesentes cernistis exploratores qui esse rei indagent sagaciter’ suggests that there was an advance party, comprising William and others, who inspected the site offered by Walter Espec before advising Bernard that the proposed endowment would sustain the colony. This was, as Nicholl so well described it, a ‘well-planned expedition organised from Clairvaux with the detailed precision of a military operation’.12 After leaving the court the Clairvaux monks journeyed north, where they spent some time in York before taking occupation of the site at Rievaulx, on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors, the formal foundation of which was recorded at the General Chapter as 5 March 1132.13 Compared to his lavish endowment of Kirkham the resources which Espec placed at the disposal of the Cistercians were not generous, comprising some nine carucates of moorland, to which was later (1145) added the moorland of Bilsdale.14 However, in terms of its isolation the endowment suited Cistercian requirements well. There is no evidence that the site was previously occupied, and although there may have been some settlement on what comprised the initial endowment of the abbey at Griff and ‘Tilleston’ (now Stilton’s Farm) it is possible that this had been depopulated following the harrying of the north by the armies of the Conqueror and still not resettled. In many ways Rievaulx was a textbook Cistercian foundation, although the abbey still lay close enough to Walter Espec’s castle of Helmsley for him and his guests to ride out to view it.15 12 Nicholl, Thurstan, p. 154. 13 P. L. Janauschek, Originum Cisterciensium (Vienna, 1877), pp. 22–3; see also Ailred of Rievaulx, Relatio de standardo, in Chron. Stephen, III, 184; John of Hexham, in Symeon, Opera, II, 285. The Historia fundationis of Byland and Jervaulx records how, at the General Chapter, ‘nomen abbatiae Jorevall inter ceteras abbatias hoc anno fundatas in tabula redigatur’ (‘the name of the abbey of Jervaulx was entered on the list among the other abbeys founded in that year’) (Mon. Ang., V, 571). This provided a record of the seniority of abbots: C. Holdsworth, ‘The church’, in E. King (ed.), The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign (Oxford, 1994), pp. 207–29 (p. 222). 14 Cart. Riev., no. 42. This is a composite document which may date from the mid 1150s, when Espec is said to have entered Rievaulx. The grant of Bilsdale is dated in the list of benefactions: ibid., p. 260. 15 Life of Ailred, p. 14.

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Page 102 In terms of its immediate impact on the laity the foundation of Rievaulx was muted, and in its first fifteen years the monks received few additional endowments. Of their benefactors only Roger de Mowbray and his mother, Gundreda d’Aubigny, were of baronial rank; the others were men of modest means, who were attracted to Rievaulx either because of its proximity or because of their tenurial links with Espec. However, a significant exception was King David I of Scotland, a man of varied religious tastes. Around 1134 he was the recipient of a letter from Bernard, asking him to help the monks of Fountains: ‘our brothers of Rievaulx were the first to experience the effects of your mercy. You opened to them the treasury of your good will and anointed them with the oil of your compassion and kindness… I am as grateful as if you had shown your favours to me personally’, he wrote.16 No charter has survived, so we do not know what form these favours took, but Bernard’s letter shows that the contacts between David and Rievaulx predated, or accompanied, the entry of his steward, Ailred, into the abbey. Ailred was born the son of Eilaf, the hereditary priest of Hexham dispossessed by Thomas II to make way for the regular canons. Educated at Hexham and later at Durham he took service with the king of Scots at whose court he grew to know the king’s stepson, Waldef, before his departure to enter the religious life at Nostell.17 Waldef may well have been the friend from whom Ailred learned of the Cistercian settlement at Rievaulx while on a mission to the archbishop of York on behalf of the king.18 The story of Ailred’s conversion, as told by Walter Daniel, is one of chance: after he left York Ailred stayed with Walter Espec at Helmsley castle, and took the opportunity to visit Rievaulx, where he was met by the prior, guestmaster, porter, and several of the monks. The following day he left for Scotland, but turning aside from the road he sought the abbey once more, where he asked for, and obtained, permission to enter the house. Yet, as Marsha Dutton has argued, Walter Daniel underplayed—either through ignorance or by deliberation—the network of patronage which brought Ailred to Rievaulx. Walter Espec, a Northumbrian as well as a Yorkshire landowner, was well known to David; so too was Thurstan, even though the desire of the king of the Scots for the independence of his church from the jurisdiction of York had in the past 16 Letters of St Bernard, no. 172. 17 Life of Ailred, pp. 2–9, and introduction, xxxiii–li; see also Marsha Dutton, ‘The conversion and vocation of Aelred of Rievaulx: a historical hypothesis’, in England in the Twelfth Century, Proceedings of the 1988 Harlaxton Conference, ed. Daniel Williams (Woodbridge, 1990), pp. 31–49. 18 Life of Ailred, p. 10: ‘he was in the neighbourhood of the city of York where he was come on business to the archbishop of the diocese. By a happy chance he heard tell, from a close friend of his, how, two years or more before, certain monks… ’.

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Page 103 strained relations between them. The reception which Ailred received argues that he was no chance recruit, but one whose entry had been carefully planned and was by no means unexpected.19 Within two years of their arrival in the north the Cistercians had attracted a high-level recruit, one whose entry secured them the support of the king of the Scots. This connection, which strengthened David’s contacts with reformed monasticism as well as reaffirming traditional links with the north, was ultimately to result in a number of foundations, deriving from Rievaulx, north of the border, the first of these, Melrose, as early as 1136.20 It also significantly raised the profile of the order. Perhaps surprisingly it took Ailred eight years to achieve office at Rievaulx—in 1142 he was appointed master of the novices—but in those years he was not inactive, and his Scottish connections enabled him, with his abbot, William, to negotiate for peace after the Yorkshiremen’s defeat of King David at the Battle of the Standard in 1138.21 Even before he became an abbot, Ailred enjoyed a public role. The impact which the coming of the Cistercians had, therefore, was not as muted in high political circles as it appears to have been among the immediate neighbours of the abbey. Nor did it pass unnoticed in ecclesiastical circles, especially among the Black Monks of York. The circumstances which led to the famous secession from St Mary’s in October 1132 and the foundation of Fountains Abbey are documented in the Narratio de fundatione of Fountains, written by Hugh, monk of Kirkstall, some seventy years after the foundation, allegedly using the eye-witness account of an elderly monk named Serlo. Details given in the prologue suggest that Serlo had been educated at the York abbey, became a monk of Fountains in the mid 1130s, and would, by the time of writing, have been approaching one hundred years old. Moreover, the obvious parallels with the Exordium parvum, and the deliberate portrayal of Fountains as the English Cîteaux to York’s Molesme, and the echoes of the Vita prima of Bernard, mean that as a historical source the Narratio has to be used with caution.22 Enshrined within the Narratio but also enjoying a separate manuscript tradition is a long letter, allegedly written by Thurstan to William of Corbeil, archbishop of Canterbury, explaining the circumstances of the secession. Again, the authenticity of this is open to question. The letter survives in at least two manuscripts from the late twelfth 19 Dutton, ‘Conversion and vocation’. 20 Rievaulx produced two daughter houses, six second-generation, and two third-generation houses in Scotland. See Janet Burton and Roger Stalley, ‘Tables of Cistercian affiliations’, in Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture, p. 396. 21 Symeon, Opera, II, 291–2; Chron. Stephen, III, 171. It is likely, but not certain, that Ailred was with William on this occasion: Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, p. 224. 22 Baker, ‘English Cistercian chronicles’, I and II.

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Page 104 century; it was, therefore, already in existence by the time that Hugh wrote the Narratio, and we can assume that it was accepted as authentic by him.23 However, is it likely that Thurstan would have written at such length to his rival archbishop only a few years after the termination of the primacy dispute? Or that he would have written so scathingly of the Cluniacs, among whom, moreover, he was to retire only a few years later? These features raise serious questions about the authenticity of the letter. On the other hand, references to the impact which the monks of Clairvaux (rather than Cîteaux) had in York suggest an early date, and mention of the monks of Savigny (at Furness) visiting York is indicative of a date before, or not long after, the merger of 1147, when the name would have ceased to have a separate identity.24 Although the question does not admit of easy resolution, it may be suggested that the letter is either a genuine letter of the archbishop or that it was an early fabrication, dating from nearer the 1140s than the 1180s. If one were to look for a likely time of composition, then a date in the 1140s, when Fountains became embroiled in the disputed election at York, suggests itself as a circumstance in which the monks might have felt the need to validate the foundation, and to confirm it as a canonical one, in much the same way as the Exordium parvum was written in order to justify the foundation of Cîteaux. Despite the problems of the source material, there can be no doubt that what precipitated the crisis at St Mary’s was the passage through the city of the monks of Clairvaux en route for Rievaulx. It would have been quite natural for the latter to accept hospitality at St Mary’s and for them to communicate their ideas to the monks. That they found such a ready audience suggests that there were already the seeds of a reform party. Quite how far discontent had spread, or how far St Mary’s might have been deemed in need of reform, is not easy to gauge, given the parallels which are deliberately drawn with the Exordium. The monks of St Mary’s, led first by the sacrist and then by the prior, Richard, were said to have been ashamed of their apathy, and of the way in which they fell short of the rule in much the same way as had Robert and his companions at Molesme.25 Their ideas were laid out in the manifesto of reform which the letter of Thurstan puts into the mouth of the prior. Baker argued that this is far more coherent than anything that might have been said at the time, and far too reminiscent of the Apologia;26 however, I am inclined to 23 For manuscripts and discussion of the letter, see Nicholl, Thurstan, pp. 251–8; also Baker, ‘English Cistercian chronicles’, I, 17 and II, 185–7, and ‘The foundation of Fountains Abbey’, Northern History, 4 (1969), 29–43 (pp. 33–5). Nicholl is more inclined than Baker to accept the letter as authentic. 24 Nicholl, Thurstan, p. 256. 25 Memorials of Fountains, I, 5–8. 26 Baker, ‘English Cistercian chronicles’, I, 17.

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Page 105 agree with Nicholl that such a programme would have sat uneasily with Cistercian practices later in the century, and is therefore unlikely to have been fabricated at Fountains then. It reads like—and may well have been—a second Apologia.27 It reflects issues and ideas that were current in the 1130s, not the 1180s. The coming of the Cistercians to the north provoked the monks into action, to demand the kind of reform—the reintroduction of manual labour, the rejection of revenue from spiritualia, and the adoption of a simpler lifestyle—which would have aligned them with Cistercian monasticism. It was not, apparently, the establishment of a Cistercian monastery which they advocated; it was reform from within.28 And reform, or change, was precisely what the elderly and conservative abbot, Geoffrey, was anxious to avoid. The enormity of what was proposed should not be underestimated. St Mary’s was the largest and most prestigious abbey in the north, which regarded itself as a royal foundation. That its endowments should be dismantled and its grandeur undermined was unthinkable, and when Archbishop Thurstan intervened on behalf of his friend Prior Richard,29 Geoffrey retaliated by summoning support. According to the Narratio, ‘missis… nunciis de vicinis per Angliam monasteriis, viros convocat litteratos, et convenit multitudo monachorum non modica’ (‘sending messengers from neighbouring monasteries throughout England, he summoned literate men, and no small crowd of monks gathered’); the ‘letter of Thurstan’ more specifically identifies those who gathered at St Mary’s as neighbouring monks of Marmoutier (Holy Trinity) and Cluny (Pontefract).30 Thurstan’s attempted visitation, aimed at bringing reconciliation, brought instead division, and he was forced to take into his protection the thirteen monks who were ejected by their brethren.31 Between October and December they remained in the archbishop’s household, until, after celebrating Christmas at his manor of Ripon, he provided them with the site for a monastery in the valley of the river Skell. The foundation of Fountains was unplanned; it was a spontaneous event. Thurstan, un27 It should be remembered that William, abbot of Rievaulx, was a close associate and former secretary of Bernard: might he indeed have brought a copy of the Apologia with him to England? 28 It is true that Hugh implies that the reformers planned to leave (‘tractant mutuo de egressione sua, de modo egressionis… solum id cogitantes, quomodo salva pace fratrum et sine scandalo res ad effectum possit produci’ (‘they discussed together their departure and the method of departure, thinking only this, how this matter could be achieved while preserving the peace of the brethren and without scandal’): Memorials of Fountains, I, 7) but this may be hindsight speaking, or it may be that they planned to leave should their plan for reform be rejected. 29 Richard was ‘familiaris et notus pontifici qui tune metropoli Eboracensi praesidebat’ (‘a friend and well known to the pontiff who at that time presided over the metropolitan see of York’): Memorials of Fountains, I, 6. 30 Memorials of Fountains, I, 8, 24. 31 The monks were named, but is it coincidence that the number of reformers corresponded so precisely to the minimum number of monks required to staff a new Cistercian foundation?

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Page 106 doubtedly aware of the depletion of the resources of the see under his predecessors, could not afford to alienate many of the archiepiscopal lands, and the monks had to be content with the site of the house and the nearby hamlet of Sutton. Like Rievaulx, the isolation of Fountains was only relative; although described (echoing the Exordium parvum) as a place of terror and solitude, it nevertheless lay only three miles from the archiepiscopal manor of Ripon.32 Prior Richard was elected the first abbot.33 The furore provoked a flurry of correspondence. Abbot Geoffrey wrote to the king and to the archbishop of Canterbury to complain. The new community was in a precarious position, and two of the monks, Gervase and Ralph, were unable to sustain the harsh conditions and returned to York. After some months the decision was taken—perhaps with the encouragement of Abbot William of Rievaulx—to ask that Fountains be received into the Cistercian order as a daughter house of Clairvaux. The date of this is uncertain: it was after the monks received a charter of confirmation from Henry I (doubtless secured by Thurstan) which refers to the community as one following the Rule of St Benedict, and was probably late in 1133 or early in 1134.34 Bernard intervened to support the new community. He wrote to Abbot Richard praising his actions, for to Bernard the breaking of a monk’s vow of stability (which leaving one monastery for another entailed) could be justified when the move was to a stricter order: Your progress from good to better is no less wonderful, no less gratifying, than a conversion from evil to good. It is much more easy to find many men of the world who have been converted from evil to good than it is to find one religious who has progressed from good to better… your most salutary and remarkable action has not only given great joy to myself… but also to the whole church, since it is all the more celebrated for being so rare. The merest prudence demanded that you should rise above that mediocrity which is so near to apostasy and leave behind you that tepidity which God vomits from his mouth.35 He also sent a monk of Clairvaux, Geoffrey d’Ainai, to instruct the monks in the tenets of Cistercian monasticism, and wrote to David of Scotland asking him to help the monks.36 He proved sensitive, as well, to 32 Memorials of Fountains, I, 32; cf. EP, pp. 59–60. 33 Memorials of Fountains, I, 33, cf. EP, p. 61. 34 EYC, I, no. 61. 35 Letters of St Bernard, no. 171. Bernard was not always so enthusiastic: on the embarrassment caused by monks leaving their houses to enter Cistercian ones, see Bernard of Clairvaux, Cistercians and Cluniacs, pp. 68–9. 36 Letters of St Bernard, no. 172: ‘I do not think your Highness can be ignorant of how these brothers, inspired from on high, came forth into a desert place from the church of the Blessed Mary at York where observance was perfunctory. They have had to endure many persecutions and injuries inflicted on them sometimes with force and sometimes with guile.’

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Page 107 the dilemma of Abbot Geoffrey who wrote to him for advice on how to treat the two monks who had returned to St Mary’s.37 The reception of the community into the Cistercian order made little material difference, and great hardship was suffered as the monks struggled to construct the buildings.38 Gifts of bread from well-wishers did little to alleviate their difficulties, and by 1135 the monks were seriously contemplating abandoning the site and moving to France, where Bernard was to make a grange of Clairvaux available to them. What rendered this unnecessary was the entry, into Fountains, of Dean Hugh of York, and one of the canons, Serlo. They brought money and goods, and, in the case of Hugh, his books which formed the basis of the abbey library. They brought prestige, too, and from 1135 until the death of Abbot Richard in 1139 sufficient endowments were received to ensure the continuance of the abbey. On what prompted the decision of Serlo and Hugh we can only speculate, but it would not be too far-fetched to see the hand of Thurstan behind the action which would save the community of which he was the unwitting founder. The reversal in the fortunes of Fountains was remarkable by any standards. Its territorial expansion, made possible by grants of land in the vicinity of the abbey from Robert de Sarz and Raghild his wife, and of the vill of Cayton, ensured the means to support the community. By 1137 the number of monks had grown sufficiently for a colony to be founded from Fountains at Haverholme; a second followed in 1138 or 1139 at Newminster in Northumberland, on lands granted by Ralph de Merlay, and a third was planned, though not realized, on lands given by Count Alan of Brittany in Masham and Aldburgh.39 The status of the abbey was underlined when Abbot Richard I was chosen to accompany the papal legate, Alberic, on his journey around the north of England in 1138; he returned to Rome with him, and died there the following year.40 He was succeeded by his namesake, the former sacrist of St Mary’s, who seems to have accepted office reluctantly, since he three times sought permission from Abbot Bernard to resign. This was refused, and it was as abbot that Richard died on his return from the General Chapter of 1143, at Clairvaux itself.41 37 Ibid., nos. 168–9. 38 On the building of Fountains see below, pp. 300–2. 39 Memorials of Fountains, I, 54–61, 66–9; EYC, I, nos. 64, 502; ibid., IV, no. 18. Haverholme, granted by Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, was abandoned in 1139 in favour of Louth Park. A bull of Eugenius III (EYC, I, no. 79) confirmed grants for the foundation of abbeys by Adam Fitz Swain, of Rainborough, Newhill, and other lands (ad abbatiam edificandam), and by Eustace Fitz John, in Troutsdale (ad abbatiam construendam). These were never realized, and Adam’s grants went in 1153–4 to his new foundation at Monk Bretton. 40 Memorials of Fountains, I, 70–3; C. T. Clay, ‘The early abbots of the Yorkshire Cistercian houses’, YAJ, 38 (1952– 5), 15–16; HRH, pp. 132–3. For John of Hexham’s comment on Richard, see Symeon, Opera, II, 300–1. 41 Memorials of Fountains, I, 73–8. See also Clay, ‘Early abbots’, 16.

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Page 108 It has been useful to dwell at some length on the foundations of Rievaulx and Fountains, for they highlight an important point. The expansion of the Cistercian order was remarkable, even phenomenal. To a certain extent this has to be explained, as we shall see, by the appeal of the White Monks to patrons. In order for a monastery to exist it needed lands and resources and these were provided, by and large, by the laity.42 However, the success of the Cistercians has also to be seen as a product of the appeal of their particular spirituality. Cistercian monasticism flourished because men wished to become Cistercian monks. The reinterpretation of the life and career of Ailred of Rievaulx by scholars such as Marsha Dutton has been useful in demonstrating that a Cistercian abbot did not necessarily give up a public role. But such reassessment should not conceal that it was to a Cistercian monastery, rather than the Augustinian priory of Hexham or the cathedral of Durham—both of them a part of Ailred’s Northumbrian heritage—that he turned in order to fulfil the call of the cloister. Nor should we forget the intense heartsearching which the introduction of Waldef to Cistercian spirituality brought him. Even allowing for the literary motifs of the Narratio we cannot disregard the impact which the Cistercians had on the monastic vocations of those at St Mary’s. To recover and recapture that sense of spirituality is difficult, and it is the aspect of monastic history most hidden from us. The sources which allow us a glimpse into the uniqueness of the White Monks were, after all, mainly written by them to present a self-image to the outside world. Nevertheless, any attempt to explain its appeal must try to understand what drew men to the Cistercian observance of the monastic life. Rievaulx, Fountains, and others, did not have a monopoly of monastic vocations, and the Cistercian expansion did not halt the growth of houses of other orders. However, the evidence we have suggests that Ailred, Waldef, and the two Richards at Fountains were not the only outstanding recruits attracted by the spirituality of the White Monks. Maurice, ‘a man of great sanctity and of outstanding judgement… [who] had climbed so high as to be called by his companions a second Bede; and truly in his day, by his pre-eminence both in life and learning he alone could be compared with Bede’, was drawn from the cloisters of the Benedictine cathedral priory of Durham to the solitude of Rievaulx.43 Thorald, abbot of Fountains, was described as ‘homo, in scripturis sacris, non mediocriter 42 Apart from Thurstan three bishops were Cistercian founders. Waverley was established by Bishop William Giffard of Winchester. Alexander of Lincoln founded Louth Park, and in 1139 rescued the ailing house of Otley, moving it to Thame. In Wales Bishop Bernard of St David’s brought monks from Clairvaux to Whitland. 43 Life of Ailred, p. 33.

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Page 109 edoctus, et in liberalibus studiis apprime eruditus’ (‘a man no little educated in the holy scriptures and very learned in the liberal arts’).44 Ralph Haget, son of a Yorkshire knightly family, monk and abbot of Kirkstall, and abbot of Fountains, was, for Knowles, the man who best characterized and summed up Cistercian monasticism.45 It is clear that in the growing prosperity of the twelfth century, and the increasing complexity of society, the striving of the Cistercians for simplicity, for primitive ideals, for poverty, and for seclusion, struck a powerful chord in the consciences both of those outside and those within the monastic order. The belief which comes clearly through the letters of Bernard of Clairvaux, that the Cistercians represented all that was best, all that was purest, in the monastic life, found a response throughout Christendom. Walter Daniel wrote his life of Ailred as a eulogy, not an apologia for the Cistercian order. But perhaps the most vivid part of the whole work is the section where the Cistercian way of life is described to Ailred. What the friend—whether Waldef or another—chose to highlight was the way in which the Cistercians ‘venerate poverty, not the penury of the idle and negligent, but a poverty directed by a necessity of the will and sustained by the thoroughness of faith, and approved by divine love’; their abstemiousness (‘they observe at all times a discreet uniformity, using only so much and such means of sustaining life as will just maintain the needs of the body’); and their egalitarianism (‘personal standing is merged in the equality of each and all’). Although it may be striking a note of what appealed to Walter Daniel personally, the life conveys the same sense of the physical beauty of the natural sites of Cistercian houses as that sounded by Orderic Vitalis: The spot was by a powerful stream called the Rye in a broad valley stretching on either side. The name of their little settlement and of the place where it lies was derived from the name of the stream and the valley, Rievaulx. High hills surround the valley, encircling it like a crown. These are clothed by trees of various sorts and maintain in pleasant retreats the privacy of the vale, providing for the monks a kind of second paradise of wooded delight. From the loftiest rocks the waters wind and tumble down to the valley below, and as they make their hasty way through the lesser passages and narrower beds and spread themselves in wider rills, they give out a gentle murmur of soft sound and join together in the sweet notes of a delicious melody.46 The locations of Rievaulx and St Mary’s, York were a world apart. Thurstan had had a hand in both the foundation of Rievaulx and of Fountains. He was also instrumental in securing the future of the third of 44 Memorials of Fountains, I, 105. 45 Knowles, Monastic Order, pp. 356–9. 46 Life of Ailred, pp. 10–13; see also Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, IV, 327.

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Page 110 William of Newburgh’s tria lumina, Byland Abbey. In 1134, just as Ailred entered Rievaulx and the monks of Fountains struggled for existence, the Lancashire Savigniac abbey of Furness started on the road to expansion by sending a colony to Calder in Cumberland. As with Fountains, our knowledge of the early years of Byland depends on the reminiscences of an old man, this time Abbot Roger, as mediated through his successor, Philip. However, the Byland Historia is in many ways a much simpler work than that of Fountains, and uses none of the literary borrowings and models which characterize the later work. In 1134, at the invitation of a lay patron, Ranulf Meschin, Furness sent a colony of thirteen monks to Calder.47 It was a conventional foundation, and it was not until its fourth year, 1137, that events took an unconventional turn, when the abbey was destroyed by the Scots under William Fitz Duncan.48 Having had little time in which to establish themselves, the monks returned to Furness, but were refused entry.49 Nicholl interpreted this as a split between conservatives and radicals such as had occurred at York.50 However, there is no suggestion in the Historia that the foundation of Calder was prompted by a desire for reform or was anything more than a routine colonization, probably made by Ranulf soon after the death of his father.51 Rather, the failure of the Furness monks to take back their colleagues was due to one of the two reasons—or a combination of both—suggested by Roger: that Abbot Gerald of Calder failed to yield his abbatial status, and it would have been impossible to have an abbey with two communities and two abbots under one roof; or that the material resources of Furness would have been too strained to take in a further thirteen monks.52 Possibly, too, the return was seen as apostasy, and 47 Mon. Ang., V, 349. The Historia does not name the founder. B. D. Hill, English Cistercian Monasteries and Their Patrons in the Twelfth Century (Urbana, 1968), p. 98, identifies him as Ranulf de Gerons, earl of Chester. However, it is clear from a bull of Eugenius III and a charter of Henry II that the founder was Ranulf Meschin, son of William Meschin, founder of St Bees and joint founder of Embsay (Bolton): EYC, VII, 7. 48 Mon. Ang., V, 349. This author identified the chief components of the Scottish army as the men of Galloway, which accords with Ailred of Rievaulx and Richard of Hexham: Chron. Stephen, III, 152, 189, 193. 49 No appeal seems to have been made to a lay patron. The date of the death of Ranulf Meschin cannot be established with precision. He was dead by 1140, and may have died any time after 1135. He was succeeded in his Cumberland estates by his sister, Alice de Rumilly, whose husband, William Fitz Duncan, was the very man who devastated Calder. The marriage probably took place after William’s invasion of Cumbria and Lancashire: Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, pp. 211–14. 50 ‘Probably it was another case of the conservatives who stayed at home feeling that the high-minded reformers… should now put up cheerfully with the consequences of their idealism’: Thurstan, p. 202. 51 ‘in or shortly before 1135’: Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, p. 211. 52 Janet Burton, ‘The abbeys of Byland and Jervaulx, and the problems of the English Savigniacs, 1134–1156’, in Monastic Studies, II, ed. J. Loades (Bangor, 1991), 119–31.

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Page 111 regarded with the same suspicion as Abbot Geoffrey of St Mary’s felt on the return of Gervase and Ralph. Following their rejection the Calder monks, knowing of Archbishop Thurstan’s support of the Fountains monks, decided to journey across the Pennines to ask for his advice. Here Abbot Roger’s memory as to the sequence of events apparently failed him. One version, and probably the more accurate, is that the monks reached York where they were received generously enough (satis liberaliter) by Thurstan, who on the advice of some of his clerks sent them to Roger de Mowbray who would provide for them from his ample patrimony.53 Roger dispatched them to Hood (about four miles north-west of Byland Abbey) where Robert d’Alneto, a former monk of Whitby and a relative of Roger’s mother, was living as a hermit. The other version is that on their way to York the monks were met by chance (casualiter) by a steward of Roger’s mother, Gundreda, who conducted them to the Mowbray castle of Thirsk. Gundreda, spying them from a high window, was moved by their wretched condition, promised them a place to live and resources, and sent them to her relative at Hood. This second version, which echoes a passage in the foundation history of Forde, Devon, may be a playful invention designed to enliven the narrative; it does, however, assign a more prominent role in the foundation to Gundreda, and makes her, rather than Thurstan, the prime influence.54 It was, however, these two who persuaded Roger de Mowbray to improve on his first, clumsy attempt to provide for the monks. He had granted them a tenth of all the food of his household, and a conversus named Ligulf was deputed to follow the Mowbray household to collect the offerings. At the instigation of his two advisers Roger granted land instead, and by 1140 the monks had secured the vaccary (cattle station) of Cam, and land in Wildon, Scackleton, and Airyholme.55 In February 1142 Abbot Gerald died, and was succeeded by Roger, formerly sub-cellarer at Calder and now novice master at Hood, who ruled the house for a remarkable fifty-four years until his retirement in 1196.56 The years which followed were marked by the entry of a number of men from the Mowbray household as conversi, and the resources they brought with them enabled the monks to create their first grange of Wildon. The growth in numbers also made necessary a move from 53 Roger is said to have newly obtained his majority (Mon. Ang., V, 349), which accords with Ailred of Rievaulx, who calls Roger adhuc puerulus at the Battle of the Standard (Chron. Stephen, III, 183). However, see below, note 57. 54 On the incident at Forde see Mon. Ang., V, 377–8; Burton, ‘Foundation of the British Cistercian houses’, p. 29; Holdsworth, ‘Cistercians in Devon’, p. 183. 55 Mowbray Charters, nos. 33–7. 56 The office of novice master could not have been an onerous one, for according to the Historia: ‘nec haberet nisi unum novicium’ (‘he had only one novice’) (Mon. Ang., V, 350).

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Page 112 Hood, which had never been intended as more than a temporary home. It was a locus angustus, too restricted for the building of an abbey,57 and on Gundreda’s urging Roger provided a second site, comprising the vill and church of Old Byland (Byland on the Moor), which had formed part of her dowry. It was from this settlement that the abbey was to take its name.58 However, the new site lay too close for comfort to the abbey of Rievaulx, and was abandoned in 1147 in favour of a third site on waste land near Stocking (Kilburn), a grant much more suitable for what was by now a Cistercian house.59 The first decade of the Cistercian expansion was a period of remarkable success, when, with buoyant recruitment, royal and archiepiscopal backing, and with assistance from lay patrons and benefactors, three foundations had taken place, and Fountains and Rievaulx had both embarked on the road to expansion. The tenth anniversary of the foundation of Rievaulx was, however, to usher in an era of controversy. Just as the monks of Clairvaux had brought not peace but a sword to the community of St Mary’s, so their revolutionary activity continued. When the Cistercian patron and protector, Thurstan, died in February 1140, just a month after his retirement to the Cluniacs of Pontefract, there was a prolonged controversy about his successor.60 It was a politically sensitive appointment at the best of times, but in the situation in which King Stephen found himself—his kingdom in a state of war, the empress in control of the west country and the Scottish king, although contained by the Battle of the Standard, still in control of the northern shires—it was crucial that the post should fall to one who could, as Thurstan had done in 1138, hold the north loyal to the king. What Stephen needed was an ecclesiastical counterpart to his secular henchman, William of Aumale, earl of York. 57 Newburgh, Historia, I, 52. The Byland Historia twice makes the point that Hood was only occupied ‘quousque locum ipsis competentiorem alibi assignaret’ (‘until he might grant a more suitable place for them elsewhere’), and ‘quousque… Rogerus de Molbray venit ad terras suas de custodia regis Stephani’ (‘until Roger de Mowbray recovered his lands from the custody of King Stephen’), thus placing the emergence of Roger from his minority after the settlement at Hood: Mon. Ang., V, 349–50. 58 Mon. Ang., V, 350, where the move is dated 1143. However, the correct date seems to be 1142, since the site was said to have been occupied for five years and abandoned in 1147. See also Clay, ‘Early abbots’, pp. 9–10. The Savigniacs did not, as did the Cistercians, ban the acceptance of churches. 59 Old Byland was reduced to a grange: Mon. Ang., V, 351. For grants made to Byland in the period 1142–7 see Mowbray Charters, nos. 41–5; EYC, IX, nos. 119–20. 60 David Knowles, ‘The case of St William of York’, CHJ, 5 (1936), 162–77, 212–14, reprinted in The Historian and Character (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 76–97. See also C. H. Talbot, ‘New documents in the case of Saint William of York’, CHJ, 10 (1950–2), 1–15; A. Morey, ‘Canonist evidence in the case of St William of York’, CHJ, 10 (1950–2), 352–3; D. Baker, ‘Viri religiosi and the York election dispute’, Councils and Assemblies, Studies in Church History, 7, ed. G. J. Cuming and D. Baker (Oxford, 1971), pp. 87–100.

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Page 113 After a year of what John of Hexham saw as prevarication,61 and rejected candidates—including, apparently, Prior Waldef of Kirkham—the choice of the chapter fell, under the watchful eye of the earl of York, on William Fitz Herbert, treasurer of the cathedral church.62 William Fitz Herbert, however, was not without his enemies, and his election was immediately opposed by two senior archdeacons, Walter of London and Osbert de Bayeux—possibly themselves disappointed candidates. The earl moved quickly to suppress their opposition, and Fitz Herbert sought out the king, who confirmed him in the temporalities of the see. Within a month, however, Stephen had suffered defeat at the Battle of Lincoln, and been imprisoned. The opposition to the archbishop-elect grew, and to it the Cistercians now added their weight: an immediate appeal was made to the pope, accusing William of intrusion, and charges of simony and immorality were subsequently added. Derek Baker has suggested that the degree of opposition to William among the York chapter makes it likely that there was some truth in the allegation that he had been intruded by royal interest, and he has argued convincingly that it was the maturity and experience of William to which the electors objected: he would be no pliable puppet. Knowles and others saw the Cistercian opposition to the election as a response to the reaffirmation, at the Lateran Council of 1139, of the right of the viri religiosi of a diocese to participate in an election, a right which they wished to assert. According to Baker’s reassessment, the Cistercians were mobilized by patrons with family connections among the York canons. Whatever the motives, the end result was the same: from 1142 the Cistercians spearheaded the opposition to the royal candidate to the see of York. Ailred of Rievaulx was sent to the papal curia where, according to Walter Daniel, he distinguished himself.63 When the pope summoned the parties to Rome in the spring of 1143, William found himself faced by the abbots of Rievaulx and Fountains in person, as well as Waldef of Kirkham and Cuthbert, prior of Guisborough. Moreover, the personal involvement of the Yorkshire Cistercians brought the affair to the attention of St Bernard, and fixed his unwelcome attention on England. In 1143, as we have seen, Abbot Richard II of Fountains died at Clairvaux. Under the Cistercian constitution, as Bernard was fully aware, he should as father abbot have presided over the election of a new abbot at Fountains.64 Instead, he sent reinforcements in the person of the Yorkshireman Henry Murdac, former monk of Clairvaux and now abbot of Vauclair, with a letter which in veiled language ordered 61 Symeon, Opera, II, 306–7. 62 Cf. Baker, Legend and reality’, pp. 59–82. 63 Life of Ailred, p. 23. 64 CCP, p. 101.

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Page 114 his election.65 Murdac’s voice was added to that of Abbot William of Rievaulx, whom Bernard reminded of the need for moderation in the affair: ‘your zeal is well-known to me and… it would not help your house if it were to flare up beyond the bounds of prudence and discretion’.66 The pressure continued to be applied by William and Murdac in England, and by Bernard through a torrent of letters until, with the election of a Cistercian pope, Eugenius III, Fitz Herbert was deposed. Seeing Murdac as the prime mover in the affair, supporters of Fitz Herbert attacked Fountains, and fired some of the newly constructed buildings.67 They overlooked the abbot, who lay before the altar in prayer, and were therefore unable to vent their wrath on him in person. However, their conviction as to Murdac’s role in the deposition of Fitz Herbert must have seemed confirmed when, in December 1147, Murdac was himself elected archbishop by a majority of the electors. Murdac, reformer though he was, evidently felt no embarrassment at his pluralism, for he continued to hold the office of abbot, ruling Fountains through suffragans, Maurice (1148), Thorald (1148–50), and Richard (1150–3, abbot 1153–70).68 Murdac’s election marked the zenith of Cistercian involvement in the disputed election, and the victory which the reform party achieved had both moral and practical consequences. The Cistercians had succeeded in securing the deposition of the king’s candidate, on whom Stephen had conferred the temporalities of the see, and whom his brother, Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, had consecrated in 1143. Moreover, although Murdac’s activities as archbishop were curtailed by the refusal of the citizens of York to allow him to enter the city, he had, nevertheless, been elected and consecrated archbishop without the consent of the king. When in 1148 he was received by the king of the Scots at Carlisle—then under Scottish control, and in an area, Cumbria, which David regarded as an historic part of his own kingdom—and on the same occasion as the knighting of the young Henry of Anjou, the political capital and the political potential must have been clear for all to see. It was perhaps on this occasion that the king of the Scots and the archbishop of York explored ways in which they could work to their mutual benefit; and when in 1149 the allied forces of David of Scotland, Henry of Anjou, and Ranulf, earl of Chester, planned to capture the city of York, they may 65 To the prior and monks of Fountains: ‘choose for yourselves with one voice, as I have every confidence you will, a worthy shepherd of your souls, in company with the abbots of Rievaulx and Vauclair, whose advice I wish you to follow as if it were my own’. But to Henry Murdac: ‘I charge you, brother Henry, that you submit out of charity to the choice of our brothers at Fountains, if, with the advice of the venerable abbot of Rievaulx, they elect you as their abbot’: Letters of St Bernard, nos. 173–4. 66 Ibid., nos. 199–201. 67 See below, p. 301. 68 On these, see below, p. 165.

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Page 115 have done so with the cooperation of Henry Murdac.69 Part of David’s strategy for retaining the northern counties of Northumbria and Cumbria, which he regarded as part of his birthright, was to secure the alliance of the archbishop of York, and to orientate the interests and sympathies of the Yorkshire church towards the north.70 However, did the alliance of the Cistercians with the anti-Fitz Herbert party affect the pattern of further Cistercian settlement? The 1140s and early 1150s, a period of civil war, were decades of great expansion for Rievaulx and Fountains, which produced between them six English daughter houses, as well as seven of the third generation. Is there a connection between the political situation and Cistercian expansion? Or was it merely coincidence, that is, that the Cistercians arrived in the north in 1132, and in 1152 the order itself attempted to arrest further growth? The Cistercian expansion during the ‘Anarchy’ can be viewed in a number of ways. B. D. Hill contended that there was a close connection between Cistercian expansion and the Anarchy, in that the barons who founded Cistercian houses did so to oppose the king, for by granting land in free alms tenure they deprived the king of land which had formerly yielded knight service.71 I have argued elsewhere that there is indeed a connection between Cistercian foundations and the Anarchy, but it is to be seen as a product of political instability and tenurial insecurity in a rather less specific way. The rival claims of king and empress, of king’s earls and empress’s earls, of feoffees of both, produced a desire to stake a claim to land and to title and to power, and this could be assisted by the foundation of a religious house.72 This proposition must be tested with regard to the north. Clearly we must look at the Cistercian expansion in two ways: internal colonization within the county, and foundation of daughter houses of Yorkshire abbeys further afield. Both argue for buoyant recruitment, made possible through the continued appeal of the Cistercian vocation. The expansion of the family of Rievaulx took place in two main areas, Scotland and the midlands. The foundations made by King David, sometimes in collaboration with his son, Henry, at Melrose (1136) and Dundrennan (1142),73 strengthened the ties between the Cistercians and the Scottish kingdom. After the Battle of the Standard in 1138, and again 69 Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, p. 173. 70 On David’s objectives, see, for instance, G. W. S. Barrow, ‘The Scots and the North of England’, in King, Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign, pp. 231–53. 71 Hill, English Cistercian Monasteries, pp. 38–40. 72 Burton, ‘Foundation of the British Cistercian houses’, pp. 24–39. 73 K. Stringer, ‘Galloway and the abbeys of Rievaulx and Dundrennan’, Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society, 55 (1980), 174–7, argues that Dundrennan owed its origins to the initiative of King David, rather than Fergus of Galloway, and is to be seen in the context of the need to secure Galloway after the annexation of the northern counties.

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Page 116 after the Battle of Lincoln in 1141, this must have had clear political implications for the king. Moreover, as Paul Dalton has pointed out, the visit of Archbishop Malachy of Armagh to the Scottish court in 1139 on his way to Rome and Clairvaux, and again in 1148, in the year after the election of Murdac, produced a vital link between the Scottish court, the Yorkshire monasteries, and St Bernard.74 Rievaulx had a clear Scottish connection and sympathy, and it is significant that Stephen’s charter of confirmation for Rievaulx was issued very early in his reign, before the foundation of Melrose.75 In 1143 Rievaulx sent out a third colony, this time to Revesby (Lincolnshire) under the leadership of Ailred. We should remember, however, that a foundation could be a long time in the planning, and official Cistercian dates of foundation refer to the occupation of the site. The foundation of Revesby was probably being planned throughout 1141 and 1142, that is, at precisely the point at which the Yorkshire Cistercians were proclaiming their opposition to the archbishopelect, and, by implication, to the king. Could this have been in the mind of William de Roumare, who in 1139 had been created earl of Lincoln by Stephen? The coincidence of the dating is suggestive, for in 1141, following the Battle of Lincoln, Roumare defected to the empress. I do not go as far as Hill in suggesting that the foundation of a Cistercian house at Revesby was intended to deprive the king of political power. However, I would argue that for a man such as Roumare, planning to found a Cistercian monastery to add to Augustinian Warter, the choice of Rievaulx as a mother house would have been an attractive proposition. If one were to look for an instance of political manipulation of a monastic house in order to announce affiliations and loyalties, then the foundation of Revesby might be a case in point. R. H. C. Davis also pointed to the struggle for control of Byland Abbey as an instance of the same phenomenon.76 The unorthodox origins of Byland in a sense left it without a mother house since Furness could have been said to have renounced its obligations and responsibilities when its monks refused to take back the remnant of the Calder colony. In 1141 Abbot Gerald foresaw that the growing wealth of Byland might attract the attention of Furness, and so laid before the General Chapter of Savigny a plan to subject Byland to the mother house of the order.77 This was accepted. 74 Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, pp. 223–5. 75 RRAN, III, no. 716; see Holdsworth, ‘The church’, p. 227. 76 R. H. C. Davis, King Stephen 1135–1154, 3rd edn (London, 1990), pp. 99–101. 77 One might note in this context the rule in CCP (p. 91) that ‘nullius commodi corporalis exactionem mater ecclesia a filia requirat’ (‘the mother church may not require from the daughter the payment of any temporal goods’). Although Gerald’s anxieties predate the merger of 1147, it is instructive to note the prominence of this regulation.

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Page 117 However, the issue of affiliation became a real, rather than a theoretical, problem some years after the recolonization of Calder in 1142, when Abbot Hardred of Calder II claimed jurisdiction over Byland.78 He was persuaded to drop his claim at the General Chapter, probably that of 1151, but Furness did not let the matter rest, and laid its own claim to jurisdiction over Byland. The case was referred to Ailred of Rievaulx, who decided for Byland and Savigny and against Furness. In so doing he cited the testimony of the abbot of Savigny, that Roger de Mowbray, patron of Byland, had taken the decision to subject his house to Savigny, and had declared so in the General Chapter.79 Davis interpreted this as a political gesture, that Roger, having decided to adhere to the Angevin camp, removed his abbey from filiation with King Stephen’s own foundation of Furness. Roger fought for King Stephen at the Battle of Lincoln and was captured by the earl of Chester. He was then forced to make concessions and to ally himself, through marriage to the sister of Gilbert de Gant, with the earl’s party. It was around this time that he wrested control of Byland from Furness. He then removed himself from the struggle by taking the cross, and it is on his return, in the late 1140s and early 1150s, that his more obvious Angevin leanings can be seen.80 The problems of Byland, and its daughter house of Jervaulx, stemmed from the weak control which the order of Savigny maintained over its abbeys, and an inadequate system of filiation. However, the whole question cannot be divorced from the political context, and it may be that when Furness vigorously opposed the merger of the two orders in 1147 it did so partly because it feared its own autonomy would be curtailed, and partly through a desire not to affiliate with an order whose Yorkshire members had stood out against its own patron, King Stephen.81 In the case of the family of Rievaulx, therefore, it can be suggested that there was a strong political element in a patron’s choice of order and mother house. Is the same true of Fountains? The year 1147 was an annus mirabilis for the Yorkshire Cistercians, for Fountains added to its family a daughter house at Barnoldswick (19 May)82 and granddaughters, through Newminster, at Sallay in the extreme west of the county (6 January) and Roche in the extreme south (30 July).83 Is there any evidence that the 78 Mon. Ang., V, 352. According to Roger, the abbot justified his claim to Byland because Furness ‘parum aut nihil de eorum curavit destitutione’ (‘cared little or nothing about their sorry state’), seeming to confirm the behaviour of the Furness monks in 1137. See Burton, ‘Abbeys of Byland and Jervaulx’, 120–5. 79 See L. Delisle, ‘Documents relative to the abbey of Furness, extracted from the archives of the abbey of Savigny’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 6 (1851), 419–24. 80 Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, pp. 168–9. 81 Delisle, ‘Documents relative to the abbey of Furness’. 82 Removed to Kirkstall around 1152. 83 For the date of Sallay, see Cart. Sallay, I, 1; EYC, XI, 27.

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Page 118 founders of Kirkstall, Sallay, or Roche were attempting to express implicit opposition to the king or deprive him of services? The foundation history of Kirkstall states that Henry de Lacy, who, it should be remembered, was already patron of the family monasteries at Pontefract and Nostell, was motivated to found a religious house as a result of illness. On his recovery and in fulfilment of a vow he went to Fountains to ask for a group of monks to colonize a religious house. This he planted on his estates in the west of Yorkshire about ten miles from Skipton, in the vill of Baroldswick.84 Henry de Lacy, whose family had only been restored to favour in 1135, was a supporter of Stephen, but he seems to have wavered in his loyalty in 1148/9. At the very least his vulnerability to Scottish attack on his estates at Clitheroe (Lancashire) must have suggested the wisdom of remaining aloof from the struggle.85 It was on these exposed and precarious estates that his Cistercian house was planted. The endowment which the monks received was, by Cistercian standards, an inappropriate site; it lay in a vill and there was a church there. Why did Lacy choose to offer the monks such an unsuitable site? The general location for the new house might be explained by the fact that it would, presumably, have been unwise to add a third monastery to his south Yorkshire estates, in competition with Pontefract and Nostell. However, the particular choice of Barnoldswick may also have suggested itself to Lacy because, like the founders of Sawtry and Biddlesden, he wished to gain all the benefits of founding a religious house while using lands to which he had uncertain title.86 He had held Barnoldswick of Hugh Bigod, earl of Norfolk, but had long since failed to pay the yearly rent due. The foundation was made with no reference to Hugh Bigod, and the negotiations between Henry Murdac as abbot and Henry de Lacy resulted in the formal occupation of the site under Abbot Alexander. The consequences were far-reaching, and involved the monks in a tedious and expensive law suit brought by Hugh Bigod. Could we suggest, then, that in the case of Barnoldswick any connection with the Anarchy has less to do with the demonstration of political loyalty—since Lacy could not be described as having links with the Angevins or the Scots, but rather being simply in a vulnerable position—than with the nature of the endowment; and that the foundation of Baroldswick falls into that class of Cistercian monastery that was a symbol of political presence and tenurial power? Possibly, but it may be significant that Alexander, abbot of Lacy’s foundation, witnessed a charter of William Fitz Duncan for Embsay Priory, 84 For this, and the details which follow, see Foundation of Kirkstall, pp. 173–9. 85 Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, p. 175; G. W. S. Barrow, ‘King David I and the honour of Lancaster’, EHR, 70 (1955), 85–9. 86 On these see Burton, ‘Foundation of the British Cistercian houses’, pp. 28, 30–1.

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Page 119 which was addressed to Henry Murdac. When we consider that the same charter was witnessed by the abbot of Sallay— founded by William de Percy, who did have close connections with the Scottish king—then I am inclined to agree with Paul Dalton, that ‘King David also appears to have been cultivating links with… Fountains’.87 Moreover, Barnoldswick was the one Yorkshire Cistercian site which failed in all ways to conform to the Cistercian ‘desert’ whether real or psychological. Not only was it unsuitable because of the insecure title of the donor, but also because it was an existing settlement comprising a vill and a church. The author of the foundation history apparently felt no embarrassment at explaining the sequence of events. There was a church at Barnoldswick, very ancient and founded long before, with four parochial vills, that is, Marton and another Marton, Bracewell and Stock, besides the vill of Barnoldswick, and two small vills belonging to it, that is, Elfwynestrop and Brogden, of which the said monks were by this time in possession, after the removal of the inhabitants. On feast days the parishioners met at the church with the priest and clerks according to custom, and became a nuisance to the monastery and the brethren residing there. Desiring therefore to provide for the peace and quiet of the monks, the abbot—it may be with some want of consideration—pulled the church down to its foundations, in the face of the protests of clerks and parishioners. And so no small controversy arose concerning such an unusual and highhanded proceeding.88 The parishioners took their complaint to the archbishop, Henry Murdac, who refused to give a ruling, but referred the case to the pope. The pope, also a Cistercian, declared that ‘the less good should yield to the greater, and that the case be gained by the party which would bring forth richer fruits of piety’. That party was the Cistercian order. Accordingly, a classic case of depopulation of a site was followed by the removal of the nuisance of the neighbouring church; Henry Murdac made arrangements for the redistribution of parishes and authorized the appropriation of the new parish churches of Bracewell and Marton to the abbey.89 Even the reformer was adapting to the political and tenurial realities of the north. Barnoldswick, however, was a site which failed. The foundation narrative complained, as did the author of the Jervaulx history of its own first site, of poor weather and continual rain (a complaint echoed in a charter of Sallay Abbey, only six miles away).90 It speaks also of attacks by plunderers, and given the troubles which the Craven area might have sustained from Scottish raids, this is not unlikely. How the second site, 87 Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, p. 225. 88 Foundation of Kirkstall, pp. 174–5. 89 York Minster Library, MS P1(2)1 (possibly spurious); printed EEA, V, no. 121, where dated c. 1152 x 14 October 1153, revising the date of 1147 × 50 given in EYC, III, no. 1471. 90 EYC, XI, no. 50; see below, pp. 196–7.

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Page 120 further east at Kirkstall, was obtained, is instructive. The initiative was taken by Abbot Alexander, who seems to have shown the same single-mindedness as he exhibited towards the parishioners of Barnoldswick. While away from his house on business he happened upon a group of hermits living under the leadership of a man from the south of England named Seleth. Alexander was much taken with the site, and set about acquiring it. First he convinced Seleth that he and his brethren would be better off as Cistercians: He began then gently to admonish the brethren about the health and progress of their souls, putting before them the danger of their individual wills, the small number of their brethren, that they were disciples without a master, laymen without a priest, calling them to a greater perfection and a better form of religion.91 He also gained the assent of Henry de Lacy for the transfer of the convent; and he settled a feud with William Peitevin, who held the land, and acquired the site for the monks. Some hermits were absorbed into the community; others were paid to leave. In his ruthless action Alexander gained a more secure site for his abbey, and at the same time boosted recruitment. The founder may, however, have had more say in the choice of Kirkstall than the foundation history suggests, for Kirkstall lay on an ancient way which linked Pontefract to the Lacy castle of Clitheroe.92 Quite why William de Percy, like Richard de Busli (Builli) and Richard Fitz Turgis (joint founders of Roche),93 turned not to one of the two illustrious Yorkshire abbeys of Rievaulx and Fountains but to the second daughter of Fountains, Newminster in Northumberland, is uncertain. It may have been a practical matter, for by 1147 Fountains had sent out seven colonies and Rievaulx three. Since under Cistercian statutes a minimum of thirteen monks was required for a new foundation, the loss of manpower, particularly for Fountains, may have made difficult the foundation of two more daughter houses in 1147.94 In the case of Sallay there may have been a more personal connection, for Robert, abbot of Newminster, had formerly been rector of Gargrave, in the Craven area.95 Whatever the reason, the effect was to draw Cister91 Foundation of Kirkstall, pp. 177–8. 92 Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, pp. 6–7, note 11. 93 It is clear that the charters of the founders of Roche had been issued before the precise location of the abbey had been decided, for they specify that the monks were to construct their abbey on whichever side of the water they wished: Mon. Ang., V, 502–3, nos. I–II. 94 Was this the reason why three foundations, planned before 1146, were not realized? See above, note 39. 95 It should be noted that, although William de Percy is credited with the foundation of Sallay, his grant of land in Sallay and Dudland, which accompanied the foundation, was preceded, perhaps by several years, by a sale, by Swain son of Swain, a Percy tenant, of two carucates of land in Sallay, to the abbot of Newminster: EYC, XI, nos. 12–13 (Cart. Sallay, I, nos. 1–2).

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Page 121 cian monks, under the patronage of the Scottish king and his allies or dependents, into a familial pattern which spread from Yorkshire through the northern counties under Scottish control, into Scotland itself. One could make a strong case for there being a distinctly political dynamic to the Cistercian expansion from both Rievaulx and Fountains, due to the actions of patrons and founders who were pro-Angevin or pro-Scottish. The exception to this, at first sight, is William of Aumale, earl of York, upholder of royal authority in the shire and, according to William of Newburgh, ‘quasi rex in Eborascira’, himself almost a king in Yorkshire, who was the founder of two daughter houses of Fountains. Paul Dalton’s reassessment of William’s career, however, has shown that he moved from self-interest (‘pursuit of territorial ambitions at the expense of public order and royal authority’) to a more openly hostile position to the king.96 Dalton linked William’s foundation of Meaux from Fountains, dating formally from 1 January 1151 but clearly planned earlier, to his shift from the royalist and pro-Fitz Herbert camp to a recognition of the realities of Murdac’s authority. What is surely more telling, however, is his earlier Cistercian foundation, from Fountains, at Bytham (23 May 1147), which removed to Vaudey in 1149. It was, according to the Meaux Chronicle, while the earl was visiting Vaudey during the construction of the buildings that Adam, a monk of Fountains who was overseeing the work, suggested that Aumale’s anxieties about having failed to fulfil a vow to go to the Holy Land might be eased by the foundation of a second Cistercian house. Bytharn was clearly being planned early in 1147 if not in 1146, before Henry Murdac’s election as archbishop, with the status of William Fitz Herbert not fully resolved, and with pressure for his deposition still being maintained.97 How are we to interpret this? Either William of Aumale had already changed camps; or he was indifferent to the question of who was archbishop, and perhaps welcomed ecclesiastical anarchy in which to pursue his own ambitions; or he was moved by the spiritual dynamic of Cistercian expansion, and eager to join the ranks of those who benefited, as founders, from the prayers of the White Monks.98 96 Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, pp. 169–74. 97 English, Lords of Holderness, p. 20, and Christopher Holdsworth, The Piper and the Tune: Medieval Patrons and Monks, The Stenton Lecture, 1990 (University of Reading, 1991), p. 12, connect the foundation of Bytham to Aumale’s recognition of Murdac as archbishop, but the chronology shows that the foundation predated his election. 98 William was certainly enthusiastic enough about making the foundation at Meaux to part, albeit reluctantly, with land which he had recently purchased to enclose for a deer park. Abbot Burton, who recorded this tradition, took great interest in the derivation of the name Meaux (Latin, Melsa) but despite his attempts to find a theological origin, it was in fact the name of the Domesday Book vill, forming part of the soke of Aldbrough: DB, I, fo. 324a.

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Page 122 The case of William of Aumale demonstrates that to classify Cistercian patrons as ‘Angevin’, or ‘opponents of the king’, is at best too clear-cut an explanation, at worst misleading. Here again the wider context is important. Rievaulx’s daughter houses also included Warden, founded by Walter Espec himself on his patrimonial estates in Bedfordshire (1136). One of Warden’s daughter houses was Sawtry, established by Simon II de Senlis (1147) in order to assert his control over a corner of the earldom of Huntingdon, which Stephen had confiscated from Prince Henry of Scotland and granted to the earl.99 Here we see family and tenurial connections at play. What seems to undermine Hill’s thesis more convincingly, however, is that not all Cistercian founders are to be identified as Angevin supporters, which is the logical conclusion of his argument. While it is true that neither Stephen nor his queen, in contrast to the empress, was a patron of the Cistercians, Stephen did confirm, sometimes more than once, the foundation or endowment of Cistercian houses. Professor Holdsworth has drawn attention to royal charters issued for eleven out of thirty-nine Cistercian houses founded in his reign. Nine of these eleven were established by Stephen’s loyal supporters who fought for the king.100 The foundation of a Cistercian house—like that of Rufford by Gilbert de Gant and deriving from Rievaulx—was not always the action of a man who wished to demonstrate his Angevin sympathies.101 Eighteen Cistercian houses were established in the short period between 1146 and 1148; eight of these were founded by men close to King Stephen, and three by supporters of the Empress Matilda. As Christopher Holdsworth suggests, ‘some more internal rhythm of monastic life’ rather than political influence may be involved; and the coincidence of the timespan with the date of the Second Crusade, preached by St Bernard, may be significant.102 The Cistercian expansion in Yorkshire and from Yorkshire was the result of a complex interweaving of factors. Above all the dynamic of expansion was spiritual: monks and patrons were drawn by the attraction of the new movement which offered to monks the ‘surest way to heaven’. However, there was also, in the north, a political dimension. The Cistercians had a 99 K. Stringer, ‘A Cistercian archive: the earliest charters of Sawtry Abbey’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, 6 (1980), 325–34. 100 Holdsworth (‘The church’, pp. 226–7) includes in this list William of Aumale, whose foundation at Meaux, but not at Vaudey, received a charter of confirmation. 101 On Rufford see Burton, ‘Foundation of the British Cistercian houses’, pp. 31–2; Rufford Charters, ed. C. J. Holdsworth, Thoroton Society Record Series, 29, 30, 32, 34 (1972–81), I, xx–xxvi. Gilbert’s father had previously made a grant to Rievaulx of land at Stainton ‘for the foundation of an abbey’; this did not take place, and Rufford may have been made to fulfil his father’s wishes. 102 Holdsworth, ‘The church’, pp. 222–3; Rufford Charters, I, xxiii, where it is suggested that foundations made in these years may have been made by men ‘who dare not leave home’.

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Page 123 high political profile during this period because of their involvement in the disputed election, and this may have been particularly appealing to founders with Angevin sympathies. Their foundation of a Cistercian house was a statement of their own political identity, but it is unlikely that they envisaged the kind of practical advantage suggested by Hill. The evidence further suggests that the political and tenurial uncertainties of the period were conducive to monastic foundations, in that the establishment of a religious house could stake a claim to disputed lands and title; the Cistercians were in place at the right time to benefit. Moreover, in such unsettled times men might feel in more need of the spiritual comfort, and insurance, that a monastic foundation would offer.103 Let us allow a near-contemporary to have his assessment. Walter Daniel described the actions of Ailred as abbot of Revesby. His fame runs through the whole countryside. Bishops, earls, barons, venerate the man and the place itself, and in their reverence and affection heap gifts upon it and defend it by their peace and protection. The bishop orders him to preach to the clergy in their local synods and he does so; to bring priests to a better way of life, as he does not fail to do; to accept grants of land from knights in generous free alms, and he obeys, since he had realised that in this unsettled time such gifts profited knights and monks alike, for in those days it was hard for any to lead the good life unless they were monks or members of some religious order, so disturbed and chaotic was the land, reduced almost to a desert by the malice, slaughters and harryings of evil men. And so he desired that that land, for which almost all men were fighting to the death, should pass into the hands of the monks for their good; and he knew that to give what they had helped the possessors of goods to their salvation, and that, if they did not give, they might well lose both life and goods without any payment in return.104 Here, then, was one Cistercian abbot who deliberately used the political and tenurial stresses and strains to further the Cistercian movement. The Cistercian expansion was not a phenomenon that can, or should, be explained by reference simply either to ecclesiastical or to political motivation. The reasons why a baron founded a Cistercian house were as varied as were the barons themselves. They might found a monastery because of illness and impending death (Kirkstall), or to compensate for a broken vow (Meaux). They might choose to found a Cistercian one because of the resonance of political affiliation, or for family reasons, or quite simply because Cistercian monasticism was perceived as the holiest there was. We should remember, as well, that of the eight Yorkshire houses only five were ‘text-book’ Cistercian foundations, with full colonies sent at the invitation of a lay patron to a site which had been 103 A point made in connection with Revesby by Holdsworth, The Piper and the Tune, pp. 9–13. 104 Lfe of Ailred, p. 28.

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Page 124 inspected and approved. Fountains was an unplanned, accidental foundation; the community of Byland, established as a Savigniac house, came to its Yorkshire location by chance; and its daughter house of Jervaulx came into being when an informal group of Savigniac monks were taken in by a tenant of the honour of Richmond, and then taken over by the patronage of the earls. It was not without many anxieties that the abbot of Savigny was prevented from dismantling the foundation.105 The dynamic of Cistercian expansion in Yorkshire has to be seen in the wider context of the dispersal of the families of its two premier abbeys, Rievaulx and Fountains. The influences which brought the monks to Yorkshire, and secured them their power and prestige, came both from the continent and from the north. It came first from the cradle of Cistercian monasticism, Burgundy, and from the greatest of all White Monks, Bernard. It was nurtured by that continental churchman, Thurstan, and sustained by Henry Murdac, himself a product of the monastic cross-culture of the north of England and Europe. The axis of expansion lay also across the border into Scotland, and the energy and fervour of David I and Prince Henry ensured that Rievaulx’s influence there was high. At no time more than in the 1140s was that axis from Burgundy to Scotland more pronounced. That the impetus went out of Cistercian foundations in the north after 1151 was due less to the ending of ecclesiastical and political faction than to the internal dynamic of the order, which attempted to put a halt to further foundations. 105 Mon. Ang., V, 568–9. The author of the Historia did not know what had brought the monks to Wensleydale, but recorded a tradition that brother Peter, a man skilled in medicine, was in the household of the earl of Richmond to heal the sick and collect alms. See Burton, ‘Abbeys of Byland and Jervaulx’, 125–8.

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Page 125 Chapter 5 RELIGIOUS WOMEN Between around 1125 and 1215 some twenty-five houses were established for women in Yorkshire. To write their history raises some special problems: these were, on the whole, much smaller and poorer houses than male monasteries, and as such were not great generators of written records. Moreover, recent research has shown that different questions have to be asked about female monasticism, and the historian cannot assume that the labels which have traditionally been applied to male houses are applicable to female ones. This chapter will therefore assess the evidence for the dispersal of female houses in the county, and also seek to explore the nature of female monasticism and what—if anything— distinguished it from its male counterpart, through an examination of the founders and their endowments, and affiliation. This theme will be followed through into the general discussion in chapter 6 of issues of recruitment, internal organization, and government. THE FOUNDATION OF THE YORKSHIRE NUNNERIES An archiepiscopal foundation: St Clement’s, York Although a date of around 1133 has been suggested for Handale, it seems likely that the earliest female foundation was that of St Clement’s, York, founded by Archbishop Thurstan, who, as we have seen, was active in the encouragement of male religious houses within his diocese. The original of Thurstan’s charter survives and its witness list dates it to between around 1125 and 1133.1 The site which he chose for the new community lay outside the city walls on the west bank of the river Ouse, in the area already known as Clementhorpe which, since the Anglo-Scandinavian period, had formed part of the patrimony of the archbishop of York. 1 London, BL Cotton charter xi.66, printed most recently in EEA, V, no. 74; printed in EYC, I, no. 357, from Mon. Ang., IV, 324–5, no. 1.

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Page 126 Whether or not there was already a church there dedicated to St Clement is uncertain, though archaeological evidence has uncovered the remains of an earlier structure on the nunnery site which may have been a church.2 The nunnery was endowed with ‘locum in quo monasterium et edificia monialium constructa sunt’ (‘the place in which the monastery and the buildings of the nuns have been constructed’)—suggesting that the charter was issued fairly late in the process of foundation—and with lands and rents from the archiepiscopal demesne in York, Otley, Cawood, Southwell, Bishop Monkton, and Bishop Wilton, the wide dispersal of the properties reflecting the scattered nature of the archbishop’s estates. The property in Southwell included land on which a guest house for the nuns’ use could be constructed. The grants were confirmed by the dean and chapter of York shortly after Thurstan’s death.3 Although the charters give no hint as to the specific factors which prompted the foundation of St Clement’s, Thurstan must have been aware of the climate which was beginning to favour the establishment of women’s houses. Episcopal colleagues, such as Gundulf of Rochester, had earlier taken the initiative in providing for religious women within their dioceses.4 Thurstan’s neighbour to the south, Alexander of Lincoln, was influential in the formation of St Gilbert’s community at Sempringham,5 the subsequent expansion of the priory, and the foundation of its first sister house of Haverholme (1139). Moreover it was Bishop Alexander who in 1131 received the public profession of Christina of Markyate as a nun, marking the end of her long and sometimes painful struggle to be allowed to live a monastic life. Thurstan tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade Christina to come north to take charge of his new house.6 Thurstan was unique among the founders of nunneries in the north in that he was the only senior member of the church hierarchy to establish a house for women. We should not read too much into this, however, as, influential though the archbishops of York were in the spread of the religious orders in the county, they were not notable as founders. No male monastery in Yorkshire was a planned foundation by any of their number. 2 R. B. Dobson and Sara Donaghey, The History of Clementhorpe Nunnery, The Archaeology of York, vol. 2, Historical Sources for York Archaeology after AD 1100, fasc. I (York Archaeological Trust, 1984), pp. 6–8. 3 EYC, I, no. 358, from Mon. Ang., IV, 325, no. II. 4 Founder of the Kent priory of Malling. Anselm of Canterbury is credited with the foundation of the nunnery of St Sepulchre, Canterbury, but Thompson considers the evidence to be weak: Women Religious, pp. 36, 192–3. 5 Traditionally a date of c. 1131 is assigned, but this has no secure foundation, and the Life of Gilbert merely places it in the reign of Henry I. It is possible that the foundations of Sempringham and St Clement’s are roughly contemporary. 6 See Nicholl, Thurstan, pp. 194–200; The Life of Christina of Markyate, a Twelfth-Century Recluse, ed. and trans. C. H. Talbot (Oxford, 1959, repr. 1987), pp. 126–7.

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Page 127 Thurstan’s other ‘foundation’, that of Fountains, was a rescue plan dictated by the exigencies of the moment.7 With resources which had never been extensive and had been depleted still further in the post-Conquest period, the archbishops’ role in the monastic expansion was advisory and hortatory, but not one of initiative. Moreover, with one exception (Swine) all other founders of nunneries were secular men and women. Nunneries founded by men Tradition dates the foundation of Handale, in the parish of Lofthus on the North Yorkshire Moors, twelve miles from Whitby Abbey, to 1133. Indeed it is in the cartulary of Whitby Abbey that we find a memorandum stating that William son of Richard de Percy founded the priory, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary in that year, endowing the nuns with two tofts in the fields of Dunsley, on the sea, ten acres in Deepdale, ten acres of his own demesne, and pasture for 200 sheep.8 The founder is to be identified as a descendant of a younger son of William I de Percy, Domesday Book tenant in chief in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire and founder of Whitby Abbey.9 The evidence for an early foundation date for Kirklees, in the parish of Dewsbury, is more ambiguous. On the one hand, a surviving seal of the priory, which has been dated on stylistic grounds to the 1130s, suggests an early date;10 on the other there exists, in a seventeenth-century transcript, a charter of Reiner II the Fleming, confirming the site of the priory and defining its boundaries, which can be dated by its witness clause to between c. 1170 and c. 1190. This is evidently not a charter of foundation, but if the traditional identification of Reiner II, an undertenant of the honour of Skipton, as founder is correct, then he cannot have established the house much before 1166, the date at which he succeeded to his father’s estates in Wath on Dearne.11 If the evidence of the dating of the seal can be accepted then the founder may have been Reiner I the Fleming, who died c. 1148, and a date roughly contemporary with Handale is therefore possible. Reiner II’s charter was confirmed by his lord, William of Warenne, between 1202 and 1210.12 7 See above, pp. 103–6. 8 Cartulary of Whitby Abbey, on deposit among the records of the Strickland family at Whitby Museum, fo. 129; Cart. Whitby, II, no. 376, EYC, II, no. 897. 9 Of the line of the Percy family of Dunsley: EYF, p. 72. William son of Richard de Percy also confirmed his grandfather’s grants to Whitby, and founded a hermitage dedicated to St James, in compensation for a broken vow: EYC, II, nos. 898–9. 10 C. T. Clay, ‘The seals of the religious houses of Yorkshire’, Archaeologia, 78 (1928), 1–36 (p. 23). 11 EYC, VIII, no. 145; on the family of Fleming, see EYF, p. 33. 12 Mon. Ang., V, 739, no. II; EYC, VIII, no. 89.

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Page 128 Another foundation by a man was Wilberfoss, a mile or so to the east of the river Derwent and about eight miles east of York. Leland ascribed the foundation to Alan de Catton, son of Elias, but no charter of foundation exists. Indeed there is no mention of Alan in the charter of Henry II which confirmed to the nuns of Wilberfoss the chapel of ‘Wictona’ (grantor unspecified) ‘and other donations which were made to them, as the charters of the donors bear witness’; the king went on to confirm the church of Wilberfoss which had been given by Jordan son of Gilbert, and confirmed by Archbishop Roger de Pont l’Evêque and by Hugh du Puiset, then treasurer of the cathedral church of York.13 A much later charter of confirmation, that of George, duke of Clarence (August 1464), recited three charters. The first was that of Jordan, which stated that he had sought for his grant the assent of the chapter of York and the abbot of Rievaulx ‘qui vices archiepiscopi tunc temporis exequebatur’. This was followed by a recitation of the charter of Alan son of Elias (Alan de Catton), which granted the nuns his hall with a croft in Wilberfoss, and all the land belonging to his fee with the meadow lying towards the Derwent. These gifts he made cum matre sua. The third charter, addressed to Archbishop Henry (1147–53) by William de Percy, confirmed the grant of the church by Jordan son of Gilbert.14 Taken together these suggest that as donor of the church which formed the nucleus of the new community the prominent figure in the foundation was Jordan son of Gilbert; that Alan son of Elias, however, was closely associated with the endowment of the priory and may indeed have been regarded as joint founder; that Jordan’s grant was confirmed by Hugh du Puiset, treasurer of York, possibly in the period of uncertainty in the period following the suspension of Archbishop William Fitz Herbert and the election of Henry Murdac as archbishop, that is, between 1143 and 1147, or in his capacity as archdeacon of the East Riding (before 1153);15 and that Jordan’s grants were confirmed by his lord, William de Percy of Bolton Percy, holder of lands in Sutton upon Derwent. The foundation of Wykeham Priory, lying on the southern edge of the North Yorkshire Moors about six miles from Scarborough, was ascribed, in a confirmation charter issued by Theobald son of Pain of Wykeham, to his father, who granted to the nuns the mansura in which they dwelt, and 24 acres of land.16 To these Theobald added his own grant of 18 acres in Wykeham, whatever he held in the advowson of the church of All Saints there, and the waste land near their granges. Theobald’s charter is not easy 13 Mon. Ang., IV, 355, no II. 14 Ibid., 356, no. V. 15 In which capacity he confirmed the foundation of Swine; see below, p. 129. 16 Mon. Ang., V, 670, nos. I–II. A confirmation of King John (ibid., no. VI) identifies the founder as Pain son of Osbert.

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Page 129 to date, and the reference to ‘whatever is of his fee in Boddale near their granges’ suggests a date some time after the establishment of the priory. A further confirmation was issued by Ingelram, rural dean of Welburn, who occurs in the period 1154 × 1160.17 This makes clear that Theobald gave two bovates in Wykeham ‘cum filia sua religioni in eadem traditur’. A charter of Prior Hugh of Bridlington reveals that the nuns were in possession of a charter of Prior Bernard (who occurs between c. 1141 × c. 1153) confirming that Wlmar, priest of Wykeham, and the two men from whom the priest held part of the church, had quitclaimed on the altar of Bridlington all the right which they had in the church.18 The evidence of the Bridlington charter suggests that the nuns were consolidating their hold on the parish church in the 1140s or early 1150s, but the most precise date that can be placed on the foundation is before 1153. A cluster of nunneries was founded in the 1150s. In the East Riding the priory of Swine, unique for Yorkshire in that it was founded by a priest, was established by Brother Robert de Verli before January 1153 when Hugh du Puiset, treasurer of York and archdeacon of the East Riding who confirmed the foundation, became bishop of Durham.19 It was also in the reign of Stephen that Bertram de Bulmer, lord of Sheriff Hutton, had founded the Augustinian priory of Marton in the forest of Galtres, which alone among the Yorkshire houses for regular canons was a double house for both men and women.20 By c. 1158, however, the nuns had been removed to a separate establishment at Moxby, just over a mile away. Some connection between the two houses may have persisted, for a charter of Henry II, issued in 1180–1, refers to a grant made to the canons and nuns of Marton.21 Sinningthwaite Priory, four miles from Wetherby, had been established by 1155 when the foundation was confirmed by Henry II.22 Its founder was Bertram Haget, tenant of Roger de Mowbray, who himself ratified the foundation and the additional endowment made by Bertram’s son, Geoffrey.23 Marrick Priory, in Richmondshire, owed its foundation to a tenant of the honour, Roger de Aske, who between 1154 and 1158 endowed it with the church of St Andrew, one carucate of land in Marrick, with assarts and woodlands, and with the tithes of his mills and quittance from multure.24 17 Mon. Ang., V, 670, no. III; Cart. Riev., no. 77—see no. 239 for another charter of c. 1160 × 1174. 18 Mon. Ang., V, 670, no. V. Bernard had been succeeded by Prior Roger by 1153 at the latest: HRH, p. 154. 19 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 7, fo. 259; EYC, III, no. 1360; see also G. Duckett, ‘Charters of the priory of Swine in Holderess’, YAJ, 6 (1881), 113–24; for the possible role of Robert in the priory see below, p. 171. 20 See above, pp. 87–8. 21 EYC, I, nos. 419–20; Cal. Ch. R., III, 396. 22 Mon. Ang., V, 468, no. XIII; see Mowbray Charters, p. 179. 23 Mon. Ang., V, 464–8; Mowbray Charters, no. 265. 24 EYC, V, no. 173, from Coll. Top. Gen., V, 101.

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Page 130 Another male founder was Robert III de Stuteville, whose family had been banished from England following the Battle of Tinchebrai in 1106. Robert succeeded in reclaiming his family estates shortly after 1154, and established a nunnery at Keldholme some time before 1166, when the master of Duva, the alternative name for the priory, witnessed a charter.25 By that date Stuteville had endowed the nuns of Keldholme with the site of the priory on the river Dove with land to the north; the mill and multure of Kirkby Moorside, land to the south of the house; and pasture within specified bounds in Ravenswyke. He added pasture and a vaccary in Bransdale with materials from Farndale for the construction and repair of buildings.26 The Stuteville family is also associated with Rosedale, on the North Yorkshire Moors, and King John confirmed to the nuns whatever Robert V de Stuteville, son of Nicholas I, had granted them.27 However in another, earlier charter, John confirmed the grant made to the nuns by William of Rosedale and his son Turgis, and the protection granted by Henry II. William is to be identified as William Fitz Turgis Brundos, who was dead by 1130, and the involvement of Stuteville may be that of an overlord.28 That Rosedale was among the first wave of nunnery foundations in Yorkshire cannot be precluded. The foundations of nunneries continued through the 1150s into the 1160s. Arden Priory was established by Peter de Hoton (Sand Hutton), also known as Peter of Thirsk, and his endowment of the nunnery with three carucates of land was confirmed by his lord, Roger de Mowbray, between 1147 and 1169; Mowbray stated that the endowment was to be subject to no other abbey.29 The founder of Arthington was Peter de Arthington, and the establishment of the priory was confirmed by his son Serlo, and also by his lord, Avice de Rumilly. Charters of Avice’s son, William de Curcy, and Warin Fitz Gerold, royal chamberlain, indicate that Avice granted the nuns half her land in Healthwaite (Harewood), reserving pannage for forty pigs at harvest time. Warin appears to have been dead by 1158, and this is accordingly the terminal date for the 25 EYC, II, no. 718; for later occurrences see ibid., I, no. 504; IX, no. 10. See also J. H. Rushton, ‘Keldholme Priory: the early years’, The Ryedale Historian, I (1965), 15–23. 26 EYC, IX, no. 12; Mon. Ang., V, 664, nos. I–II. 27 EYC, IX, no. 55, dated 1209. 28 EYC, IX, no. 111 (dated 1200 × 1201) and pp. 195–7. Thompson queries the identification of William Fitz Turgis as founder, but does not mention the Stuteville connection; her date of c. 1130 × 1160 suggests that she accepts the identification of William as founder: Women Religious, p. 228. Turgis Brundos was one of Henry I’s ‘new men’, who had acquired Rosedale and ‘a small cluster of nearby estates derived from the royal demesne and the dismembered fee of Gospatric’: Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, p. 100. Nicholas I de Stuteville was in possession of the honours of Liddel and Rosedale by 1174. 29 Mowbray Charters, no. 20; Mon. Ang., IV. 285, no. I. A charter of King John (ibid., 286, no. III) makes Mowbray the donor of the locum ubi abbatia sua sedet, and Peter of the three carucates.

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Page 131 foundation of the priory.30 After c. 1160 only a few further foundations were added. The only nunnery known to have transferred its site was that which began life at Hutton, moved to Nunthorpe, and finally settled at Baysdale (Basedale). The dates are not easy to establish. Adam de Brus granted licence to Ralph de Neville ‘facere abbatiam sanctimonialium’ (‘to found an abbey of nuns’) at Hutton, which was ‘liberum matrimonium conjugis sue’, his wife’s marriage portion.31 Hutton has previously been identified as Hutton Rudby; however, as Thompson indicates, Hutton Lowcross, which was of the Brus fee, is more likely.32 Ralph subsequently granted to the nuns of Hutton two carucates, one bovate, and a mill in Thorpe, and this was confirmed by his father-in-law, Ernald de Percy, whose charter was witnessed by an Archdeacon Ralph. Ernald died in 1170, and Ralph is therefore to be identified as Ralph d’Aunay, who became archdeacon of Cleveland between 1165 and 1172. The evidence thus establishes that Hutton had been granted its second site by 1170, but how long the priory had been in existence is not recorded.33 During the residence at Nunthorpe the nuns received, from William son of Fulk, two bovates in Kildale.34 The final site at Baysdale was provided by Guy de Bovingcourt, along with lands in Stokesley and Westerdale (1190 × 1204).35 Thicket Priory, in the parish of Wheldrake, was established by Roger son of Roger, and endowed with lands in Thicket and nearby Goodmanham and West Cottingwith;36 Roger appears to have been succeeded c. 1180 by his son, Thomas Hay. Esholt, near Calverley in the West Riding, originated in a grant to the priory of Sinningthwaite: a papal bull of 1172 for Sinningthwaite confirmed inter alia: 30 EYC, III, no. 1863; Mon. Ang., IV, 520, nos. II–III; Thompson, Women Religious, p. 218; cf. EYC, III, 470–1, which identifies Warin (d. 1216) as the husband of Alice, daughter of Gundreda de Warenne and William III de Curcy, son of Avice de Rumilly. See also W. T. Lancaster, ‘Four early charters of Arthington nunnery’, in Miscellanea, Thoresby Soc., 22 (1915), 118–28. 31 Mon. Ang., V, 508, no. 1. Ralph held the fee of Kinwick, Kildale, Ormesby, and elsewhere, of Adam. The use of the wife’s marriage portion for the site suggests that this could have been a joint husband-and-wife foundation. 32 EYC, II, 463, followed by Janet Burton, The Yorkshire Nunneries in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Borthwick Paper no. 56 (York, 1979), p. 9; Thompson, Women Religious, p. 52. 33 Mon. Ang., V, 508, no. III. Thompson (Women Religious, p. 218) dates the foundation to between c. 1139 and c. 1159, relying on the identification of the archdeacon as an earlier Ralph, Ralph Baro. 34 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 7, fo. 66v; EYC, II, no. 748; Mon. Ang., V, 508, no. II. Thompson (Women Religious, p. 52) suggests, tentatively, that the move may have taken place as a result of a search for a more contemplative spot: Hutton was later the site of a hospital, though if it existed at the time the nunnery was there is not recorded. For a further grant to the nuns of St James, Nunthorpe, see Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 7, fo. 47r; EYC, II, no. 753. 35 EYC, I, no. 565; Mon. Ang., V, 509, no. VIII. 36 EYC, II, no. 1131; Mon. Ang., IV, 385–6, no. I (confirmation of King John).

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Page 132 Ex dono Simonis Ward et Matildis uxoris sue et Willelmi filii eius locus qui dicitur Essolth cum suis pertinentiis in bosco et plano et in terra arata et aqua, libera et absoluta ab omni exactione sicut in eorum authentico scripto exinde facto continetur.37 (Of the gift of Simon Ward and Matilda his wife and William their son, the place called Esholt, with its appurtenances in wood and plain, and in ploughed land and watercourses, free and discharged from any exaction, as is contained in their original deed.) Between 1172 and 1181 William Ward confirmed the grant to Sinningthwaite as the gift of his father, and it was further confirmed by Pope Lucius III in 1184.38 In subsequent years, however, Esholt was established as a separate house.39 There is no evidence to suggest that Sinningthwaite exercised any rights or jurisdiction over Esholt. Finally, all that is known of Nunburnholme and Ellerton (NR) is that they were in existence by the end of the century;40 and after 1200 only the tiny house of St Stephen, Thimbleby (Foukeholme) was established. The priory, which seems to have been founded by the Coleville family, disappeared altogether during the Black Death.41 Foundations by women and joint foundations by women and men The houses described so far appear to have been established on male initiative. Certainly the charters of foundation, where they exist, were issued by men, and confirmation charters ascribe the foundation to men, although this evidence, as we shall see, may be misleading. However, it is clear that some houses were either founded on female initiative or were joint ventures. Nun Monkton Priory, some ten miles to the north-west of York, was established by William de Arches, a tenant of the honour of Mowbray, and his wife Juetta.42 The foundation was notified to Archbishop Henry Murdac, who issued two charters confirming the priory in possession of three churches and six and a half carucates of land; these can be dated to between January 1151 and October 1153, and provide a 37 EYC, I, no. 200; Mon. Ang., V, 466–8, nos. VI, XI. 38 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 8, fo. 100r; EYC, I, no. 52; Mon. Ang., V, 466–7, nos. VII–VIII. 39 Apparently by 1184, the latest date for a grant to Esholt by Adam son of Peter: EYC, VI, no. 67; Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 8, fo. 146r. 40 The founders appear to have been, respectively, the families of Merlay, before 1188 (see, however, Mon. Ang., IV, 278–9), and of Barden or Egglesclive, by 1204 (EYC, V, no. 132, and note). 41 Its last appearance in the written records was in 1349: York, Borthwick Institute, Reg. 10 (Reg. Zouche), fo. 168. 42 William was the son of Osbern de Arches, Domesday Book tenant in chief in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, but by 1124 the lands had passed to Nigel d’Aubigny and were thereafter held by the Arches as undertenants: EYF, pp. 1–2.

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Page 133 terminal date for the foundation.43 A close family relationship existed between Nun Monkton and two other foundations. Nunkeeling, in the East Riding, was established by William de Arches’s sister, Agnes. Agnes married, as his second wife, Herbert de St Quintin, undertenant of the earl of Aumale, who died before 1129, and the foundation of Nunkeeling was made for the souls of her husband, Herbert, and her sons, Walter and Alan. It was confirmed by Archbishop William Fitz Herbert (1143 × 1147, or 1153 × 1154) at the request of Agnes and her sons by her third marriage, William and Hugh Foliot.44 The grant of the church of Keeling, with a croft on the western side of the wood of Bewholme and three carucates of land, was approved by her step-son Richard de St Quintin, of whom Agnes held the land.45 Referring to her as Agnes de Catfoss, William of Aumale confirmed her grant to the nuns, reserving the right to military service due to the king, as well as Danegeld.46 Agnes’s daughter by Herbert de St Quintin was Alice, who with her son Robert was the founder of Nun Appleton Priory, and as with Nunkeeling the foundation cannot be dated more precisely than between c. 1148 and 1154. The site of the priory, which lay at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Wharfe, was described in her charter as ‘locum quem Juliana tenuit juxta Appeltonam… necnon terram circa locum, partim sartatam et partim non sartatam’ (‘the place which Juliana held… and also the land around that place, partly assarted and partly not assarted’), and two bovates in Appleton and one in Thorp Arch were added.47 Alice made the grants with the assistance of her son, Robert, for the soul of Robert son of Fulk her first husband, steward of the Percy fee, and they are most likely, therefore, to lie between his death (c. 1148) and her second marriage to Eustace de Mersc. Eustace attempted to found a colony derived from Nun Appleton in the church of St Mary, Coddenham (Suffolk), which was of his wife’s dowry, but the venture foundered, possibly because of the difficulties posed by the distance between the two locations and the lack of means of control.48 Both Nunkeeling and Nun 43 EEA, V, nos. 125–6, printed from an inspeximus of Archbishop Melton, 1330: York, Borthwick Institute, Reg 9A (Reg. Melton), fo. 222v–223r (180v–181r); EYC, I, no. 535. 44 London, BL MS Cotton Otho C. VIII, fos. 66v, 67v; EYC, III, nos. 1331–2; EEA, V, no. 98. For the marriages of Agnes, see EYF, pp. 2, 26, 33–4, 79. 45 BL MS Cotton Otho C VIII, fo. 65; EYC, III, no. 1333. 46 BL MS Cotton Otho C VIII, fo. 87; EYC, III, no. 1334; Mon. Ang., IV, 187, no. III. The wording of this, and the act of Fitz Herbert, suggests that the foundation had been made without his knowledge or consent. 47 EYC, I, no. 541 (where dated 1144 x 1150), from Mon. Ang., V, 652–3, no. I. The land partly assarted may be that pardoned by Henry II in 1181; EYC, I, no. 542. For a confirmation of Richard de St Quintin, see EYC, I, no. 545. 48 BL MS Cotton Nero C XIII, fo. 227; EYC, I, no. 546; Mon. Ang., V, 655–6, no. I. The house was to be ‘de congregatione et de professione et de ordine sanctimonialium de Apeltuna’ (‘of the congregation and of the profession and of the order of the nuns of Appleton’).

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Page 134 Appleton, although approved by the founders’ sons, were founded on female initiative by women apparently recently widowed. The sequence in which these three nunneries were founded cannot be established. However, they afford a remarkable example of the intimate family connection which could exist between founders, and of the channels by which ideas could permeate knightly society. The connections spread to the next generation, for Alice de St Quintin’s daughter and son by her first marriage became monastic benefactors; Rohaise married Simon de Kyme, founder of Gilbertine Bullington (Lincolnshire), and Robert married Rohaise, widow of Gilbert de Gant, and became a benefactor of the Gilbertine priory of North Ormsby (Lincolnshire).49 If we consider tenurial as well as family connections then the web becomes even tighter, for Bertram Haget held Sinningthwaite as a tenant of the Arches fee, of the honour of Mowbray. Another foundation which, like Nun Monkton, appears to have been a joint one is Hampole, about eight miles north-west of Doncaster, which was later to be associated with the hermit and mystic Richard Rolle. Hampole was in existence by 1156 when the pope issued a bull confirming it in its possessions.50 Its founders were Avice de Tany and her husband William de Clerfai, and their grant of the vill of Hampole was confirmed by Archbishop Roger of York. However, charters of Roger de Tilly and his brother Ralph, sons of Ralph de Tilly and Sibyl, daughter of the founders, give prominence to Avice. They do not mention William de Clerfai, but confirm ‘omnes donationes et concessiones quas Avicia de Tanai avia mea et Sibilla mater mea de sua hereditate fecerunt’ (‘all the donations and grants which Avice de Tany, my grandmother, and Sibyl, my mother, made of their inheritance’).51 This suggests that William’s part in the foundation was a formal one, limited to his assent, and that the initiative lay with his wife. Another foundation which appears at first sight to have been a joint one was Yedingham Priory, also known as Little Mareis, which lay on the banks of the river Derwent about ten miles north-east of Malton. Yedingham had been established before 1158, when the priory received royal confirmation from Henry II.52 The initiative for the foundation appears to have lain with Helewise 49 Burton, Yorkshire Nunneries, pp. 18–19; S. Elkins, Holy Women of Twelfth-century England (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1988), pp. 94–6. 50 PUE, III, 16; see MRH, p. 273, where Knowles and Hadcock drew attention to this bull, and reassessed the traditional date of foundation (c. 1170). 51 Mon. Ang., V, 487, nos. I–II. 52 EYC, I, no. 613; Mon. Ang., IV, 275, no. II; C. T. Clay, Notes on the Family of Clere (privately printed, 1975), p. 16. Henry’s charter was witnessed by John, treasurer of York, who was consecrated bishop of Poitiers in 1162; as Henry was on the continent between 1158 until after the consecration, his charter must date to before 1158; it may have been issued on his visit to York in January of that year.

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Page 135 de Clere, probably the wife of Roger I de Clere, who later married Jocelin d’Arecy; Helewise granted lands in Little Mareis and two bovates, with pasture for one hundred sheep, in Wilton. The foundation may have been made between the death of Roger I and her remarriage. Roger II de Clere also claimed the foundation as his own, although his charter was evidently one of confirmation.53 His brother Ralph who succeeded him was responsible for the important transfer of the church of All Saints, Sinnington, and the charter of his grandson, Roger III (who had succeeded by 1239), refers to grants by his grandmother, Mabel, presumably the wife of Ralph I.54 Female founders of nunneries were outnumbered by male. However, the participation of women in the spread of female monasticism may have been more important than the records suggest. An example is provided by the community of Baysdale, established first at Hutton Lowcross and subsequently at Nunthorpe. As we have seen, the site on which it was first founded lay on the dower lands of Ralph’s wife. The use of a wife’s dower lands, which is paralleled at Watton, suggests a degree of female co-operation if not initiative. The gilbertines The final foundation to be discussed remains a special case: this is Watton, the sole Gilbertine double house in the diocese of York. The Gilbertine order, the only monastic order to have its origins in medieval England, was a bold experiment. It began with a simple vision: the desire of St Gilbert, a parish priest, to use his patrimonial churches of Sempringham and West Torrington for the good of the poor and the godly.55 According to his own account, Gilbert had intended to place his endowment at the disposal of religious men, but when he found none willing to submit themselves to the discipline of the religious life he favoured instead a group of young women of the parish who wished to devote themselves to the eremitical life. Gilbert accordingly enclosed them in a house on the north side of the church of St Andrew at Sempringham. Gradually his ideas developed. Lay sisters were added, since Gilbert deemed it unwise 53 Mon. Ang., IV, 275, no. I. 54 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 121, fo. 62V; EYC, I, nos. 595, 612; Mon. Ang., IV, 275–6, nos. VI–VII. 55 The origins of the Gilbertine order are narrated in the Life of St Gilbert, of which a short version was prepared before Gilbert’s canonization in 1202, and a longer version which incorporated the canonization dossier, probably between 1202 and 1203. These are printed in The Book of St Gilbert, ed. and trans. R. Foreville and G. Keir, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1987). See also the preface, supposedly a first-person reminiscence of Gilbert himself, which introduces the sole manuscript of the Institutes of the order: Mon. Ang., VI, xxix–xcvii. The authoritative study of the Gilbertines is now Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham.

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Page 136 for secular women to minister to the enclosed nuns. The preface to the Institutes attributes this decision to the advice of the abbot of Rievaulx.56 Later lay brothers were added, and both these developments suggest the influence of the Cistercian model.57 In time the small anchorage expanded to be a priory, dedicated to St Mary, which lay some way from the parish church. In 1139 Bishop Alexander of Lincoln founded a second Gilbertine house at Haverholme, about ten miles from Sempringham. Gilbert at that time, and indeed for many years to come, did not take monastic vows, and the responsibility for the two communities weighed upon him. As the Preface expressed it, there was a need for literate religious men to have custody and guardianship of the women.58 As he had received much support and encouragement from the Cistercians, his first thought was to ask for his communities to be taken into the Cistercian fold.59 His request was made at the Cistercian General Chapter of 1147, but refused. Others were more fortunate, for at that same chapter the orders of Obazine and Savigny, both of which made provision for female followers, were absorbed into the Cistercians.60 This makes the official Gilbertine explanation for Gilbert’s rejection, written in the early years of the thirteenth century—that the Cistercians were not permitted the rule of others, still less of women—sound rather hollow.61 However there was a difference between the requests. Savigny and Obazine brought with them a structure, and control over their women which they continued to exercise. Gilbert was offering two nunneries only, but establishments in which there were no literate or clerical men to minister to the women. Gilbert clearly hoped that Cistercian men would fill that need, but such involvement would have been too close for the Cistercian establishment.62 Following his rejection Gilbert, encouraged by Pope Eugenius III and 56 William, founder abbot (1132–45). 57 On the degree of influence of the Cistercian conversi at this early stage, see Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, pp. 111–19. 58 Mon. Ang., VI, xxix–xxx. 59 Certainly Gilbert enjoyed connections with the Cistercians of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. His association with William of Rievaulx has been noted; in addition, early in 1147 Gilbert attested a charter in the company of the abbots of Revesby, Louth Park, and Kirkstead (Registrum Antiquissimum, III, 263), and the Cistercian abbeys of Louth Park and Revesby (under its first abbot Ailred) lay not far from the Gilbertine houses. 60 For discussions of the Cistercian attitude, see The Book of St Gilbert, ed. and trans. R. Foreville and G. Keir, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1987), pp. xl–xlii; Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, pp. 26–33; S. Elkins, ‘All ages, every condition, and both sexes: the emergence of a Gilbertine identity’, in Medieval Religious Women I: Distant Echoes, ed. J. A. Nichols and L. T. Shank, Cistercian Studies Series, 71 (Kalamazoo, 1984), pp. 169–82. 61 Book of St Gilbert, pp. 42–3. 62 The Cistercian attitude towards women who claimed to be Cistercian is discussed below, pp. 146–7.

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Page 137 perhaps with encouragement from St Bernard and Malachy, archbishop of Armagh,63 embarked on the next stage of the development of a Gilbertine constitution, the addition of a fourth element to the three existing components of his communities, that is, canons following the Rule of St Augustine. The order began now to expand rapidly: between 1148 and 1154 further houses were established in Gilbert’s native Lincolnshire,64 and around 1150 it made its first foundations outside the diocese of Lincoln, when Eustace Fitz John, lord of Knaresborough and Malton in Yorkshire and Alnwick in Northumberland, established a double house at Watton and a house for canons only at Malton.65 There is no basis for the tradition that Malton and Watton were founded by Fitz John in recompense for having fought for the Scots at the Battle of the Standard in 1138.66 In his foundation charter for Watton Eustace and his second wife Agnes granted ‘sanctimonialibus que Deo serviunt in Wattuna’ (‘to the nuns who serve God at Watton’), the vill of Watton and its appurtenances, and Orm de Ferriby and his land (three bovates).67 An act of Archbishop Henry Murdac, dateable to between January 1151 and October 1153, confirmed to the nuns of Watton the vill of Watton, and additional endowments made specifically ‘ad sustentamentum tresdecim canonicorum qui ibidem iamdictis sanctimonialibus perpetuo servituri et provisuri sunt tam in divinis quam in terrenis secundum instituta ordinis de Sempingham’ (‘for the maintenance of thirteen canons who are to serve and provide for the said nuns there in perpetuity, both in divine and in earthly matters, according to the institutes of the order of Sempringham’).68 This provides evidence that Watton was in existence by 1153 at the latest; it also furnishes both the first record of a community of canons and nuns, and of the Gilbertine Rule or Institutes. Eustace’s wife, Agnes, daughter of William, constable of Chester, and co-heir of her brother, William, issued a charter in her own right, in which she recorded her grant of the vill of Watton. Moreover, a confirmation charter of Robert, constable of Chester, makes it clear that Eustace Fitz John had made the initial grant to the nuns of Watton ‘prece et assensu Agnetis uxoris sue, per cujus maritagium excambiata ipsa Watuna, scilicet pro Lodituna et 63 The degree of Cistercian influence is a vexed question: Book of St Gilbert, pp. xlviii–l; Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, pp. 26–33; Elkins, ‘Gilbertine identity’, pp. 177–80. 64 Alvingham (1148 x 1153); Bullington (1148 x 1155); Catley (1148 x 1154); North Ormsby (1148 x 1154); Sixhills (1148 x 1154). 65 At roughly the same time he founded Premonstratensian Alnwick: Colvin, White Canons, pp. 53–6. 66 Recorded, for instance, in Rose Graham, St Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertines (London, 1903), pp. 36–7; cf. Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, p. 216. 67 EYC, II, no. 1107; Mon. Ang., VI, 955, no. II. 68 EEA, V, no. 129; EYC, II, no. 1108, from BL Stowe charter 502. The archbishop stated that the grants had been confirmed, in his presence, by William Fossard, Eustace Fitz John’s lord.

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Page 138 Hildertorp’ (‘on the prayer and with the assent of his wife, Agnes, through whose dowry Watton was exchanged, that is, for Loddington [Northamptonshire] and Hilderthorpe’); in other words, we have here another example of lands which a woman brought with her on her marriage forming the initial endowment of a nunnery (in this case through exchange), and the likelihood that female participation in a monastic foundation has been all but obliterated by the masculine language of the charter: Watton was granted to the Gilbertines at the request of Agnes, and she provided her own dowry in exchange for the initial endowment.69 The relationship of Watton to Fitz John’s male Gilbertine foundation of Malton is not specified by their founder; it is possible that the canons of Malton were to serve the double house of Watton.70 The only linking of the two comes in a charter of William de Vescy, son of Eustace and Beatrice, in which he confirmed ‘omnes donationes quas pater meus Eustachius filius Johannis dedit tam canonicis quam monialibus sive in Wathona sive in Maltona sive in Wintringham sive alibi’ (‘all the grants which my father Eustace Fitz John made both to the canons and to the nuns, whether in Watton or Malton or in Wintringham [a church granted to Malton] or elsewhere’). Specifically named were the church of Wintringham and the two mills of the vill, the village of Linton, and the church of Malton; and the church and vill of Watton which Eustace had granted monialibus suisque fratribus.71 The chronology of foundations suggests that Yorkshire witnessed the stirrings of interest in the establishment of houses for women religious between 1125 and 1133, with the foundation of St Clement’s. Thereafter expansion was steady, but slow, throughout the 1130s and 1140s, but took a sharp upturn in the 1150s. By around 1160 there were perhaps seventeen nunneries in the county; in the next fifty years only seven more were added. The high point of expansion was, therefore, in the middle years of the twelfth century. Comparison with the extension of provision for monastic women in England generally is instructive. By 1100 there were about seventeen nunneries in England, and within the first quarter of the twelfth century only a few more had been added; with two possible exceptions (Newcastle and Holystone) all lay in the south and midlands.72 The expansion accelerated in the years between 1125 and 1140, with the 69 For the charters of Agnes and Robert, both witnessed by (among others), Priors Peter of Norton and William of Arbury, and Master Gilbert of Sempringham, see EYC, II, nos. 1109, 1111; Mon. Ang., VI, 955–6, nos. IV–VI. On the marriage see Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, p. 99. 70 On Malton and Lincoln, and the two other male houses founded in Gilbert’s lifetime, that is, Mattersey and Newstead, see Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, pp. 219–25 and 230–3. On the later Yorkshire houses, see above, pp. 90–1. 71 Mon. Ang., VI, 971, no. III. 72 Thompson, Women Religious, pp. 217–31.

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Page 139 foundation of priories of nuns at St Radegund (Cambridge), Godstow, Cannington, Chester, Kilburn, Wroxall, Pinley, and Stixwould. Between roughly 1140 and 1160 around thirty houses were founded, fourteen or fifteen each decade. Thereafter the rate of foundation declined, with six houses founded in the 1160s and 1170s. Thus the pattern of expansion in Yorkshire seems to run parallel with England generally. Everywhere in England more opportunities were being created for women to live the monastic life. That the rate of increase of female houses in Yorkshire should mirror that of the rest of the country, and indeed that by the end of the century the number of nunneries should approach the total of those for men, may not seem to call for comment. However, what does emerge from an examination of the pattern of expansion of female religious houses generally is the large number founded in Yorkshire. Even taking into account the geographical area covered by the county, the number of houses of religious women is unusually high, and the shire accounted for one sixth of the total of English nunneries. The only county with a similar number of female foundations was Lincolnshire, and there the pattern was rather different, being dominated by the Gilbertine order, whose dispersal always remained intensely local.73 MOTIVES FOR FOUNDATION Foundation charters are notoriously uncommunicative about the motives for which monastic houses were founded. They frequently contain the standard pro anima/pro salute anime clause, indicating that a founder expected to benefit from the prayers of a community; they may sometimes allude to a secondary motive—thanksgiving for delivery from sickness or compensation for a broken vow—although these are more commonly to be found in narrative accounts rather than charters; they are rarely explicit about some of the social, family, or political considerations which might have influenced the foundation of a house, or the choice of order, or of a mother house.74 Can we tell, therefore, what guided or influenced the founders of Yorkshire nunneries? Why did they choose to establish a female rather than a male house? Was there anything gender-specific about these foundations? The first point to make may seem so obvious that it can easily be overlooked. Founders established nunneries because there were women who wished to live as nuns. There would have been no nunneries without a vibrant female monastic vocation. To state this is easier than to 73 Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, p. 448. 74 Such as those which, it has been argued, motivated some Cistercian founders.

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Page 140 provide examples, and we know of only a few women who became nuns in Yorkshire. There is certainly no northern Christina of Markyate—none, that is, who has left her mark on the records. However, there can be little doubt that founders were moved by the desire of women to live a life dedicated to prayer and worship. We have already noted the possible parallels between the foundation of Swine and Sempringham. The better-documented case makes it clear that Gilbert, in founding a small anchorage adjoining the parish church at Sempringham, was responding to female needs and that there was a strong eremitical element which aligned the origins of Sempringham with those of Markyate and Kilburn. The foundation of Swine by the parish priest suggests that Robert de Verli planned, by converting the parish church into a monastic one, to merge the needs of the wider community with those of the women who became the first nuns.75 At St Clement’s it is possible, although no reference is made to a church in Thurstan’s charter, that the site included an earlier church; certainly the priory church in the later Middle Ages had parochial status.76 At Marrick, Nunkeeling, and Wilberfoss the church was part of the initial grant and continued to have a parochial function, and it is likely that, in these cases, too, the parish priest had an (unrecorded) role in the provision for religious women. At Wykeham three churches or dedications are mentioned: the founder’s son granted his share in the advowson of All Saints in that vill, and in another charter confirmed grants to the church of St Mary and the nuns serving God there; the rural dean confirmed the church of St Michael to the nuns serving God there, as later did King John. Priors of St Mary, Bridlington, attested to the surrender of the church of Wykeham (dedication not given) to the nuns by the priest Wlmar and two lay men from whom Wlmar held part of the church.77 The evidence accordingly suggests the existence of a priory dedicated to St Mary within the parish church, which was probably that of St Michael. If this pattern were duplicated, then it would suggest that the installation of a group of religious women within a parish church was seen as a way of catering for female devotion. It also maintained a close link between nunnery and community. Two factors emerge very clearly to set the majority of Yorkshire nunneries apart from the majority of male houses: their small size and their limited financial resources. This may well be a consequence of the 75 Farrer (EYC, III, no. 1360, note) remarked that ‘it is unfortunate that the name of the possessor of Swine and Winstead, in succession to Richard de Verli living 1115–1118, and preceding Hugh de Verli, who held them in 1166, is not known’ because he, rather than Robert de Verli, is likely to have been the founder of Swine. There seems to be no basis for his statement, nor any reason to doubt the charter of Hugh, treasurer of York, who confirmed the foundation by Robert ‘cujus ipsa ecclesia esse dinoscitur’. 76 Dobson and Donaghey, Clementhorpe Nunnery, p. 22. 77 Mon. Ang., V, 670, nos. I–III, V–VI.

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Page 141 status of the founders: only William de Percy (Handale), Robert de Stuteville (Keldholme, and possibly Rosedale), and Eustace Fitz John (Watton) were of baronial rank, and Watton alone by the 1530s reached a level of prosperity which saved it from the threat of closure as a lesser monastery.78 The pattern of expansion of nunneries in twelfth-century Yorkshire was one of small houses springing up piecemeal on the estates of the tenants of major barons. Why was this pattern so different from the male houses, most of which, certainly those established before the middle of the twelfth century, were founded by men of baronial rank? How, if at all, does this inform our understanding of the nature of female monastic foundations? At a number of priories there is an indication of a close personal connection between founder and nunnery through the entry of a member of the founder’s family. Henry Murdac confirmed William and Juetta de Arches’ foundation of Nun Monkton ‘Deo et sancte Marie et Matilde filie sue et sanctimonialibus de Monketon’ (‘to God and St Mary and Matilda their daughter and the nuns of Monkton’), and elsewhere Matilda is more explicitly identified as prioress.79 That William was dead by around 1154 indicates that the foundation may have been made late in his lifetime, and intended to secure the wellbeing of his daughter.80 The foundation charter for Marrick mentions no such family connections, yet it is clear from a charter of Wimar, steward of Earl Conan of Richmond, that two of Roger de Aske’s daughters became nuns there.81 A daughter of Bertram Haget became a nun (and possibly prioress) at her father’s foundation at Sinningthwaite.82 This suggests that at least three foundations might have been made with the express purpose of providing an outlet for the vocation of a female relative, or, at the very least, they indicate that a priory would be expected to furnish such a place if so 78 A number of nunneries were, however, reprieved despite being valued at less than £200 per annum. See Claire Cross and Noreen Vickers, Monks, Friars and Nuns in Sixteenth-Century Yorkshire, YASRS, 150 (1995), pp. 525 (Marrick), 532 (Nunkeeling), 540 (Thicket), 543 (Wilberfoss), 548 (Yedingham), 556 (Baysdale), 563 (Esholt), 567 (Hampole), 573 (Handale), 577 (Kirklees), 580 (Nun Appleton), 589 (Swine), 595 (Wykeham), 600 (Arthington). 79 EYC, I, no. 535; Feodarium Prioratus Dunelmensis, ed. W. Greenwell, Surtees Soc., 58 (1872 for 1871), p. 163, note. 80 Mowbray Charters, pp. 59, 230. 81 EYC, V, no. 174, from Coll. Top. Gen. V, 101: ‘donationem quam Rogerus de Asch fecit puellis servientibus Deo… cum filiabus suis’. 82 Geoffrey Haget’s grant of three and a half carucates, made when his sister entered the house, was confirmed by Roger de Mowbray between 1173 and 1186, although two carucates had evidently been received by 1172, when the prioress was Christina: Mowbray Charters, no. 265; EYC, I, no. 200; Mon. Ang., V, 465–6, no. VI. A pedigree contained in the cartulary of Healaugh Park notes a Haget prioress, of the next generation: Euphemia, daughter of Alice, sister of Geoffrey Haget. See The Chartulary of the Augustinian Priory of St John the Evangelist of the Park of Healaugh, ed. J. S. Purvis, YASRS, 91 (1936), p. 1; HRH, p. 219.

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Page 142 desired, and that a relative of the patron might come to hold high office. Such a pattern is not confined to nunneries. We have pointed to instances where the male relatives of founders and patrons entered their monasteries and indeed become abbot or prior—Serlo de Percy at Whitby, William de Brus at Guisborough, William of Garton at Kirkham—but these do not suggest that a foundation was made with the specific intention of providing for a relative. We have to be careful in suggesting a gender distinction between male and female recruitment of this kind. However, two considerations suggest that the link between the act of foundation and the entry of a relative might have been closer in female houses. One is the small size of the nunneries, which would make places within them scarce;83 the other is the analogy between entry into a nunnery and marriage. This analogy is one which has a long tradition.84 The author of the Life of Gilbert spoke of the earliest members of the anchorage ‘wishing to overcome the temptations of their sex and of the world’, and desiring ‘to cling without hindrance to a heavenly bridegroom’; and of how Gilbert ‘abandoned his own possessions in order to preserve their virgin status’.85 Moreover, for some women, most famous among them Christina, the question was not simply one of the spiritual analogy of the nun as bride of Christ but the practical antithesis of secular marriage and the religious life. Monastic writers continued to hold before women the contrast between marriage, with its attendant woes and transitory pleasures, and the status of virgo, embracing the heavenly bridegroom.86 Young women heeding this didactic literature which extolled virginity would see the nunnery as an avenue for the preservation of their chastity. The endowment of a nunnery at a daughter’s entry could be the monastic equivalent of a dowry. It may be that—with so few local opportunities available—men and women like William and Juetta de Arches (Nun Monkton) and Roger de Aske (Marrick) were prompted to establish a modest religious house for the accommodation of the vocation of one or more daughters as an alternative to marriage. For those who held control of a parish church the outlay could be modest indeed. It will be argued below that the nunneries were heavily dependent on local assistance, and that the provision of resources and recruitment were two closely related issues. 83 Janet Burton, ‘Yorkshire nunneries in the Middle Ages: recruitment and resources’, in Government, Religion and Society in Northern England 1000–1700, ed. John C. Appleby and Paul Dalton (Stroud, 1997), pp. 104–16. 84 See, for example, P. Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France (Chicago and London, 1991), pp. 63–4; T. Head, ‘The marriages of Christina of Markyate’, Viator, 21 (1990), 75–101. 85 Book of St Gilbert, pp. 30–1. 86 Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to Woman Christ (Philadelphia, 1995), pp. 19–45.

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Page 143 Not all nunneries, however, were established by parents for their unmarried daughters. We have noted at least three houses, Nun Appleton, Nunkeeling, and Yedingham, which appear to have been founded by widows.87 In the event, all three went on to remarry, but it may be that the foundation of a nunnery was a provision for their retirement. They might have envisaged taking the veil—as Edith, widow of William Lancelene, did at her own foundation of Godstow—or a less formal retirement. There was a long tradition of women, ‘widowed’ by the decision of their husbands to enter a monastery as well as by death, becoming nuns. When Abbot Hugh of Cluny founded Marcigny (c. 1055), he stated: It seems good to us that since, through the foundation of our holy fathers, men who are sinners—if they wish to renounce the world and its vanities—have enjoyed entry into salvation through Cluny, so too divine mercy should not forbid entry into the kingdom of heaven to women who are sinners, fleeing from the snares of the world to this place, and groaning from their hearts for the sins that they have committed.88 Marcigny was a place where mature women who were tired of matrimonial licence might purge their past errors and be worthy of attaining the embraces of Christ. Noble women who had been freed from matrimony chose this place, resigning themselves the more patiently to the loss of matrimonial joys as they discovered how short and full of sorrow are its pleasures.89 The early history of Marcigny suggests that its foundation may have served a practical purpose: a place of refuge and retirement for those women whose husbands had decided to became monks at Cluny. It offered, we might say, a solution to family problems. Nunneries could provide not just for the retirement of their founders, but also of their kin. Walter de Fauconberg, grandson of the founder of Nunkeeling, granted land to the nuns with his mother, and Robert Jordan granted land with his wife;90 moreover it is clear from a charter of Alan son of Elias, that his endowment to Wilberfoss came cum matre sua.91 Not all the Yorkshire nunneries are likely to have been founded for the same personal motives as provision for daughters and for old age. What else did founders expect? When I wrote a short study of the Yorkshire 87 For nunneries elsewhere in England founded by wealthy widows, see Thompson, Women Religious, pp. 167–75. 88 Quoted, in Latin, in Thompson, Women Religious, p. 84, note 7; my translation. 89 Quoted in R. W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, 1970), p. 311. 90 London, BL MS Cotton Otho C VIII, fo. 65; EYC, III, no. 1337; Mon. Ang., IV, 187, no. V. 91 Mon. Ang., IV, 356, no. V.

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Page 144 nunneries some years ago I remarked that provision for women in the monastic life of the Middle Ages was hampered by the lower status accorded to their prayers: founders perceived that although women could lead holy lives their prayers were less effective than those of communities of monks.92 In this I was following a traditional line of argument, one which has since been challenged,93 and I would like here to reassess the evidence. How do we know what founders and benefactors thought of monastic women, and what light does that shed on why they were patronized? The starting point must be the charters of the founders and of those who supplemented their grants. As we have seen, these tend to be of a standard pattern (with variations), and formulaic. This has led some historians to ‘write off the stated desire for intercession, and the pro anima clause as simply standard form. However, as Milis has pointed out in his challenging study of the monastic life, often what is commonplace is so for a reason.94 When monastic founders and benefactors stated that they made a grant pro anima they meant just that; they expected spiritual benefits. Any analysis of the charters of the Yorkshire nunneries must bear in mind their poor survival rate. There is only a handful of original charters, and many copies survive only in late transcripts. Examination of those charters which do survive is not conclusive. The records of some priories, such as Wykeham, do not even express that a grant was made pro anima.95 For other houses, charters may specify that grants were made for the soul of the donor or other named individuals. Eustace Fitz John’s and Agnes’s foundation of Watton was made ‘pro animabus patrum et matrum et filiorum et filiarum, fratrum et sororum nostrorum et amicorum nostrorum’ (‘for the souls of our fathers and mothers and our sons and daughters, and our brothers and sisters, and our friends’), and Agnes specified ‘pro salute domini et mea et pro anima Ricardi filii mei et Gaufridi et ceterorum amicorum meorum’ (‘for the salvation of my lord and my own salvation, and for the soul of Richard my son and Geoffrey and the rest of my friends’).96 Thurstan’s foundation of St Clement’s was ‘pro anima mea et animabus antecessorum et successorum meorum’ (‘for my soul and the souls of my predecessors and my successors’);97 Nicholas Ward and Nigel de Plumpton made grants to Esholt ‘pro salute anime mee et omnium antecessorum et heredum meorum’ (‘for the salvation of my soul and all my ancestors and my heirs’) / ‘pro salute animarum patris et matris mee et pro salute anime mee et sponse mee et heredum meorum 92 Burton, Yorkshire Nunneries, p. 2. 93 For example, by Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture. 94 Ludo J. Milis, Angelic Monks and Earthly Men: Monasticism and its Meaning to Medieval Society (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 87–91. 95 See Mon. Ang., V, 670–1. 96 Ibid., VI, 955, nos. II, IV. 97 EEA, V, no. 74.

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Page 145 et successorum’ (‘for the salvation of the souls of my father and my mother and for the salvation of my soul and that of my wife and my heirs and successors’).98 Similar clauses, some simple and some complex, appear in some but not all surviving charters of Sinningthwaite, Hampole, Swine, Nun Appleton, and Kirklees.99 These instances indicate that founders and benefactors expected to benefit, spiritually, from the assistance given to holy women. However, there is a lack of evidence to suggest that they expected, or requested on a large scale, the kind of specific intercessory benefits— obits, masses for the dead, confraternity, burial—commonly sought from male houses, or houses such as the double Gilbertine monasteries, which had a male component.100 There are a few exceptions. Alice de St Quintin gave one carucate of land to Nun Appleton, which she founded, ‘cum corpore suo’ (‘with her body’), and Eleanor, widow of William de Cornborough, granted land to Nun Monkton, with a request for burial.101 Ralph de la Hay made a grant to Swine ‘pro fraternitate ecclesie nostre’ (‘for confraternity with our church’).102 Jordan de Aluoldelie and Annais his wife granted to Sinningthwaite land and pasture for 160 sheep, in settlement of a dispute between them and ‘pro fraternitate et pro orationibus supradicte domus’ (‘for confraternity and for the prayers of the above house’).103 It would be unwise, on such slender evidence, to conclude that benefactors did not expect the prayers of the nuns whom they patronized, or the spiritual benefits of burial and confraternity. However, might it not be that the large benefactions were channelled towards male houses which, in the twelfth century, could be expected to supply a full range of spiritual benefits—notably masses—and that the benefits for a patron of nunneries lay in the saving grace of helping women to live holy lives? The charter of Abbot Hugh of Cluny, quoted above, stressed the personal, penitential, aspect of the female monastic life. Women were to enter Marcigny to purge themselves of their sins, and less, perhaps, to pray for the world as spiritual soldiers against the powers of darkness—terms in which monks are often described. This is not to argue that religious women were regarded as ‘second class’, rather that their function was differently regarded. We also need to take account of the attitude—not admittedly often expressed—of men like Michael de la Pole, who, completing his father’s project to establish a religious house at Kingston upon Hull (1378), explained why he was founding a charterhouse rather than the 98 Mon. Ang., V, 472, nos. IX, XI. 99 Ibid., V, 464, 487, 494, 653, 739. 100 Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, pp. 322–50. 101 Mon. Ang., V, 653–4, no. VI; Alnwick Castle MSS, X series, division II, section 6, box 36. 102 EYC, XII, no. 65, from the original, BL Add. ch. 26108 (before 1189). 103 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 8, fo. 144v; EYC, III, no. 1876.

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Page 146 nunnery proposed by his father: through the Carthusian monks ‘tutius, vigilantius et devotius quam per mulieres in dicta domo verisimiliter credimus deserviri’ (‘we firmly believe that we will be served in the said house more safely, more vigilantly and more devoutly by them than by women’).104 Those who argue that the prayers of women were perceived to be as effective as the intercessory masses offered by male religious still need to answer the question why, although there were roughly the same number of male and female houses, there was such a discrepancy in their size and financial resources. It is the argument of this book that women’s houses were smaller and poorer because they were perceived to have a function different from male houses. They were small because they catered for local recruitment, and their financial status was lower partly because of the class (and therefore the more local interests) of the founder;105 they were poorer because they were not intended to bear the expense of a full corporate body of monks engaged in ceaseless intercessory activity. FEMALE MONASTIC OBSERVANCE: CISTERCIAN INFLUENCE As abbess of the Paraclete, Heloise wrote to her former lover Abelard asking for guidance on the observance which should best be adopted by nuns. Her letter hit on a critical problem: the lack of a rule written for women. The Rule of St Benedict, she argued, which had been written by a man for men, was used, faute de mieux, by women. Her assessment was correct. The rule for women compiled by Benedict’s contemporary, Caesarius of Arles, had made little impact, and before Robert of Arbrissel, founder of Fontevrault, and Gilbert of Sempringham, no one had successfully addressed this need.106 It is clear that, in England as on the continent, women as well as men responded to the call of the new religious movements. Some leaders rose to the challenge of providing for women, or incorporating them into their ranks. The order of Prémontré, for example, allowed women into what became double houses, provided that the male and female quarters were kept segregated. At Fontevrault Robert of Arbrissel made arrangements for the women who were drawn by his preaching to be accommodated in a double community, again one in which communication between the sexes was forbidden. Arrouaise, centre of a congregation of predominantly male houses, had its female satellites. However, the most successful of all twelfth-century move104 Mon. Ang., VI, 20–1, no. II. 105 See the similar point made by Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture, p. 191. 106 For a recent translation of the Rule of Caesarius, see E. Amt, Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook (London, 1993), pp. 221–31.

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Page 147 ments, that of Cîteaux, steadfastly refused to admit women into its ranks. This was an official ban. The Cistercian order was a masculine one; and the phrase ‘Cistercian nun’ would have been a contradiction in terms. Nevertheless, at a personal level the Cistercians were not unsympathetic to female monastic vocation. There was a female house associated with Molesme and Cîteaux, that of Jully, which fulfilled the same function as Marcigny did for Cluny, namely, to provide a refuge for those women whose husbands and other male relatives had taken to the monastic life. Moreover, individual Cistercians encouraged female monastic vocation. Throughout the twelfth century, however, the Cistercians refused to countenance the admission of women into the order despite the growing number of female monasteries which claimed to be Cistercian.107 Then in 1213 the order succumbed to female pressure, largely from the aristocratic Spanish nunnery of Las Huelgas and the French house at Tart, and admitted nunneries into the order, under the tutelage of neighbouring Cistercian houses. It was a short-lived triumph, for within just a few years steps were taken to distance the nuns. By 1228 the future affiliation of new houses was forbidden, and pastoral care—visitation and confession—was denied to those already incorporated. Detecting Cistercian ‘identity’ In Yorkshire, twelve nunneries—Baysdale, Ellerton, Esholt, Hampole, Handale, Keldholme, Kirklees, Nun Appleton, Rosedale, Sinningthwaite, Swine, and Wykeham—appear at one stage or another to have claimed to be Cistercian. The evidence, however, is not consistent, and some of it is very late. The earliest references appear in relation to Swine and Sinningthwaite. In a papal bull which can be dated 1177 Alexander III issued a notification to the archbishop of York and the bishop of Lincoln to the effect that the nuns of Swine and Nun Cotham (Lincolnshire) had complained that certain men had been exacting tithes from them, despite the fact that, like Cistercian brethren, they were free from the payment of tithes on lands which they cultivated themselves (‘eis, sicut fratribus Cisterciensis ordinis indultum sit de clementia sedis apostolicae, ut de laboribus suis, quos propriis manibus vel sumptibus excolunt nemini decimas solvere teneantur’ (‘although it is granted to them, as to the brethren of the Cistercian order, by the clemency of the Apostolic See, that they shall be bound to pay tithes to no-one from their own labours, which they accomplish with their own hands or at their 107 See Sally Thompson, ‘The problem of the Cistercian nuns in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries’, in Medieval Women, Studies in Church History, Subsidia I, ed. D. Baker (Oxford, 1978), 227–52, and Women Religious, pp. 94–112.

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Page 148 own expense’)).108 This falls short of describing the nuns as Cistercian; however, it does claim for the two nunneries the Cistercian privilege of exemption from tithes which had been granted by Pope Innocent II in 1132. Evidence for Sinningthwaite also derives from papal bulls. In 1172 Alexander III took Prioress Christina and the sisters of Sinningthwaite under his protection, and ordered ut ordo monasticus qui secundum Dei et beati Benedicti regulam et institutionem Cisterciensium fratrum in eodem monasterio institutus esse dinoscitur perpetuis ibidem temporibus inviolabiliter observetur.109 (that the monastic order which is known to have been instituted in that monastery according to the rule of God and the blessed Benedict and the institutes of Cistercian brethren, should be observed there, inviolate, for all times.) A further bull, using the same description, exempted the nuns from the payment of tithes on lands which they cultivated themselves, and ordered that no-one break into their houses or granges.110 In 1204/5 Pope Innocent III referred to the nuns of Hampole as Cistercian.111 Other evidence derives from the ambiguous descriptions in the Mappa mundi of Gervase of Canterbury (c. 1201). There are two categories which need to be considered. First, there were listed thirteen houses of canonici albi et moniales, white canons and nuns. Of these, nine were Gilbertine, and the others appear to have been ‘Cistercian’; these were Hampole and Wykeham in Yorkshire, and Nun Cotham and Stixwould in Lincolnshire.112 Seven houses were described as moniales albe, a designation which appears at first sight to align them with the Cistercians, whose ‘white’ (undyed) habits had long been a cause for comment. Although the colour of the habits of both the Cistercians and female religious is ambiguous,113 it is likely that Gervase was attempting to note something distinctive about the nunneries of Keldholme, Rosedale and Sinningthwaite, as well as Amesbury (Fontevraudine), ?Tarrant, Shouldham (Gilbertine), and Brewood.114 Ellerton, on the other hand, which was later regarded as a Cistercian house, was described as a community of nuns who wore black.115 Thompson, while pointing out that the colour of habit did not necessarily indicate the order or group to which a house belonged, nevertheless suggested that Ellerton may not, from its founda108 Mon. Ang., V, 494, no. II. 109 EYC, I, no. 200; Mon. Angl., V, 465–6, no. VI. 110 Repeated by Lucius III in 1185; Gregory IX also referred to the house as Cistercian: Mon. Ang., V, 466–7, nos. VII– IX. 111 The Letters of Pope Innocent III concerning England and Wales, ed. C. R. and M. G. Cheney (Oxford, 1967), p. 100, no. 602. 112 Gervasii Cantuariensis opera historica, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols., RS (1879–80), II, 429, 432, 439, 441. 113 Thompson, Women Religious, p. 100. 114 Gervase of Canterbury, II, 420, 422, 428, 438, 440. 115 Ibid., 441.

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Page 149 tion, have been Cistercian. The only documented claim to such identity derives from the sixteenth century.116 For six houses, therefore, there is evidence from before 1215 that they were in some way regarded either as Cistercian, or as in some way distinctive. Claims for a Cistercian identity for the other six—Baysdale, Ellerton, Esholt, Handale, Kirklees, and Nun Appleton—derive from records later than 1215. In 1276, for instance, Archbishop Giffard issued a mandate to the prioresses of Hampole, Nun Appleton, and Sinningthwaite, and other Cistercian prioresses in the diocese to receive friars as their confessors, notwithstanding the prohibition of the Cistercian abbots.117 In that same year the prioress and convent of Sinningthwaite sent three sorores to London to argue that, as a Cistercian priory, Sinningthwaite was exempt from episcopal jurisdiction.118 However, it should not be assumed that affiliations were constant throughout the history of a house; Nun Appleton might have been referred to as Cistercian in 1276 but no such identity was proclaimed in its early charters. What little evidence there is suggests a link either with the Cluniac priory of Pontefract,119 or with the Gilbertines: Agnes, prioress of Nun Appleton, is alleged to have seen a vision of Gilbert’s funeral. She was described as prioress of a community of ‘nuns of another order’; and yet she claimed Gilbert as her lord and patron.120 It may be that a Cistercian affiliation was announced by the dedication of nunneries; certainly those which claimed to be Cistercian bore the dedication to St Mary demanded for the male houses by the statutes of the order. On the other hand the priories of Arthington, for which there is slight evidence of Cluniac affiliation, Moxby (Augustinian), Nun Monkton, Nunburnholme, Thicket, Wilberfoss, and Yedingham, were also dedicated to St Mary; this seems, accordingly, to have been the most obvious choice for a female monastery. Moreover, the ‘Cistercian’ nunneries of Esholt, Nun Appleton, Rosedale, and Wykeham, carried double dedications to St Mary and, respectively, to St Leonard, St John the Apostle and Evangelist, St Lawrence, and St Michael.121 The twelfth- and early thirteenth-century records of houses calling themselves Cistercian are scarce, and interpreting them is not easy. How were Swine and Sinningthwaite perceived, and in what ways could they 116 Thompson, Women Religious, pp. 102–3. 117 Reg. Giffard, p. 295; see also the decree of the Cistercian General Chapter of 1535, which lists seventeen houses to be visited by Cistercian abbots, among them Nun Appleton, Ellerton, Esholt, Hampole, Kirklees, Sinningthwaite, Swine, and Arthington: Thompson, Women Religious, p. 98. 118 Mon. Ang., V, 464–5, no. V. 119 See below, pp. 171–2. 120 Book of St Gilbert, pp. 124–7. 121 For a complete list of dedications, including double ones at Benedictine houses, see the table on p. xix.

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Page 150 have called themselves Cistercian? Were they attempting to follow the Cistercian institutes, however informally, or to adopt a Cistercian lifestyle? The evidence is sparse. There is, for instance, no trace in the records of the attitude of the Yorkshire nunneries to the nature of the horarium, or to manual labour. It is true that a number of houses fitted the classic definition of a remote Cistercian site, ‘far from the habitation of men’, but these were not necessarily the houses which appeared to claim Cistercian identity. The economy of some houses had Cistercian features, in particular the grange, which is found in the twelfth century at Wykeham and Swine; at other ‘Cistercian houses’ the endowments have been described as a classic southern Benedictine type.122 What we may be seeing are sites and endowments which are classically northern, rather than classically Cistercian. In the first instance, the motivation for nunneries to claim a Cistercian identity appears to have been financial, that is, the considerable advantage which could accrue from relief from the payment of tithes. Sally Thompson has indeed suggested that in the thirteenth century a primary motive for nunneries wishing to be Cistercian was the avoidance of tax, and she highlighted one occasion when the abbot of Cîteaux disowned a number of English nunneries for making such claims.123 Yet Sinningthwaite and Swine were not, apparently, the only nunneries to claim such privileges, and Nunkeeling—a house for which there is no evidence of Cistercian leanings or claims—received from Alexander III a bull exempting it from tithes couched in much the same terms as those received by the other two.124 Moreover such a claim by Swine and Nun Cotham presupposes a good working knowledge of Cistercian practice. From where might this have derived? As we have seen, the founder of Swine was brother Robert de Verli. The Meaux Chronicle, in its description of the boundaries of the region before the coming of the Cistercians, locates the family as tenants on the borders of Wawne and Swine, roughly three miles to the south-east of Meaux.125 The terminus ad quem for the foundation of Swine was January 1153; it is thus roughly contemporary with that of the male Cistercian house of Meaux (1151). Might it therefore be suggested that Swine was founded by Robert de Verli as a female counterpart to the Cistercian abbey so close to hand? Whatever the official attitude of the Cistercians towards women, a local founder might have had no qualms about allowing them to participate in the most radical and spiritual of monastic experiments. 122 For Wykeham and Swine see, for instance, EYC, II, no. 1070, and XII, no. 65; for Keldholme, see Elkins, Holy Women, pp. 93–4. 123 Thompson, Women Religious, pp. 103–6. 124 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 7, fo. 255r–v; EYC, III, no. 1336. 125 Chron. Melsa, I, 79.

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Page 151 Meaux was not the only other religious house near to hand, for a dozen miles or so to the north-west lay Watton, the double Gilbertine house, founded like Swine before 1153. The parallels between the origins of Swine and that of the proto-Gilbertine house of Sempringham are striking: both were located in the parish church by the local priest, who seems to have retained control of the community. Had Sempringham/Watton provided the model for Swine (and as we shall see the similarities did not end with the circumstances of foundation) then it is perhaps more likely that Swine would have proclaimed a Gilbertine rather than a Cistercian affinity. However two factors should be kept in mind. First, Swine and Watton were founded in the very early years of the development of the Gilbertine order after the adoption of the fourth element, the regular canons, following Gilbert’s rejection by the Cistercians in 1147. The foundation charter of Watton contains the earliest reference to a double house and to the Gilbertine institutes. Swine may indeed precede Watton, so to prove Gilbertine influence is difficult. Second, the Gilbertines were known to have been influenced by the Cistercians in the adoption of lay sisters and lay brothers, and Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, in his foundation charter for Haverholme (1139), referred to the nuns as following the life of Cistercian monks as far as the weakness of their sex allowed.126 So, to suggest Gilbertine influence on Swine does not preclude the description of the priory as Cistercian. What the evidence does indicate quite clearly is that the few square miles around the Watton/Meaux/Swine axis provide a microcosm of the religious experiments going on around western Europe at this time. Moreover, there were clearly close personal links. Adam, abbot of Meaux, witnessed Henry Murdac’s confirmation of the foundation of Watton, and it was to Watton that he retired as a hermit in 1160.127 The likelihood that personal, local contacts, rather than large-scale influences lay behind the description of nunneries as Cistercian is reinforced when we look again at the foundation of Sinningthwaite. The priory was founded by Bertram Haget before 1155, and his endowment was supplemented by his son, Geoffrey, when his sister became a nun there. Another son of Bertram, Ralph, became a Cistercian monk of Kirkstall, where he rose to the office of abbot in 1182. The date of his profession is not known, but he could well have been a monk at the time of the foundation of Sinningthwaite. Family connections suggested to Bertram Haget the foundation of a Cistercian nunnery; again there is a divergence between the official and the local attitude. An even closer, though still unofficial, link between male and female Cistercian houses is 126 EEA, I, no. 37. 127 EEA, V, no. 129.

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Page 152 possible, for when Geoffrey’s sister, Gundreda, added her own grant to Sinningthwaite, of the advowson of the church of Bilton, her charter was witnessed by Elias, abbot of Kirkstall. The Yorkshire nunneries were a significant, if not a large, force in the spiritual life of the north. That they were smaller and less well endowed than male houses was partly a consequence of the perceived function of female houses and partly because after the middle of the twelfth century the status of monastic founders generally was lower, and houses were therefore poorer as a consequence. This applies to male as well as female houses. Moreover, what I have termed ‘nunneries’ were not the only means by which a woman could pursue a holy life. Others were hermits, attested in the north throughout the Middle Ages—and we do not know how many nunneries may have originated in this type of community. It is instructive to remember that but for the survival, in one manuscript, of the Life of Christina, we would have no idea of the anchorite prehistory of Markyate Priory. Other women found their desire for Christian service fulfilled in hospitals, or in less formal communities. Roger de Pont L’Evêque in 1169 confirmed lands to the pauperes sorores of Killingwoldgraves in compassion for their poverty.128 Female religious vocation was, and continued to be, a vibrant force in Yorkshire society. 128 EYC, I, no. 86.

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Page 153 Part II The life within and the world outside

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Page 155 Chapter 6 THE MONASTIC WORLD Monasteries and nunneries were both worlds within themselves and part of the wider communities of order and congregation, town and countryside, parish and diocese, castle and manor. The second half of this book therefore explores the life within the monastic house and its involvement in the world outside. This chapter begins by looking at the monastic world at its narrowest, that is, the individual monastery and nunnery. The questions which arise concerning these communities are many. What kind of men and women dedicated their lives to God there, and what were the conditions of their entry? How were the communities governed, and how was promotion to the highest office achieved? In these discussions I have found it convenient to separate the male and female monastic communities, since these pose different problems for the historian. I have begun with the large Benedictine houses which still, by the twelfth century, dominated the monastic world, and move on to the Cistercian houses, whose statutes imposed distinctive obligations on their abbots. My treatment of the female monastic community opens with an exploration of the link between recruitment and resources, which I argue is more pronounced in the case of female than male houses, and continues with a discussion of the male presence in nunneries and its implications for the structure of power, authority, and command. The chapter concludes by placing these individual communities in their wider monastic context, exploring how discipline was maintained and, in the case of those houses which belonged to an order, examining the nature of contacts within the monastic family. THE MALE MONASTIC COMMUNITY Evidence for recruitment into monastic houses for men derives in some measure—but not, as will be demonstrated, with the same frequency as for female houses—from grants which accompanied entry, or anticipated

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Page 156 entry.1 Previous chapters have shown that those recruits most frequently mentioned in narrative sources tend to be the high-status entrants, such as Dean Hugh of York, and Serlo and Tostig, canons, who entered Fountains Abbey in 1135. Such references clearly distort the picture, but they do give an indication of the impact of the monastic expansion in the locality. The Historia of Byland—admittedly looking back over half a century—recalled how in the years after 1142 ‘veterani et emeriti milites de curia et familia’, knights from the court and household of Roger de Mowbray, entered the community, bringing with them their not inconsiderable goods. Three were thought worthy of special mention: Landric de Ages, Henry de Wasprey, and Henry Bugge, the last becoming the custos operi of the abbey.2 The evidence for both the composition of the monastic communities and those who governed them is also slanted towards the larger houses which were the greatest generators of written records. Very little, for instance, can be reconstructed of the history of the priors and communities of the regular canons, beyond a skeletal list of the names of their heads. However, with all the dangers of generalization, it would seem safe to say that Yorkshire monasteries recruited from across the social spectrum, though abbots and priors were more likely to be drawn from the aristocracy and the clerical élite.3 The Black Monks and their abbots Even if the evidence did permit a full discussion of the men who entered and ruled the Yorkshire monasteries, this would not be possible within the scope of one chapter. One house which is, however, sufficiently well documented to allow for detailed analysis is Selby, and the following account is based largely on the Historia Selebiensis monasterii and charter evidence. It is not claimed that Selby is ‘typical’, but the fortunes of its abbots are of interest as those of a moderately sized and prosperous house of Black Monks. Selby also provides a useful basis for comparison. When Abbot Benedict of Selby was removed by the order of William II, he was succeeded by a man who commanded the admiration of the author of the Historia, Abbot Hugh (1096/7–1122), formerly provost of Selby, who was allegedly elected by the community, but with the 1 See below, pp. 167–70. 2 Mon. Ang.,V, 350; see also Mowbray Charters, p. xli and nos. 38, 156, 177, 230, 374 for the attestation of two of the three. The phrase used by the Historia is ‘siquidem… conversi fuerunt’, and this is generally taken to mean that the knights became conversi, not monks. 3 For those related to the patrons/founders see below, p. 200. Abbots like Ralph Haget of Fountains were drawn from the class of honorial barons.

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Page 157 approval of the king and Gerard, archbishop of York.4 How much this is conventional rhetoric is unclear, but we may note what this suggests about the continued interest of both king and archbishop in the headship of the abbey. Tradition has associated Hugh with the powerful south Yorkshire family of Lacy, lords of the honour of Pontefract.5 Under Hugh the monastery prospered, increasing its material possessions, and charter evidence confirms the Historia on this point.6 In addition, Nigel, reeve, or provost, of the archbishops of York, granted two and a half carucates of land in Hillam before he became a monk at Selby;7 and Archbishop Gerard granted the church of Snaith.8 Moreover, Hugh began the rebuilding of the abbey, transferring its site a little further away from the waters of the Ouse. This was done despite a mandate from Henry I forbidding a move—though he may have been referring to an earlier, perhaps more radical, plan to relocate.9 Much of the nave and transepts constructed in Hugh’s time remains as a testimony to the work he inspired.10 Abbot Hugh was not just a well-known figure in the neighbourhood of Selby; with Abbot Stephen of York he attended the translation of the relics of St Cuthbert at Durham in 1104.11 This first age of territorial expansion came to an end with the resignation of Abbot Hugh. In 1122, after twenty-six years in office, he felt unable to continue and, with the permission of Archbishop Thurstan, resigned. The event, as described in the Historia, also suggests something of the wider reputation of Selby and its abbot. When Archbishop Thurstan had privately and reluctantly accepted Hugh’s decision to resign, he brought together in the chapter house there, on the pretext of discussing other business, Ranulf Flambard, bishop of Durham, Ralph, bishop of Orkney, Abbot Geoffrey of York, the prior of Pontefract, and many others; such was the audience for Hugh’s announcement. What is striking is not so much the Historia’s conventional description of the distress which this caused to all present, and their attempts to dissuade Hugh from 4 There is an error in the Historia here, for in 1097 the archbishop of York was Thomas I (1070–1100). 5 This identification has no medieval source; it was accepted by Hohl, but questioned by Wightman: Hohl, ‘Une fille?’, p. 37; Wightman, Lacy Family, p. 58. For the account of Hugh’s abbacy, see Hist. Selb., fos 20v–23v (pp. 22–5) and for verses in his praise fos. 23v–24r (pp. 25–6). 6 See, for example, Mowbray Charters, nos. 2, 3, 9; EYC, I, nos. 43, 45–6, 462; III, no. 1622; XII, no. 15. 7 BL MS Add. 37771, fo. 96r (‘antequam fierem monachus in ecclesia Selebiensi’ (‘before I became a monk in the church of Selby’)); EYC, I, no. 45; Selby Coucher, I, no. 509. 8 BL MS Add. 37771, fo. 155r; EYC, I, no. 472; EEA, V, no. 10; Selby Coucher, II, no. 875. Confirmed by Henry I: BL MS Add. 37771, fo. 14v; EYC, I, no. 473; Selby Coucher, I, no. 25. 9 BL MS Add. 37771, fo. 14r; EYC, I, no. 471. 10 On Hugh’s building activities see L. F. Salzman, Building in England down to 1540 (Oxford, 1952), p. 3, and below, pp. 298–9. 11 Symeon, Opera, I, 258.

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Page 158 his resignation, so much as the place which Selby had evidently assumed in the ecclesiastical life of the diocese. Hugh spent part of the remaining two years of his life visiting the shrines of England, including Durham, before returning to dwell as a hermit not far from Selby. On his death he was buried in the chapter house. Hugh’s successor was short-lived. Herbert, ‘vir valde monachus et in ordinis observatione probatissimus’ (‘a complete monk, and very well tested in the observation of the [monastic] order’), was a monk of St Albans, coincidentally one of those places visited by Hugh in his retirement, and, so the Historia claims, a man admired by the king. Devoted to the contemplative life, it is difficult to see what brought Herbert to Selby. He may have been known to Abbot Hugh, but a royal appointment is more likely—although he does not appear to have been the kind of abbot to appeal to a king wanting someone to protect royal interests. The Historia’s portrayal of Herbert as a Mary rather than a Martha figure is a stereotype,12 but there may be some substance to the claim that the house was poorly administered and the lands uncultivated, for there is little charter evidence to suggest the continuation of the expansion enjoyed under Benedict and Hugh. Unable to find a solution to the problems caused by the financial difficulties into which the abbey had fallen, Herbert approached the papal legate for advice during his visit to York in 1125. The legate had strong words for Herbert: simplicity, humility, and constancy were not virtues in those who held high office. Herbert thus became the third abbot of Selby to resign his office, and in contrast to Hugh’s announcement of his retirement, his return to St Albans caused little stir among his brethren. The monks once again looked outside their house for an abbot, this time lighting on Durand, monk of St Mary’s, York.13 The main interest, for the Historia, in his ten-year period of office was the flooding of the river Ouse, the worst consequences of which were diverted by the intervention of St Germanus. Durand was a complete contrast to his predecessor; a man ‘in exterioribus valde prudens’ (‘very prudent in external matters’), he was educated in the liberal arts, handsome, noble. Unfortunately he was also somewhat lacking in spiritual observances, and before long he became a source of scandal to both laity and monks throughout Yorkshire. No details are preserved, merely the hint that his downfall was caused by his association with women. The Selby monks sought the aid of Archbishop Thurstan, who deprived Durand of his office (1135). When Durand failed to recover his reputation and his post, 12 Hist. Selb., fo. 24r–v (pp. 26–7); for a similar description of Richard of Fountains, see below, p. 166. 13 Hist. Selb., fos. 25r–26r (pp. 27–8).

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Page 159 he became a monk at Cluny, and later still prior of one of the English houses of the congregation.14 Both in 1122 and in 1125 the Selby monks had failed, for whatever reason, to elect one of their own number as abbot. In 1135 this was again the case, and their inability to agree resulted in a two-year vacancy.15 The continued lack of leadership led to intervention by the pope, who wrote commanding Archbishop Thurstan to see that a good and suitable pastor be elected at Selby.16 Accordingly under the direction of the archbishop the monks elected Walter, prior of the Cluniac house of Pontefract to which Thurstan was to retire three years later. Walter, described as ‘moribus et etate bene maturus artium liberalium assertione precipuus’ (‘wise in his ways and of advanced age, known for his knowledge of the liberal arts’), appears to have been another individual whose interests lay in contemplation rather than administration.17 Throughout his period of office (1137–43) he left the day-to-day running of the house to a monk named William Grandus, and one of the few recorded acquisitions was that of land in Kelfield.18 When Walter died in 1143 he was the first abbot of Selby in its 75-year history to do so while still in office. Once again his successor proved to be a sharp contrast. Elias Paynel (1143–52) came to Selby from the position of prior of Holy Trinity, York; he was a man of noble origins, and possibly the son of Ralph Paynel of Drax, founder of Holy Trinity. The judgement of the Historia was less than favourable: he was recorded as ‘omnino pene laicus excepto psalmorum recordatione’ (‘almost a lay man, except that he could recite the psalms’). But for the time—the troubled reign of King Stephen—he was not a bad choice, and the fortunes of Selby during this period will be considered elsewhere.19 After ruling for four years Elias became the fourth abbot of Selby to resign, and his downfall was apparently due to the intervention of Henry Murdac, archbishop of York. The author of the Historia explained the episode in terms of Murdac’s resentment of the support given by the Yorkshire Benedictines to William Fitz Herbert, treasurer of York, elected as archbishop in 1141, and their opposition to his, Murdac’s, own election in 1147;20 finding nothing of which to complain in Elias’s behaviour he was, according to the Historia, forced to rely on cunning. Elias initially refused to resign, but the monks elected as abbot one of 14 Possibly Montacute: HRH, pp. 69, 122. 15 Hist. Selb., fo. 28r–v (p. 31). 16 HCY, III, 66–7. 17 Hist. Selb., fos. 28v–29v (pp. 31–2). Again the parallel of Mary and Martha is used. 18 See BL MS Add. 37771, fo. 111r (Selby Coucher, I, nos. 600–2, EYC, IV, no. 16, and V, nos. 162–3) for confirmations of this grant. 19 Hist. Selb., fos. 30r–39v (pp. 33–44); see below, pp. 201–3. 20 Hist. Selb., fos. 39v–40v (pp. 44–5).

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Page 160 their own monks named William, possibly William Grandus who had administered the house during the abbacy of Walter. Murdac quashed the election and ordered them to settle on his own candidate, German, monk of St Albans and at the time prior of that abbey’s dependency at Tynemouth. Under threat of anathema the monks elected German but, after the death of Henry Murdac, their efforts, aided by those of the chapter of York Minster and Archdeacon Osbert de Bayeux secured the deposition of German and the restoration of Elias. Six months later, however, Elias was once more removed, this time by Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury.21 The Gesta abbatum Sancti Albani, whose author may have been recording a tradition preserved at the abbey about one of its own monks, offers a different interpretation. It accuses Elias of ignorance and neglect, and states that German was appointed to reform Selby: ‘ad reformationem ordinis, qui ibidem deperierat’ (‘to reform the monastic order which had there declined’). It adds that after the deposition of German he returned to St Albans, whose abbot, Robert, sent a monk to Rome to put German’s case to the pope. The pope then ordered the deposition of Elias and the degradation of Archdeacon Osbert, the instigator of the whole affair (hujus rei incentorem).22 ‘Pastor nescius et remissus’ Elias may have been in spiritual affairs but he was not lax in extending the territorial possessions of Selby. He acquired additional lands in Acaster Selby, Brayton, and Monk Fryston, and perhaps encouraged Roger de Mowbray to grant the manor of Middlethorpe in restitution for damage which he had done to the monastery.23 By 1154, when King Stephen, present at the siege of Drax, issued a confirmation charter to the abbey, the monks had extended their possessions to Bramwith and Doncaster and had acquired the churches of Ashby Puerorum and Redbourne (Lincs.).24 After the disputes and uncertainties of 1153–4 German returned to rule Selby, and despite the manner of his election the Historia was well disposed towards him, describing him as an honourable man, a man of virtue and integrity, and an example of perfection to his monks.25 After 21 The intervention of an archbishop of Canterbury suggests a date after the death of Archbishop William (June 1154), briefly restored to the see of York in late 1153. 22 Gesta abbatum Sancti Albani, ed. H. T. Riley, 3 vols. (RS, 1867–9), I, 120. Osbert was degraded following accusations of complicity in the alleged murder of Archbishop William; see EEA, V, 126–7, and references cited there. 23 EYC, III, nos. 1543, 1547; Mowbray Charters, nos. 254–6. Mowbray later granted the manor to Byland Abbey (Mowbray Charters, no. 55). 24 BL MS Add. 37771, fo. 9v; Selby Coucher, I, no. 4; EYC, I, no. 480; RRAN, III, no. 817. See also EYC, III, nos. 1623, 1721; XII, no. 44, for acquisitions in Holme on Spalding Moor, Thorpe Willoughby, and Shitlington. 25 Hist. Selb., fos. 40v–41r (pp. 45–6). For territorial expansion in his abbacy see Selby Coucher, I, no. 556; BL MS Add. 37771, fos. 166v–67r; EYC, I, no. 484, XI, nos. 123–4.

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Page 161 German’s death on 23 November 1160,26 the character of the Historia changes, and little is recorded of individual abbots. Abbot Gilbert de Vere (1160–83), brother of Guy de Vere, is mentioned only twice;27 the last twelve chapters are devoted to the miracles of St Germanus, and the Historia ends in 1174. There was a prolonged vacancy between 1183 and 1189, when Roger of London, prior of Selby, succeeded as abbot (1189–95); his successor, Richard (1195–1214), was also promoted internally from the office of prior.28 Does the documentary evidence permit comparison with the other two independent houses of Black Monks? Sadly we know nothing of the previous careers of Abbots Nicholas (1125–39), Benedict (1139–48), and Peter (resigned by 1212) of Whitby, though Richard I (1148–75/6) and Richard II of Cornwall (1177–c. 1181) were promoted from outside. The Whitby Memorial relates how Benedict, third abbot, went to Archbishop Henry Murdac at Beverley and sought his permission to resign. The cause is only hinted at: ‘non ferens molestias a quibusdam suis adversariis sibi illatas’ (‘unable to bear the troubles brought against him by certain of his enemies’). There was evidently opposition to Benedict, though not necessarily from within the community. The date—within a year of Murdac’s election as archbishop—suggests that the adversarii of the abbot may have derived from Murdac’s supporters. Whatever his reason for going, his chapter supported Benedict’s request to be allowed to retire to the abbey cell of All Saints, Fishergate. It is at this point that the histories of the two abbeys of Whitby and Selby come together, for Murdac allowed Benedict to resign only on condition that the monks elect an abbot of his nomination. The choice which he offered them was Thomas Grammaticus, monk of St Albans and Murdac’s own nephew, Richard, prior of Peterborough, or German, prior of Tynemouth, who a few years later was to become abbot of Selby. The Whitby monks elected Richard of Peterborough, whose brethren were only reluctantly persuaded to part with him.29 Escorted back to Whitby by its prior, Walter, and a monk named Martin, Richard was welcomed by thirty-six monks. Abbot Richard ruled Whitby for twenty-six years (1148–75), and the Memorial records this as a time of prosperity, during which the territorial basis of 26 London, BL MS Add. 36652 (Selby Easter tables), fo. 6r. 27 His death, and that of Clement, abbot of St Mary’s, are noted in Howden, Chronica, II, 288, under 1184, but see HRH, p. 69. 28 Howden, Chronica, III, 15–16, where it is stated that this was a royal appointment, and that the elect was blessed by Bishop Hugh of Durham on the order of King Richard I but against the wishes of Geoffrey, archbishop-elect of York; see also HRH, p. 69. 29 Cart. Whitby, I, 8–10. Richard’s election was also noted by Hugh Candidus, the Peterborough chronicler: The Chronicle of Hugh Candidus, a monk of Peterborough, ed. W. T. Mellows (London, 1949), pp. 119–22.

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Page 162 the abbey was extended, and repairs to the fabric undertaken.30 Richard is recorded as having rebuilt the chapter house, possibly destroyed when the town of Whitby was devastated by a Viking fleet;31 and when he died in 1175 he was buried in the chapter house next to Abbot William. There were then thirty-eight monks at Whitby; numbers had remained reasonably constant through his term of office.32 Both Richard and his namesake, formerly prior of Monks Kirby, appointed by Henry II at the royal council of 29 May 1177,33 were successful in obtaining considerable endowments for their house. Acquisitions were made in York, Cayton, Great Ayton, Middlesbrough, and South Fyling,34 and further churches were obtained.35 The internal development of St Mary’s is, for the premier abbey of the north, meagrely documented, particularly in contrast to the economic side of its history. The cartularies clearly reveal the economic strengths of the house, but the personalities which led the monastery to success are often no more than names. And it is doubly unfortunate that, after Abbot Stephen’s vivid description of its first years, virtually the only glimpse we have inside the walls of the great York abbey in the period covered by this book is the secession of a group of monks in October 1132 which led to the foundation of Fountains Abbey.36 Abbot Stephen was succeeded by a monk of St Mary’s, Richard (1113/14–18), but the provenance of those abbots between him and Robert de Longchamp, the prior of Ely elected in 1197, is not known.37 The history of Selby in the eleventh and twelfth centuries is one of particular fascination. As the first foundation in postConquest York30 Cart. Whitby, I, 9. 31 Snorri Sturlason, Heimskringla or the Lives of the Norse Kings, ed. E. Monsen and transl. A. H. Smith and E. Monsen (Cambridge, 1932), p. 679, places this, the last recorded Viking attack on England, in the reign of Stephen. Hugh Candidus (Chronicle, pp. 121–2) dates it to the abbacy of Richard. Together these suggest a date between 1148 and 1154. 32 All are named, but none bears an identifiable or distinctive name: Cart. Whitby, I, 10. 33 Howden, Chronica, II, 135. Monks Kirby (Warwickshire) was a priory dependent on St Nicholas of Angers. 34 EYC, I, nos. 249, 279, 331; II, nos. 709, 888, 1044; XI, nos. 186–8. For a list of the possessions of the abbey by 1148 see the bull of protection issued by Eugenius III, printed in Cart. Whitby, I, no. 149, EYC, II, no. 872. 35 Barmston, confirmed by Archbishop Roger de Pont l’Evêque; Huntington, granted by the abbot of Evesham to be held for 10s per annum; Ingleby Greenhow and Kirby in Cleveland, granted by Guy and Bernard de Balliol; Saxby, granted by Robert son of William de Aketon; and Skirpenbeck, Slingsby, and Sutton upon Derwent, granted by Walter de Gant, Robert Chambord and Robert I de Percy respectively. EYC, I, nos. 568, 571; II, nos. 882, 887, 1059; VI, no. 99; XI, no. 104; Cart. Whitby, I, no. 86. In addition, by 1165, the monks were evidently serving the chapel of Ugglebarnby: EYC, II, no. 885. 36 See above, pp. 104–6. 37 Geoffrey (c. 1119–c. 1138), Savaric (1138–?61), Clement (c. 1161–84), Robert I de Harpham (c. 1186–95).

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Page 163 shire, it must always hold a distinctive place in the history of religious developments in the county. There are, however, other features of special interest, not least because the office of abbot and its holders are particularly well documented. Ten abbots ruled the house from 1069 to 1214; of these six resigned, only two voluntarily.38 Excluding Benedict, and Gilbert de Vere, whose previous career is not documented, only three of the remaining eight were elected or appointed from being priors of Selby. The others were drawn from St Albans (2), St Mary’s, York, Holy Trinity, York, and Pontefract. For whatever reason few of Selby’s monks attained high office there. One possible explanation is the intervention of the archbishops of York, which could stem from the grant of the abbey to them by William II. Was it by virtue of this special position that Thurstan intervened to put in Walter of Pontefract, and that Henry Murdac deposed Elias and intruded German? Did the archbishops regard themselves as acting as patrons or diocesans? Apart from these instances of archiepiscopal intervention there is little evidence to indicate how the grant was exploited. If the archbishops did assume powers of patronage on behalf of the king—for Selby was a royal foundation—then this might explain the wide circle from which the abbots were drawn, and the elevation of men who did not have local interests. Only two Selby abbots, Elias Paynel and Gilbert de Vere, are known to have been drawn from local aristocratic families, and Elias was elected by the monks at a time when there was no effective archbishop of York, and we may see in his election the dominance of a factional interest. Moreover, it may have been that the prolonged interregnum at Selby in the years 1184 to 1189 was in some way connected with the vacancy in the archbishopric (1181–91). On the other hand, it was in response to a papal mandate that Thurstan participated in the election of an abbot; and the intervention of Henry Murdac at Selby is matched by similar actions at Whitby. It may be significant that none of the three candidates Murdac offered the Whitby monks derived from that house, and two were monks of St Albans. The timing of Murdac’s intervention at Selby and Whitby suggests that it was dictated by his desire to undermine the power of the Benedictine abbots who had opposed him, and to replace them by outsiders. Either way, the episodes at Whitby and Selby in the late 1140s and early 1150s demonstrate the power which the archbishop wielded over the Black Monk houses of his diocese, and the degree to which the affair of the disputed election to the see of York involved its monastic houses. In contrast to the earlier period the abbots who ruled Selby between 1189 and 1214 were promoted from within the community, though with royal influence.39 38 Hugh, and Richard, who resigned in 1214 after being elected abbot of Ramsey. 39 See above, note 28.

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Page 164 The evidence from Whitby also suggests some royal intervention; and the final abbot to rule St Mary’s in the period under consideration, Robert de Longchamp, who succeeded Robert de Harpham, deposed by Archbishop Hubert Walter in 1195, was brother of William de Longchamp, bishop of Ely (1189–97), and royal chancellor.40 Durand, monk of St Mary’s Abbey, was the only monk from one of these three independent Benedictine houses known to have become abbot at another (Selby). There was, however, clearly communication of other sorts among them. We have already noted how Abbot Hugh of Selby, with Stephen of St Mary’s, journeyed to Durham for the translation of St Cuthbert, and how Hugh’s announcement of his retirement was made in the chapter house of Selby in the presence of a notable audience. At a time of crisis in 1132 Geoffrey, the aged abbot of St Mary’s, was able to call on the support of Holy Trinity and Pontefract, and together the abbots of York, Whitby, and Selby offered their backing to Archbishop William Fitz Herbert during the disputed election. Cistercian abbots According to the Carta caritatis prior, a Cistercian community could elect any White Monk as its abbot.41 In the period up to 1215 the eight Yorkshire houses elected a total of forty-seven abbots, excluding the founder abbots, who would have come from the mother house; the origins of eighteen of these are not recorded. Of the remaining twenty-nine, ten were elected from within, and nineteen from outside, their own houses. Those promoted from within their own communities were: Roger of Byland (1142–96), previously monk of Furness, sub-cellarer at Calder, novice master at Hood; Richard II of Fountains (1141–3), previously monk and sacrist of St Mary’s, monk and prior of Fountains; Ralph Haget (1182–90/1) and Lambert (1190/1–92/3), of Kirkstall, both previously monks there; Thomas (1182–97) and Hugh (1210–20) of Meaux, both previously priors; Maurice of Rievaulx (1145–7), monk and subprior of Durham, monk of Rievaulx; Geoffrey, monk and abbot of Rievaulx (elected 1204); Elias, monk, cellarer, and abbot of Rievaulx (1211–15); Reginald of Roche (elected c. 1213) who was probably a monk of that house. 40 Howden, Chronica, III, 294; Radulfi de Diceto decani Lundoniensis opera historica, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols. (RS, 1876), II, 151–2. Knowles, Monastic Order, pp. 399, 651–2, points out that William Longchamp did not scruple to intervene in abbatial appointments, but that Diceto stresses that Robert was elected by the York monks. William died in January 1197 and Robert was elected in March. 41 CCP, p. 101. For the abbots of English and Welsh Cistercian houses to 1216, see HRH, pp. 126–48; see also Clay, ‘Early abbots’.

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Page 165 Those brought in to rule from outside were Philip of Byland (1196–8), who moved from the post of abbot of Lannoy, in the diocese of Beauvais, a daughter house of Savigny; Henry Murdac of Fountains (1143/4–53), monk of Clairvaux, and abbot of Vauclair; Murdac’s suffragans, Maurice, monk and former abbot of Rievaulx (1148), Thorald (1148–50), monk of Rievaulx,42 and Richard III (1150–70) native of York, precentor of Clairvaux and abbot of Vauclair; Robert of Fountains (1170–80), former abbot of Pipewell; William of Fountains (1180–90), former Augustinian canon of Guisborough, then abbot of Newminster; Ralph Haget of Fountains (1190/1–1203), who moved from the abbacy of Kirkstall; John of York of Fountains (1203–11), monk and cellarer of Fountains, then abbot of Louth Park; Turgisius, abbot of Kirkstall (1191/2–1201/2), formerly monk of Fountains; Elias, abbot of Kirkstall (1202/3–c. 1204), formerly monk of Roche; Ralph of Newcastle, abbot of Kirkstall (c. 1204–31/3), former monk of Fountains. Two abbots of Meaux came from elsewhere, Philip (1160–82), monk of Kirkstead, abbot of Hovedö, who returned to Kirkstead as prior, and Alexander (1197–1210), monk of Forde. Ailred came to the abbacy of Rievaulx (1147–67) from Revesby, Silvanus (1167–88) from Dundrennan, Ernald (1189–99) from Melrose, and Henry (1215–16) from Warden. Finally Osmund, abbot of Roche (c. 1184–1213), was previously cellarer of Fountains. The pattern seems, therefore, to have been one of movement primarily within families. Apart from founding abbots, Fountains supplied heads for its Yorkshire family at Kirkstall (2) and Roche (1), and received back as abbots heads of Pipewell, Newminster, Kirkstall, and Louth Park. Rievaulx drew abbots from its daughter houses of Revesby, Dundrennan, Melrose, and Warden; and Elias, who resigned as abbot in 1215, was elected to the daughter house of Revesby in 1217. There was movement across the generations of the same family (Roche to Kirkstall, Kirkstead to Meaux, Lannoy to Byland) and in the case of Murdac’s two suffragans at Fountains, from one family (Rievaulx) to another. The exceptional circumstances of the York election brought direct continental influence to Yorkshire affairs: Bernard was responsible for returning Murdac to his native north, and Murdac’s third suffragan at Fountains was also a northerner and abbot of Vauclair. Those abbots who came from outside this fairly tight structure were few. Indeed, the one documented example appears to have been Alexander of Forde, appointed to Meaux in 1197. According to the Meaux Chronicle he was recommended by the father abbot, that is, Ralph Haget of Fountains, and was unknown to anyone in the abbey. That he was appointed to rescue the house from the financial 42 After his resignation he went on to be abbot of Trois Fontaines (c. 1151).

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Page 166 disasters incurred under the previous abbot suggests that Ralph had considerable knowledge of the Forde monk, either personally or through an intermediary.43 Alexander may have been helped by the patronage of Archbishop Hubert Walter of Canterbury (1191–1205), who, just a year after Alexander became abbot of Meaux, nominated him for the vacant bishopric of St Davids.44 Alexander further showed his political confidence when in late 1200 he assumed the leadership of the Cistercian abbots who were resisting King John’s attempts to extort tax from them, and assured them of Hubert Walter’s support.45 The Yorkshire Cistercians seem, therefore, to have succeeded in keeping the election of their abbots free from political and ecclesiastical influence. This sets them apart from what can be learnt of their Benedictine counterparts. For the houses of regular canons there is, unfortunately, little basis for comparison. Some eleven Cistercian abbots are recorded as having resigned, and at least one other attempted to do so: Richard II of Fountains, characterized as a Mary rather than a Martha, and an unwilling leader, asked three times to be relieved of his post but was refused by Bernard.46 Roger of Byland was finally allowed to lay down the reins of office in extreme old age in 1196. Maurice resigned after two years as abbot of Rievaulx in 1147, as he was to at Fountains after only a brief spell the following year. Two resignations may suggest an unsuitability for high office. However, Maurice’s successor as suffragan at Fountains was also to resign (1150), because of a disagreement with Murdac—could this have been connected with Murdac’s reforms?47 This suggests an unsettled spell at the house. Both Sylvanus and Ernald resigned from Rievaulx (1189 and 1199); the former chose the setting of his former abbey of Dundrennan to give up his office, but it was at Byland that he died and was buried (1189).48 At Meaux four resignations from five abbots speak of serious difficulties, and the chronicle suggests financial troubles. Adam (1151–60) failed in his attempt to raise the number of monks to forty, saw the house fall into poverty, and presided over the first dispersal of the convent in 1160. Under the pretext of pursuing a lawsuit in Rome, Adam retired as an anchorite to Watton.49 Philip (1160–82), appointed on Adam’s advice, died in office, but Thomas resigned in 1197, blaming himself for the poor 43 Chron. Melsa, I, 289. 44 C. R. Cheney, Hubert Walter (London, 1967), p. 163, suggests that Alexander may have been a chaplain of the archbishop. 45 Knowles, Monastic Order, p. 367. 46 Memorials of Fountains, I, 78. 47 Ibid., p. 85. 48 The Chronicle of Melrose, facsimile edition, ed. A. O. and M. O. Anderson (London, 1936), pp. 46–7, 50. The reasons for their resignations, as well as that of Geoffrey of Sallay, are not recorded, although Ernald’s death the following year suggests illness or old age. 49 Chron. Melsa, I, 107; see below, p. 272.

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Page 167 financial state of the house and a second dispersal.50 Alexander resigned in 1210, and Hugh ten years later. THE FEMALE MONASTIC COMMUNITY Nunneries and the local community: recruitment and resources As the previous chapter demonstrated, a study of the documentary sources for the Yorkshire nunneries before 1215 reveals that they were dependent on the gradual accumulation of resources from men and women of the locality, rather than on a generous foundation endowment. An exceptional house was Watton, which was founded by a baronial family with large resources at its disposal and wide contacts. Even the status of the founder was no guarantee of prosperity, however: Keldholme, too, was a baronial foundation, but it was also a local house, and beyond the grant of the site and its surroundings provided by Robert de Stuteville, it was endowed by men and women of modest means. The pattern of expansion, indeed survival, of the other nunneries appears to have been one of piecemeal acquisition of estates, and the issues of recruitment and resources were closely linked. As we have seen, there are instances which demonstrate that a parish church formed the basis of the nunnery, and these churches continued to serve both the monastic and the wider community. Nunneries may well have been sustained by the goodwill offerings of the parishioners as well as their landed endowments, but there are also indications that these grants were, in reality, entry fees. It is from these that most of our evidence for female recruitment derives. Between 1170 and 1180 Wilberfoss acquired lands in nearby Meltonby from Ralph when his daughter, Alice, became a nun there. His charter stated: obtuli hanc cartam cum filia mea Aaliz ad quam hereditas mea spectabat super altare sancte Marie de Wilburfosse, concessu et prece ipsius filie mee, quam prefate sanctimoniales in consortium susceperunt servituram ibi Deo omnibus diebus vite sue, sicut ipsa coram Deo vovit.51 (I have offered this charter with my daughter, Alice, to whom my inheritance belongs, on the altar of St Mary of Wilberfoss, at the instance and prayer of my daughter herself, whom the aforesaid nuns have accepted into their fellowship, to serve God there all the days of her life, as she herself has vowed in the presence of God.) 50 Ibid., 233–4. 51 To be held for an annual rent of 5s, paid to the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 7, fo. 358r–v; EYC, I, no. 444.

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Page 168 Yedingham acquired from Baldwin de Alverstein one and a half carucates in exchange for rent which he had previously given with his daughter, Lecia.52 Thicket supplemented its lands in West Cottingwith, Goodmanham, and Wheldrake from a number of local benefactors.53 Two of these, Hugh de Bolton and Cecilia his wife, granted all their part of the castlery and bailiwick of Wheldrake, with two bovates and one acre outside cum Isonda filia nostra. In the West Riding Nun Monkton added to the three churches, Askham Richard, Thorp Arch, and Kirk Hammerton, which formed its initial endowment, the church of Little (Kirkby) Ouseburn, granted by Elias de Ho, a kinsman of the founders; and William and Juetta de Arches’s other daughter, Juetta, who married Adam de Brus, added lands in Stainton in county Durham.54 A series of benefactions from the families of Cornborough, Luvel, and Plaiz brought property in Appletreewick and Newton on Ouse; at least two charters link the benefaction to the entry of members of the families, Ermengata, cousin of Osbert de Cornborough, and Elizabeth and Agnes, daughters of William de Plaiz, into the nunnery.55 William de Percy confirmed to Nun Appleton land which Cecilia his mother had granted to the priory on her entry.56 By virtue of grants made by the founder’s family and others, Sinningthwaite extended its property to Bilton, Thorpe Underwood, Widdington, Little Ouseburn, and Elwicks, and in Tockwith and Rossehirst.57 Gundreda, daughter of Bertram Haget, in her widowhood, granted the advowson of the church of Bilton, in which parish the priory lay. The land in Tockwith was accompanied by the entry of the daughters (number unknown) of Simon I de Mohaut, and a charter of his son, Simon II, reveals that his two nieces, as well as his sisters, had entered the priory.58 Arthington was granted land in Healthwaite by Avice de Rumilly, and in addition to grazing rights she reserved for herself the privilege of nominating one nun.59 The Coleville patrons of 52 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 7, fo. 189v; EYC, I, no. 390. 53 EYC, II, nos. 1131–2; Mon. Ang., IV, 385–6, nos. I–III. 54 The advowson of Little Ouseburn was quitclaimed to the monks of Fountains in 1217: Cart. Fount., I, 422–3, nos. 21– 2; for agreements with the monks concerning lands in Thorpe Under-wood, see ibid., II, 721, nos. 15–16 and 723, no. 20. For Nun Stainton: EYC, I, 415; Feodarium Prioratus Dunelmensis, p. 163, note. 55 Alnwick Castle (Northumberland), Muniment Room, X series, division II, section 6, box 16 (m), and boxes 36–7. For late medieval examples of recruitment at Nun Monkton, see Burton, ‘Recruitment and resources’, pp. 104–16. 56 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 8, fo. 155r; EYC, XI, no. 100. 57 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 8, fos. 139v, 144v; EYC, II, no. 734, III, no. 1867; Mon. Ang., V, 464, no. III. For an agreement with the monks of Fountains concerning land in Thorpe Underwood, see Cart. Fount., II, 723–4, no. 21. See also Cal. Ch. R., I, 450–1. 58 EYC, X, no. 50. Alice, sister of Simon II, granted seven bovates with her two daughters. 59 Confirmed by her son, William de Curcy: EYC, III, no. 1863.

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Page 169 Foukeholme claimed complete control of both the recruitment and the resources of the priory.60 Little evidence exists for the endowments or recruits of the North Riding houses of Rosedale, Ellerton, Baysdale, and Handale. The nuns of Wykeham, however, received land in Marton (Wykeham), and William de Octon granted one and a half carucates of land which had formed the dower of his sister Mabel. Theobald son of Uvieth granted land ‘cum filia mea… religioni tradita’ (‘with my daughter who has been given over to the religious life’), and the nephews of William de Octon were also received into the community.61 The best-documented house is Marrick, from which over one hundred and thirty charters have been preserved.62 Among the benefactions received by the priory were those of Warner son of Wimar (the mill of Ellerton on Swale), Conan de Manfield (Manfield), Conan de Aske (Marrick, Dalton Travers), and Alan de Ling (Melsonby).63 Some at least appear to have been entry grants. Warin son of Peter of Dalton granted two bovates of land ‘in feudo meo Daltunie, que fuerunt Wihtmai uxoris patrui mei’ (‘in my fief at Dalton which belonged to Wihtmai, the wife of my uncle’) with his aunt, and this was confirmed by Conan de Aske, son of the founder of Marrick, and nephew of Wihtmai.64 Marrick also received two bovates of land in Carperby from Peter son of Torphin de Askrigg when his sister, Amabel, became a nun there.65 Geoffrey de Lascelles granted a yearly money rent to mark the entry of his sister Agnes, also into Marrick.66 Gilbert son of Alan of Downholme granted land with his sister Avice, and Hervey son of Acaris a total of sixty acres with his wife and daughter.67 In general the nunneries attracted benefactions from members of the founder’s family and his or her lord, and fellow tenants. Moreover the evidence suggests that grants were sometimes accompanied by the entry of a female relative; that is, a novice was supported by a grant of land or rents. In houses with limited resources and probably with limited places, 60 Northallerton, North Yorkshire County Record Office, Mauleverer Brown Archives FL 8; Burton, Yorkshire Nunneries, p. 23, where dated c. 1240; Thompson, Women Religious, p. 186, suggests a rather earlier date. 61 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 7, fos. 295v, 296v–297r; EYC, I, no. 383; II, no. 1065. 62 These charters are now preserved among the muniments of the Stapleton family at Hull University Library. They were printed in T. S[tapleton]’s Collectanea topographica et genealogica (1838), volume V. 63 EYC, V, nos. 168, 177, 275–8, 312, 343, 369–70, 378 (Coll. Top. Gen., V, 103, 106, 109, 118, 221, 224–5, 227). For further lands in Eppleby, East Cowton, Kirby Ravensworth, Patrick Brompton, Aiskew, and Garriston, see Mon. Ang., IV, 245–6, no. I. 64 EYC, V, nos. 170–1; Coll. Top. Gen., V, 229. 65 Also confirmed by Amabel’s nephew, Alan son of Adam: EYC, V, nos. 216–17; Coll. Top. Gen., V, 116. 66 EYC, V, no. 375; Coll. Top. Gen., V, 231. 67 EYC, V, nos. 127, 377; Coll. Top. Gen., V, 120, 221.

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Page 170 such grants may have been deemed necessary for the financial survival of the nunneries. The danger was that they would be regarded as simony, that the thin line between a free-will offering and an entry fee might be traversed. This was not a problem unique to female houses, since in monasteries as well as nunneries there was potential for abuse of the chapters of the Rule of St Benedict which allowed an adult novice and the parents of an oblate to make a formal donation to the house which received him/her.68 The issue was addressed at the Council of Westminster of 1175, which forbade any religious house to accept a novice ‘by any pact’. When the ruling was repeated on a European level at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) women were singled out for criticism. The archbishops of York continued to warn the nunneries against the reception of recruits through ‘pact’ rather than ‘love’, which suggests an ongoing problem.69 However, it is impossible to distinguish between entry fees which might, as a consequence of the poverty of the nunneries, be demanded from recruits, and the free-will gifts, seen as the girl’s dowry, which her family might be happy to provide. Evidence from the late medieval wills from the diocese of York indicate that testators not infrequently left a sum of money to provide for a girl should she wish to enter religion, and this is sometimes specified as an alternative to her marriage dowry.70 The male presence in nunneries When Gilbert of Sempringham approached the Cistercian General Chapter in 1147 he did so because he saw the need for literate men to care for his female communities. He had already brought in lay brothers for the manual and administrative tasks. He realized that he needed also: men for their ability, scholars for their skill in ruling others, clerks in order to exercise authority over the church in accordance with law; men to look after women, scholars to open the way of salvation to both men and women, and clerks to supply the pastoral office to all.71 Although this was a retrospective explanation for the introduction of canons into the Gilbertine communities, it articulates quite effectively the way in which female communities were perceived to need the services of men, mainly the spiritual services of a priest. A variety of arrangements was possible. A nunnery could have a resident or visiting chaplain; it could have a resident or non-resident custos; like the Gilbertine order it could more formally incorporate men into the community. Given the consistent need for a male presence, some historians have 68 Rule of St Benedict, chapters 58–9. 69 See Burton, ‘Recruitment and resources’. 70 Ibid., pp. 104–16. 71 Book of St Gilbert, pp. 44–7.

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Page 171 suggested that to apply the term ‘double house’ specifically to groups like the Gilbertines and the order of Fontevrault is misleading, because it suggests that other houses were composed solely of women. However, there is a rationale behind distinguishing those orders which afforded men a formal, or legal, role in the constitution, and those where the arrangement was less formal and more fluid. An examination of the evidence reveals a variety of organization. Masters, guardians, and priors There are a number of references to male magistri or custodes of Yorkshire nunneries. The foundation grant to Nun Appleton was made to ‘God and St Mary and St John the Apostle and Brother Richard and the nuns’, and confirmed to the same by Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury;72 and an unnamed prior occurs around 1163.73 These are the only references which I have been able to trace to a master at Nun Appleton; the identity of Brother Richard is unknown, and it is not certain if he was intended to be a long-term resident of the establishment. It is tantalizing to note that two of the witnesses to the foundation grant were monks of Pontefract (about a dozen miles away), that the secondary dedication of Nun Appleton, to St John the Apostle and Evangelist, is the same as that of Pontefract, and that Theobald also issued a confirmation to Pontefract.74 It is possible, though the evidence is very slight, that Brother Richard was master during the early, formative years of the priory only. Hampole had a magister called Peter, who occurs after 1166, and another, Albinus, who is recorded in the period 1188 x 1205 as a witness to a charter of Blyth Priory, some fifteen miles distant.75 Geoffrey, master of Keldholme, witnessed no earlier than 1166 and no later than 1184.76 At Swine magister Robert (1170 × 1175 and 1185 × 1195), also called prior, may be the founder Robert de Verli; by c. 1184 × 1189 the master was Philip.77 At Wykeham there were masters named Alan and Simon.78 One clearly non-resident master was that of Yedingham in the period c. 1185 × 1195; he was Andrew, prior of Kirkham.79 The nuns of Moxby 72 Saltman, Theobald, no. 189. 73 London, BL Cotton ch. XII.46; EYC, I, no. 543. 74 Saltman, Theobald, no. 202. 75 The Cartulary of Blyth Priory, ed. R. T. Timson, Thoroton Society, 27–8 (1973), I, no. 303; EYC, VIII, no. 119, from Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 8, fo. 308v. 76 EYC, I, no. 504, II, no. 718, and IX, no. 121. 77 BL MS Add. 40008, fo. 146r; Cart. Brid., p. 195; Cart. Riev., no. 132; EYC, II, no. 808 and III, no. 1308; Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Top Lincs d I, fo. 6v, cited Thompson, Women Religious, p. 69n. 78 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 7, fo. 295v; EYC, I, no. 383; HRH, p. 224. 79 He attested at least one other charter of the period without the designation of master: see Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 7, fos. 182v, 189v; EYC, I, nos. 390–2.

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Page 172 may, given its early history as a double house, have turned to the prior and canons of Marton for male guardianship; the nuns of Arden did on at least one occasion, for in 1212 Henry, prior of Marton, was described as their proctor.80 Masters recorded in the thirteenth century were appointed by the archbishops: Baysdale and Handale had as their custos a monk of Whitby.81 Nunkeeling had in 1267 (not for the first time) a canon of Newburgh.82 Swine was entrusted to a canon of Croxton in 1287, and he was succeeded by a brother of Knaresborough.83 Guardians were drawn not only from the monasteries of the diocese, but also from the ranks of the secular clergy.84 Who they were, and how they were chosen in the twelfth century, and indeed if this reflects anything of the circumstances of the foundation of the nunnery, are less clear. Was the appointment of a Whitby monk as guardian of Handale in the thirteenth century a unique event? Or was there a longer standing and more fundamental link between the two Percy foundations?85 The role of religious men in the foundation of houses for women remains a matter for debate. Elkins asserted that a distinctive feature of female monasticism in the north—in comparison with the south—was the lack of foundations by religious men. Thompson more cautiously pointed to arrangements at Swine and Moxby, and the occurrence of a prior of Kirkham as master of Yedingham, to suggest a greater degree of participation in foundation than had previously been thought.86 The evidence is slight, but I would suggest clerical or monastic influence is to be seen less in the process of foundation than in a general willingness on the part of northern Benedictines and Augustinians to provide assistance and spiritual as well as material support for religious women. There are, however, some intriguing possibilities beyond those detected by Thompson: the same dedication at Nun Appleton and Pontefract, and the occurrence of two monks of Pontefract as witnesses to the foundation charter; the secondary dedication of Wykeham to St Mary, the same as the house of Augustinian canons whose prior appears to have secured the transfer of the parish 80 Cart. Fount., II, 626, no. 10. 81 Reg. Giffard, p. 54. 82 Reg. Giffard, pp. 108–9. 83 Reg. le Romeyn, I, 203, 209, 217. 84 For example, the rectors/vicars of Londesborough (Swine), Wath on Dearne, Conisborough (Hampole), Kippax (Arthington), Thirkleby, Bossall (Moxby), Kirk Deighton (Sinningthwaite), Sutton upon Derwent (Wilberfoss): Reg. le Romeyn, I, 86, 125, 157, 180, 234, and II, 222; Reg. Wickwane, pp. 28, 37. For the rector of Adwick le Street, a church appropriated to Hampole, as master of the nuns (1241), see Cart. Fount., I, 259, no. 4. For the role of a master, as defined in the early fourteenth century by Archbishop Melton when he appointed the vicar of Lofthus as custos of Handale, see Reg. Melton, I, 15–16, no. 35. 85 See above, p. 127. 86 Elkins, Holy Women, p. 91; Thompson, Women Religious, pp. 54–79.

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Page 173 church to the nuns,87 and suggestions of continued contact between Whitby and Handale. More than the documentary traces show, clerical and monastic men in Yorkshire may have been formative in the provision of monastic vocations for women. Chaplains, canons, and lay brothers It is not surprising that at some nunneries we find record of chaplains. Two capellani of St Clement’s, John and William, occur in a charter of the 1170s.88 John, chaplain of Sinningthwaite, appears in a charter of the period 1180 × 1201; and Geoffrey, chaplain of the nuns, attested an agreement with Fountains Abbey in the early thirteenth century.89 Some records afford traces of canonici or conversi at certain houses; at others the references are simply to fratres. A charter of Erneburga de Burton, wife of Ulbert, constable of William of Aumale, granted one carucate in Fraisthorpe ‘Deo et ecclesie sancte Marie de Suina et fratribus et sororibus ibidem Deo servientibus’ (‘to God and the church of St Mary of Swine and to the brothers and sisters serving God there’).90 In 1181 King Henry II took into his protection the master, canons, brothers, and nuns of Swine.91 At different times Master Robert and Master Philip of Swine attested in the company of a canon of the priory named Alexander,92 and in the early thirteenth century there were at least two canons and seven conversi.93 A visitation of 1267 recorded the presence of canons and lay brothers as well as nuns and lay sisters—a classic Gilbertine pattern.94 A late-twelfth-century agreement between the nuns of Baysdale and the parson of Stokesley in which parish the nunnery lay, allowed the nuns a cemetery for the burial of their nuns, sisters, and brethren, but stated that their servants should have burial and the other sacraments at the parish church.95 The nephews of William of Octon signalled their intention to become canons at Wykeham; and a canon named Nigel attested in the company of Master Alan.96 The bull of Alexander III for Sinningthwaite (1172) referred to the brethren and sisters of the house, and allowed the nuns to accept ‘clericos vel laicos a seculo fugientes… ad conversionem 87 See above, pp. 128–9, 140. 88 Dobson and Donaghey, Clementhorpe Nunnery, p. 16. 89 EYC, II, 734; Cart. Fount., II, 723–4, no. 21; see also p. 766, no. 7, where he attested a charter of Matilda, prioress of Sinningthwaite, granting land in Little Ouseburn to the monks. 90 Datable 1155 × 1170 and witnessed, inter alia, by Hugh de Verli: BL, MS Add. 26736, fo. 71; EYC, III, no. 1361; Mon. Ang., V, 494, no. I. On the donor, the ancestor of the Constable family of Halsham and Burton Constable, see EYF, p. 22, and English, Lords of Holderness, pp. 90–1. 91 EYC, III, no. 1363; Cal. Ch. R., III, 61–2. 92 BL MS Add. 40008, fo. 146r; Cart. Brid., p. 195; EYC, II, no. 808. 93 Chron. Melsa, II, 19. 94 Reg. Giffard, pp. 146–8. 95 EYC, I, no. 564; Mon. Ang., V, 509, no. VII. 96 EYC, I, no. 383 (1160 × 76).

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Page 174 vestram’ (‘clergy or laymen fleeing from the world to take the habit at your house’).97 Brother William, conversus of Marrick, attested a charter of 1195 x 1208.98 William of Hampole, frater, witnessed in the period between 1188 and 1200; and the Mappa mundi of Gervase of Canterbury (c. 1201), included Hampole and Wykeham among the houses of White canons and nuns.99 There is evidence, therefore, that at a handful of Yorkshire nunneries, if not more, there were male administrators beyond the chaplain and servants which would have been necessary for any female community. It is significant that out of the eleven nunneries with some recorded male presence, eight at some stage in their history claimed to be, or were described as, Cistercian.100 Male–female cooperation and segregation This seeming contradiction sums up the attitude of the monastic and canonical orders to women religious in the twelfth century. In the early years of the century a number of the infant congregations and orders of northern France allowed women to be part of the community. The relationship of the sexes varied. Thus at Fontevrault the nuns came to achieve a higher status than the men—this is reflected both in the wording of their charters and in the internal organization of the abbey and its associated priories. In contrast, in the community of Prémontré the women were engaged in lowlier tasks, such as sewing the habits of the canons, and laundry. They were both enclosed and dependent on the men. Women were also found in a number of Arrouaisian houses, though little is known of the early organization. Common to these three movements were two features: the men followed the Rule of St Augustine; and care was taken to segregate the male and female occupants of the houses. The fourth element of the double Gilbertine houses, as we have seen, came to follow the Rule of St Augustine. The occurrence of men described as canons in the non-Gilbertine Yorkshire nunneries raises the possibility that the organization of female houses in Yorkshire may have been influenced and aided by the canonical orders, and in particular by the Gilbertines. Can we know, however, what the relationship between the male and the female components of these houses was? It is intriguing that Gilbert was, in one very real sense, swimming against the tide when, in the years after 1147, he created what we can justly call double houses—communities with men and women living under the same roof and according to 97 EYC, I, no. 200; Mon. Ang., V, 465–6, no. VI. 98 EYC, II, 72; Cart. Riev., no. 361. 99 EYC, VIII, no. 117; see above, p. 148. 100 A point also noted by Elkins, Holy Women, pp. 84–8.

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Page 175 the same constitution. For it was at precisely this time that the continental canonical orders were loosening the bonds. Around 1140 Premonstratensian double houses began to be disbanded, and their nuns moved to separate establishments. Within sixty years it had been decreed that no more women were to be received into the order; the explanation given by a Premonstratensian abbot was the need to exclude women in order to safeguard the temporal goods and the physical and spiritual health of their canons. Similar separation is to be seen in the congregations of Arrouaise and the Hospital of St John. Locally, by 1158 the Augustinian nuns of Marton had moved to a separate establishment. Of the relationship between the men and women of these Yorkshire communities we can say little. An incident which provides one glimpse of life within a double house, however, had far-reaching consequences and seemed set to undermine the growing reputation of the Gilbertine order. This was the episode of the nun of Watton, as related by Ailred of Rievaulx whom Gilbert himself asked to investigate the matter. The nun, whose name does not appear in the records, was placed in the house at the age of about four by Archbishop Henry Murdac. This must have been in the very early years of the priory’s history. As she grew up she had no taste for the religious life, and began an affair with a man of the house, possibly a canon but more likely to be a lay brother—he is said to have entered the women’s quarters for the purposes of work. Several years later Ailred recorded subsequent events—the girl’s pregnancy, the discovery of the affair, the mutilation of the man, the imprisonment of the girl, and her miraculous restoration to her virginal state.101 The potential scandal was evidently suppressed, and it was not long before the matter became submerged in a second problem to hit the order, the rebellion of the lay brothers of Sempringham and their appeal, against Gilbert, to the pope. In the letters written by various high-ranking ecclesiastics as well as the king of England in support of Gilbert the two problems become difficult to disentangle. What emerges quite clearly is the desire of the establishment to stress the propriety of the double houses, and the strict segregation of men and women. Of Watton the archbishop of York wrote: there is only one house in the diocese of York where canons and lay brethren dwell alongside nuns within the same enclosures, which are particularly spacious; but, as is public knowledge, they live apart with propriety.102 101 PL 195: 789–96; G. Constable, ‘Aelred of Rievaulx and the nun of Watton: an episode in the early history of the Gilbertine order’, in Baker, Medieval Women, pp. 205–26; Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, pp. 33–8. 102 Book of St Gilbert, pp. 150–1.

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Page 176 The prior of Bridlington affirmed that: to ensure that the purity of religious observance was not disturbed by unruliness on the part of the lay brethren, the master, who was most experienced in taking precautions of this kind, wisely arranged that the dwelling of the educated brethren should be situated some distance away, and not within the nuns’ churches at all, but separate and outside the area occupied by women, within the lay brethren’s enclosure.103 Whether these descriptions reflect the early arrangements of the order or a reaction to the episode of the nun of Watton is less clear. In the early thirteenth century the author of the Life of Gilbert went to great lengths to explain the measures taken to prevent contact between the sexes;104 and the mature institutes of the order as well as the physical layout of the excavated site of Watton bear witness to this continued preoccupation. Indeed Gilbertine influence may have spread to other communities of men and women; by the late thirteenth century Swine Priory had the classic ‘window house’ through which Gilbertine nuns and canons had their sole contact.105 The status of women within nunneries Are we to assume that the presence of men within the northern nunneries meant a lesser status for women? Brian Golding, in his analysis of Gilbertine charters, has suggested that they indicate a falling status for women after the introduction of the canons: privileges which were previously granted to the nuns were now granted to nuns and canons, or to canons only.106 This is mirrored in the organization of the order, for although women were allowed the status of prioress within the female part of the community, their power was limited, and at the highest level the order was dominated by a man, the magister, first Gilbert himself and after him Roger, prior of Malton. Elsewhere, however, and even in houses for which there is evidence of a male presence, women appear to have enjoyed a degree of authority. Despite the presence of a master at Hampole, it was the prioress and convent who reached an agreement with the priory of Worksop around 1190 x 1200.107 At Swine the nuns—not the master or the canons—gave 5 marks to Robert, father of Walter Le Nair, when he went on pilgrimage.108 Beatrice, prioress of Wilberfoss, confirmed a grant made by Ralph de Clere, their patron, of the chapel of 103 Ibid., pp. 154–5. 104 Ibid., pp. 46–7. 105 Burton, Yorkshire Nunneries, p. 31, discussing the visitation of 1268 recorded in Reg. Giffard, pp. 146–8. 106 Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, pp. 133–7. 107 EYC, II, no. 821. 108 BL MS Add. 40008, fo. 240v; Cart. Brid., p. 319; EYC, III, no. 1409.

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Page 177 Sinnington, to the canons of Guisborough, to hold of the mother church (Wilberfoss).109 The function of men was to allow women seclusion in which to pursue their vocation, protection from the outside world, the spiritual services of confession and mass, and administrative experience. They did not, however, remove all power from the women, who held, and continued to hold, respected and responsible positions within the local community. MONASTIC DISCIPLINE The Rule of St Benedict demanded the surrender of the individual will, complete obedience to the Rule and to the abbot. This was the hallmark of cenobitic monasticism. The Rule of St Augustine was no less demanding, and the Carta caritatis added for the Cistercians the extra dimension of complete conformity to the regulations of the order. For the Benedictines and the Augustinians 1215, the closing date for this book, marks a turning point, for the Fourth Lateran Council introduced a corporate mechanism for discipline, that is, provincial chapters on the lines of the Cistercian General Chapter, and from 1225 the registers of the diocese of York bring to bear the evidence of the archbishops’ visitations of the non-exempt houses, also formalized after 1215. For the earlier period evidence of how discipline was maintained—and indeed if control was necessary—is unclear. The most dramatic episode within the period must surely be the events of 1132 in the monastery of St Mary’s. It need hardly be stressed that the degree to which, as suggested in the Narratio and particularly the ‘Letter of Thurstan’, the community had become degenerate begs a whole host of questions. There can be no doubt that those who favoured the Cistercian way of life would have considered life at St Mary’s unacceptable. The house was wealthy. Even by 1132 it possessed vast estates, and relied heavily for income on spiritualia. However, the crisis through which St Mary’s passed was caused by a clash of different concepts of the monastic life, not unlike the clash which, fifty years previously, had precipitated the schism between Abbot Stephen and Prior Reinfrid, and, as Baker pointed out, St Mary’s produced an impressive array of Cistercian leaders.110 What is worth noting here, however, is the response of Archbishop Thurstan to the crisis, and his visitation of the abbey at the invitation of Prior Richard, a man well known to him. The reaction he received was an extreme one, and does suggest that it was perceived as an unwelcome intrusion into the affairs 109 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 7, fo. 186v; EYC, I, no. 597. 110 Baker, ‘Foundation of Fountains Abbey’.

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Page 178 of an independent house. By the thirteenth century such visitation had become the norm. The coming of the Cistercians to Yorkshire marked a new and revolutionary phase in its monastic history because it brought a group of houses, relatively few in number, into an order which overrode political and diocesan boundaries, and which legislated for its own administration. The annual General Chapter was the keystone of Cistercian unity. In the early years of the order the chapter provided the opportunity for the abbots of Cistercian houses to meet together, for the purposes of discussion and discipline. The Carta caritatis prior, in a brief passage, highlights the obligation of the chapter: ‘de salute animarum suarum tractent, in observatione sanctae regulae vel ordinis, si quid emendandum est vel augendum ordinent, bonum pacis et caritatis inter se reforment’ (‘they are to make decisions concerning the salvation of their souls, and, if in the observation of the holy rule or the order anything should need changing or adding, they are to ordain it, and they are to reaffirm the cause of peace and charity amongst themselves’); they were also to take care to alleviate the poverty of individual houses.111 Over the period the legislative activity of the chapter grew. It came to be recognized, as well, that the chapter was the place where important business, secular and ecclesiastical, could be announced. There are no complete records of attendance at the General Chapter, and evidence can only be gleaned from chance references. We know that Richard, second abbot of Fountains, died at Clairvaux on his return from the chapter of 1143, and Abbot Robert at Woburn in 1180.112 Abbot Roger of Byland attended in 1149 and again in 1150. In that same year Ailred of Rievaulx was appointed by the chapter to investigate the claim of Furness to jurisdiction over Byland.113 The Savigniac order also had an annual General Chapter, but it was evidently one of the weaknesses of the congregation that by the 1140s attendance from the English houses appears to have been poor—in 1147 only the abbots of Neath and Quarr were there.114 There is little evidence to suggest that the Yorkshire Cistercian abbots were failing to fulfil their obligations, although in practice the obligations would have placed a severe strain on abbots such as Ailred, with poor physical health, or the elderly Roger of Byland.115 By 1157 the Scottish abbots had been relieved of the necessity of personal attendance every year. The amount of time 111 CCP, p. 95. 112 Memorials of Fountains, I, 78, 115. 113 Mon. Ang., V, 352, 571. 114 Ibid., V, 569. 115 Complaints about non-attendance are surprisingly rare. In 1190 the abbots of Quarr, Stanley, and Forde failed to attend: Canivez, Statuta, I, 126–7 (no. 42). In 1195 the abbot of Rievaulx was excused attendance by the king, but still did penance in 1196: ibid., 191 (no. 65), 203 (no. 32).

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Page 179 needed by the Yorkshire heads cannot have been much less, but in 1201 the chapter rejected a request from the English abbots for the same dispensation.116 Problems of distance and communication would also have affected the performance of annual visitation. Until the later version of the Carta caritatis known as Carta caritatis posterior (between 1165 and 1190) allowed abbots to appoint a proxy, the abbot of Fountains would have had, in theory at least, to visit eight daughter houses, one of them in Norway, and the abbot of Rievaulx, five daughter houses. Again, only chance references enable us to see the system in operation. Walter Daniel recorded that Ailred visited Dundrennan at least once, and independent evidence places him in Scotland on at least two other occasions when visitations may have taken place. Abbot Henry of Rievaulx died at the daughter house of Rufford in 1216, though whether during a visitation or on another occasion is not clear.117 The obligation to visit Lysa in Norway was a constant burden for the abbot of Fountains, and after repeated complaints, the General Chapter of 1213 removed it from the jurisdiction of the mother house.118 YORKSHIRE AND THE WIDER MONASTIC WORLD Despite the local, family monastic ties which have been clearly demonstrated, the Yorkshire Cistercians were aware of belonging to a wider monastic order. This must have been strongest in the early years of the expansion, when the ties were intensely personal ones, and the solidarity was emphasized and maintained by common causes such as the opposition to William Fitz Herbert. However, that impression of solidarity remained, so much so that it could be seen by secular rulers as a threat, or a lever. When the Cistercians of Pontigny—which incidentally had no daughter houses in Britain—gave shelter from 1164 to 1166 to Thomas Becket during his exile, Henry II did not feel it an idle boast to threaten the order with the confiscation of all its English lands. Some houses of the order continued to take an interest in the archbishop’s cause, and venerated him after his death.119 Cistercian statutes to 1215, and indeed beyond, indicate that the order flourished as an international organization. Matilda de Percy took the advice of the abbots of Igny and Mortemer, who visited Sallay, on the alleviation of the poverty of the house 116 Ibid., I, 67 (no. 62), 272 (no. 45). 117 Life of Ailred, pp. 45, 74 (Epistola ad Mauricium); Stringer, ‘Galloway and the abbeys of Rievaulx and Dundrennan’, 174–5; Chronicle of Melrose, p. 63. 118 Canivez, Statuta, I, 406–7 (no. 11). 119 See B. D. Hill, ‘Archbishop Thomas Becket and the Cistercian order’, Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis, 27 (1971), 64–80. See below, pp. 293–4.

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Page 180 (1189).120 When in 1204 the foundation of an abbey in the diocese of Canterbury was proposed, it was the abbot of Fountains, acting with his counterpart at Longviliers, whom the Chapter delegated to visit the site and pronounce on its suitability; and when in 1211 it was reported that the abbot of Fountains had accepted an underage novice, the case was committed to the investigation of the abbots of Le Loroux and La Boissière (Angers).121 The Cistercians acted above and beyond political and ecclesiastical boundaries. It would be misleading, however, to think that the sense of belonging to a world beyond the confines of the cloister was limited to the Cistercians. The Cluniac houses and alien dependencies were also local houses, yet ones which enjoyed links with continental abbeys. How they regarded themselves is impossible to tell. Certainly in the period covered by this study the priory of La Charité continued to claim rights over Pontefract, and received an annual census until its suspension in the reign of Edward III.122 English Cluniac priors may have visited France from time to time although their visits are not recorded; and Thurstan’s familiarity with reforms at Cluny could have derived from his contact with the prior of Pontefract, the house which he may already have chosen for his retirement.123 Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, was in England in 1130 but how widely he travelled is not known.124 The channels of communication between Pontefract and La Charité existed at the formal and constitutional level; however, Pontefract’s personnel may well have been more English than French. Even those houses which were not constitutionally linked to houses further afield might enjoy wider cultural and spiritual contacts, and evidence of these is provided by confraternity lists. Mention has been made already of the Durham Liber vitae, which brought the Yorkshire Benedictines into community with the cathedral priory.125 A confraternity list from St Mary’s, surviving in a copy of date around 1180, indicates that the York monks soon established spiritual ties with houses throughout England and beyond.126 The earliest convention recorded in this list is that made with Abbot Aldwin of Ramsey (1091–1102) in the chapter house of York, which provided for the reception of a monk of either house in chapter, and commemoration for deceased abbots and monks. The list was evidently added to regularly until, by c. 1180, the monks of St 120 EYC, XI, no. 50, and see below, pp. 196–7. 121 Canivez, Statuta, I, 303 (no. 36) and 386 (no. 35). 122 On the later history of the English Cluniac houses see R. Graham, ‘The papal schism of 1378 and the English province of the order of Cluny’, and ‘The English province of the order of Cluny in the fifteenth century’, in English Ecclesiastical Studies (London, 1929), pp. 46–61, 62–90. 123 Knowles, Monastic Order, p. 232; Nicholl, Thurstan, p. 169. 124 ASC, s.a. 1130. 125 See above, p. 35. 126 Burton, ‘Confraternity list’, 330–3.

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Page 181 Mary’s prayed for, and were prayed for by, members of over fifty religious houses. The northern Benedictine houses were included, as were ancient English abbeys such as Evesham, Glastonbury, and Westminster, and southern and midland post-Conquest foundations like Battle, Shrewsbury, and Castle Acre. Sixteen continental houses were brought into association, and from the mid-century Augustinian priories: five Yorkshire houses, and those at Llanthony, Colchester, Huntingdon, and Barnwell. Significantly, perhaps, with the exception of Furness and one named monk of Fountains, the Cistercians were noticeable by their absence. The provisions for commemoration varied, but four houses only (apart from named individuals) received recognition of full equality, that is, that a deceased brother would be prayed for as a monk of St Mary’s. These were Selby, Whitby, Evesham, and Colchester. Such agreements, which resulted in the occasional admission to the daily chapter of a stranger monk, or his inclusion on the roll of prayer, reminded a member of the monastic order in Yorkshire of his or her world at its widest. At its most mundane that world is largely hidden from us. For most, their existence was bounded by the cloister and submerged in a routine of prayer, contemplation and work, the activities described by Robert, prior of Bridlington, such as the preparation of parchment, writing and illuminating, making clothes and implements, weaving mats, digging and weeding, reaping and mowing.

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Page 182 Chapter 7 FOUNDERS, PATRONS, AND BENEFACTORS The monastic expansion in Yorkshire was in part a movement of the spirit, a response, by those who entered the religious life, to the rich variety and vitality of northern monasticism. However, for monasticism to flourish it needed patrons as well as recruits. Men and women established monasteries in order to obtain prayers for the salvation of humankind, and for their own security in particular; but there were other motivations. As Professor Southern remarked, monasteries ‘did not exist solely or even mainly for the sake of the monks who sought within their walls a personal salvation… [they] were founded and filled for political, social, and religious purposes of which we hear nothing in the Rule’.1 This chapter explores the explosion of monasticism in Yorkshire from the angle of those who established religious houses. How did founders choose the type of house to establish, or the monastery from which to draw a colony? Why did they sometimes go on to establish other houses or to endow monasteries founded by others? The particular circumstances of foundation have been discussed in chapters 1–5. The first part of this chapter brings together evidence to support the thesis that the monastic expansion in Yorkshire—which was essentially sponsored by baronial patronage although aspirations later percolated down to the middle orders of society—was a product of particular political, social, and tenurial circumstances which existed between 1066 and the close of the twelfth century; and that these factors, as much as spiritual vocation, determined the shape of the monastic order. Those who founded religious houses assumed, or enjoyed, a particular status, that of fundator, patronus, or advocatus, and with it a privilege and a responsibility which was transmitted to their heirs. Although often used interchangeably, the words patron and advocate were legally distinct. Ius patronatus was ‘in theory a privilege, a concession made by the Church to 1 Southern, Western Society and the Church, p. 224.

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Page 183 the founder and his family… in effect the feudal relation, not denied but limited and charged with obligations of defence’. Advocates, on the other hand, were ‘chosen officials paid with privileges or a fief, in practice hereditary masters with numerous rights’.2 Despite the distinction made by canon law, in England the two concepts merged. In contrast in Germany, despite an attempt in the tenth century by monasteries to escape the hereditary dominium of lay lords by placing themselves under the control of the papacy, the aristocracy succeeded in gaining wide powers of advocacy over monastic lands.3 In England the founder-patron usually also acted as advocate;4 and the words fundator, patronus, and advocatus could be used synonymously. William II de Percy was described as advocatus of Whitby when he confirmed grants made by himself and his brother, and Henry de Lacy as advocatus of Nostell; Roger de Mowbray was patronus of Byland; and Walter Espec fundator and advocatus of Kirkham.5 The rights which these and other founders enjoyed, and the responsibilities which they assumed, varied according to the character of the monastic house and the order or congregation to which it belonged; to the circumstances in which it was founded; to the aspirations and ambitions of the founder; and, it will be argued, to particular political circumstances. The second and third sections of this chapter will therefore explore the relationship between the Yorkshire houses and their founders, and both the spiritual expectations and the material benefits which they and their heirs, as patrons, might enjoy. Finally, the monastic expansion involved the contribution of thousands of people who were not themselves founders, but whose endowments made possible the material expansion of the monastic order in the county. What prompted them to support particular houses? Previous studies have tended to assume that tenurial connections were of supreme importance in the choice of patronage. This chapter argues that the desire for the benefits, both spiritual and material, which could derive from the status of benefactor, although influenced by patterns of tenure and obligation, was also connected to the ambitions of the lesser baronage and the knightly class, which drew their inspiration from those above them on the social scale. 2 Wood, English Monasteries and their Patrons, pp. 16–17. See also B. Thompson, ‘Monasteries and their patrons at foundation and dissolution’, TRHS, 6th series, 4 (1994), 103–25. 3 H. Hirsch, ‘The constitutional history of the reformed monasteries during the Investiture Contest’, in Medieval Germany 911–1250, ed. G. Barraclough (Oxford, 1938), II, 131–73; J. W. Bernhardt, Itinerant Kingship and Royal Monasteries in Early Medieval Germany, c. 936–1075 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 27–35, 138–9. 4 E. M. Hallam, ‘Henry II as a founder of monasteries’, JEH, 28 (1977), 113–32 (p. 116). 5 Cart. Whitby, I, no. 209; Leeds District Archives MS NP/C1, p. 85; Newburgh, Historia, I, 52; Cart. Riev., no. 149.

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Page 184 THE FOUNDERS: CONSOLIDATION OF BARONIAL POWER, AND KNIGHTLY ASPIRATIONS The material support which made possible the monastic expansion in Yorkshire, as in other areas of England but in contrast to Scotland and Wales, was largely furnished by the baronage, or the aristocracy. Although, as we have seen in previous chapters, the Norman kings took the post-Conquest Benedictine houses into royal patronage and saw their political potential, and although Henry I clearly encouraged Augustinian foundations, no Yorkshire house could have claimed to be a ‘royal foundation’ in the sense of a deliberate royal creation de novo. In the same way, although notable for their encouragement of others, the archbishops of York (with the exception of Thurstan’s foundation of St Clement’s) were not deliberate founders of religious houses. Both kings and prelates issued routine charters of confirmation, and indeed sometimes went further and granted property and privileges, and the monastic expansion clearly had a certain royal and ecclesiastical agenda; yet it was baronial sponsorship which shaped monastic developments. Defining quite what constituted the ‘aristocracy’ has exercised the minds of historians. Here I am using the terms ‘baronage’ to denote the group of men holding in chief of the king—although that was a fluid and constantly changing group—and ‘aristocracy’ to describe, in David Crouch’s words, ‘a self-conscious and dominant social group at the head of society’.6 When I come to discuss members of the ‘middle ground’ I prefer the term ‘knightly class’ to ‘gentry’.7 This is also a difficult group to define. Its members held enough land to sustain a non-agrarian lifestyle, and were figures of local prominence, but there were great variations in the amount of land held and the degrees of influence. In his study of Yorkshire between 1066 and 1154 Paul Dalton has traced the changing nature of Norman settlement of the county and the development of its baronial honours.8 The men who aspired to, succeeded in joining, and who fell from the baronial class, were the ones most closely involved in the monastic expansion. Between 1066 and 1088 the houses whose foundations were described in chapter 1 came into existence largely on monastic initiative. Those lay patrons materially involved in the consolidation of Selby, Whitby, and St Mary’s, however, were men operating on the highest political level. Hugh Fitz Baldric and 6 D. Crouch, The Image of Aristocracy in Britain, 1000–1300 (London and New York, 1992), pp. 15–16; see also the discussion in C. Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages (London and New York, 1987), pp. 11–25. 7 Crouch, Image of Aristocracy, pp. 23–7, prefers the term ‘gentry’ as a more amorphous and all embracing one. 8 Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship.

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Page 185 William I de Percy were, Dalton argues, among the first Normans to be established north of the Humber. Robin Fleming has suggested that Hugh received the estates of thegns deprived after the harrying of 1069–70; it was at this same time that, acting as sheriff of Yorkshire, he brought Benedict of Selby to the attention of the king.9 Just a few years after the arrival of William de Percy in the county he became the patron of the fledgling community at Whitby. Count Alan of Brittany, established in Richmondshire on the confiscated estates of Earl Edwin, was protector of the Whitby monks who moved to Lastingham, and was instrumental in transferring them from there to York (1086).10 All three monastic communities received both royal and aristocratic backing, as the interests of king and baronage coincided: a strong, even if small, monastic presence was a symbol of Norman power as well as a nucleus of loyal support for an alien regime, and this was particularly important at a time when royal authority was as fragile as it was in Yorkshire before 1070.11 Two further baronial foundations coincided with the consolidation of Norman power. Although Ilbert I de Lacy evidently held the guardianship of Pontefract and began the construction of a castle there in the 1070s, he does not seem to have established a firm hold on the honour until 1086.12 The foundation of a Cluniac priory by his son, Robert, in the following decade, therefore, marks an important stage in the creation of a solid power base for the family in south Yorkshire centred on a strategic crossing place into the county. Similarly, Ralph Paynel’s foundation of Holy Trinity, York, coincided both with his tenure of the office of sheriff of Yorkshire and his organization of his estates within the county.13 Political conquest and alien settlement marched hand in hand with monastic foundations, and stone abbeys like stone castles became a powerful symbol of the Norman presence in the north, even when—perhaps especially when—they annexed Anglo-Saxon and Northumbrian nostalgia and sentiment.14 Matthew argued that, as a class, the first generation of Anglo-Norman barons were not notable for their monastic foundations in England, but preferred to endow continental houses with English estates, often sharing with family foundations in Normandy the 9 Robin Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England (Cambridge, 1991), p. 167; Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, pp. 65–7; see above, pp. 26–7. 10 Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, pp. 66–7. 11 Fleming, Kings and Lords, pp. 165–7. Between 1066 and 1069 the Yorkshire lands available for regranting were very limited. 12 Wightman, Lacy Family, pp. 17–40, argued that the Lacy fee was a creation of the 1080s; Fleming (Kings and Lords, pp. 177–8), however, argues for a date a decade earlier. See also Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, pp. 39–49. 13 See above, pp. 46–8. 14 See above, pp. 32, 38–9.

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Page 186 fruits of military victory.15 In Yorkshire the line is not clear cut, for although some first-generation barons, like Stephen of Aumale, showed loyalty to Norman abbeys, ‘alien cells’ continued to be founded long into the twelfth century; conversely the earliest independent houses were not affiliated to continental houses.16 Holy Trinity and Pontefract were, indeed, derived from Marmoutier and La Charité, but it is by no means certain that this was due to any ‘family feeling’. Moreover, if the identification of Robert de Lacy as founder of Nostell can be sustained, a band of what were probably native hermits could as easily form the basis of a monastic community loyal to its lord as could a colony of Norman or French monks.17 In Yorkshire the ‘Conquest generation’ played a significant part in the establishment of locally based monastic power and influence. Paul Dalton has argued that the Norman settlement of the north was a much speedier and sustained process than has hitherto been recognized. Moreover, it was precisely on those honours where reorganization and subinfeudation progressed rapidly—the estates of Percy, Fitz Baldric, Richmond, and Lacy—that monastic foundations, or ‘religious enfeoffment’, also took place.18 The Norman settlement was, however, far from complete by the last decade of the eleventh century; moreover the baronage was soon to be shaken by a series of confiscations and restructuring of honours during the reigns of the sons of the Conqueror.19 The rebellion of 1088 claimed the downfall of Hugh Fitz Baldric, and that of 1095, Earl Robert of Northumberland. Parts of their honours were divided among newcomers like Robert I de Stuteville, Guy de Balliol, and Robert de Rumilly. Under Henry I the transformation continued; several barons with interests in the shire fell, and others rose, as estates went to the ‘new men’ of Henry I, like the lands formerly of the honour of Robert I de Stuteville in Upper Ribblesdale, Thirsk, and Kirkby Malzeard, which went to Nigel d’Aubigny.20 Nigel also benefited from the demotion of Gilbert Tison and William de Arches, who both now 15 Matthew, Norman Monasteries, p. 28. 16 See above, pp. 51–5. On the establishment of alien cells in a neighbouring county, see D. M. Owen, Church and Society in Medieval Lincolnshire, History of Lincolnshire, 5 (Lincoln, 1971), pp. 47–8. 17 See above, pp. 71–7. 18 The exceptions, where no monastic foundation took place, are the honours of Conisborough (Warenne) and Tickhill (Builli). The major Warenne foundation was on the southern estates at Lewes; the family of Builli made a foundation of its Nottinghamshire estates at Blyth (from Rouen) and did not establish a house in Yorkshire until 1147 (Roche). 19 For the following details I am indebted to Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, pp. 79–112. For a discussion of the second generation of post-Conquest nobles, see Charlotte A. Newman, The Anglo-Norman Nobility in the Reign of Henry I: The Second Generation (Philadelphia, 1988). 20 For the classic description of Henry’s treatment of magnates and new men, see Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, VI, 16–17. On Nigel see Mowbray Charters, pp. xvii–xix.

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Page 187 became his tenants. The scattered estates of the count of Mortain went to several tenants, and two subtenants, Fossard and Surdeval, were raised to baronial status. Through marriage into the family of Surdeval the family of Paynel was enriched and a new branch established at Hooton Pagnell. Thirteen Surdeval manors then passed intact to form a barony, based on the caput of Skelton, for Robert I de Brus, a newcomer to England and a close associate of Henry I.21 As Dalton has shown, the ‘old amorphous Domesday lordships were being woven by the king and his magnates into compact castleries’.22 The Brus fee is a good example of a consolidated conglomeration of Domesday estates of the Crown, those of Robert Malet, and of Hugh Fitz Baldric. Brus, and his honour, were deliberate creations of the king designed to bring royal authority into a distant, marcher, region. The fate of the honour of Pontefract shows how, in contrast to the Brus fee, old lordships could be preserved: at Lacy’s exile it passed direct to a ‘new man’, Hugh de Laval, and at his death (before 1129) to another, William Maltravers, who paid handsomely for Laval’s estates and his widow. Thus, when Maltravers’s murder in 1135 cleared the way for the return of the Lacy family, Ilbert II resumed his estates more or less intact. The ‘new’ men were intended by Henry to be a novel breed of magnate. Not only would they be loyal to the king who had created them, they would be administrators too. Prominent in this respect in Yorkshire were Walter Espec and Eustace Fitz John. Walter, whose modest patrimonial lands lay in Bedfordshire, was a newcomer to the north. Although his first recorded appearance was at Durham in 1121, he must have been well established by that time in his power bases of Helmsley (Yorkshire) and Wark (Northumberland).23 Also holding lands in both counties was Eustace Fitz John, a younger son who made his fortune at the royal court. Royal grants brought him Bamburgh and Malton, and before 1130 he had acquired the hand of an heiress, Beatrice, daughter of Ivo de Vescy, and with her the lordship of Alnwick (Northumberland). His second marriage, to Agnes, daughter of William Fitz Nigel, constable of Chester, was just as advantageous, and brought land in Loddington (Northamptonshire) and Hilderthorpe, near Bridlington.24 Although there is some evidence to suggest that Ralph Paynel and Robert de Lacy had earlier been associated with the operation of royal justice in the shire, it is with Walter Espec and Eustace Fitz John, the ‘new men’, that the 21 For discussion of the creation of the Brus fee, which the author dates to between 1114 and 1119, see Peter King, ‘The return of the fee of Robert de Brus in Domesday’, YAJ, 60 (1988), 25–9. 22 Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, p. 91. 23 Ibid., pp. 99–100. 24 Ibid., pp. 96–9, and ‘Eustace Fitz John and the politics of Anglo-Norman England: the rise and survival of a twelfthcentury royal servant’, Speculum, 71 (1996), 358–83.

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Page 188 integration of Yorkshire into the administrative structure created by Henry I and his curiales is first apparent. It is also in the reign of Henry I that the pace of monastic foundations in Yorkshire accelerated, and the chronology is closely tied to the rise and fall of the baronage, old and new. Walter de Gant, Domesday Book tenant in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, had marked his arrival with a Benedictine foundation at Bardney (Lincolnshire). The acquisition of further estates was accompanied by the foundation of an Augustinian house at Bridlington. Significantly, Bridlington was not only a port and a borough, it was ‘the administrative centre of the neighbouring Hunthow hundred’.25 Gant’s revitalization of a minster church reinforced his own growing status in the locality. The honour of Robert de Rumilly in Skipton, created by William II and consolidated by Henry I, lay on the western fringes of the county. By 1120 the honour had passed to Robert’s daughter, Cecily de Rumilly, who married William Meschin, lord of Copeland. The marriage made a formidable alliance, and the two collaborated just a year or so later in the foundation of Embsay Priory, not far from the castle of Skipton.26 In 1155 their daughter, Alice, removed the canons to Bolton, the soke manor which had formed the initial royal enfeoffment of Robert de Rumilly. It was perhaps more important, psychologically, for Henry I’s ‘new men’ than for the established barons to mark their arrival and their rise in status by the foundation of a monastic house, and by the patronizing of a community of monks or canons to pray for their souls and provide more material benefits. Robert de Brus’s elevation in Cleveland was bolstered by the foundation of Guisborough on one of the most important manors he had been granted, just three miles from his castle at Skelton.27 Walter Espec introduced Augustinian canons to Kirkham in around 1121;28 in 1132 he established a second Yorkshire monastery, Rievaulx, but it was not until 1136 that his patrimonial estates were graced with a monastic foundation, at Warden. Eustace Fitz John consolidated his authority in Northumberland with a Premonstratensian foundation at Alnwick and in Cheshire he assumed the patronage of Augustinian Norton, founded by William Fitz Nigel; to these he would later add the Yorkshire Gilbertine houses of Malton and Watton.29 Bertram de Bulmer, son of Ansketil de Bulmer, like his father before him sheriff of Yorkshire, was founder of the double house 25 Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, p. 85. 26 See above, pp. 80–3. 27 See above, pp. 77–9. 28 See above, pp. 79–80. 1121 is the year of Walter’s first recorded appearance in the north, but his foundation of Kirkham around that date suggests that he had had time to organize his estates at least enough to select an appropriate endowment. 29 J. Patrick Greene, Norton Priory (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 1–9; on Malton and Watton see above, pp. 89–90, 137–8.

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Page 189 of Marton, and another royal elevation, Geoffrey Fitz Pain, founded a cell of Nostell at Tockwith, and may have been associated with the establishment of Warter Priory.30 If William Fitz Turgis Brundos was indeed founder of Rosedale, then he can be added to the roll of ‘new men’ who consolidated their authority by the foundation of a religious house.31 Some ‘new men’ in this second and third generation of post-Conquest barons by now inherited monastic foundations. Pontefract and Nostell were Lacy foundations, but the patronage was taken over first by Hugh de Laval and then by William Maltravers. Hugh was a particularly generous benefactor. He granted Nostell considerable estates in the honour of Pontefract, and the section of the Nostell cartulary headed Carte advocatorum begins with Hugh’s grants.32 Clearly the continuity of a relationship of patronage with the canons brought with it respectability and acceptance. The concern for continuous expansion of monastic interests is exemplified by the Paynel family. In the 1130s William Paynel added a second family foundation to the alien priory founded by his father in York, by establishing Augustinian canons at Drax, and around 1145, towards the very end of his life, founded a third monastic house, Hambye, in Normandy. On his death William’s lands, both in England and Normandy, were partitioned between his two sons, Hugh and Fulk. To the latter fell the patronage of all three religious houses.33 The reign of Henry I witnessed a quite remarkable increase in the number of monastic foundations in Yorkshire. The process was dominated by the Augustinian canons (possibly seven foundations), with two Cistercian abbeys, and two or three nunneries, and possibly three cells. This contrasts with neighbouring Lincolnshire, where the establishment of small alien cells ‘was to be the pattern of foundation until after 1130’, the only exceptions being Benedictine Bardney and Augustinian Wellow.34 Matthew suggested that the Norman barons did not endow or found English monasteries until they ceased to regard the duchy as their home, and that ‘this process of losing touch with Normandy is hardly noticeable before the death of Henry I’.35 For Professor Southern, part of the appeal of the Augustinian canons to Henry’s ‘new men’ lay in their combination of prayer and practical service, and part in their modest needs.36 In Yorkshire both the established baronage whose fortunes were rejuvenated by the king, and the novi homines, combined 30 See above, pp. 84–5, 87–8. 31 See above, p. 130. 32 A point made by Wightman, ‘Foundation of Nostell Priory’, 57. See above, pp. 60–2 and p. 76. 33 EYF, pp. 68–9. 34 Owen, Church and Society in Medieval Lincolnshire, p. 48. 35 Matthew, Norman Monasteries, p. 28. 36 R. W. Southern, ‘The place of Henry I in English history’, Proceedings of the British, Academy, 48 (1862), 127–56; reprinted as ‘Henry I’ in R. W. Southern, Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford, 1970), pp. 206–33.

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Page 190 to produce the expansion; in some respects, as the latter acquired wealth, status, and security, the two groups merged. There can be no doubt, however, that the rise of a new aristocracy and the monastic expansion were intimately linked: the former used the latter to signal their arrival to the baronage, to provide a visible sign of their elevation, and to lay claim to their lands. It was, however, the next generation, those who lived through the turbulent reign of King Stephen, who witnessed the most intense period of activity. The monastic foundations of this period are distinctive in a number of ways. First, the class of founders was widened, and a foundation now came within the aspiration of men and women of the knightly class. Second, expansion was dominated by two groups, the Cistercians and religious women. Third, the foundations took place against a background of increased tenurial insecurity, the breakdown of royal authority and administration, the rise to supreme power of William of Aumale, earl of York, and a series of local wars. The founders of monasteries in the period 1135 to 1154 were drawn from a variety of backgrounds. Some were members of established families which already had monastic foundations, and who now added to them. Henry de Lacy added Kirkstall to the family houses of Pontefract and Nostell, and took an interest in his tenants’ Templar foundations of Temple Hirst and Temple Newsam. Alan of Brittany offered protection to his tenant’s community at Fors, and his son and successor, on removing that community to Jervaulx, took it into comital patronage. The Percy foundations of Whitby and Handale were joined now by Cistercian Sallay. William of Aumale founded Augustinian Thornton (Lincolnshire, 1139), and Cistercian Vaudey (Lincolnshire, first at Bytham, 1147) and Meaux (1151) to join the cell at Birstall. Gilbert de Gant added Cistercian Rufford (Lincolnshire) to Bardney and Bridlington, possibly fulfilling his father’s intention to found an abbey at Stainton, in the North Riding.37 Some established families made Yorkshire foundations for the first time: Richard de Busli, grandson of the Domesday Book tenant in chief at Tickhill, and his neighbour, Richard Fitz Turgis, together founded Roche. Roger de Mowbray, son of Nigel d’Aubigny, came of age shortly before 1138. In that year he founded Savigniac Byland and later Augustinian Newburgh, and was probably also responsible for three Templar houses at Cowton, Penhill, and Stanghow.38 Robert III de Stuteville, who was later to dispute lands with Mowbray, marked the restoration of his fee after 1154 by the foundation of a nunnery at Keldholme. 37 Cart. Riev., p. 261: Walter died in 1139, and his son succeeded as a minor. The grant of Stainton had been exchanged for other lands by 1158. 38 Janet Burton, ‘Knights Templar’, 30.

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Page 191 These tenants in chief, however, did not have a monopoly on monastic foundations, for a new phenomenon was the foundation of monasteries and particularly nunneries by their tenants and subtenants. Adam Fitz Swain was the grandson of Ailric, who in 1086 held lands in Cawthorne of the honour of Pontefract.39 Swain had added several further manors, and by 1135 the family was one of the most important of the Lacy tenants. Adam also succeeded in obtaining lands in Cumbria and following the Scottish annexation of the area in 1138 he was to be found attesting charters of David I. It was probably at the instigation of William Fitz Duncan, nephew of David I and husband of Alice de Rumilly, lady of Skipton, that Adam was enfeoffed after 1138 with estates of the Honour of Skipton. Dalton has suggested that William was competing with the Lacys for the loyalty of Adam, whose estates of the honour of Pontefract surrounded an outlying portion of the honour of Skipton, at Wath on Dearne; this was a strategy which he tried with other families. Adam was in a vulnerable, but at the same time a commanding position: he was a tenant of two lords with conflicting interests, and his dilemma may have led him to play off the two sides. It was towards the end of Stephen’s reign, that he established both a castle at Mirfield and a monastery at Monk Bretton. It has been traditional to describe Adam’s foundation, his choice of the Lacy Cluniac house of Pontefract as the mother house, as dictated by tenurial connections.40 It may also have been a case of geographical proximity, or admiration for Cluniac monasticism. Certainly loyalty to a Lacy foundation did not stop him patronizing the Cumbrian cell of St Bees, then under Scottish control, which grant was confirmed by David I, and before 1146 he had intended to found a Cistercian abbey as a daughter house of Fountains.41 Was the choice of Pontefract as a mother house intended to reassure Henry de Lacy of his loyalty? Or in constructing a monastery at Monk Bretton was Adam announcing to Lacy that he was, to a certain extent, an independent agent? Certainly he signalled his intention to keep firm control on his new foundation.42 Adam was not alone among the class of wealthy tenant who aspired to his own monastic house.43 Acaris Fitz Bardolph, though apparently he had not planned to found a Savigniac house, did not hesitate to offer his 39 For the details which follow I am indebted to Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, pp. 216–18. See also Hugh M. Thomas, ‘A Yorkshire thegn and his descendants after the Conquest’, Medieval Prosopography, 8 (1987), 1–22. 40 Golding, ‘Coming of the Cluniacs’, p. 69. 41 The Register of the Priory of St Bees, ed. J. Wilson, Surtees Soc., 126 (1915), nos. 39–41. On Fountains see above, p. 107, note 39. 42 See above, pp. 63–5. 43 Adam demonstrates the difficulty of defining a man as of baronial or non-baronial rank, since in Yorkshire he was an honorial baron and in Cumbria a tenant in chief.

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Page 192 patronage to a wandering monk, Peter de Quinciaco, and to found the abbey of Fors (1145).44 Another tenant of the honour of Richmond, Roald, constable of the castle, brought Premonstratensian canons to Easby, within sight of the caput of the honour (1151). However, these three founders of male houses were exceptions in not belonging to the class of Yorkshire tenants in chief; it was among the nunneries that the difference in the status of founders becomes most apparent. William de Percy, Robert de Stuteville, and Eustace Fitz John were the only founders of nunneries who were of baronial rank. The remainder were drawn from the wealthier tenants of the major honours, men like William de Arches, Bertram Haget, and Peter of Thirsk, tenants of the honour of Mowbray, Roger de Aske, holder of nine carucates of the Steward fee of the honour of Richmond, and Peter de Arthington, tenant of the Paynels of Hooton Pagnell.45 The predominance of the baronial class in the expansion of monastic houses need not surprise us. The foundation of even a house of modest size demanded the permanent alienation of land and revenue. Members of the aristocracy were those with the resources to found such establishments, and with the motivation—the desire to consolidate political power and the acquisition of estates—to exploit the material potential from a foundation. That founders of lower status opted for houses of regular canons and nuns may be related to their more modest requirements,46 and nunneries may have had a more obvious local appeal.47 What is clear is that after the first few decades of the twelfth century, members of the knightly class ceased to be content to endow the houses established by their lords, and themselves aspired to the status of founder. In both groups monastic foundations were influenced by marriage, for the foundation of a religious house could be a means of consolidating such an alliance.48 It certainly helps to explain how a man or woman came to choose an order to patronize or a house from which to draw a colony. The Gant family was linked by marriage to the Mowbrays, the Percys, and the Paynels, and canons of Roger de Mowbray’s foundation at Newburgh were initially drawn from the Gant monastery at Bridlington. Among the knightly class a cluster of nunnery foundations in the late 1140s and early 1150s may reflect family connections.49 Dynastic and political relationships fostered the spread of monastic houses and were influential in the popularity of particular orders, groups, and mother 44 Mon. Ang., V, 568; see above, p. 124. 45 See above, pp. 127–39. Bertram also founded the hermitage of Healaugh Park, later converted into an Augustinian priory. 46 For this argument applied to Augustinian houses see Southern, Western Society and the Church, p. 245, and to Gilbertine houses, Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, pp. 269–80. 47 See above, pp. 139–46, 167–70. 48 See above, p. 86. 49 See above, pp. 132–4.

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Page 193 houses. Among both aristocracy and knightly class the foundation of a religious house was, in part, about their image, their aspirations and their continuity with the past and the future. It was part of a self-conscious expression of their status in society, a need which increased in times of tenurial and political insecurity. PATRONAGE AND PENANCE The foundation of a religious house was, accordingly, part of the image of the aristocracy, and increasingly of the knightly class, a trapping of power and authority. We should not forget, however, that there was a fundamental spiritual and penitential motive for making a religious foundation: the fear of hell and damnation. Sermons and homilies constantly reminded medieval man and woman of the consequences of sin, and recalled for an aristocracy bred for war the need for intercessory supplication on its behalf. Their message was reinforced by monastic writers. When Orderic Vitalis recorded the foundation of Shrewsbury Abbey, he placed in the mouth of his father, Odelerius, a speech in which he urged Roger of Montgomery to found a community of monks, a ‘citadel of God against Satan, where the cowled champions may engage in ceaseless combat against Behemoth for your soul’.50 The seeming innocuousness of the pro anima clause in charters masks the enormity of medieval humanity’s fear of retribution; and the development of the doctrine of Purgatory, fast-growing in the twelfth century, added an extra incentive to secure vicarious intercession.51 A charter generally stated that a foundation had been made, and land granted to God and the religious community pro anima mea, or pro salute anime mee. An addition might be the expectation that the foundation would benefit the souls of the founder’s ancestors and heirs, his wife and his children, perhaps even his king. Walter Espec made his foundation grant to the Cistercians to God and the church of St Mary of Rievaulx in the hand of Abbot William and the brethren serving God there, for the love of God and for the salvation of the soul of William, king of the English, and for the salvation of Henry, king of the English, and of all their ancestors, and for the salvation of the soul of my father and my mother, and for the soul of Hugh de Wildecher, and for the souls of the father and mother of my wife, and of all our family and ancestors.52 50 Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, III, 142–7. 51 See the short but useful discussion in Crouch, Image of Aristocracy, pp. 311–16. 52 Translated from Cart. Riev., no. 42. On this theme see B. Thompson, ‘Free alms tenure in the twelfth century’, AngloNorman Studies XVI, Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1993, ed. M. Chibnall (Woodbridge, 1994), 221–43.

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Page 194 However much there may have been other motives (usually not mentioned in charters), the fundamental reason for a foundation remained penitential. Henry de Lacy’s charter for Kirkstall, for instance, makes no mention of his illness but records his grant to God and St Mary and to Abbot Alexander and the monks of Kirkstall, of his land in Barnoldswick and Kirkstall, for the souls of his grandparents, Ilbert and Hawise, his own heirs, his father and mother, brothers and sisters, his aunt, Matilda, and all the faithful dead.53 Desire for salvation meant that responsibility did not end with the act of foundation. Further grants or confirmations to a religious house could follow, often when the founder felt in particular need of reassurance. When he returned to England after 1154 Earl Conan of Brittany removed the monks of Fors to a more salubrious site at Jervaulx, and then assumed the status of founder from his tenant, Acaris Fitz Bardolph. Some time later he issued a charter of confirmation: Iccirco in hac vita degens, et saluti anime mee volens providere, Deo et Beate Marie, et abbatiae de Jorevalle Cisterciensis ordinis quam fundavi in honorem Domini nostri Jesu Christi, et monachis meis ibi Deo servientibus et pro me orantibus.54 (Therefore declining in this life and wishing to provide for the salvation of my soul [I grant] to God and St Mary and the abbey of Jervaulx of the Cistercian order, which I founded in honour of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to my monks who are there to serve God and to pray for me.) This vividly conveys the anxiety of a man approaching death, certainly, but it is also a self-confident expression of the purpose and function of the monks of Jervaulx. They were Conan’s monks, and they were there to serve God and to intercede on his behalf. The use of the term ‘my monks’ almost seems to imply a personal chantry. Conan added to his requests for spiritual services the reassurance of burial at the abbey ubicunque obiero in Anglia. Often spiritual expectations of founders are unspoken. On other occasions the charters make manifest a close relationship between monastery and founder or patron. Gilbert de Gant encapsulated many of the expectations of a founder when he issued a charter for Bridlington Priory, part of which states: pro redemptione peccatorum meorum et pro peculiari dilectione quam semper habui erga ecclesiam Sancte Marie Brellintone, mancipavi me ipsum eidem ecclesie, ea videlicet ratione ut ubicunque vivendi finem fecero in monasterio 53 Kirkstall Coucher, I, no. 67 (a later charter, issued after the relocation to Kirkstall); see also ibid., no. 268 (EYC, I, no. 641). For the foundation see above, pp. 118–20. 54 Mon. Ang., V, 572–3, no. IX.

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Page 195 Bredlintoniensi locum sepulture accipiam. Et si aliquando Deus per gratiam suam cor meum tetigerit et opportunitatem dederit ut relicta seculari vanitate in paupertate Deo servire decernam, in predicto monasterio habitum religionis accipiam et in illorum consortio ultima vite mee spatia compleam inter quos ab annis infantie coalueram, conveniens quippe mihi visum est ut ubi in hunc mundum ingressus sum de ventre matris mee, ibi de hoc mundo egrediar in matrem omnium.55 (For the redemption of my sins and for the special love which I have always had for the church of St Mary of Bridlington, I have bound myself to the same church in this way, that wherever I shall come to the end of my life I will receive a place of burial in the monastery of Bridlington. Moreover, if at any time God in his grace shall touch my heart and give me the opportunity to leave behind the vanity of the world and serve him in poverty, I shall receive the habit of religion in the aforesaid monastery and shall complete the last space of my life in the company of those among whom I grew up from the years of my childhood, since it seems good to me that where I entered this world from the womb of my mother I should also leave this world in the mother of all.) This charter brings together so many of the spiritual goods a founder could expect to reap from the act of foundation and shows that they could endure from the cradle to the grave and beyond. Prayers, a promise of entry should a founder wish to take the habit, burial within the monastery, ensuring a resting place in the holy of holies and an unbroken series of masses from the point of burial, and the spiritual–material benefits of education of one’s children among the religious, were the primary concerns of founders. These concerns were individual, but they were also about family and continuity of family. Burial at a religious house was an individual mark of grace, but it cannot be divorced from a founder’s concern for genealogy, or lineage. Patronage of the family monastery at Kirkham brought the Ros heirs of Walter Espec the prayers and masses of the canons; it also provided them with a mausoleum, which would lead in the thirteenth century to the lavish rebuilding of the east end of the church as a fitting environment for their tombs. The priory gatehouse, also of the thirteenth century, blazoned the Ros arms, leaving the world in no doubt as to the standing, and continuity, of the family line. In stone the canons of Kirkham celebrated the line of Walter Espec as Ailred, writing at Walter’s Cistercian house of Rievaulx, celebrated his deeds in the words of his Relatio de standardo.56 PATRONAGE AND POLITICS: THE POWERS OF ADVOCACY The political dimension of monastic foundation has been a constant theme of this book. I do not seek to marginalize the primacy of spiritual 55 EYC, II, no. 1138. 56 See below, p. 284.

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Page 196 considerations in the minds of founders, rather to emphasize that foundations should not be separated from their political and social context: in Yorkshire the consolidation of Norman baronial power in the late eleventh century, the extension of royal government in the early twelfth century, and the anarchy and breakdown of central government in the reign of Stephen. The general dominance of the Cistercians between 1135 and 1154, and the relationship between monastic growth and the ‘anarchy’, were taken further by B. D. Hill, who argued that when the great barons assisted the Cistercians with landed endowments, with privileges and with rights, and the monks accepted these gifts, there was established between the two institutions, the feudal and the monastic, a strong, close, and virtually indissoluble bond… the barons realized that the monasteries posed no threat to feudal power or ambition; indeed, the monasteries, by the fact of their dependence on the nobles and by the fact of their close connection with the Holy See, implicitly supported the barons in their opposition to royal authority.57 Not just in England, but in France and Germany, the Cistercians were most powerful in areas where royal authority was weakest. The question which Hill is addressing here is not so much ‘why did founders establish monasteries?’ as ‘why did they choose to found Cistercian houses?’ Hill’s answer seems to be that English patrons founded Cistercian houses because they desired German-style powers of advocacy which would give them control over monastic lands and estates; that Stephen was unable to prevent this; but that Henry II was able to bring the Cistercians back into the orbit of royal authority. This leads us into the question of the nature of the powers which patrons had over their houses, the material benefits which they enjoyed and the responsibilities which they were seen to have. Did patrons protect, or exploit, their monasteries? Further, we must ask if the evidence sustains Hill’s thesis that there was something distinctive about the powers enjoyed, or sought, by Cistercian patrons. As stated earlier, in England patrons were also generally advocates, that is, they had a function to act on behalf of a religious community. The responsibilities of a founder-patron were numerous. The first was to provide endowments, the second to augment those assets if they proved inadequate. Reference to surviving cartularies reveals how, with few exceptions, families granted layer upon layer of benefactions, as heirs succeeded to baronies. Alan de Percy added to his father’s endowments of Whitby, and Nigel de Mowbray to his father’s foundations at Byland and Newburgh. Matilda de Percy, countess of Warwick, was approached by 57 Hill, English Cistercian Monasteries, pp. 38–40.

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Page 197 the monks of Sallay with a complaint about the inadequacy of her father’s endowment and responded accordingly: pater meus abbaciam quandam Salleiam nomine fundavit in Crauena in terra nebulosa et pluviosa, ita quod segetes jam albe ad messem per consuetudinem in culmo computrescant et ubi conventus per xl annos et amplius propter aeris intemperiem tanta inedia et omnium necessariorum inopia attritus est quod pauperitatis eorum immensitas in contumeliam et obprobium patris mei et omnium heredum eorum redundabat.58 (My father founded a certain abbey named Sallay in Craven, in land so cloudy and rainy that the crops, still white at harvest, usually rot on the stalks. When the convent had been worn down for forty years and more on account of the intemperateness of the climate by their great austerities and the lack of all necessities, the immensity of their poverty redounded as a disgrace and a shame on my father and all his heirs.) There was doubtless the hand of a monastic scribe of Sallay behind this forceful statement, but its point was not lost on Matilda, who granted the church of Tadcaster, the income from which would enable the monks to fulfil their function ‘in the service of God… and in the reception of the poor and pilgrims’; nor, presumably, would it have been lost on her successors. It was not only endowments but sites which might prove inadequate, and several Yorkshire monasteries found it necessary or desirable to move to another location. The details of the process by which these transfers were effected are not always recorded, but the role of the patron was clearly important. Roger de Mowbray provided a total of four sites for the Byland community, and Alice de Rumilly, as patron, moved the canons of Embsay to the important manor of Bolton. The initiative for locating a second and more appropriate site for the monks of Barnoldswick, as the Kirkstall narrative tells, lay with Abbot Alexander, but it was the founder, Henry de Lacy, who obliged by securing the estate from the holder.59 In addition to providing lands himself or herself a patron might encourage his or her tenants to do the same, and the dependency of a number of monasteries on the ability of a patron to promote their interests is indicated by the geographical limits of their estates which were confined to the fee, or honour, of the founder/patron.60 There were obvious exceptions, monasteries like St Mary’s, a royal foundation which attracted considerable baronial patronage, early foundations when there were few monasteries a benefactor might choose, and those, like Rievaulx, whose wellknown figures commanded public attention. 58 EYC, XI, no. 50; Cart. Sallay, II, no. 615. See below, p. 223. 59 Foundation of Kirkstall, p. 178. 60 For a similar phenomenon, see Owen, Church and Society in Medieval Lincolnshire, pp. 49–50.

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Page 198 However, an incident from the early years of Fors allows us to see the importance of a patron, in this case not the founder himself but his lord, Alan III, count of Brittany. Omnibus autem praeparatis ad erectionem primi aedificii, frater Petrus quaesivit comitem sicut praeceperat. Qui veniens ad locum illum ubi domus illa deberet levari, advocavit sibi nominatim quatuor vel quinque de militibus qui secum advenerant, et dixit illis, jocundo vultu quasi in ludendo, ‘Nos omnes habemus terras magnas et possessiones; nunc ergo propriis manibus adjuvemus, et erigamus istam domum in nomine Domini nostri, et unusquisque nostrum terram vel redditum exhibeat in perpetuam elemosinam et sustentationem partis quam levaverit.’61 (When all the preparations had been made for the erection of the first building Brother Peter sought out the count as he had been ordered. When he [the count] came to the place where that house was to be raised he called to him four or five of the knights who had come with him, and said to them, with a smile on his face as if he was joking, ‘We all have great lands and possessions. Let us now assist with our own hands and raise this house in the name of our Lord. And let each one of us give land or rent in perpetual alms to maintain the part he has built.’) Some of the knights were said to have been willing to comply with Count Alan’s suggestion; others, less impressed perhaps by his sense of humour, assented only per conditionem. Alan was not acting in an unusual way in setting himself up as protector for a tenant’s foundation; this was part of the reciprocal nature of feudal relations. The account raises, however, the question of whether Alan’s son, Conan, regarded the monks of Jervaulx as ‘his monks’ because he transferred the community to its second site or because he was the superior of the founder. It was not just estates which monasteries could expect, but also protection and privilege. Roger de Mowbray granted Byland freedom of his seal, so that they could receive confirmation of any gift ‘absque alicujus exactione temporalis seu secularis impensionis’ (‘without the demand for any temporal or secular payment’).62 Following her grant to Embsay Priory of the mill of Silsden, Cecily de Rumilly took steps to ensure that the canons would benefit from the gift to the full. First she ordered that no other mill should be built in the vill without the consent of the canons, and that no hand mill should be used; and second that she and her heirs would confiscate the grain of anyone using another mill. Similar provisions attached to her grant of the mill of Harewood.63 When Roger de Mowbray left England for Normandy in 1147, Robert and William de Stuteville, part of whose family possessions had passed a generation earlier to Nigel d’Aubigny, attempted to regain some of those estates which 61 Mon. Ang., V, 569. 62 Mowbray Charters, nos. 64, 71. 63 EYC, VII, no. 4; III, no. 1861.

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Page 199 Mowbray had granted to Byland. Other Mowbray tenants apparently followed suit, and the monks were forced to ask for their patron’s aid. Scripsit… quod ipsi cessarent deinceps molestias facere monachis suis, et si quid factum fuisse iniuste, ad reditum suum in Angliam per legales homines vicinos secundum legem terrae voluit emendari. Scripsit etiam matri suae et dapifero suo et omnibus ballivis suis comitatu Eboracensi quod ipsi manutenerent, protegerent, et defenderent abbatem R. de Bellalanda et monachos suos fratres, et terram eorum sicut suam propriam terram.64 (He wrote… that they should from now on cease troubling his monks, and if anything had been done unjustly he wished to set it to rights on his return to England through men of law of the neighbourhood, according to the law of the land. He wrote also to his mother and to his steward and to all his bailiffs in the county of Yorkshire, that they should maintain, protect, and defend Abbot R[oger] and his brother monks and their land as they Would their own land.) The close relationship which could exist between monastery and patron might be reinforced by the use of a proprietorial tone—references by patrons to ‘my monks’, or ‘my canons’.65 Gilbert and Robert de Gant could both speak of ‘my canons’ of Bridlington, and Roger de Mowbray of ‘my canons’ of Newburgh. Similar terms were used by Henry de Lacy to describe the monks of Pontefract and Kirkstall, and by Eustace Fitz John of the canons of Malton.66 Although not the founder or the patron of Easby, Richard II de Rollos could call the canons ‘my canons’, possibly because he and Roald, founder of Easby, held joint interests in the land of Ernisan Musard.67 In a number of cases the close relationship was reinforced, physically, by the proximity of a monastery to the patron’s castle. Thus Nostell and Pontefract lay near to the caput of the Lacy estates at Pontefract, Rievaulx three miles or so from Espec’s castle at Helmsley, Roche near Tickhill, Easby and Jervaulx not many miles from Richmond castle. Guisborough, Drax, Marton, Bolton, Byland, and Newburgh were within easy reach of the castles of Skelton (Brus), Drax (Paynel), Sheriff Hutton (Bulmer), Skipton (Rumilly), and Thirsk (Mowbray).68 This contrasts sharply with the liminal sites of many nunneries.69 64 Mon. Ang., V, 352. There is a parallel between the letter which the author was paraphrasing and royal charters in which kings protect lands sicut dominium meum. 65 I have found no references to ‘my nuns’. 66 EYC, II, nos. 1156–7; see also the grant by Robert de Lacy to ‘my monks of Pontefract’ (EYC, III, no. 1514, Cart. Pont., I, no. 8, dated c. 1180 x 1193); Mowbray Charters, nos. 205, 208; Cart. Pont., I, no. 15; EYC, I, no. 643; London, BL MS Cotton Claudius D XI, fo. 34. For other instances see Edmund King, ‘The foundation of Pipewell Abbey, Northamptonshire’, Haskins Society Journal, 2 (1990), 167–77 (p. 172). 67 EYC, V, no. 198 and pp. 84–5. 68 On this theme see also M. W. Thompson, ‘Associated monasteries and castles in the Middle Ages: a tentative list’, Archaeological Journal, 143 (1986), 305–21. 69 Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture, pp. 65–9.

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Page 200 Links between a monastery and founder could also be sustained through the appointment of a head of a community related to, or sympathetic to, the interests of the patron. Attention has been drawn to a number of instances early in the history of a community: Serlo de Percy, brother of the founder, as prior of Whitby; Elias Paynel as prior of his father’s foundation at Holy Trinity; William, uncle of Walter Espec, as prior of Kirkham; William de Brus as first prior of Guisborough.70 Reference was also made in an earlier chapter to how Adam Fitz Swain, as founder and patron of Monk Bretton, envisaged a role for himself and his heirs in the election of its prior.71 How prominent patronal intervention was in the election of abbots and priors is not clear: Adam’s claim came early in the life of the monastery and also coincided with a period of instability in the region. However, at least one record which plays down the part of the lay patron is suggestive of special pleading. In the 1180s the canons of Kirkham secured the testimony of several notable ecclesiastics as to the form of election of the previous prior, Geoffrey, which they agreed had been canonical: the choice had been made by the canons, the Te Deum sung before the high altar to indicate an absence of secular interference, the elect presented to the advocate, and by him and the canons to the archbishop for ordination.72 This follows what became standard practice, which allowed the patron, as well as the right to issue a congé d’élire and custody of estates during a vacancy, a formal right in the ceremony of election.73 However, the evident need to stress the freedom from lay interference suggests that the current patron of Kirkham, Everard de Ros, may have been trying to exert undue pressure on the choice of a new prior. There are other ways in which patrons attempted to influence affairs at their houses. It will be recalled that the status of mother house of Byland was contested between Furness, King Stephen’s abbey from which the convent at Calder was founded in 1134, and Savigny, to whom the monks of Byland had affiliated themselves in 1138.74 After the merger of 1147 the case was brought to the Cistercian General Chapter, and delegated for investigation to Ailred of Rievaulx. Ailred reported the testimony of the abbot of Savigny, and the words he allegedly used are significant. The abbot maintained that Roger de Mowbray as fundator of Byland had visited Savigny and there, in the General Chapter, had granted his new foundation to Savigny, and Roger was the man ‘qui monasterium Bellelande assignare potuit et donare cujuscumque voluit 70 See above, pp. 34, 49, 78–9. 71 See above, pp. 64–6. 72 EYC, X, nos. 105–6; Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 7, fo. 60v. 73 D. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, II (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 248–54. 74 See above, pp. 116–7.

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Page 201 subjectioni’ (‘who could assign and grant the monastery of Byland to the subjection of whomsoever he wished’).75 Again, this action has to be seen in the context of northern power politics, and Mowbray’s shift into alliance with the earl of Chester following Stephen’s defeat at Lincoln in 1141. The unsettled conditions may have inclined monasteries to grant more powers than usual to their patron. Hill’s remarks about advocacy applied specifically to the reign of Stephen, and the lack of stability, the breakdown of royal authority and the explosion in monastic foundations are, indeed, linked; and the wider fate of the Yorkshire monasteries, both Cistercian and non-Cistercian, in this period shows how patronage and politics went side by side. If religious houses were founded partly as symbols of baronial power, then it is not surprising that the interests of monastery and patron were seen to coincide. Some monasteries suffered physical damage during this period. Selby Abbey became involved in local politics partly because of the intervention of the archbishop as patron,76 and partly because of the family connections of the head of the house. In 1143 Elias Paynel, prior of Holy Trinity, was elected abbot. He was related to William Paynel, lord of Drax, and possibly also to Henry de Lacy, who succeeded his brother Ilbert II de Lacy at Pontefract after 1141.77 One of Elias’s first measures was to construct a castle at Selby to provide, in Wightman’s words, ‘an outpost for the protection of the Pontefract estates on their weakest side, and to protect the lands of the abbey and the town itself’.78 This impinged on the ambitions of several other parties. William of Aumale, with an interest in Sherburn in Elmet,79 besieged the castle, captured it, and laid waste the countryside. The Historia Selebiensis monasterii vividly describes the impact on the town which had grown up around the abbey.80 This is corroborated by charter evidence. In the years after 1143 Roger de Mowbray granted to Selby the manor of Middlethorpe in restitution for damage which he had inflicted on the monastery.81 He, too, had embroiled the monks in his own territorial ambitions: the additional clause, that the monks were to hold Middlethorpe until he himself should recover York castle, suggests that his quarrel was not with the monks of Selby but with William of Aumale, now custodian of the castle which had once been in the hands of Roger’s father, Nigel d’Aubigny, and that the damage sustained by Selby Abbey 75 Mon. Ang., V, 353. 76 See above, pp. 156–60. 77 Hist. Selb. fo. 30v (p. 33) regarded Elias as a cognatus of Henry de Lacy. The relationship is not proven, but it is possible that Ralph Paynel’s wife was an otherwise unknown daughter of Ilbert I de Lacy: Wightman, Lacy Family, pp. 57–8, note. 78 Ibid., pp. 76–7. 79 For this point I am indebted to Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, pp. 169–71. 80 Hist. Selb., fos. 30v–39v (pp. 33–44). 81 Mowbray Charters, no. 255.

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Page 202 was part of the conflict between the two magnates for the control of the Ainsty area around York. The years around 1143 were crucial ones in the political manoeuvring of the Yorkshire magnates: Roger himself was directed by the earl of Chester to marry the widow of Ilbert II de Lacy (1142 or 1143); William of Aumale attempted to bribe Waldef of Kirkham, promising his support for his candidature as archbishop in return for the manor of Sherburn in Elmet;82 the abbot of Selby attended the consecration of William Fitz Herbert as archbishop at Winchester (September 1143). The monastery of Selby seems to have been caught up in these political activities, less, it would seem, as the result of the affiliations of its patron—although it was in archiepiscopal patronage and neutrality cannot have been easy— than from the strategical importance of its location, and the family connections of its abbot. The uncertainty of tenure in the region is emphasized by Mowbray’s further notification that, should the monks be disseised of land in Acaster Selby that he had granted them, he would himself restore it, and his later statement that such restoration had been necessary.83 The territorial and jurisdictional ambitions of William of Aumale, appointed earl of York in 1138, brought him into conflict with others apart from Mowbray and led to a series of local wars in the 1140s. The quarrel with Gilbert de Gant appears to have arisen when William seized the hundreds of Turbar and Hunthow from the Gant family. Alan of Brittany was another rival, whose storming of Galclint castle and expulsion of William in 1141 forced King Stephen himself to journey north to intervene. Dalton has argued convincingly that Galclint, the identification of which has long puzzled historians, is to be located to the Willerby area of the East Riding, and is therefore also part and parcel of the rivalry with the Gant family, in particular the struggle for the Gant estates during the minority of Gilbert after the death of his father Walter de Gant in 1139.84 The valuable Gant estates were contested between the earl of York and the earl of Chester who had forced Gilbert de Gant to marry his niece Rohaise; custody of the Brus fee during the minority of Adam II (from 1143) was disputed among the earls of York, Chester, and Richmond; and Richmond and York fought over the Yorkshire estates of the bishop of Durham. Far from being united in their opposition to the territorial ambitions of Aumale, Henry de Lacy and Gilbert de Gant—whose sister, Alice, had married Ilbert II de Lacy (d. after 1141)—were at 82 Baker, ‘Waldef of Melrose’, rejects this story as a later invention, but the mention of Sherburn in Elmet, which lay in the disputed area, is a convincing detail. 83 Mowbray Charters, nos. 254, 256. See also Henry de Lacy’s restoration of land to Selby: EYC, III, no. 1506. 84 Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, pp. 162–5.

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Page 203 odds with each other. The cause of this strife is not recorded; it may have been concerned with Gilbert’s elevation to the earldom of Lincoln by Stephen in 1146, giving him potentially substantial influence on the southern edge of the county, bordering on the Lacy lands; it may have been an extension of the struggle between Lacy and Aumale for control of the area around Selby; it may have been concerned with the bringing of Lacy into the camp of the earl of Chester following the marriage the earl arranged between Alice de Gant, Ilbert de Lacy’s widow, to Roger de Mowbray. In all these rivalries the monasteries were pawns. Both Pontefract Priory and the Lacy estates generally suffered as a result of the Gant–Lacy rivalry. In 1148 or 1149 the dean and chapter of York confirmed to the monks half the town of Ledsham and sixty-seven acres to hold for the payment of 10 marks per annum, but they were to be relieved of the rent ‘si forte occasione aliqua villa ipsa depopulata fuerit, vel sterilitate vel alia devastatione’ (‘if by any chance the vill itself shall be depopulated, either as the result of barrenness or any other devastation’).85 Damage to the monastery itself was evidently so great that the church needed rebuilding and rededicating. In 1154 Gilbert made a substantial grant to Pontefract of a ferry at South Ferriby, on the river Humber, and land there, and in Barton-upon-Humber: pro maximis dampnis que predictis ecclesie et monachis, culpis meis exigentibus, intuli in guerra illa que fuit inter me et H. de Lascy. Et ipsi monachi fecerunt me absolvi de excommunicacione qua fecerunt me excommunicari et susceperunt me in plenariam fraternitatem ecclesie sue et totius ordinis sui.86 (for the very great injuries which I, by my own exigent faults, brought on the said church and monks during that war between me and H[enry] de Lacy. And the monks themselves have caused me to be absolved from that sentence of excommunication by which they excommunicated me, and have received me into full confraternity of their church and the whole of their order.) Henry de Lacy issued two charters, augmenting the endowment of the monastery and stating: feci dedicari ecclesiam Sancti Johannis Evangeliste in Pontefracto per consilium Rogeri venerabilis Eboracensis archiepiscopi qui eandem ecclesiam consecravit.87 85 EYC, III, no. 1472. 86 Cart. Pont., II, no. 400. 87 EYC, III, no. 1499; Cart. Pont., I, no. 10; the date lies between the consecration of Archbishop Roger in October 1154 and 1158, the latest date for the confirmation charter of Henry II which includes some of the grants made by Henry. See also EYC, III, no. 1504; Cart. Pont., I, no. 14, a grant made by Henry to the monks ‘in die quando feci ecclesiam eorum dedicari’.

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Page 204 (I have caused the church of St John the Evangelist in Pontefract to be dedicated on the advice of Roger, the venerable archbishop of York, who has consecrated the same church.) On the day of the dedication, Archbishop Roger, wishing to protect the monks against the malice of evil ones (contra perversorum malitiam), confirmed the grants of their Lacy patrons and released all those who visited the monastery on the anniversary of the consecration from twenty days’ penance.88 Indeed, archaeological investigation in the 1950s confirmed rebuilding of the east end of the priory church around 1150.89 Similar damage seems to have been sustained at Gant’s own monastery of Bridlington, located as it was in a strategic administrative centre. In 1143 Aumale attacked the town; John of Hexham recorded that he made his military camp in the priory itself, and William of Newburgh later recalled how ‘having excluded the regular canons he invaded and violated the church’.90 Religious houses, however, did not just suffer at the hands of the enemies of their founders and patrons. Between 1153 and 1155 Henry de Lacy issued a notification that Prior Savard and the canons of Nostell had absolved him from the injuries he had done them when he seized booty, men and chattels from their lands in the time of war (tempore guerre).91 Further reconciliation was necessary after Henry attempted to seize control of a half carucate above his fishpond, on which land the canons had built their church.92 Was Lacy here using his special status as advocate to requisition priory lands and goods during his conflict? This instance, along with the possible involvement of Pontefract in the disputed election, and the foundation of Monk Bretton towards the end of the reign, as well as Adam Fitz Swain’s insistence on controlling elections to the office of prior, suggest that the Nostell–Pontefract–Monk Bretton axis was closely affected by the lack of strong central authority, and a prey to factional interest. In such circumstances the baronial patrons may well have sought the wide powers of advocacy suggested by Hill. These would have included the control of monastic property suggested by the charter of Henry de Lacy, and the control of elections sought by Adam Fitz Swain at Monk Bretton. However, it was not just patrons who interfered with monastic property. The case of the Stuteville claim on Byland land has already been 88 EYC, III, no. 1477; Cart. Pont., I, no. 48. 89 C. V. Bellamy, Pontefract Priory Excavations, 1957–1961, Thoresby Soc., 49 (1965). 90 Symeon, Opera, II, 315; Newburgh, Historia, I, 47. For examples of armed attacks on monasteries in the West Midlands and East Anglia, such as Worcester, Tewkesbury, Abingdon, and Ramsey, see Knowles, Monastic Order, pp. 268–72. 91 EYC, III, no. 1497. 92 Leeds District Archives MS NP/C1, p. 85.

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Page 205 cited. Roger de Mowbray, in a charter of restoration to St Mary’s, York which can be dated to before 1154, referred to a grant made in restitution for damage (multa dampna multociens) which included freedom from castle work (de operibus castrorum) and from taxes (de tensariis), which he had clearly extorted from the monks.93 The charter further restored to the abbey its mill, millpond, and fishery at Myton on Swale, which suggests that the seizures were connected with Mowbray’s construction of a castle at Myton to prevent William of Aumale from extending his influence into the North Riding.94 The picture that the evidence paints is one in which monastic property was seized by the baronage as they fought for territorial control of parts of the shire, and that those most likely to offend were the patrons themselves, who as advocates used and abused the property of their own house. However, in modification of Hill’s thesis, it has to be pointed out that the patrons and houses concerned were not exclusively or even mainly Cistercian ones. The crucial factors seem to have been the identity of the patron and the depth of his involvement in local warfare, and the location of the monastery and its estates. Thus, the houses at which there are most documentary traces of damage and disruption, Pontefract, Nostell, Bridlington, Selby, and St Mary’s, were ones most closely tied to the main protagonists, Henry de Lacy, Gilbert de Gant, and William of Aumale. The interests of a monastery and its founder/patron/advocate were not easily disentangled. BENEFACTORS AND BENEFITS The status of patron was a special and envied one, and brought with it spiritual and material advantages which the heirs of a founder took care to preserve.95 The interests of the baronage, however, were not limited to their own foundations, nor to a particular order, and several individuals became benefactors of other houses. Many examples of this phenomenon could be cited. William II de Percy, with family monasteries at Whitby, Sallay, and Handale, was a benefactor of Byland. Eustace Fitz John, patron of Alnwick, Norton, Watton, and Malton, also granted lands which he obtained as a subtenant of William of Aumale to the canons of Bridlington, was credited by Hugh of Kirkstall with saving the infant community at Fountains from extinction by a timely gift of bread, and became a benefactor of St Mary’s, York. William Paynel, patron of Holy 93 Mowbray Charters, no. 318; the word, tensarie, is that used by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicler in his famous description of the nineteen long winters: ASC, s.a. 1154. 94 Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, p. 184, commenting on this charter. 95 Note the insistence by the joint founders of Roche that the patronage be shared, on whichever part of the estate the monks chose to settle: Mon. Ang., V, 502, nos. I–II.

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Page 206 Trinity and Drax, also favoured Nostell, and Bertram de Bulmer, founder of Marton, was drawn to Byland and Rievaulx. D. E. Greenway’s edition of the charters of the honour of Mowbray has shown very clearly how widely a baron— admittedly a wealthy and powerful one—could spread his interests. Roger, it will be recalled, was barely out of his minority when he was persuaded to provide a site at Byland for the refugee monks of Calder, and he followed this a few years later with the Augustinian foundation at Hood (Newburgh). His interests in the crusading movement—he was one of the few English barons to go on the Second Crusade in 1147 and he was to be captured at the Battle of Hattin (1187) and die in the Holy Land—led him to patronize the Knights Templar and Hospitaller and provide material for the construction of three Templar preceptories.96 In addition to these foundations Roger and his son Nigel endowed over forty religious houses, seventeen of them in Yorkshire. Roger was commemorated at Durham, at Arden (founded by his tenant), and by the Templars, and his wife, Alice de Gant, at Fountains Abbey as well as at York Minster.97 The motives behind the endowment of religious houses other than one’s own foundations could be political, dynastic, and tenurial. They could mark the resolution of a conflict, submission after defeat in battle, a marriage alliance, or the consolidation of territorial interests in a particular locality. They could signal the desire of a man, like Mowbray, to secure the prayers of a wide range of religious houses. Moreover, benefactions were often business transactions in disguise. On at least four occasions Roger de Mowbray received money from the monks of Fountains Abbey: 10 marks ‘in testimony and in memory’ of his grant; 350 marks for confirmation of the abbey’s rights in Brimham; 83 marks ‘in my great need’; and 120 marks to assist his journey to Jerusalem.98 It was religious houses other than those of which he was patron, with which Mowbray had most financial dealings.99 Monastic houses depended for their material wellbeing on a range of benefactors drawn from all free sections of society. A benefactor could, with certain exceptions, request the same benefits as a patron. He or she could expect the prayers of the community. Sometimes more specific spiritual services were requested. The degree of refinement which this could reach is well illustrated by a charter of William son of Hervey for Pontefract. He granted to the monks 40s rent from property in Darrington, to be received each year in mid Lent. The sacrist of the monastery was to assign 3s for the monks and 1s to purchase wine for mass. On the 96 Mowbray Charters, no. 272; Burton, ‘Knights Templar in Yorkshire’, 30. 97 Mowbray Charters, p. xli, note 8. 98 Ibid., nos. 103, 111, 120, 126. 99 For an example of financial assistance offered by one of Mowbray’s own monasteries, Byland, which agreed to hold Nidderdale for ten years in mortgage for 300 marks, see ibid, no. 54.

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Page 207 day the money was received each monk-priest was to sing one mass for the soul of William’s parents and ancestors, and each non-priest was to say fifty psalms for William’s soul for as long as he lived, and to continue after his death to pray for him and all the faithful departed.100 William Fossard granted land to Watton Priory, a foundation in which he had been closely involved, with a particular danger in mind: ‘maxime pro itinere quod facturus eram Ierosolimam, et pro remissione peccatorum meorum’ (‘chiefly on account of the journey which I was about to make to Jerusalem and for the remission of my sins’).101 Benefactors of many houses specifically asked for the rights of confraternity, or spiritual union with the community.102 Matilda de Rouellé confirmed the grant which she and her husband had made to Malton, and in recognition the canons received her in specialem sororem domus sue, a commonly used phrase explained in Matilda’s charter as ‘facient pro me sicut pro sorore sua sive viva sive defuncta’ (‘they shall perform for me as for a sister, alive or dead’).103 Some grants were made when a man or woman entered the house, or were intended to secure entry into a religious community at a later date. Attention has already been drawn to instances of female relatives of benefactors entering nunneries.104 Others reserved their place as well. Samson d’Aubigny, cousin of Roger de Mowbray, made grants when he entered the Mowbray foundation of Newburgh. Peter son of Toke and Serlo the cook secured entry into Bridlington and Byland respectively with a grant of land; Osbert Salvain made a grant fratribus meis canonicis regularibus (‘to my brothers, the regular canons’) of Nostell.105 Thomas son of Robert de Toulston granted land to Pontefract when his brother became a monk there, as did Gurwald of Cowton to Fountains (quum receptus ibi fui: ‘when I was received there’).106 Promises of future reception accompanied grants made by William de Preston to Nostell (‘si in vita mea ad religionem me conferre voluero, apud sanctum Oswaldum habitum religionis suscipiam’: ‘if I shall wish, during my lifetime, to give myself to the religious life, I may take the habit of religion at St Oswald’) and by William Aguillun to Malton (‘ipsi vero canonici receperunt me in specialem fratrem omnium domorum ordinis de Semplingham et facient me canonicum quandocumque canonicus esse rationabiliter voluero’: ‘indeed the canons themselves have received me as a special brother of all 100 EYC, III, no. 1720, dated by Farrer to 1170 x 1180. 101 Ibid., II, no. 1095. 102 See, for example, EYC, II, no. 755; III, no. 1692; V, no. 197; VI, no. 121; IX, nos. 105, 166; Cart. Pont., I, no. 159; Cart. Sallay, I, no. 255; Kirkstall Coucher, no. 93. 103 EYC, VI, no. 91. 104 See above, pp. 167–70. 105 Mowbray Charters, nos. 178n, 196; EYC, III, nos. 1357; Mon. Ang., V, 571; BL MS Cotton Vespasian E XIX, fo. 53v. 106 EYC, III, no. 1612, V, no. 296.

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Page 208 the houses of the order of Sempringham, and will make me a canon whenever I may reasonably wish to become a canon’).107 Fountains Abbey, which depended on the grants of the knightly class and the well-to-do peasants, promised Richard son of Gleu that they would find food and clothing for his son until he came of age to be a Cistercian monk; and Edulf de Kilnsey, also a benefactor of Fountains, received an undertaking that he should be admitted to the house as a conversus, his son, Nicholas, as a monk, while his wife would be placed in a house of religious women. In return for his ‘grant’ Edulf provided for three members of his family. Such alienation of property naturally had implications for the following generations, and a further charter secured the consent of Edulf’s four remaining sons.108 Peter de Cordanville, granting the church of Sherburn in Pickering Lythe to the canons of Guisborough, stipulated that he should be afforded the right to nominate a clerk at each vacancy—a somewhat extreme privilege which he soon remitted.109 Benefactors might ask for specific material returns for their grants, which amounted to what would later be termed a corrody. William son of Walding requested that he should be allowed to lodge at Pontefract Priory if he was required to perform castle duty.110 Hugh son of Everard entered into a detailed arrangement with the monks of Selby whereby he received a yearly rent, a promise that he would be accepted as a monk whenever he wished, land in Selby with a house and courtyard where he and his wife could lodge, and allowances of food and clothing for his wife.111 Pagana, with the consent of her son William, canon of York Minster, granted to Whitby Abbey a plot of land near to the minster of St Wilfrid in York, so that she might partake in all the spiritual benefits of the church and have the provision of one monk and one servant throughout her life. The abbey undertook to provide clothing for her for the next two years, then for her son for two years, and so on for their lives, and if her son died or became a monk, she was to have the entire clothing allowance.112 All these were ways of cementing the relationship between the monks and their benefactors. The frequency with which grants were reciprocated varied according to the circumstances of individual houses. Rievaulx, which attracted a wide circle of baronial benefactors, seems not to have been lavish in its rewards. In contrast Fountains Abbey, which also received considerable baronial patronage, notably from Roger de Mowbray, the Percys, and the 107 Ibid., III, no. 1596; II, no. 1084. 108 Ibid., V, no. 288; VII, nos. 120–1; for further instances see ibid., V, no. 287, VII, no. 118. 109 Ibid., IX, nos. 94–5. 110 Cart. Pont., I, no. 101. 111 Selby Coucher, II, no. 1296, where he is called Hugh son of Edward. King Stephen confirmed the grant as that of Hugh son of Everard: EYC, I, no. 480. 112 EYC, I, no. 249; Cart. Whitby, I, no. 260 (dateable 1150 x 1160).

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Page 209 Stutevilles, nevertheless relied heavily on the grants made by men and women of knightly status and from the upper peasantry, and the abbey records are full of returns offered for their grants.113 Finally burial rights could be demanded. These were highly prized and advantageous to both monasteries and their benefactors. To the house, a request for burial rights could be accompanied by a grant of land, money, or other financial asset. To the benefactor the granting of such rights allowed them to be buried on holy ground. Cistercian statutes forbade burial in the monastery to any lay person, although this was later amended to allow burial of patrons, as the pressures of benefactors and the financial incentive mounted. When individuals were patrons and benefactors of more than one foundation their choice of burial place could be revealing about their loyalties.114 Matilda de Percy, countess of Warwick and daughter of William de Percy, and Alice de Rumilly the younger, for instance, despite having their own family monasteries, chose to be buried at Fountains.115 Grants were frequently made cum corpore meo, indicating an intention to be interred in a certain monastery or nunnery. Humphrey de Lascelles, for instance, granted to Monk Bretton with his body for burial, Geoffrey son of Gamel with four acres of land (‘corpus meum in die depositionis mee apud eos sepeliendum’: ‘my body for burial among them on the day of my death’).116 One such undertaking carried the provision that Sallay Abbey would grant burial to Norman de Horton si christiano morte obiero (‘if I shall die a Christian death’).117 Ralph of Adwick granted land which he held within the court of Kirkstall’s Bessacar grange, in the monks’ close near the sheepfold, to the monks in return for an undertaking that, wherever he died, he was to be buried at Kirkstall.118 With increasing frequency benefactors, like Gilbert de Gant, covered all eventualities. William III de Wennerville granted himself to St Oswald and to Nostell ‘in capitulo suo per tuppum capitis mei ita ut si forte inspirante gratia divina habitum religionis suscipere voluero ibi inter canonicos suscipiam et non alibi, nisi concedente priore et conventu ejusdem loci’ (‘in their chapter house, by the bowing of my head, so that if by chance, by the inspiration of divine grace, I should wish to take the habit of religion I shall do so among the canons, and nowhere else, except with the consent of the prior and convent of the same place’), and stated 113 See in particular Joan Wardrop, Fountains Abbey and its Benefactors 1132–1300, Cistercian Studies Series, 91 (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1987). 114 For a general discussion see B. Golding, ‘Burials and benefactions: an aspect of monastic patronage in thirteenthcentury England’, in England in the Thirteenth Century, Proceedings of the 1984 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. W. M. Ormrod (Harlaxton, 1985), pp. 64–75. 115 EYC, XI, no. 45; VII, no. 32. 116 1180 x 1200 (EYC, III, no. 1546; Cart. Monk Bretton, no. 572). 117 Cart. Sallay, I, no. 94. 118 EYC, II, no. 823.

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Page 210 that he would receive burial there whether he died in England or overseas.119 Early charters granting lands and assets to the monastic order tend not to be specific about the use to which the property or income was to be put. As the twelfth century progressed, however, benefactors seem to have been more self-confident in their freedom to specify a particular purpose. Between 1160 and 1170 John de Lascelles made a grant to the monks of Selby of a man called Asswin of Birkin, land, and an assart. This was given in pure alms to provide a light in the cloister throughout the night.120 Around the turn of the twelfth century Hugh de Milford granted to Selby Abbey an annual rent towards the building work of the abbey (ad opus ecclesie sue);121 and the canons of Bridlington received a quarry at Filey for the fabric of the monastery and its offices.122 Hugh son of Lewin confirmed a grant made by his mother, Juliana, to St Mary’s Abbey to purchase wax for eight candles upon the beam of the high altar.123 Others made grants specifically for providing shoes for the poor; to maintain a light in front of the altar of St Andrew, Marrick; the fabric of the new church at Easby; for the sustenance of the poor gathering at the abbey gate at Fountains; and the poor at the gate and in the infirmary of Marrick Priory.124 There was a considerable degree of interaction between those who gave and those who received. A CASE STUDY: ADAM SON OF PETER DE BIRKIN Many individuals might be selected as a case study of a monastic benefactor. Adam de Birkin is of particular interest as a man of Anglo-Scandinavian descent, whose family survived the Conquest and increased its fortunes. Adam’s grandfather was Essolf (Asulfr);125 his father, Peter, married a Norman, Emma, probably the sister of John de Lascelles, who seems to have brought as her marriage portion lands in Snaith and Shitlington.126 On Peter’s death (by 1143) his lands passed to Adam, eldest of at least four sons (Adam, Thomas, William, and Roger), and in 1166 Adam held one knight’s fee of Henry de Lacy. He also held lands as a 119 Ibid., III, no. 1591. It is worth noting the contractual nature of this charter. 120 Ibid., III, no. 1545; Selby Coucher, I, no. 486. 121 EYC, III, no. 1614; Selby Coucher, I, no. 531; Farrer dated the charter c. 1190 x 1196, but one witness, Martin, prior of St Andrew’s, York, occurs c. 1200 (HRH, p. 205). 122 EYC, II, no. 1176. 123 Ibid., I, no. 208. 124 EYC, III, no. 1599, V, nos. 126, 202A, 287; Coll. Top. Gen., V, 122. 125 Whether there were one or two individuals by this name is unclear, and the family of Jordan son of Essolf of Thornhill may have been of different descent: EYC, III, 359; EYF, pp. 6, 90–2; C. T. Clay, ‘The family of Thornhill’, YAJ, 29 (1927–9), 286–321. 126 In or before 1179 Adam made a claim against Simon de Lascelles for twenty-four carucates in Birkin and the soc of Snaith ‘in the right of his mother’, that is, Emma de Lascelles.

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Page 211 tenant of the Paynel fee (Bingley), Meschin fee (Horsforth), and Fossard fee (Bramley). Farrer, followed by recent writers, suggested that the interests of Adam’s descendants in Mirfield may have derived from Adam’s first marriage to Matilda (d. c. 1175), who he suggested was a sister of Adam Fitz Swain. By her, Adam son of Peter had a son Robert (who died without heirs) and a daughter Isabel. His second wife was another Matilda, daughter and coheir of Robert de Caux, by whom he had four sons (John, Peter, Roger, and William) and a daughter. Adam was dead by 1185. Of the monastic interests of Adam’s parents we know a little. His father, Peter, is recorded in a charter of his son, Thomas son of Peter, as having granted rent from property in Leeds to the Knights Hospitaller.127 With his sons Adam and Thomas he witnessed William Paynel’s foundation charter of Drax.128 Like other members of her family Adam’s mother, Emma, favoured Selby Abbey. With the consent of her son, Adam son of Peter de Birkin, she granted Shitlington mill to the monks of Selby, ad vinum missarum emendum (‘to purchase mass wine’).129 Adam himself confirmed to the monks Langley, and a villein named Thomas son of Archil, and granted lands ‘de feudo meo et hereditate mea… et manu propria obtuli Deo et Sancto Germano de Seleby et monachis super altare’ (‘of my fee and my inheritance, and I have offered [them] with my own hand to God and to St Germanus of Selby and to the monks on the altar’).130 Emma also showed an interest in Rievaulx Abbey, and between 1145 and 1160 granted two carucates in Shitlington and Flockton and common pasture of both vills.131 Adam’s earliest benefactions appear also to have been those to Rievaulx, though whether these predated his mother’s grant is not clear. Some time before 1150, with the consent of his brothers, he granted a place to build forges on the river Dove in Stainborough; and a second charter specified that the assart of ‘Oggethwaite’ was intended for the creation of forges. Both charters guaranteed Rievaulx a monopoly of iron-working in the vill,132 and this marked the beginning of Rievaulx’s industrial development of the region. In roughly the same period he granted the site of a grange at Shitlington, and common pasture and materials for building, and land in 127 EYC, III, no. 1746. 128 Ibid., VI, no. 13. Adam and his brother Thomas later witnessed the confirmation of William Paynel’s grants to Drax by Robert de Gant, husband of Alice Paynel, William’s daughter, and by William’s widow, Avice de Rumilly: ibid., nos. 46, 62. 129 EYC, III, no. 1721; Selby Coucher, II, no. 1277. Farrer assigned a date of 1145 x 1160. Peter son of Essolf, Emma’s husband, was dead by 1143. 130 EYC, III, no. 1738; Adam claimed for himself the grant of Langley, but this, and Archil, were actually granted earlier by John de Lascelles, probably his uncle, and confirmed by Henry de Lacy. 131 EYC, III, no. 1724. 132 Ibid., III, nos. 1725–6; Cart. Riev., nos. 91–2, 94.

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Page 212 Blacker (Upper Hoyland) as the site of iron smithies, iron ore in Shitlington and Flockton and licence to construct a pool. Both grants were witnessed by his three brothers.133 In another area, where he held lands through enfeoffment of the Paynel fee, he granted to Rievaulx Faweather on Rumbold’s Moor (Bingley) and a ridding in Stainborough; and by a further charter he conveyed dead wood and minerals in four vills, Halton (Bingley) and Shipley, and Heaton and Chellow (Bradford).134 In later years he increased his endowment to Rievaulx by adding thirty acres in Shitlington, that is, ten in ‘Breriroda’ and twenty in the wood of Little Midgely.135 With consent of all four sons by his second marriage Adam confirmed to Rievaulx their smithies and other possessions.136 Adam’s closest tenurial connection was with the Lacy family, from whom he held most of his lands. It is not therefore surprising that the Lacy monastery at Pontefract should attract some of his endowments. To the monks there he granted one eighth of the vill of Midgely. He granted half a bovate in Fairburn, for which the monks received him ‘in fraternitatem et societatem omnium beneficiorum suorum que amodo in monasterio Sancti Johannis agentur’ (‘in confraternity and association in all the benefits which are to be enjoyed in the monastery of St John’), and ten acres in Smeathalls (Birkin). Another grant brought them five acres in the riddings of Birkin and three in the meadow of Smeathalls, near to the two acres of the hospital of St Michael, and pasture for twenty cows and one bull; and with his second wife, Matilda de Caux, he granted half the mill of Stainborough. With the consent of John, his son and heir, he granted to Pontefract a buck or doe yearly from his park at Birkin, to commemorate his soul each year on the feast of St John the Evangelist, and two old oak trees yearly for burning in preparation for Christmas time. He granted lands in Horsforth to the monks of Kirkstall, another Lacy foundation.137 Farrer suggested a connection, through Adam’s first marriage, with Adam Fitz Swain. This, along with the proximity to his estates, would explain Adam’s interest in Monk Bretton. To the monks there he granted the service of Roger de Montbegon for lands in Worsborough, that is, 4s, and five acres of meadow in Smeathalls next to the meadow of the monks 133 EYC, III, nos. 1727–8; Cart. Riev., nos. 95, 99. 134 EYC, III, no. 1726, attested by his brothers; Cart. Riev., no. 100. 135 EYC, III, no. 1722, where dated 1170 x 1185. However, the charter is witnessed by two of his sons by his second marriage, John and Peter. John cannot have been born before c. 1175, and even if they attested at a tender age the charters cannot be much earlier than the early 1180s. 136 EYC, III no. 1737, where dated 1173 x 1185. However, in view of the mention of all four sons, who gave their consent to the confirmation, this is likely to have been issued late in Adam’s life, towards 1185. 137 EYC, III, nos. 1730–1, 1734, 1739–41, 1452 (Cart. Pont., I, nos. 319–21, 323–5; Kirkstall Coucher, no. 92).

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Page 213 of Pontefract, and a fishpond between Royston and Carlton.138 His interests spread to other local houses, to Hampole, and the cell at Headley, both recipients of meadow in Smeathalls, and to larger establishments further afield, like St Peter’s Hospital, which received a similar grant free of secular service ‘preter orationes pauperum eorumdem et ut simus participes omnium beneficiorum et elemosinarum et precum que fiunt vel facienda sunt in illa domo tam in morte quam in vita’ (‘except for the prayers of their poor, and that we might be partakers—in death as in life—in all the benefits and alms and prayers which are performed, or may be performed, in that house’).139 He witnessed the grant of the nunnery of Esholt to Sinningthwaite, and to the former he conveyed lands in Cullingworth (Bingley), common rights in Harden, and materials to repair their buildings and for their fires.140 He confirmed a grant made by his brother, Thomas, to Fountains, and attested charters in favour of Byland, Esholt, Rievaulx, St Peter’s Hospital, York, Pontefract, and the Knights Templar.141 Finally, his benefactions to the Lincolnshire Gilbertine priory of Haverholme are to be explained by family considerations. He granted all that he had in Horsforth and Keighley with his daughter, Juliana, and his niece, Matilda. In return the convent promised him and his wife the service due to a canon and nun. Farrer dated this charter to around 1165 × 1179, yet identified Juliana as Adam’s daughter by his second marriage. However, the land was soon leased to Kirkstall Abbey, which already had substantial interests in Horsforth. If, as the editor of the Kirkstall cartulary suggested, the copy of the charter in the Monasticon Anglicanum mistakenly gave the witness Ralph, abbot of Kirkstall, in error for Ralph, abbot of Kirkstead, then the charter can be dated to between 1174 and 1178.142 It seems clear, therefore, that the daughter of Adam who became a nun at Haverholme was not the daughter of his second marriage but either the daughter of his first marriage or illegitimate. Adam was a benefactor of two smaller and much more local nunneries, Esholt and Hampole; yet he, or Juliana, seems to have been drawn by the reputation of the Gilbertines. The influence on Adam’s monastic interests seems to have been partly 138 EYC, III, no. 1735; confirmed by his son, John (ibid., no. 1736); ibid., no. 1747. 139 Ibid., III, nos. 1732–3, 1742. The first witness to the grant to Headley was Albinus, master of Hampole. 140 Ibid., I, no. 201; VI, no. 67. 141 Ibid., I, no. 610; II, no. 849; III, nos. 1499, 1505, 1549, 1627, 1837. 142 Ibid., III, no. 1871; Kirkstall Coucher, no. 89. Mon. Ang., VI, 949, has as witnesses Abbots Robert of Fountains (1170–80), Sylvanus of Rievaulx (1167–88), Ralph of Kirkstall (1182–90), Hugh of Revesby (1172–1203 x 1206). Ralph was abbot of Kirkstead between 1174 and 1178. The cartulary copy (Kirkstall Coucher, no. 90) and the confirmation by Adam son of Peter (no. 91) have no witnesses.

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Page 214 dictated by existing family interests (Selby), possibly by his own marriage (Monk Bretton), by his tenurial connections with the Lacys (Pontefract, Kirkstall) and Fossards (Headley), and by geographical proximity: he was a benefactor of local houses at Pontefract, Monk Bretton, Selby, Esholt, and Hampole. However, his most significant endowments were to the Cistercians at Rievaulx, some thirty to forty miles to the north, with whom he had no known connections. It is possible that both he and his mother were attracted by the reputation of Rievaulx; certainly no family or tenurial connection suggests itself. The effect of Adam’s activities as a monastic benefactor was to give the monks of Rievaulx two important industrial sites in the West Riding, and a monopoly of mining activity there. In contrast, Smeathalls was shared among a number of religious houses: Headley, Hampole, Pontefract, Monk Bretton, the hospital of St Michael, and St Peter’s Hospital, York, all held adjoining meadow land. In common with other monastic benefactors Adam was careful to associate his sons with his grants, and those of his second marriage attested charters and gave their ‘consent’ at a tender age.143 This guarded against future hostility to recipients of Adam’s grants, and indeed his patronage of the monastic order was continued by his family.144 Adam’s charters show him to have been conventionally concerned for the salvation of his soul and those of members of his family. A number, however, notably those to Pontefract, Hampole, Headley, and Monk Bretton, express deeper concern, and include prayers for those who had sinned on behalf of the donor; these contain variations on the clause ‘pro remedio anime mee et patris mei et matris mee et uxoris mee Matildis et omnium antecessorum meorum et heredum meorum et pro animabus omnium qui causa mei peccaverunt / omnium illorum qui causa mei in aliquibus deliquerunt’ (‘for the salvation of my soul, and for those of my father and my mother and my wife Matilda, and all of my ancestors and heirs, and for the souls of all who have sinned for my sake / of all those who have in any way sinned on my behalf’).145 Had these instances been confined to a single monastery the clause might have been explained as the idiosyncrasy of one monastic scribe. That they occur more widely suggests the desire of the donor, Adam son of Peter himself, that such persons be remem143 EYC, III, nos. 1722, 1735, 1737; VI, no. 67. 144 The alienation of lands to religious houses could have a devastating effect on the economic fortunes of a knightly family; for an example, see P. Coss, Lordship, Knighthood and Locality: A Study in English Society c. 1180–c. 1280 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 189–94 and 206–7. 145 EYC, III, nos. 1730, 1732; see also nos. 1733–4, and no. 1735 (‘pro omnibus sive vivis sive mortuis qui pro me vel propter me peccaverunt’: ‘for all, whether living or dead, who have sinned for me or on my behalf’).

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Page 215 bered, his charitable forgiveness presumably adding to his own chances of salvation. This chapter has illustrated the vital connection between monastic houses and their founders and patrons. Monks, canons, and nuns benefited, materially, from the religious aspirations and spiritual impulses of the laity, and by the way in which the level of benefaction to religious houses was seen as a mark of status. Religious houses reciprocated with their prayers, with confraternity, by providing a final resting place, and by allowing members of the laity to specify how their alms were used. However, the monastic order depended for material support on a wider circle of benefactors than the immediate family of the founder/patron. The major grants of resources may have derived from foundation endowments, supplemented by a later patron. However, many religious houses depended also on small, piecemeal donations, sales and quitclaims by men and women of the locality, and they repaid the local community with their care for the sick and alms for the poor—often the target specified by local benefactors for their grants. It was from the local community that monastic houses drew many of their recruits, and those recruits themselves and their families might mark their entry, or expected entry, by grants, further cementing the relationship of mutual reciprocity. Moreover, the conveyance of even a small parcel of land involved more than the grantor and the recipient. When Walter de Dinant and his wife quitclaimed to Fountains half a carucate of land which the three daughters of Nigel son of Gurwald had granted, the monks promised to find food and clothing for the girls, and to provide spiritual guidance for them, or place them in a house of religion. Walter pledged his warranty in the hand of Richard, priest of Kirby Wiske; his wife, Emma, made her pledge in the hand of Raisanta, wife of William son of Eudo; William son of Eudo was the first witness, and used his seal to seal the charter; and two sets of witnesses, one male and one female, attested the transaction.146 This was an occasion that involved the village community, and illustrates the monks of this one monastery caring for the spiritual welfare of the daughters of local benefactors. The case study of Adam son of Peter is a fine example of how one man, acting not as founder nor as patron, was a conscientious supporter of religious houses, primarily those in his own locality of Birkin. It may have been baronial affairs, enthusiasm, and ambition that influenced the shape and character of the monastic expansion in Yorkshire, but in many ways interaction with the local community was an equally vital force. 146 EYC, V, no. 287.

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Page 216 Chapter 8 MONASTERIES AND THE LANDSCAPE The type of property acquired by religious houses and their economic basis varied according to their location and size; the wealth and generosity of their founders, and their ability to promote endowments among family, peer group, and tenants; and the need and inclination of the communities themselves to develop their economic activities. The type of property conveyed to the religious orders varied as well: land, rents, and services deriving from land, natural materials, mills and ovens which yielded revenue from those who used them, spiritualia (churches and tithes), and fairs and markets which could bring valuable tolls and profits. This chapter examines the location and nature of the endowments received by the monastic houses in Yorkshire in order to demonstrate the impact which the expansion of the religious orders had on the pattern of landholding and settlement in the county. Chapter 9 explores the way in which these assets were exploited to produce a financial basis for the religious houses of the county. First, however, a few words must be devoted to the Cistercian attitude to the economy, since part of the aim of these two chapters must be to discover if, as they were to claim, the White Monks were genuinely different in their practices. The Cistercian outlook on the type of financial assets which were deemed to be acceptable was a distinctive, though not unique one; but the chronology of Cistercian thought on economic matters is still a matter of lively debate. The Exordium parvum, chapter XV, ‘The Institutes of those monks who departed from Molesme’, contains several important statements about Cistercian economic practice.1 The first, and the one that is there given greatest prominence, is the rejection of churches and tithes, the latter on the grounds that tithes were meant for the specific purposes of maintaining the priest, the church, and the poor, and that it was not for monks to appropriate this revenue. The 1 EP, chapter XV, pp. 77–80.

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Page 217 second was a statement of what assets were acceptable, namely, lands ‘far removed from the dwellings of men’, and watercourses and meadows. The third introduced the fundamentals of Cistercian land management: estates were to be administered through granges, run by lay brothers. These principles were incorporated into the first codification of statutes, traditionally dated to 1134, but probably from nearer 1150.2 These went further and specifically banned, as well as spiritualia, vills, villeins, rents, revenue from ovens and mills, and similar assets, all of which were ‘contrary to the purity of the name and office of monk’.3 Recent historical debate has raised again the question of how soon the Cistercians defined themselves as an order with a distinctive economic basis both in terms of the type of property they found acceptable and the methods of running their estates.4 Certainly, there is no indication in other chapters of the Exordium parvum and Exordium Cistercii that the reasons why Robert and his companions chose to leave Molesme included dissatisfaction with its economic basis; that is, there is no evidence that a distinctive economy formed part of their manifesto of reform. Moreover, as Bouchard has pointed out, the Exordium parvum and the Capitula alone of Cistercian documents from before the middle of the twelfth century make a clear statement on the subject; and non-Cistercian writers also appear reticent. It finds no mention in the Apologia of St Bernard as one of the features which distinguished the White Monks from the Black; in his essay on the Cistercian order William of Malmesbury, who is able accurately to transmit many of the essentials of Cistercian practice, is silent on the subject; and Orderic Vitalis also appears not to define the Cistercians by any unique economic practices, except for their rejection of tithes.5 Historians such as Berman and Bouchard, taking together the silence of contemporary writers, and the reception of the order of Savigny into that of the Cistercians in 1147—apparently without 2 In discussing the development of Cistercian economic thought and practice Constance Berman follows the traditional date of 1134 for the codification: see, for instance, ‘The development of Cistercian economic practice during the lifetime of Bernard of Clairvaux: the historical perspective on Innocent II’s 1132 privilege’, in Bernardus Magister, ed. J. R. Sommerfeldt, Cistercian Studies Series, 135 (Spencer, Mass., 1992), pp. 303–13. For the reappraisal of the date of the codification, see Holdsworth, ‘Chronology of Cistercian legislation’, p. 44, and Auberger, L’unanimité cistercienne, pp. 135–82. 3 Canivez, Statuta, I, 14–15 (no. 9); see also p. 14 (no. 5). 4 See, for instance, C. Waddell, ‘The Cistercian institutions and their early evolution: granges, economy, lay brothers’, in L’Espace Cistercien, ed. L. Pressouyre (Paris, 1994), pp. 27–38; Constance Brittain Bouchard, ‘Cistercian ideals versus reality: 1134 reconsidered’, Cîteaux, 39 (1988), 217–31, and Holy Entrepreneurs: Cistercians, Knights, and Economic Exchange in Twelfth-Century Burgundy (Ithaca and London, 1991); Constance Hoffman Berman, Medieval Agriculture, the Southern French Countryside, and the Early Cistercians, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 76, no. 5 (Philadelphia, 1986); Isabel Alfonso, ‘Cistercians and feudalism’, Past & Present 133 (1991), 3–30. 5 Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, IV, 315.

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Page 218 reservations about their practice of accepting resources that ‘monks of our order ought to renounce’—have suggested that not until the 1130s and later did the Cistercians define themselves as distinctive in their economy.6 Such reevaluation enables us to explain the early acceptance, by Cîteaux and a number of its daughter houses, of churches, tithes, and mills, and suggests that the label, common among historians, of a slide ‘from ideals to reality’ is not appropriate. Berman has stressed that the Cistercians consciously developed the ideology of an economy based on remote sites and newly cleared lands in order to justify the exemption from the payment of tithes on lands which they cultivated themselves, a privilege granted to the entire order by Pope Innocent II in 1132; by the 1130s, she argues, ‘the chief characteristics of fully-developed cistercian economic practice (direct cultivation, pastoralism, and conversi) were already present’.7 For Bouchard, the economic ‘ideals’ were constructed in the mid twelfth century as a ‘last-ditch attempt by certain abbots’ to set out the goals for which the Cistercians should be aspiring.8 There is much that is attractive in this hypothesis. There are, naturally, implications for the dating of the Exordium parvum; in order to push the formulation of Cistercian thinking on economic matters into the 1130s, 1140s, or 1150s we have to posit either that the Exordium parvum dates from that period, or that chapter XV is a later interpolation.9 For our purposes the matter is crucial, for if the Cistercian view had been articulated by around 1121, that is, roughly when a primitive Exordium might have been compiled, then it was a part of Cistercian thought by the time the order reached England; if, as Bouchard and Berman would argue, it was not a part of the programme until the 1150s—for there is no reason to date the first codification to 1134 but rather evidence to suggest the 1150s—then it postdated all the Yorkshire foundations. An examination of the Yorkshire evidence may help to elucidate the matter, and to discover whether the different orders and congregations within Yorkshire were truly distinctive. DEVELOPMENT OF ESTATES: LOCATION Amongst the earliest endowments received by religious houses were donations in kind. Roger de Mowbray’s initial grant to Byland was a tithe of the foodstuff of his household, collected by a conversus named Ligulf, 6 Existing houses which were incorporated into the Cistercian order were, for instance, allowed to keep mills acquired before their reception, but thereafter were expected to conform to Cistercian practice: Canivez, Statuta, I, 67 (no. 59). 7 Berman, ‘Development of Cistercian economic practice’, 312. 8 Bouchard, Holy Entrepreneurs, p. 190. 9 See the arguments of Auberger, L’unanimité Cistercienne, pp. 42–60.

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Page 219 who, when Roger was visiting ‘in remote parts’, sold the food and sent the money to the abbot. However, the inconvenience prompted the grant of a landed endowment, the vaccary of Cam, and land in Wildon, Scackleton, and Airyholme.10 At its foundation Holy Trinity, York, received two-thirds of the tithes of Ralph Paynel’s halls of Ashby de la Laund, Scawby, and Tealby (Lincolnshire); and when his son founded Drax Priory his endowment included thirty skeps of meal from Hunslet mill, and from Saltby (Leicestershire) the tithe of his household and kitchen, in grain and malt, and slaughtered sheep and pigs.11 The kind of domestic arrangement reached by Mowbray and the Paynels may have been far from uncommon in the early days of a religious house, before its estates and endowments were organized. However, it could also persist as a form of support. Henry de Lacy granted Pontefract a tithe of his venison in flesh and hides, and, as much as twenty years after the foundation of Drax, Robert de Gant granted the canons there a tithe of his household, in corn, malt, bread, ale, cheese, and butter, and in everything pertaining to his kitchen.12 Food renders such as these did not form a significant part of the monastic economy; they are, however, important as an indication that the monastic familia could be seen as an extension of the secular household of the patron. It was, however, land which was the most valuable asset conveyed to the religious houses in Yorkshire, and it need not be stressed that in the course of the period 1069 to 1215 a vast amount of land in the county passed into the hands of the monastic order, houses both inside and outside the county.13 Clearly enough, the location of the estates of individual houses depended on who gave lands; however, in most, though not all cases the majority of lands lay within fairly easy reach of the monastery. Furthest north in the county lay the Augustinian priory of Guisborough, generously endowed by Robert de Brus, who was followed by his tenants. Entire vills came into the control of the canons, among them Guisborough itself and Kirkleatham. The estates of the priory stretched east to the coastal strip, and west to Kirklevington, and dominated the valley of the Tees. There were only a few outlying assets, notably Sherburn, and East and West Heslerton, on the river Derwent, 10 Mon. Ang., V, 350. For charters granting Scackleton, Airyholme, and Cam, which show signs of later interpolation or tampering, see Mowbray Charters, nos. 33–7; no. 37 was witnessed by Mowbray’s steward, George, his only recorded appearance other than this account in the Historia fundationis. 11 EYC, VI, nos. 1, 13. 12 Ibid., III, no. 1496; and VI, no. 63. For further examples see ibid., III, no. 1268 (a grant of tithes of venison to Ecclesfield), and VII, no. 18 (a tithe of beasts taken on demesne, granted to Bolton). See also Mowbray Charters, no. 215. 13 Houses outside Yorkshire which received endowments from patrons who were landowners within the county included Lewes Priory, recipient of lands within the honour of Warenne.

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Page 220 and further south, where the canons obtained free passage across the Humber.14 In Richmondshire the canons of Easby acquired estates which spread along the valley of the river Swale, and the Cistercian house at Jervaulx also developed its properties in the area. Whitby’s estates were concentrated along the coast and its hinterland, although the interests of the Percy family in Cambridgeshire brought minor assets in that county. The Yorkshire estates lay in four main areas: the majority in the immediate vicinity of the abbey itself, where the monks enjoyed complete control over the town;15 the second along the coastal strip around Scarborough and Robin Hood’s Bay; the third on the Yorkshire Wolds; and the fourth comprised a small group of estates in Cleveland, around Middlesbrough, where the landed interests of Guisborough ensured that Whitby’s property remained limited.16 Moving south along the coast we come to the Augustinian priory of Bridlington which, in addition to complete control of the vill, commanded estates along the coast to the north of the priory (as far as Filey) and south to Atwick, Skirlington, and Goxhill. Further groups of estates lay to the south of the Derwent; and a few scattered estates along the north and south bank of the Humber reflect the interests of various knightly families. Moreover, the landholdings of the Gant patrons in Lincolnshire and Derbyshire brought churches in those counties. In the area between York and Malton the canons of Kirkham were dominant, with extensive endowments in the area around the priory and east across to Garton on the Wolds. The estates of another Augustinian house, Newburgh, were located within a radius of approximately ten miles around the priory, with just a few estates further afield in Mowbray territory of Masham and Kirkby Malzeard. In fact, Masham was split among Newburgh, Jervaulx, and Fountains. The East Riding houses were also fairly local in the spread of their estates: Warter in the central area between the Derwent and the Hull; Meaux in the valleys of the rivers draining into the Humber; and Watton in the Hull valley and on the coast around Bridlington and Hilderthorpe. Selby, in spite of early royal interest, developed fairly local estates, its land holdings being dominant in the valleys of the Ouse (around Selby itself), Aire, Calder, and Don, and spreading south into Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire. The influence of the tenurial pattern of the founders of houses is well illustrated by the Paynel foundations of Holy Trinity and Drax, both of which held estates in Lincolnshire as well as in the vicinity of the house. Drax also acquired 14 EYC, II, no. 764. 15 Ibid., II, no. 886. 16 See in particular B. Waites, ‘The monastic settlement of north-east Yorkshire’, YAJ, 40 (1959–62), 478–95 (pp. 483– 7), and Monasteries and Landscape in North East England (Oakham, Rutland, 1997), pp. 35–7.

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Page 221 lands in the Leeds and Bingley area, held by the Paynel family. The lands of Pontefract lay almost exclusively in two areas, one to the north and south of the river Aire, and the other in the basin of the river Dearne, around Barnsley and Dodworth. The only exceptions were rents derived from the Lacy estates in Lancashire, in Clitheroe, Burnley, and Colne. The assets of its daughter house of Monk Bretton were even more local in distribution, being situated around the house itself and further west, in the valley of the Dearne. Another Lacy foundation, Kirkstall, retained its first site at Barnoldswick in the west of the county, where patronage in the honour of Skipton brought them estates in Keighley and Riddlesden. The monks, however, accumulated a clutch of estates in the Leeds area, as well as in Pontefract, Darrington, and Stapleton, where its interests overlapped with those of Pontefract Priory. In the extreme south Roche acquired estates to the south of the Don, from Bramley to Kirk Bramwith. In the far west of the county monastic landholding was dominated by Bolton and Sallay. The estates of the canons were concentrated around the first site at Embsay, and Bolton, both in Wharfedale, and in the valley of the Aire, around the Rumilly castle at Skipton, with outlying estates further north, in Long Preston and Malham. Apart from Bolton and Sallay the only other religious house to gain a foothold in Craven was Fountains Abbey, which developed an estate at Malham. There were monasteries which developed more widespread estates. St Mary’s, an abbey enjoying royal patronage and situated in the premier city of the north, had undoubted advantages, and the spread of patronage is reflected in the scattered nature of its estates not just in Yorkshire but across the Pennines, south into Lincolnshire, and as far afield as Suffolk. Within Yorkshire the monks held estates in the valley of the Derwent, between York and Malton, in the East Riding, between the rivers Derwent and Hull, in the Wolds to the north of York, and on the North Yorkshire Moors. Further north, lands lay in the Dales, especially in Swaledale. Another house with dispersed estates was Nostell. Although the bulk of its assets lay in the Lacy heartland of south Yorkshire, in the valleys of the Don, Aire, and Calder, the early encouragement of Archbishop Thurstan and Henry I brought endowments from a wider range of the aristocracy, in Lancashire (the church of Winwick, granted by Stephen count of Mortain), Nottinghamshire (lands in Sookholme and Market Warsop, granted by Henry I), Northumberland (Bamburgh, also a royal gift), Warwickshire (the churches of Newbold Pacey, Leamington Hastings, and Whitnash), Oxfordshire (the church of Haseley), and Staffordshire (the church of Chebsey).17 St Mary’s and Nostell were the 17 EYC, III, nos. 1428, 1444.

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Page 222 only two Yorkshire houses to administer far-flung estates through a series of cells.18 Among the Cistercians the houses with the most widely dispersed estates were Rievaulx and Fountains. Although both became extensive land holders in the region of the abbey, indeed took complete control of whole areas, they attracted wider patronage and as a consequence acquired assets at a greater distance. Attention has already been drawn to the way in which Rievaulx secured estates in the Aire and Calder valleys.19 Fountains amassed a truly remarkable set of estates. In the south of the county alone lay the important grange of Bradley;20 to the west, in Wharfedale, the monks developed estates around Malham, Bordley, and Arncliffe; to the north of the abbey its lands spread on either side of the river Ure up into Swaledale, and along the river Wiske. Byland, a house more modestly endowed, nevertheless extended its influence over the Pennines into Westmorland (Warcop and Asby), and into Teesdale.21 The endowment of the nunneries was discussed in a previous chapter, where it was noted that they were usually intensely local in their distribution, partly as a consequence of the status of the founder and partly because of the interaction with the local community.22 The exceptions were St Clement’s, York, whose endowments reflect the scattered nature of the archiepiscopal demesne, and Nun Appleton, whose patrons were landowners in Lincolnshire. That most monastic estates were concentrated in a fairly limited geographical area reflects both patterns of tenure and lordship and the local appeal of many houses. However, it could also be a consequence of deliberate consolidation by religious houses, by sale, exchange, and lease. Thus the monks of Selby chose to farm their vill of Stainton in Craven to the monks of nearby Sallay;23 the abbot of Oseney (Oxfordshire) demised to Newburgh Priory land in Huggate ‘because that land is too remote from our house and therefore of little use’ (‘quia terra illa a domo nostra nimis erat remota, et ideo minus utilis’);24 the Norman foundation of Hambye granted to the canons of Easby forty acres of land with pasture for 200 sheep and 20 cows in Brompton on Swale ‘from which before we enjoyed no or little profit’ (‘de qua antea vel nullam vel modicam habuimus utilitatem’); and Easby leased land in Hesselton to the monks of Jervaulx.25 The monks of Fountains allowed its granddaughter house of Sallay to consolidate its holdings in Bowland by demising pasture there; 18 See below, pp. 245–6. 19 See above, pp. 211–12. 20 See below, pp. 263–4. 21 On the Westmorland estates, see Janet Burton, ‘Charters of Byland Abbey relating to the grange of Bleatarn, Westmorland’, TCWAAS, 79 (1979), 29–50. 22 See above, pp. 167–70. 23 EYC, XI, nos. 123–4; Cart. Sallay, I, no. 49. 24 EYC, II, no. 1257. 25 Ibid., V, nos. 193, 246.

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Page 223 and leased land in Malham from the canons of Bolton.26 To Fountains William de Arches confirmed the exchange made by him and his men with the abbey of land in Kettlewell which enabled the monks to acquire property adjacent to that which they had purchased from Walter de Fauconberg.27 Roger de Mowbray granted to Byland licence to make any exchanges of land which it deemed necessary.28 THE NATURE OF MONASTIC ECONOMIC ASSETS Arable and pasture land The aim of each monastery would have been to acquire a certain amount of arable land which could yield produce for home consumption and surplus for sale. Some houses were more favourably situated than others. The Holderness region of the East Riding, with its rich clay soils, and parts of the Vale of York, were fertile arable areas: although Holderness in the eleventh century was a marshy area it had a high density of population and plough teams, and was generally a prosperous region.29 In other regions, notably Craven and the Pennines, the climate was harsh, and in all parts there were poor soils which were unsuitable for arable. The monks of Sallay experienced the disadvantages of the climate in Craven for grain-growing; and in Wensleydale the monks of Fors complained of the barrenness of the land, and the excessive rain which caused the crops to rot.30 The absence of any account rolls for the period means that we cannot ascertain the balance between the arable and pasture lands held by religious houses, nor the proportion of food which could be grown or needed to be purchased. We know from later evidence that Malton in the middle of the thirteenth century relied heavily on sheep farming and purchased most of its grain, and that Bolton Priory in the early fourteenth century obtained most of its corn from its demesne lands and tithes.31 Such evidence is lacking for the period before 1215, but limited charter evidence indicates where some of the arable land of monastic houses lay. Nunkeeling, for instance, held arable in Bewholme, Marton Priory in 26 Ibid., XI, nos. 47, 243. 27 Ibid., XI, no. 143. 28 Mowbray Charters, no. 45. D. E. Greenway points out in the note to this charter that it might apply specifically to Brignall, in which place both Roger and Eustace Fitz John (to whom it is addressed) held lands. 29 See H. C. Darby and I. S. Maxwell, The Domesday Geography of Northern England (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 1–232, for an account of the varying conditions and agricultural activities in the county. 30 Note the similarity of the complaints: EYC, XI, no. 50; Mon. Ang., V, 571; a dispersal to the mother house of Byland was contemplated. 31 R. Graham, ‘The finance of Malton Priory, 1244–1257’, English Ecclesiastical Studies, pp. 247–70 (p. 258); Kershaw, Bolton Priory, p. 19.

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Page 224 Cawthorne, Sallay in Askwith (Weston), and Kirkstall in West Headingley.32 The monks of Rievaulx acquired a tillage of twelve acres in East Bolton, one called Ravensdale in Folkton, and in East Heslerton ‘xxx acras… de culturis… decem de melioribus, decem de mediocribus, decem de deterioribus’ (‘thirty acres of the tillages: ten of the best quality, ten of moderately good, and ten of inferior quality’).33 All over Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries pressure on land was leading to the opening up of new areas, both for arable and pasture. Although historians investigating the part played by the monastic orders have concentrated their attention on the new congregations, like the Cistercians, who actively sought remote estates, studies of the economic activity of the well-established Benedictine houses, as well as those of the regular canons, have demonstrated that assarting and the clearance of lands were not the prerogative of the Cistercians. In France the cartularies of monasteries like St Vincent du Mans, Marmoutier, Angers, and La Trinité de Vendôme, and in England those of Peterborough and Ely, abound with references to land in the process of being cleared.34 Eleventh- and twelfth-century charters leave us in no doubt that clearance was a significant activity in England well into the twelfth century, and that monastic enterprise was an important factor in the opening up of peripheral regions. However, the England of 1086 was already a wellsettled country, and colonizable land well exploited.35 Any attempt to assess the importance of Yorkshire houses in the opening up of peripheral lands must clearly take account of regional differences within this large county, and the difficulties of the source material. The much debated point is the nature of Domesday Book ‘waste’. Historians still disagree, but the consensus seems to be that Domesday ‘waste’ reflects less the passage of the armies of the Conqueror through Yorkshire as they harried the lands in the winter of 1069 to 1070 than the incomplete administrative reorganization of the county following the military conquest and political annexation.36 Certainly there were divergences in population and land use. Holderness appears to have been well settled; so too does that area contained in a line from York to Leeds and south through Pontefract to Doncaster and Sheffield. In the north of the county the most densely 32 EYC, III, nos. 1336, 1683; Cart. Sallay, II, no. 522; Kirkstall Coucher, no. 79. 33 Cart. Riev., nos. 82, 85, 141; see also nos. 87, 116; EYC, IX, nos. 145, 150 for arable in Morton, Normanby, Skiplam, and Wombleton. 34 See, for instance, R. Latouche, The Birth of Western Economy (London, 1961), pp. 271–92. For the colonizing activities of the monks of Peterborough in Northamptonshire, see E. King, Peterborough Abbey 1086–1310 (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 70–87. 35 M. M. Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society (London, 1972), pp. 16–18. 36 W. E. Wightman, ‘The significance of ‘waste’ in the Yorkshire Domesday’, Northern History, 10 (1975), 55–71; D. M. Palliser, ‘Domesday Book and the ‘‘harrying of the north’”, Northern History, 29 (1993), 1–23; Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, pp. 23–5.

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Page 225 populated area was in the Cleveland hills and the valley of the river Tees. The absence of dense settlement elsewhere, such as Craven, is problematic; it may be that there was a scarcity of population, or it may signify a deficiency in the recording process and a compiler who noted only vills and landowners.37 There appear to have been few populated vills in the upper Pennine region and in the marshy territory around the valleys of the Aire, Ouse, and Don. Low population was recorded in the Humberhead Levels (around Broomfleet) and in the Esk valley and the Pennines. Yorkshire was a county of contrasts where in some regions settlements were a little more than a mile apart, and in others recorded population was low. The impact of the monastic orders on the landscape was considerable. It was no coincidence that it was in these areas of low population that religious houses gained the strongest foothold. In many of the less cultivated regions vills make their first appearance in monastic charters. In the West Riding, Ousefleet, Whitgift, Pollington, and Swinefleet are first recorded in the cartulary of Selby Abbey.38 Similar evidence emerges in the Craven area from the cartularies of Sallay, Bolton, and Fountains. That extension of cultivated land was taking place in Yorkshire is clear from the references in charters to assarts, riddings, and terra novalis. Clearance was in three types of area: the ‘technological margin’ of marsh and fen in Holderness and the Aire valley; the forests; and regions of sparse population.39 The first stage in monastic participation was, where required, the clearance of the site of an abbey, and there is evidence of this at Meaux, Byland, and Kirkstall, deriving from the narrative accounts of the foundations.40 The Kirkstall chronicler was probably recalling the alleged origins of Cîteaux as much as those of his own house when he wrote that the monks ‘reducing thick bush to cultivation brought the niggard soil to grow rich with flourishing crops’, but we need not doubt that the area on the river Aire was before their coming an unproductive and desolate spot. Evidence for assarting on estates further away from the abbey derives from charters which either give permission to clear lands, or which (in retrospect) grant and confirm lands which had already been assarted by the monastic community. Rievaulx Abbey was granted waste below Pickering Moor, and in East 37 R. Welldon Finn, The Making and Limitations of the Yorkshire Domesday, Borthwick Paper, no. 41 (York, 1972), pp. 29–31. 38 EYC, I, no. 484; III, nos. 1543–4, 1738; Selby Coucher, I, no. 36. See EPNS, WR, II, 7, 10–11, 21. 39 Postan, Medieval Economy and Society, pp. 18–25. The most comprehensive discussion of monastic activity in England which, however, concentrates on the Cistercians, is R. A. Donkin, ‘The English Cistercians and assarting c. 1128–c.1350’, Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis, 20 (1964), 49–75. 40 Chron. Melsa, I, 78–9, 82–3; Mon. Ang., V, 353; Foundation of Kirkstall, p. 179.

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Page 226 Bolton land ‘de qua terra iiij acre et dimidia sunt culte et xxj inculte et nemorose quas sartabunt monachi cum voluerint’41 (‘of which land four and a half acres are cultivated and twenty-one uncultivated and marshy, and the monks shall assart these as they wish’). In Pilley they were granted an assart which they themselves had cleared.42 Byland Abbey received permission to assart in Nidderdale and confirmation of lands which the monks had cleared in Osgodby.43 Fountains Abbey was granted land to assart in Brimham, and had evidently been engaged in clearance in Aldburgh, one of its granges; moreover, despite the papal privilege which freed the White Monks from payment of tithes, they agreed to render them to the parish church of Masham ‘quia non fuit ibi multum terre arabilis quando primo data est eis sed fere totum monachi postea sartauerunt’44 (‘because there was not much arable land there when it was first given to them, but afterwards the monks assarted almost all of it’). Land was cleared in Long Marston.45 A grant to the monks of Sallay expected that the land would be assarted; this was one of the largest recorded assarts, of one hundred acres.46 The White Monks were not alone in clearing or instigating the clearance of lands. The Augustinians of Warter cleared waste in Seaton Ross; Alice de Gant confirmed to Bridlington all the land which the canons had assarted in her forest of Swaledale since the death of her father; Roger de Mowbray granted to the canons of Newburgh all the assarts their men had created in Kilburn.47 Selby Abbey cleared land in Pollington;48 the foundation grant of Nun Appleton included lands which were only partly assarted, and that of Marrick Priory ‘assarts of marsh and marshland’.49 On the surviving evidence, however, it would appear that in accordance with the traditional view in Yorkshire it was the White Monks who were most prominent in the clearance of land and the extension of arable. However, the colonizing activities of the monks must be set in a geographical context already modified by previous assarting. Some charters certainly indicate that the monks benefited from the activities of others. In Clayton-le-Dale, for instance, the monks of Sallay received an assart ‘which Eilsi had assarted’, ‘all the new assart and the land around it’ in Bolton by Bowland, ‘the assart of Geoffrey’, and ‘the assart which Siward 41 EYC, IV, no. 91. On Pickering see below, pp. 256–7. 42 Cart. Riev., no. 111. 43 Mowbray Charters, no. 56; Yorkshire Deeds, IX, 195. 44 Mowbray Charters, nos. 97, 119. However, see below, pp. 264–5. 45 On Long Marston see below, p. 261. 46 Cart. Sallay, I, no. 201 (Acreland). For further references see Donkin, ‘English Cistercians and assarting’, 68–75. 47 EYC, X, no. 66; V, no. 391; IX, no. 165. 48 Ibid., I, no. 484. 49 Ibid., I, no. 543; V, no. 173.

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Page 227 assarted’.50 The monks of Rievaulx obtained the assart which had already been named ‘Oggethwaite’, and the monks of Roche the assarts ‘which used to be Gamel’s’.51 Among the non-Cistercian houses, Nostell accepted from Jordan de Lacy an assart of sixty-eight acres which he had bought from Ralph; Selby took possession of the assarts which Alan de Holme held in Kirk Ella; the nuns of Nun Appleton obtained the assarts of Lambert, John, and Richard, and the nuns of Esholt the ridding of Yeadon.52 The picture of the religious orders as ‘pioneers’ in assarting land and bringing it to cultivation must be modified in the light of evidence which indicates that they were in receipt of lands cleared by non-monastic communities. Monastic assarting did take place, but often on a modest scale and within limitations imposed by neighbours. Boundaries might be clearly defined. On one occasion at least the monks of Byland were allegedly overzealous in their clearances around Kilburn and Thorpe, and as a consequence came into conflict with Robert de Daiville and Thomas de Coleville. Agreements with both men placed limits on the assarting activities of the monks.53 Roger de Mowbray, in granting pasture lands in Nidderdale to Byland, specified that the community should neither plough nor sow there.54 In the strict sense of extending the area ‘under the plough’ monastic assarting was limited both by previous assarting and by geographical factors. However, monks and canons played an important role in bringing economic activity to underdeveloped areas such as the Pennines (Nidderdale and Swaledale), Craven, and the Ouse/Aire basin, which had previously been areas of sparse population and cultivation. On the evidence the houses which played the most significant role as landowners in these regions were Rievaulx, Byland, Fountains, Sallay, and Selby; but their efforts modified, rather than transformed, the existing pattern of settlement. Much of the land granted to the religious houses of Yorkshire was not, however, suitable for the growing of grain and other crops. High in the Pennines and on the Dales were areas suitable for sheep farming. Not that sheep were the only animals kept. Pigs were grazed inexpensively in woodland areas and were raised by Bridlington (Scalby forest), Sallay (Clayton), Byland (Nidderdale), and Kirkham (Helmsley).55 Cattle were raised by Marton and Easby Priories;56 and there are references to vaccaries 50 Cart. Sallay, I, nos. 124, 135, 275–6. 51 Cart. Riev., no. 94; Mon. Ang., V, 502, no. 1. 52 EYC, VI, no. 127; XII, no. 6; I, no. 543; III, no. 1874. 53 Historic Manuscripts Commission, Reports on Manuscripts in Various Collections, II (1903), p. 3; Janet E. Burton, ‘The settlement of disputes between Byland Abbey and Newburgh Priory’, YAJ, 55 (1983), 67–72. 54 Mowbray Charters, no. 53. 55 EYC, I, no. 363; Cart. Sallay, I, no. 276; Mowbray Charters, no. 53; Cart. Riev., no. 216. 56 EYC, II, no. 784; V, no. 213.

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Page 228 on many monastic estates. The earliest appears to be that granted to Byland at Cam (1140); Meaux created one at Akenbergh shortly after its foundation in 1151, and there are others recorded in the twelfth century on the estates of Sallay, Jervaulx, and Kirkstall.57 Charters sometimes make reference to the grant of pasture for a specified number of cattle—usually fewer than thirty58—particularly in lowland areas such as the Hull valley, where Meaux obtained several grants of cow pasture,59 and in the forests of Wensleydale, Swaledale, and Nidderdale, which were developed as cattlefarming areas by the monks of Jervaulx and Fountains.60 Frequently mixed pastures were granted, such as that obtained by Rievaulx in Stainborough for four horses, eight oxen, five cows, and twenty pigs; in Stonecroft for 300 sheep and 200 other animals, and in Little Midgely, Emley, and Eagleshope (Teesdale) for cows, bulls, horses, and oxen.61 Horses were kept on the estates of Easby, Byland, Rievaulx, and Swine.62 It was, however, sheep farming that became the mainstay of the economy of many Yorkshire religious houses. Although the evidence is nowhere near as abundant for the twelfth as it is for later centuries, the charters of the period leave us in no doubt that sheep pasture formed a significant proportion of the lands conveyed to the monastic order, and that sheep farming quickly became an important feature of their economy. Sheep pastures are recorded in the charters of most houses, including the nunneries of Handale, Nun Appleton, Swine, Yedingham, and Rosedale. Numerous charters make a grant of sheep pasture or the right to share common pasture, in general terms, but from the middle of the twelfth century a minority specify the number of sheep which were to be kept at a certain location. The usual size of pasture granted was for 200 to 300 sheep, sometimes with a site or materials for a sheepfold. Fountains, for instance, received pasture for 200 sheep in West Morton with the site for a fold.63 Malton was granted pasture for 300 sheep in Ebberston, and the nuns of Rosedale the site of a fold, pasture for 200 sheep, a plough team and cattle, in Lockton.64 Some pasture lands were, however, more extensive, as Table I demonstrates. 57 EYC, XI, nos. 75, 115, 121; ibid., III, no. 1509; Mowbray Charters, no. 37. See also EYC, X, no. 90, for cattle on the estates of Meaux in Warter, and Chron. Melsa, I, 110, for a vaccary in ‘Akenbergh’. R. A. Donkin, ‘Cattle on the estates of medieval Cistercian monasteries in England and Wales’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 15 (1962–3), 31–53, and The Cistercians: Studies in the Geography of Medieval England and Wales, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Studies and Texts, 38 (Toronto, 1978), pp. 69–82, 185–6. 58 Donkin, The Cistercians, p. 73. 59 Ibid., pp. 73–4. 60 Ibid., p. 76. 61 EYC, III, no. 1725; Cart. Riev., nos. 91, 95, 115, 305. 62 Respectively, in Carperby (EYC, V, no. 213), Nidderdale (Mowbray Charters, no. 52), Shitlington (Cart. Riev., no. 95) and Spaldington (EYC, XII, no. 65). 63 EYC, VII, no. 168. 64 Ibid., I, nos. 389, 394.

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Page 229 Table 1 Sheep pastures for flocks over 400 Jervaulx Meaux Bayland Fountains Rievaulx

Rookwith (500)a Warter (160) and Myton (400)b Skirpenbeck (400)c Kettlewell (transit for 460)d Morton (400) Heslerton (1,000) Hunmanby (500) Welbury (600) Allerston (1,000) Folkton (1,000)e Litton (600) Marton (400)f Bessacar (1,000)g Carperby (500)h Kettlewell (1,000)i Seaton Ross (1,000)j Immingham (400) Spaldington (400)k

Sallay Kirkstall Easby Coverham Warter Nun Appleton Swine

a EYC., v, no. 326. g EYC, II, no. 819. b Chron. Melsa, 1, 101, 168. h Ibid., V, no. 213. c EYC, II, no. 838 i Ibid., V, no. 359. d Ibid., XI, no. 141. j Ibid., X, no., 72. e Cart. Riev., nos. 80, 85–6, 88, 90, 161, 167. k Ibid., I, no. 544; XII, no. 65. f Cart. Sallay, I, no. 63; II, no. 406. Conditions were sometimes attached to grants of pasture. Torphin de Allerston and his wife and son granted to Rievaulx pasture for 500 sheep in Givendale, inside and outside the vill, where their own flocks and those of their men pastured, and three acres to the east of the tillage ‘to enclose their bercary [sheepfold] with a hedge and ditch and to use them as they wish’ (‘ad berchariam suam, claudendas sepi et fossato et utendas sicut voluerint’).65 The donors also gave one acre for the provision of straw for the sheepfold, and reserved for themselves half the dung and manure from the sheepfold for all times. A benefactor of Fountains reserved for himself the manure from grazing land for 200 sheep. ‘Such petty bargaining’, as Donkin called it, marked the transference of pasture rights to the monks, but one should not underestimate the benefits which lay donors saw in the improved breeding and farming techniques of the monks.66 65 Ibid., I, no. 386 (Cart. Riev., no. 167). 66 Donkin, The Cistercians, p. 95.

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Page 230 The coming of the monastic order to Yorkshire, and its rapid and extensive territorial acquisitions had a lasting impact on the landscape. From the Tees in the north to the Sheaf in the south there was no area in which land did not pass to the monks, canons, and nuns. In some regions, where concentrated estates were accumulated by individual houses, the impact was more obvious. There was a close correlation between monastic estate development and those areas with either ‘waste’ or low recorded population in 1086; and although the degree of recovery between that date and the coming of the monastic orders is not recorded, there can be no doubt of the monastic contribution to recovery and economic expansion. Recent studies have tended to modify the ‘frontier thesis’ of Cistercian settlement, and played down their contribution to the opening up of lands.67 However, it is clear that in Yorkshire, although the White Monks were not alone in their efforts, they were responsible for the settlement of previously unexploited areas as well as the extension of others, and that their activities modified the landscape of the county. Manorial perquisites Although land was undoubtedly the most important source of wealth for the religious houses of medieval Yorkshire, there were others. Mills were among the most valuable of manorial assets because they brought with them a monopoly of milling, and multure, income from the tenants who were obliged to have their corn ground there. The grant of a mill to a religious house was, therefore, a double benefit, for if it was sited on or near monastic property it also brought free milling for the community’s own produce.68 The foundation endowment of Bridlington included the mills adjoining thirteen carucates of land in the vill, and that of Guisborough the mills of the vill with soke and multure; William de Roumare, in endowing Warter, granted the site of all the mills on his lands, and quittance from multure; as founder of Embsay, Cecily de Rumilly provided several mills for the canons. Nostell took possession of the mills of Saxton, Norton, Bramham, Shafton, Harlington, and ‘Culceneia’.69 Grantors in particular took care to safeguard the rights of the recipients, as Cecily de Rumilly did when she conveyed to the canons of 67 See, for example, Alfonso, ‘Cistercians and feudalism’. 68 For a useful discussion of medieval mills, both general and relating to one particular region, see M. L. Faull and S. A. Moorhouse (ed.), West Yorkshire: An Archaeological Survey to A.D. 1500, 4 vols. (Wakefield, 1981), III, 702–23. 69 EYC, II, no. 1135; X, no. 66 (see also no. 72, and XI, no. 166); VI, no. 13; VII, no. 4 (see also no. II, and III, no. 1861); II, no. 1018, III, nos. 1529, 1533, 1561; VIII, nos. 100–101; BL MS Cotton Vespasian E XIX, fo. 53v.

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Page 231 Embsay the mill of Silsden (Kildwick) in order to ensure that the canons derived full profit from the grant.70 From this discussion it will be clear that the regular canons in particular benefited from the grant of mills. They are not uncommon in the endowments of Yorkshire Benedictine houses, which acquired them both in areas where they controlled extensive property and elsewhere; Selby Abbey held the mill of Shitlington from the middle of the twelfth century even though it had no other property in the vill. It was because mills brought with them income derived from the work of others that the Cistercians came to ban their possession except where they were solely for the use of the monastic community. That as early as 1157 the ban had to be renewed indicates a concern about the consequences of accepting such grants, and some historians have seen the seeds of decline as lying in the incorporation of houses of other orders, notably Savigny, which were allowed to keep their mills.71 Mills for their own use could be found in the precinct of abbey and grange, and the grant of permission to erect a mill, as Fountains received at Kirkheaton, adjoining its grange at Bradley, or Rievaulx at Blacker, near its proposed grange at Shitlington, are cases in point.72 The possession of mills further away from Cistercian estates—like that of Hunslet, granted to Sallay—suggests a wider exploitation of milling rights,73 but generally the Yorkshire evidence does not show any but the most minor infringements. Charters of the period tend not to distinguish different types of mill, corn, fulling, and tanning, and it is not therefore certain how frequently Cistercian possession of a mill denotes cloth production at abbey or grange, as opposed to the milling of corn. Certainly the Cistercian houses of Stanley and Newminster possessed fulling mills by the late twelfth century. Natural resources As fish was an important constituent of the monastic diet, and salt necessary for preserving, the grant of fisheries and salt pans was significant, and was received by a wide range of houses. Several fisheries and sites for fish weirs were obtained along the river Tees by Guisborough, 70 EYC, VII, no. 4; see also, for instance, Cart. Guis., I, no. 1; EYC, XII, no. 83 (protection of a grant to the nuns of Swine). Faull and Moorhouse (West Yorkshire, III, 703) and Richard Holt (The Mills of Medieval England (Oxford, 1988), p. 38) point out that Cecily’s charter contains one of the earliest recorded references to the illegal use of handmills. 71 Canivez, Statuta, I, 14–15 (no. 9), 64 (no. 36), 67 (no. 59). For this assessment of the impact of the merger with Savigny, see Hill, English Cistercian Monasteries, pp. 80–115. 72 EYC, III, nos. 1706, 1709, 1727–8. 73 Cart. Sallay, II, no. 505. For instances of other Cistercian houses acquiring mills see Hill, English Cistercian Monasteries, p. 73.

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Page 232 which also had a salt pan at Coatham, by Rievaulx (Newsham, Stainsby, and Normanby), and by Byland (Gaterigg, Linthorpe, and Coatham).74 Drax Priory was provided with a draft of nets along the river Ouse, and from William de Stuteville the monks of Fountains received a fishery on the Ure and Ouse from Boroughbridge to the city walls of York, with one fisherman and his servants, two boats, a seine, and a net; a sole restriction was that the monks were not to construct a fishgarth. Fountains also held a fishery on the Swale near Topcliffe, one at Malham Tarn and half on the Wiske.75 Nostell and Pontefract both had fisheries at Beal on the river Aire, and Selby on the Trent at Crasgarth (Lincs.) and on the Ouse at Whitgift and Selby. Fisheries on the Derwent were obtained by Drax, Fountains, and Warter.76 St Mary’s, York, secured fisheries at Haines (on the river Don), Bradmere and Wroot—and in Bradmere three good pike and twelve bream on the feast of the Assumption of St Mary—as well as a monopoly of fishing on Hornsea Mere. Meaux Abbey had extensive fisheries on the rivers Hull and Humber.77 The grant of materials—wood, stone, and ore—aided the monastic order in Yorkshire not only in the economic exploitation of their estates but also in the construction of the buildings of abbey, grange, sheepfold, and barn. Malton and Yedingham, for example, received yearly cart loads of wood, the first for the kitchen and the second for the making of ploughs.78 Easby and Sallay received quarries to aid in building work; and Sallay also obtained timber from the wood of Billington.79 Grants of turbaries brought essential fuel.80 Sometimes a number of assets were combined: Robert III de Stuteville granted to the monks of Meaux the site of a mill on the river Hull in Cottingham, a croft and a fishery there, a wooden castle for the construction of the bakehouse and stables, and other offices of the monastery, and branches from the woods of Cottingham for the repair of carts.81 Three Cistercian houses were instrumental in the larger scale development of industrial sites in the county. The origins of one of these lay in the grants made by Adam son of Peter to Rievaulx Abbey.82 Adam granted all the minerals and dead wood for smelting on his land in the vills of Halton, Shipley, Kirkheaton, and Chellow, with exclusive mining 74 Cart. Guis., II, nos. 781, 1117; Cart. Riev., nos. 114, 116, 315; EYC, II, no. 703. See also J. McDonnell, Inland Fisheries in Medieval Yorkshire 1066–1300, Borthwick Paper, 60 (York, 1981). 75 EYC, VI, no. 13; I, no. 517; V, no. 285; XI, nos. 23, 38–9. 76 Ibid., XI, nos. 164, 171; XII, no. 98. 77 Ibid., III, nos. 1299, 1302; VIII, no. 30; I, no. 354; Chron. Melsa, I, 100. 78 Mowbray Charters, no. 185; EYC, I, no. 392. 79 Ibid., V, nos. 149–54; Cart. Sallay, I, no. 255. 80 See, for example, EYC, VI, no. 122 (Nostell), and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 7, fo. 5 (Kirkham). 81 Chron. Melsa, I, 99; EYC, IX, no. 9. 82 See above, pp. 211–12.

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Page 233 rights. At a second location, Shitlington, he granted fifteen acres to build forges in which to make iron and necessary utensils; and all the minerals in Flockton and Shitlington, and all the dead wood for use in their forges. He protected the interests of the monks by granting ‘ut nullus alius favercam habeat ad ferrum faciendum in his predictis locis, nec mineriam nec carbonem asportet extra territoriam predictarum villarum’ (‘that no other shall have a forge in the aforesaid places for the making of iron, nor transport minerals nor charcoal out of the territory of the said vills’). Adam completed his endowments to Rievaulx by granting a forge, with all the minerals of the vill and the forests.83 Rievaulx’s second iron-working site, at Faweather (Bingley), also originated in grants of mineral rights from Adam.84 Grants which were intended to lead to the mining activities of a second Cistercian house, Byland, were concentrated in two areas, Kirkby Malzeard and Denby. Roger de Mowbray granted materials and minerals and a tithe of lead in Kirkby Malzeard; William son of Osbert de Denby granted iron ore in Clover Leys (formerly Claverlay, Denby) and they received as well a furnace and fuel in Emley.85 Byland developed two granges which concentrated on iron working; these were at Bentley and Denby, and a right of access linked the two sites. Finally, Fountains Abbey developed an important industrial estate in Bradley (Huddersfield/Kirkheaton) from an early grant of a forge by Ralph son of Nicholas, which was augmented when Thomas, brother of Adam son of Peter, granted all the dead wood belonging to five bovates in Kirkheaton, and iron ore wherever it could be found ‘excepta terra que culta fuerit postquam Henricus rex Anglie… primo coronatus fuit’ (‘except for the land which was brought into cultivation after Henry, king of England, was first crowned’). The grant included charcoal for the forges.86 Further exploitation is indicated by Adam de Crosland’s grant of millstones from his land in Crosland for use in the abbey mills at Bradley, reserving for himself and his heirs the remainder of the quarry; he further allowed the monks to have wood for making the millstones and licence to take them over his land, provided that they did not transverse corn and meadow.87 There are other instances of grants of mineral rights which were apparently not taken up. There is, for example, no indication that the monks of Fountains exploited Roger de Mowbray’s grant of mineral 83 Cart. Riev., nos. 91, 94–5, 100. 84 See above, p. 212. 85 Mowbray Charters, no. 48; EYC, III, no. 1808. 86 Ibid., III, nos. 1692, 1762; C. T. Clay, ‘Bradley: a grange of Fountains’, YAJ, 29 (1929), 97–106; G. Coppack, Fountains Abbey (London, 1993), pp. 84–5. 87 EYC, VIII, no. 137. For the granges associated with these industrial sites see below, pp. 263–4.

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Page 234 rights in Nidderdale, though there are references to their forge at Aldburgh; Jervaulx received from Earl Alan of Richmond the right to mine any iron ore they found on his land; and Sallay had permission to take all the iron ore and dead wood for charcoal in Salesbury (Lancashire).88 In none of these cases did major industrial activity develop: not all the economic opportunities offered by benefactors were exploited. Urban property Urban property provided both a base for servants and representatives of monasteries engaged in trade, and money rent. It is not surprising that it was the houses located in or just outside towns, notably St Mary’s, York, which developed as the major urban landlords, but they were not alone. A useful starting point is an inquest of around 1230 into the York property of religious houses.89 This indicates that over thirty monasteries and other religious institutions had come into possession of 163 properties within the city. St Mary’s and Holy Trinity were recorded with fifteen each, St Andrew’s with twelve, and the nuns of St Clement’s with seven. Tenements had also been acquired by Selby, Guisborough, Nostell, Kirkham, Bolton, Bridlington, Fountains, Rievaulx, and Nun Monkton. The survey, however, clearly underrecords the extent of monastic ownership of York property. St Mary’s from an early date had established itself as the dominant landlord in Bootham and Gillygate, in the suburbs, and in the twelfth century acquired property all over the city and notably in Ousegate, Walmgate, Marygate, Coney Street, Fossgate, Bretgate, St Saviourgate, Hungate, Spurriergate, Blake Street, Micklegate, and Fishergate.90 There is no mention in the survey of the possessions of Whitby, which at an early date acquired property in Fishergate, Walmgate, Blake Street, and near the Minster, administered from the abbey cell in the church of All Saints, Fishergate. Bolton had property in Blake Street and St Andrewgate, Nostell in Aldwark and Clementhorpe, and Malton in Skeldergate. Among the Cistercians—whose statutes at first forbade, and then attempted to limit, the acquisition of town property91—the tenement of the monks of Fountains in Coney Street is recorded, but not those in Stonegate and Nessgate, nor is the property of Rievaulx in Layerthorpe, of Byland in Coney Street, of Kirkstall outside Micklegate, nor of Meaux.92 88 Mowbray Charters, nos. 103–4, 115, 135; Mon. Ang., V, 569, no. III; Cart. Sallay, I, no. 285. 89 PRO E/135/25/1; for a summary see VCH, City of York, p. 49. 90 See Manchester, John Rylands Library Latin MSS 220–221, fos. 96v–98, 100–103, 106–107v; EYC, I, passim. 91 See below, p. 253. 92 For Fountains’s York property see BL MS Add. 40009, pp. 201–82, calendared in Cart. Fount., I, 267–91. Before 1176 the monks had obtained property on the river Ouse in the city (pp. 224–6). See also Cart. Riev., no. 368 (p. 262); EYC, I, no. 245; Kirkstall Coucher, no. 204.

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Page 235 By the early thirteenth century the abbot of Easby had property in Bootham, which was leased out, the abbot however reserving for himself a place to stay whenever he was in York;93 and the abbot of Sallay made similar provisions for his properties in North Street and Micklegate.94 York was clearly the main urban centre for the Yorkshire monastic houses, but they obtained property in other towns, most notably Beverley, an important regional and overseas trading centre, where Rievaulx and Meaux secured tenements.95 St Mary’s, Fountains, Sallay, and Meaux all obtained property in the Lincolnshire market and trading town of Boston;96 and Fountains, Malton, and Bridlington were landlords in the major port of Scarborough.97 By 1199 Fountains also had property in Yarm, Hartlepool, and Grimsby. Churches and spiritualia It has been demonstrated in earlier chapters that parish churches and associated revenues were a staple, indeed an outstanding, feature, of monastic endowment in the late eleventh and throughout the twelfth century. It is not intended here to repeat the details of the churches granted to individual houses, though it is perhaps worth recalling the numbers in which they came into the hands of the monastic order.98 Among the Benedictines, Whitby Abbey received grants of twenty-seven churches and chapels in the period up to around 1215. Holy Trinity received twelve parish churches and a moiety of a thirteenth, and the alien cell of Birstall was at the centre of fifteen East Riding churches conveyed to the abbey of Aumale. St Mary’s, York, received nine churches by 1093, and by 1157 had acquired in the region of thirtyfour more.99 The Augustinian canons were major recipients of such grants.100 Subsequent benefactors of the Black Monks and the regular canons added church after church, until a significant number had been placed in the hands of the religious orders. As we have seen, there are instances which indicate that a parish church formed the basis of the female community, and these churches continued to serve both the monastic and the wider community. Under the influence of churchmen who sought to wrest the patronage of parish churches from lay 93 BL MS Egerton 2827, fo. 135. 94 Cart. Sallay, II, nos. 562–3. 95 Cart. Riev., nos. 135, 368 (p. 262); Chron. Melsa, I, 228–9. 96 For Fountains see Cart. Fount., I, 114–21, abstracts of BL MS Cotton Tiberius C XII, fos. 119v and 230–9. 97 EYC, I, nos. 366, 368–9. 98 For a full discussion of this problem see Janet E. Burton, ‘Monasteries and parish churches in eleventh- and twelfthcentury Yorkshire’, Northern History, 23 (1987), 39–50. 99 Comparing EYC, I, no. 350 (confirmation of William II), and no. 354 (confirmation of Henry II). 100 See above, pp. 69–97.

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Page 236 hands, founders and patrons conveyed such rights to the monastic order.101 By the twelfth century, however, a number of caveats had been added to the wholesale transfer of churches to the monastic and religious orders; from within the monastic body members of reformed groups resisted such possession, their argument being that ecclesiastical revenues should be reserved for the support of those who served altars. A fundamental feature of the Cistercian economy was their rejection of churches and revenue derived from ecclesiastical sources.102 In this they were followed by the Premonstratensians, and the orders of La Grande Chartreuse, Grandmont, and Fontevrault. When the order of Savigny joined that of Cîteaux in 1147 its houses were allowed to retain the churches they held, although some individuals, perhaps under Cistercian influence, had already refused churches: Abbot Roger of Byland declined to accept the ius patronatus of Thirsk, Hovingham, and Kirkby Malzeard at about the time of the merger because he was ‘of scrupulous conscience concerning the cure of souls’ (‘homo scrupulosae conscientiae pro cura animarum’).103 The Gilbertines, an order which had a canonical element, allowed the possession of churches, the only restriction being that they should not be farmed to others without the consent of the order.104 For Benedictine and Augustinian houses, however, churches could be a significant source of revenue.105 However, not all grants of churches were either immediate or effective. Having granted a church, the donor might expect to retain rights during his lifetime: Samson d’Aubigny granted to his cousin’s foundation of Newburgh seven churches (c. 1145) but stipulated that he was to hold the churches for as long as he lived in laicali habitu, and after his entry into the religious life, or his death, his son, Roger, was to hold the four churches in the Isle of Axholme and a fifth, rendering an annual payment to the prior.106 Other patrons manipulated grants to their own advantage: among the initial endowments of Guisborough was the church of Skelton, but the founder’s grandson, Adam II de Brus, fell into dispute with 101 For discussion of this phenomenon, see, for instance, G. Constable, ‘Monastic possession of churches and ‘‘spiritualia” in the age of reform’, Il Monachismo e la Riforma Ecclesiastica (1049–1122), Miscellanea del Centro di Studi Medioevali, 6 (Milan, 1971), pp. 304–31; Morris, Papal Monarchy, pp. 60–2; B. R. Kemp, ‘Monastic possession of churches in England in the twelfth century’, JEH, 31 (1980), 133–60. For the development of Yorkshire parishes see the ongoing series of Fasti parochiales, published by the Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series. Symptomatic of the attitude towards lay possession of churches was the statement of Roger de Flammaville, that he was granting the church of Norton to the Gilbertines of Malton quantum fas est laici persone, as far as it was within the power of a lay person to do so: BL MS Cotton Claudius D XI, fo. 55. 102 Canivez, Statuta, I, 14–15 (no. 9). 103 Mon. Ang., V, 351. 104 Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, p. 356. Golding’s lengthy discussion of the Gilbertines and their churches (pp. 356–91) provides a useful comparison for the present chapter. 105 For the Augustinians and their churches, see Robinson, Geography of Augustinian Settlement, I, 172–272, II, 404– 78. 106 Mowbray Charters, no. 196.

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Page 237 the canons when he forced them to pay a pension to his chaplain, Adam, until the church should fall vacant and they could appoint him to the living.107 Later patrons might dispute possession of churches: the Ros family, for instance, questioned certain rights which Kirkham had in Kirkham itself, Helmsley, Kirbygrindalythe, and Garton.108 Often the rights of the incumbent had to be protected, occasioning another delay before possession could be effective: Ivo de Karkeni, granting Hessle church to Guisborough, secured the tenure of his nephew, John, rector of the church.109 The insecurity of monastic possession can be demonstrated with reference to a number of the churches of two Paynel foundations, Drax and Holy Trinity, both of which experienced difficulty retaining their churches for two main reasons: the subsequent grant to another religious house, and encroachment by monasteries with landed interests in a parish. Among the endowments of Holy Trinity was the church of Thurnscoe; however, the interests of the Vavasour family in the vill led them to make a second grant of the church, to the Cistercian monks of Sallay. Moreover, extensive land acquisitions in the region led to a third claim, by the monks of Roche, and a three-way tussle developed, which was eventually won by Sallay.110 Adel was another church granted to Holy Trinity, but it was challenged for possession by Kirkstall, which had estates in the vill.111 When William Paynel founded Drax he granted two churches—Irnham and Roxby—which his father had previously granted to Holy Trinity. Drax itself, however, experienced difficulty in retaining Roxby, which was claimed by Roche, and Irnham was disputed by Bardney Abbey; eventually Drax was successful in its claims.112 The canons temporarily lost another of their churches, Swinstead, which Robert de Gant granted ‘in ignorance’ to Guy the clerk at the request of King Stephen’s son, Eustace.113 Delays in taking possession of a church, changes in inclination on the part of patrons, and the desire of monasteries with landed interests in a parish to secure those interests by the possession of the church, even at the expense of others, all meant that transfers could be far from smooth. Unless a charter stated that the house was to take a pension only, the 107 EYC, II, nos. 660, 675. 108 PUE, III, no. 294. 109 EYC, IX, no. 101; see also no. 102. 110 EYC, XI, no. 115 and VI, 228–9. For the possible reason for Roche’s attempts to secure the church, see below, pp. 266–7. 111 EYC, VI, no. 7; Kirkstall itself failed to retain Marton church, which was lost to Bolton Priory (Fasti parochiales, vol. IV, ed. N. K. M. Gurney and C. T. Clay, YASRS 133 (1971), 94–5). 112 EYC, VI, no. 75; Curia Regis Rolls, I, 431. 113 EYC, VI, no. 80; PUE, III, no. 320. For another example see Mowbray Charters, nos. 203, 325; YMF, I, 81–2, II, 51–6.

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Page 238 grant of the church probably conveyed at minimum the advowson, the right to present the incumbent. Sometimes the wording was specific: Roger de Mowbray confirmed Newburgh in possession of the ius patronatus of Brafferton; Easby was granted quicquit juris et patronatus Ismania, daughter of the founder, had in the church of Great Langton, and similar phrases appear in the charter conveying to the canons the church of Stanwick St John.114 After the destruction of Barnoldswick church the monks of Kirkstall were granted the right to present to its two dependent chapels, which were raised to the status of parish churches.115 Following a dispute about Adwick on Dearne church a papal enquiry ordered the officials of the archbishop of York to receive the parsons presented to them by the canons of Nostell.116 A further step allowed a religious house to appropriate a church and thus enjoy all its revenue. Evidence of this derives generally not from the charters of grantors, although it is sometimes implicit in them that the churches were to be in proprios usus of the monastery. The most explicit statement, that of the ‘foundation charter’ of Guisborough, namely that Robert de Brus had granted eight churches ‘ut decedentibus clericis qui quasdam de praedictis ecclesiis tenent, habeant eas canonici praefati ad sustentationem suam’ (‘so that, when the clerks who hold any of the said churches are dead, the said canons might hold the churches for their own maintenance’), is in itself one of the suspicious features of the charter.117 Generally evidence for appropriation derives from papal or archiepiscopal licence to convert the church ad proprios usus. The implications were both financial and pastoral: the monastery would benefit from the revenues of the church and in return would have to undertake to see that the cure of souls was provided for. However, the reason given for licence to appropriate was generally, though not always, financial: the poverty of the house, either real or fictional. The earliest intention to appropriate may belong to the office of Archbishop Thomas II (1109–14), although the identity of the archbishop is uncertain and may be Thurstan (1114–40). This is the permission to Holy Trinity Priory to appropriate the churches of Leeds, Adel, Barton-le-Street, and Hooton Pagnell.118 Before 1140 Thurstan approved the appropriations of Skipton with its dependent chapel of Carleton, and Kildwick (Bolton), and Bessingby (Bridlington), in the case of Kildwick the reason being the poverty (inopia) of the canons.119 When Archbishop Roger licensed Nostell to appropriate 114 Mowbray Charters, no. 209; EYC, V, nos. 256–9, 269. 115 See above, p. 119.; the monks presented to Bracewell in 1230: Reg. Gray, p. 33. 116 EYC, III, no. 1682. Nostell also presented to Weaverthorpe (ibid., I, no. 29). 117 Cart. Guis., I, nos. 1–2. 118 EEA, V, no. 29; EYC, VI, no. 11; see below, p. 241. 119 EEA, V, no. 33; EYC, VI, no. 8.

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Page 239 Featherstone, Batley, Felkirk, and Warmfield, it was ‘ad sustentationem suam et hospitalitatem augmentandam… ita ut liceat eis fructus et omnes obventiones et possessiones earundem ecclesiarum cum vacaverint in proprios usus convertere’ (‘to the increase of their maintenance and hospitality… that they shall be allowed when the churches become vacant to convert to their own use all the fruits and offerings and possessions of the same churches’).120 Licences to appropriate were granted to Easby, with respect to the churches of Stanwick and Great Langton;121 Byland (Old Byland);122 Whitby (Whitby, Hackness, Great Ayton, Ingleby Greenhow);123 Monk Bretton (Royston);124 Drax (Drax, Bingley and Foston);125 and Guisborough (Skelton in Cleveland).126 It is also possible that Gainford church was intended to be appropriated by St Mary’s, York.127 The Cistercians appear to have appropriated only two churches before 1215: Byland (Byland Abbey) and Barnoldswick (Kirkstall).128 The order as a whole received from King Richard I the church of Scarborough, the revenue of which was to help defray the costs of attendance at the General Chapter.129 These are all instances in which the archbishops of York authorized the appropriation of a particular church or churches. The appropriation of a church was not, however, merely a financial matter, for it involved the monastery in the provision of spiritual care, either through one of its own number, who was a priest, or through the appointment of a stipendiary chaplain. From the latter part of the twelfth century papal authorization for the appropriation of any church, provided that certain conditions be met, became increasingly common. Pope Lucius III, in confirming four churches to Warter, allowed the canons to place in any of the churches, when they became vacant, four, or at the very least three of their number, ‘quorum unus dyocesano presentetur episcopo ut ei curam animarum committat ita quidem quod ei de spiritualibus vobis autem de temporalibus debeat respondere’ (‘of whom one shall be presented to the diocesan bishop so that he may commit to him the cure of souls, so that he ought to respond to him concerning the spiritual side of things and to 120 EYC, III, no. 1481. 121 Ibid., V, nos. 261, 270. 122 Ibid., III, no. 1834. 123 Ibid., II, no. 881. 124 The Letters of Pope Innocent III concerning England and Wales: A Calendar with an Appendix of Texts, ed. C. R. and M. G. Cheney (Oxford, 1967) pp. 219–20 (app. no. 268). 125 EYC, VI, nos. 23, 70; Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Top. Yorkshire C 72, fo. 44r. 126 EYC, II no. 675. 127 G. V. Scammell, ‘Four early charters relating to York’, YAJ, 39 (1958), 86–90. 128 EYC, III, no. 1834; EYC, I, no. 622; EEA, V, no. 121. The monks of Byland were granted the church of Rillington, but this was disputed and it was not until 1344 that the whole church was appropriated (Fasti parochiales, V, 31–6). Tadcaster was appropriated to Sallay in 1241 (EYC, XI, Cart. Sallay, II, nos. 612, 615). 129 EYC, I, no. 365.

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Page 240 you (the canons) concerning temporal affairs’).130 In 1190 Celestine III issued a similar bull to Bridlington, allowing the canons to place two or more in nineteen of the churches it had been granted and a moiety of a twentieth. That the wholesale appropriation of churches by the regular canons could be envisaged is indicated by a letter of Pope Alexander III to Archbishop Roger de Pont L’Evêque, stating that regular canons within the diocese were to be allowed to serve any of the churches and chapels granted to them provided at least three canons, if not four, were placed in each church.131 These papal provisions regarding appropriations by the regular canons amount to blanket permission to transfer parochial revenues into their hands, and at the same time serve the spiritual needs of the diocese. The regulations concerning the number of canons to be placed in each church reflect the concerns of the authorities, expressed at the Third Lateran Council of 1179, that monks and canons were not to serve churches without companions (‘non singuli… ad quascumque parochiales ponuntur ecclesias sed in majori conventu aut cum aliquibus fratribus maneant’: ‘they shall not be placed individually in parishes, but shall remain in full convent or with other brethren’): in other words, they were to serve churches which were close enough to the monastery not to require a monk or canon to be resident, or they were to be staffed by a group of brethren. Clearly practical issues would dictate whether or not a monastery could avail itself of licence to appropriate. Many of the churches lay at a distance which would not have allowed a monk or canon to visit the church and return in one day. Moreover, the numbers in priories would not have permitted the placing of three canons in each church. Licence to appropriate was not, therefore, automatically followed by the act itself. Opinions of historians have varied as to how far in the twelfth century canons and monks did serve churches in their care—the absence of archiepiscopal registers makes any systematic investigation impossible. For J. C. Dickinson, English regular canons probably served fewer of their churches than did those of the better-staffed continental houses.132 For Hamilton Thompson it was likely that Bolton, in common with other Augustinian houses, served the churches in the vicinity of the priory.133 Nicholl suggested that the cell system developed by Nostell was intended to facilitate the service of parish churches by the canons them130 Ibid., X, no. 73. 131 PUE, II, no. 169. 132 Dickinson, Austin Canons, p. 240; see also his remarks on p. 232. For a general discussion of the problem see M. Chibnall, ‘Monks and pastoral work: a problem in Anglo-Norman history’, JEH, 18 (1967), 165–72. 133 Thompson, Bolton Priory, p. 34.

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Page 241 selves.134 The problem does not admit of easy resolution; perhaps the best we can say is that there was no slowing down in the rate of appropriations, and the blanket permissions received by the canons suggest no waning of enthusiasm by the popes. A solution to the problem of numerical weakness which may have prevented monasteries from enjoying the full benefits of appropriation was the ordination of a vicarage, with the monastery assuming the position of corporate rector and paying a proportion of the revenue to a vicar. The earliest Yorkshire evidence for licence to ordain vicarages in Holy Trinity’s churches of Leeds, Adel, Barton-le-Street, and Hooton Pagnell derives from a charter issued either by Thomas II (1109–14) or Thurstan (1114–40)—if the former then this would provide an unusually early example of the ordination of a vicarage.135 By 1205 a vicarage had been instituted in the church of Leeds, whose vicar received one-third of the revenue. In general the Yorkshire houses soon seemed to have conformed to the growing expectation that this share, onethird, of the revenue, would be that allotted to the vicar. This is also recorded at Ecclesfield, appropriated to St Wandrille by 1188, and at Wath near Ripon, appropriated by Mont St Michel,136 although on occasion the archbishop allowing the proceeding merely stipulated that sufficient provision should be made for the vicar.137 The recorded instances of the intention to create vicarages in Yorkshire churches appropriated to monastic houses are not numerous. However, the tendency towards standardization of phraseology in charters suggests not, as Hartridge once suggested, that ‘churches were served… by vicars under terms made locally without any reference to a general system’138 but that such a system with the practice of assigning one-third of the revenue to the vicarage had emerged and been accepted. Cheney demonstrated that before 1215 roughly 200 to 300 vicarages had been established in England.139 The Yorkshire evidence suggests that by 1215 the way was 134 Nicholl, Thurstan, pp. 135–6. A letter of Prior Ethelwold as bishop of Carlisle was addressed to ‘omnibus fratribus sancti Oswaldi qui extra domum in cellulis habitant’ (EYC, III, no. 1473). 135 See EEA, V, no. 29, and the references there cited. See also Roger de Pont L’Evêque’s institution of Paulinus de Ledes as vicar on the presentation of the prior and convent (EYC, VI, nos. 82, 84–5). 136 CDF, I, 61, no. 178; EYC, III, no. 1278; V, no. 316. 137 For example, Geoffrey de Lucy and William de Chimeli, successive archdeacons of Cleveland, allowed Easby to institute vicarages in the churches of Stanwick St John and Great Langton (EYC, V, nos. 261, 270). Archdeacon Honorius later stated that he had set aside 100s from Great Langton for the rectory (the canons) and the remainder for the vicar (BL MS Egerton 2827, fo. 295). 138 R. A. R. Hartridge, A History of Vicarages in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1930, repr., 1968), p. 29. 139 C. R. Cheney, From Becket to Langton: English Church Government 1170–1213 (Manchester, 1956), pp. 131–6. For instances of ordination of vicarages in the diocese of Chichester see The Acta of the Bishops of Chichester, ed. H. Mayr-Harting, Canterbury and York Soc., 56 (1964), pp. 57–60. See also the ongoing volumes in EEA.

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Page 242 already being paved for the great number of vicarages ordained during the period of office of Walter de Gray (1215– 55).140 There was, naturally, room for abuse in the creation of vicarages; monasteries as corporate rectors might fail to appoint a vicar, or might make inadequate provision for him.141 More serious, however, was the separation of the tithes and other revenues from the parish church.142 Until the reform movement of the eleventh century monasteries were able, with spasmodic opposition from bishops, to obtain tithes, until ‘by the middle of the eleventh century tithes were an established part of monastic revenue’.143 As with the recovery of the advowson of parish churches, the late eleventh century onwards witnessed an attempt by the ecclesiastical authorities to restore tithes to parish churches. The arguments were conducted on a theoretical level—how far were monks to be regarded as clerics—and on the practical level of the problems raised for the parish priest by the diminution of his revenue. A stark example is provided by St Mary’s Abbey, York, which by 1157 had come into possession of the tithes of thirty parishes in which they had no other rights.144 In such cases agreements could be reached with the patron of the church, either directly or through an intermediary. One such agreement was made concerning the church of Kirklevington, held by Guisborough. Celestine III delegated the abbots of Kirkstall and Swainby and the prior of Malton to inquire into the tithes of Kirklevington, which had been appropriated by two clerks on behalf of St Mary’s Abbey, York. The compromise which they proposed involved the York abbey retaining the tithes but compensating the canons with the tithes of one of their own churches, Hessle, in return for a yearly payment of one pound of cumin.145 This chapter has demonstrated that the period covered by this book was one in which financial assets of all kinds—lands, natural resources, manorial rights, and spiritualia—were conveyed to the religious orders in 140 His register provides evidence of the creation of vicarages in, for example, churches appropriated by Yedingham (Yedingham), Nostell (Rothwell, Warmfield, Felkirk, Tickhill, Batley, South Kirkby), Guisborough (Hessle, Stainton), Bridlington (Scalby), Cîteaux (Scarborough), Monk Bretton (Royston). 141 For a discussion of complaints of this nature, with specific reference to the diocese of Worcester, see Cheney, Becket to Langton, p. 135. 142 On a second cause for concern, the exemption which the Cistercians and the Military Orders had acquired from the payment of tithes on lands which they worked themselves, and which, after 1215, was restricted to novalia, see below, pp. 264–5. 143 Constable, ‘Monastic possession of churches’, 312, and Monastic Tithes from their Origins to the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1964). 144 EYC, I, no. 354. 145 BL Stowe charter 405; cartulary copy in Cart. Guis., II, no. 673. For a similar restitution see EYC, II, no. 729.

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Page 243 great numbers. It has shown, as well, that the first of the distinctive ‘twin planks’ of the Cistercian economy, that is, a land-based economy, which rejected spiritualia and temporalia which involved the labour of others, was, by and large, maintained; its abbeys appear to have acquired few mills and churches before 1215. The evidence from the Yorkshire houses therefore indicates that the Cistercians aimed for a land-based economy, with where possible a balance between arable and pasture, which would clearly depend on the nature of the terrain of the abbey itself and the grange estates. How far those distinctive qualities were carried through in the area of financial exploitation is the subject of the following chapter. In terms of the impact on the landscape, a fuller assessment must await a discussion of the running of monastic estates; however, it can be suggested that although houses of all orders appear to have participated in the colonization of marginal and underexploited areas and in the extension of arable and the area under the plough, it is rightly with Cistercian estates that this activity is most closely associated.

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Page 244 Chapter 9 FINANCING THE MONASTERY: THE MANAGEMENT OF ECONOMIC RESOURCES To explore how the various economic assets described in the previous chapter were administered in order to secure a financial basis on which monasteries could survive is not easy given the nature of the source material, and in particular the absence of account rolls, before 1215. However, this chapter aims, on the basis of charter and narrative sources, to construct a picture of the exploitation of monastic estates. In the case of the three independent Black Monk houses, this investigation is aided by the survival of vacancy accounts in the Pipe Rolls from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. As in the previous chapter the major debating point must be: was there any distinction between the methods used by different houses and groups or orders, and if so, was the divergence due to ideological or geographical factors? LORDS OF THE MANOR Despite the debate about the chronology of the Cistercian documents that outline the thinking of the order on economic matters, it is clear that by the time the expansion of the order was under way in England, the White Monks were developing an economy based on direct cultivation of lands using the labour of conversi. This, by implication, ruled out the possession of manors and manorial rights, even if the rejection articulated in the ‘1134’ capitula was not indeed framed until nearly two decades later. Manorial exploitation was the antithesis of what came to be seen as classic Cistercian practice. The grant of manors was common, however, among the houses of Black Monks, and when the abbot accepted such a grant he became lord of the manor, entitled to the profits of the demesne land, rights over customary tenants, rents and labour services, and the perquisites of lordship, including profits of the manorial court. In practical terms there was little difference between manors under lay control and those under monastic control.

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Page 245 There is evidence to suggest that the Yorkshire Benedictines came into possession of manors and vills in considerable numbers; that is, they enjoyed both land and lordship. Selby came early into the control of Selby itself, Hambleton, and Stanford on Avon (Northants.).1 St Mary’s held those of Appleton Wiske, Hornsea, Myton on Swale, and Hutton-leHole, and moieties of Skirpenbeck and Bugthorpe;2 and Whitby those of Stainsacre, Newholm, Stakesby, and Whitby.3 Among the Augustinians a similar pattern emerges. Kirkham and Bolton, for instance, acquired the manors in which they were located, as well as Whitwell and Westow (Kirkham), and Embsay and Kildwick (Bolton). Bridlington’s endowments included the manors and vills of Bessingby and Speeton, and, although it is not termed a manor, the extent of Robert de Brus’s endowment in Guisborough makes it likely that this, too, comprised manorial rights.4 The lack of specification in twelfth- and early-thirteenth-century charters, and the absence of account rolls, makes any investigation of how these manorial estates were administered—by whom, whether labour services were commuted to money payments, and so on—fraught with uncertainties. Charters yield the names of a few monastic officials— Abraham, marshal and subsequently sergeant of the abbot of St Mary’s, and Daniel, steward (dapifer) of the abbot,5 Walter de Boynton, steward (senescallus) of the abbey,6 Thomas, steward of Pontefract,7 and Eustace, steward (dapifer) of Guisborough, who was brother of two priors, Cuthbert and Ralph8—but the nature of their office and their duties are not specified. At Whitby in the late 1170s officials (ministri) of the abbey took the fealty of the provost of one of the abbey tenants concerning rights of pannage.9 In some cases it is likely that the monastic cell was the physical centre of manorial administration on the lines of the system developed by Cluny. Under this system a parish church acquired by a monastery became the centre of a bloc of estates, and choir monks were placed there to act as ‘local agents’.10 Certainly the outlying church of Hackness, appropriated 1 EYC, III, no. 1484; Selby Coucher, II, no. 1157; RRAN, I, no. 178 (possibly spurious). 2 EYC, I, no. 354; II, nos. 648, 792; III, no. 1299; IX, no. 6. 3 Ibid., XI, no. 1. 4 Ibid., II, nos. 1135, 1140; VII, nos. 17–18, Cart. Riev., no. 216. 5 EYC, II, nos. 793, 1050, 1056; see also I, nos. 265, 461, 540. 6 Ibid., I–III, passim. In the thirteenth century Sir John de Octon, sheriff of York, was steward of the abbey. 7 He regularly attested Pontefract charters, described as steward, steward of the monks, or provost of the monks. See, for instance, EYC, III, nos. 1321, 1550, 1555, 1659, 1669–70, 1719, 1771, 1777, 1866. 8 Ibid., II, nos. 695, 700, 719; Cart. Guis., I, no. 20. 9 Cart. Whitby, I, no. 264. 10 J. Evans, Monastic Life at Cluny (Oxford, 1931, repr. 1968), pp. 65–77; Knowles, Monastic Order, pp. 134–6, 432–3.

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Page 246 to Whitby, is variously described as a manor and a cell;11 and the York church of All Saints, Fishergate, a royal grant to Whitby and confirmed by successive kings as a cell, had a resident bailiff: between c. 1180 and 1200 there is reference to rent paid for property in Towthorpe under Galtres, to the bailiffs of Whitby Abbey at Fishergate.12 Whitby’s other cells, Goathland and Middlesbrough, were at the centre of groups of churches and estates, and may also have fulfilled an economic function. In the case of St Mary’s the Cumbrian ‘cells’ developed as dependent daughter houses, but the economic basis of Nostell’s cells is suggested by Tockwith’s maintenance of its own cartulary, although a dual role for the cells, both economic and pastoral, cannot be ruled out. Undoubtedly the clearest picture of manorial exploitation derives from the inquest of lands of the Knights Templar, compiled c. 1185 and one of only eleven or twelve such surveys extant from the twelfth century.13 As a pattern of monastic exploitation of manorial estates the Inquest needs to be used with caution. It was an investigation into the property of an international order, whose western houses, or preceptories, were never intended to be anything more than economic units. Moreover the organization of the Yorkshire folios is, as Beatrice Lees demonstrated, confused, with some entries transposed. However, the Inquest is an invaluable guide for assessing how Templar lands were acquired, the location of demesne and assized lands, the obligations of tenants, the rents agreed, and Templar ownership of mills and churches. The Yorkshire material appears to have been organized around the holdings in the three ridings, and into further subgroups. Of the three groups which made up the North Riding estates, group I included the three preceptories of Penhill, Cowton, and Stanghow, and a proportion of estates (the two carucates in Penhill and four out of six in Temple Cowton) was retained in demesne.14 Group III estates were similarly split between those held in demesne and those held by tenants,15 whereas group II estates were all leased for money rents.16 The West Riding estates were divided into two groups centred on the preceptories of 11 By the fourteenth century and in common with other Whitby estates it comes to be referred to as a grange: see B. Waites, ‘The monastic grange as a factor in the settlement of north-east Yorkshire’, YAJ, 40 (1959–62), 627–56 (p. 629). 12 EYC, I, no. 165; Cart. Whitby, I, no. 236. 13 PRO, Exchequer, Misc. Books, series I (E 164), 16, printed in Records of the Templars in England in the Twelfth Century, ed. B. A. Lees, British Academy Records of Social and Economic History, 9 (1935). It was used to famous effect by M. M. Postan, ‘The chronology of labour services’, reprinted from TRHS, 4th series, 20 (1937), 169–93, in W. E. Minchinton, Essays in Agrarian History (Newton Abbot, 1968), I, 73–91. For a detailed description of the Yorkshire evidence see Burton, ‘Knights Templar in Yorkshire’. 14 Records, pp. 119–20. 15 Ibid., pp. 129–31. 16 Ibid., pp. 120–3, 127–9 (entries transposed).

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Page 247 Temple Newsam and Temple Hirst. There was a core of demesne land around Temple Newsam, and the nearby church of Whitkirk was also held in demesne. In Temple Newsam two mills were retained as demesne, the rest of the property being held by tenants.17 In the East Riding there were two groups of estates apparently unconnected to a preceptory.18 In Allerthorpe one carucate out of the six granted by Richard de Morville was in demesne, and the remainder leased.19 In group II all except three carucates were leased to tenants.20 The Inquest leaves many questions unanswered, not least the relationship between the estates and the preceptories. The pattern which seems to emerge, however, is that of relatively small areas being worked in demesne, notably around the preceptories of Cowton, Penhill, Stanghow, Temple Hirst, and Temple Newsam, and the remainder leased to tenants for a combination of money rents and service.21 There was considerable variation in the balance between the two. In Newbiggin in the West Riding tenants owed yearly anywhere from 2s 6d to 5s per bovate; 2 hens and 20 eggs; 4 boon works, twice to plough with one man, twice to harrow, once to mow, once to make hay; to repair the mill pond when necessary, and to draw in the mill stones; to wash sheep one day and shear another. The cottars owed 12d for twelve acres, 1 hen, 10 eggs, and 4 boon works, and the other services owed by those holding one bovate.22 There is only one indication in the Yorkshire folios that the Templars leased their estates ad firmam, that is, farmed their estate for a money rent. The summa for Allerthorpe is followed by the sentence ‘Hic est redditus assisus qui fuit antequam Alwerthorp esset ad firman’ (‘this is the assized rent as it was before Allerthorpe was farmed’).23 The general conclusion must therefore be that the majority of the widespread Templar lands in the county were manorial; that is, they comprised demesne and tenanted land (assized land), held for a combination of money rents and labour services on the demesne. Extra income came from mills: the third mill of Newsam was rented collectively by the men of the vill for 20s, and the Castle Mills of York, and the mills of Faxfleet and elsewhere yielded an annual rent.24 Income also came from rights over manorial tenants: in Cold Kirby it was recorded that at the death of a tenant a third of his goods went to the lord of the manor.25 The master had control over his free tenants: in Skelton the acre held by Jordan had been taken back by 17 Ibid., pp. 117–19, 127. 18 No ER preceptory is recorded before 1185; by the early fourteenth century there were two, York and Faxfleet. 19 Records, pp. 123–4. 20 Ibid., pp. 125–6, 131–2. 21 Cold Kirby appears to be the only estate held in demesne where there was no preceptory (p. 130). 22 Records, pp. 117–18. 23 Ibid., p. 124; cf. Finchingfield (Essex), p. 12. 24 Ibid., pp. 127, 131–2, 134. 25 Ibid., p. 130.

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Page 248 the Templars when the tenant had failed, because of poverty, to pay the rent; while in Allerthorpe the master per cartam had freed Arngar of his customary rent and service.26 This suggests a heavy degree of involvement and direct exploitation from the preceptories. The Survey is the most comprehensive picture of manorial life which we have from Yorkshire before 1215. Indeed, for Lees it evoked ‘an organized village life, a self-respecting peasantry, little burdened by compulsory service’ developing under the guidance of the Templars—an assessment which does not sit well with the complaints of excessive exactions by the Templars recorded in the Meaux Chronicle.27 However, given the international character of the order, how much can be extrapolated from the Templar survey about monastic administration of manorial estates in Yorkshire generally? The vast majority of surviving charters are those which convey land to the religious orders, and only occasionally do these specify that the grant included the service of tenants or peasants. Adam son of Peter, for instance, granted to Selby land in Langley, Tranmoor, and Brayton, with one villein and his land.28 William Paynel of Hooton Pagnell granted land there to the Knights Hospitaller with pasture, the mill and multure, boon work for the repair of the mill, two villeins, and Gamel son of Arthur and his family.29 In other charters donors of assets promised that they would continue to render service. William son of Roger de Caratil, for instance, granted to the canons of Guisborough two carucates of land in Moredale (Guisborough) for 40s per annum, and for fraternity for his family; the canons in return granted him licence to dig turf where they did, for which he would render the customary boon works which his father had performed in the time of Prior William (d. by 1139).30 The major question must be: in the period before 1215 did the Yorkshire Benedictine and Augustinian houses—those which appear to have been the recipients of manorial lands—manage them directly, as the Templars appear to have done, or put them to farm for fixed money rents; and if the latter, did they then participate in the trend towards high or direct farming associated with the period after 1180? Here I am concerned with rural rather than urban properties, which will be the subject of the next section. The monastery for which most evidence survives is St Mary’s, York. Under Abbot Geoffrey (c. 1119–c. 1138) estates held by the abbey in at least seven places were farmed. In Caythorpe four carucates were granted in firmo feudo to Siward for an annual rent of 20 ores (2 marks); before 1130 the town of Dalby was granted in feudo et hereditate to Hugh de Flam26 Ibid., pp. 118–19, 124. 27 Ibid., p. ccxiii; Chron. Melsa, I, 161–2. 28 EYC, III, no. 1738. 29 For the grants of this donor to the Knights, see EYC, VI, nos. 139–44, 154–5. 30 Ibid., II, no. 755, dated by Farrer to between 1160 and 1180.

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Page 249 maville for 25s per annum and common taillage when demanded, as rendered by the other lands of St Mary’s; Richard d’Orival granted St Mary’s three carucates in East Lilling and two and a half in Fimber, and the abbot and convent, at his request, granted it to his kinsman, Gilbert, in feudo et jure hereditario. Similar farms were granted in Foston, Fulford, and Hutton-le-Hole. The rents were to be paid twice yearly, usually at Whitsuntide and Martinmas, but in the case of the Caythorpe estate at Rogation and the feast of St Peter ad Vincula.31 Under Abbot Savaric (c. 1138–61) the policy appears to have accelerated. Peter de Fauconberg received three carucates and the site of a mill in feudo et hereditate, for one mark for all service and for homage pro hac tenura and fealty sworn on the four gospels.32 In Fimber estates were restored to Bertram Haget, Asketil, and John son of Wihard, which had been held by their kin, and the abbot confirmed the subinfeudation of part of the vill by John son of Wihard to John son of Gamel.33 Alan son of Walter was enfeoffed of the manor of Kirby Misperton to hold for 10s yearly for all service, and the chapter attested that his father had done homage for this land and received it with a knife from Abbot Stephen (d. 1112).34 A number of charters are more specific: two acres in Fulford were leased to a tenant ‘in vita sua’ (‘during his lifetime’), and the agreement was to last ‘quamdiu se legaliter habuerit erga nos et bene reddiderit predictum censum’ (‘for as long as he acts according to law towards us and renders the aforesaid rent’).35 Under Abbot Clement freeholders (franctenentes) were enfeoffed of lands in Fulford, Skelton, Stokesley, Sunderlandwick, Myton on Swale, Gilling in Ryedale, Hornsea, Acaster Selby, Shipton, Bolton on Swale, Burneston, Croft on Tees, Danby, Finghall, Gilmonby, Hornby, Foggathorpe, Hessle, and Langthorne.36 When a lessee, Warin, was enfeoffed with land in Gilmonby for an annual payment of 12s and provision of a suitable guest house for the abbot and monks and their servants visiting the area, an additional clause stated that if the abbot and convent wished to lease the two bovates of land which they had retained in their own hands (i.e., in demesne), Warin was to hold them under the same conditions as the six he already held.37 No evidence survives on this scale for the other Benedictine 31 EYC, II, no. 1063; I, nos. 340, 460, 637; IV, no. 105; York Minster Library, D & C MS A2, fo. 159. 32 EYC, I, no. 540. 33 Ibid., I, no. 627–30. 34 Ibid., I, no. 602. For similar grants in Rudston and Hessay, see ibid., nos. 455, 528. 35 Ibid., I, no. 325. 36 See, for instance, EYC, I, nos. 330, 342–4, 423, 563; II, nos. 681, 794–5; III, nos. 1878–80; IV, nos. 88, 107–8, 119; V, nos. 189, 219, 281, 331, 349, 355–6; XII, nos. 12, 20; BL Stowe charter 444, leasing the churches of Foxholes and Butterwick, with the tithes, to William the cleric, in return for 7 silver marks per annum and hospitality for the abbot when he should visit those places. 37 EYC, IV, no. 107. Warin was bound to provide, in the guest house, fire, straw, hay, and grass for the horses.

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Page 250 houses, although leases do exist. Whitby was certainly farming some of its estates in Ugglebarnby and Everley;38 and there is limited evidence that Pontefract, too, leased out some of its lands.39 There is an indication of the relative values of sources of Benedictine revenues from vacancy accounts: from Selby following the death of Abbot Gilbert de Vere (1183), from Whitby for 1181–2/3 and 1212 to 1214, following the deaths of Abbots Richard II and Peter, and from St Mary’s, York for 1184–5 and 1185–6, following the death of Abbot Clement.40 The Pipe Rolls indicate that in the two years leading up to Michaelmass 1185 the income of Selby was as follows: £259 7s 0d from assized farms of the abbey manors (that is, rents from tenants) £15 6s 8d from Nor[…] and the abbey treasury £3 2s 2d from pannage from the woods £25 1s 6d from pleas and perquisites (judicial) £23 15s 0d from the sale of hides, cheese and beans This represents a total income of £325 18s 4d [sic], of which £215 16s 3d was expended by the receiver on food and clothing for the monks, and a further sum on payment to servants, expenses on manors, and purchase of lands.41 The balance (around £110) went to the royal treasury. In 1187–8 Hugh Murdac and Ernisius de Neville rendered account of £245 19s 2d from the manors of Selby for the previous two years, £115 19s 2d derived from the church of Snaith and pensions from other churches, and £27 0s 5½d from perquisites. Of the total of £388 18s 9d, £103 was paid into the treasury and the remainder expended on food for the monks and servants residing at the abbey (£221 11s 3d), on clothing for the monks (£38 10s), to the sacrist (£13 15s), on wages of servants on the abbey manors (£11 8s 10d), and on maintaining the horses of the king and their keepers (£1 15s 7½d). There was some inconsistency in Selby’s annual income (on average between £165 and £195), but the higher figure in 1187–8 may be due to the inclusion of spiritualia, which do not appear in the earlier account. The bulk of Selby’s income appears to have derived from the farm of manorial lands, although income from churches in 1187–8 was considerable. The vacancy accounts for Whitby for 1180–1 and 1181–2 give no details beyond recording the sums of 50 marks (£33 6s 8d) and £104 3s 1d paid into the treasury in 1181 and 1182 respectively after the purchase 38 See, for instance, Cart. Whitby, I, no. 264. 39 EYC, III, nos. 1752, 1758; Cart. Pont., II, p. 582 and no. 315. 40 See HRH, pp. 69, 78, 84; Pipe Roll 31 Henry II, p. 79, Pipe Roll 34 Henry II, p. 1 (Selby); Pipe Roll 27 Henry II, p. 50, Pipe Roll 28 Henry II, p. 62, Rotuli litterarum patentium 1201–1216 (Record Commission, 1835), pp. 94, 96, 108, Pipe Roll 14 John, p. 5 (Whitby); these accounts are noted in EYC, I, 370–1, II, 232–4. For the York accounts see Pipe Roll 31 Henry II, pp. 77–8, Pipe Roll 32 Henry II, pp. 84–5. 41 The amount is unknown because of damage to the manuscript.

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Page 251 of food and clothes—the sum for 1181–2 being remarkably consistent with that of Selby. There exists a second account for the years between 1206 and 1209 for which there is no obvious explanation—there was no vacancy at the time but it may have been related to the quarrel between Abbot Peter and the town—during which William de Wrotham, archdeacon of Taunton, rendered account.42 The net issue after purchases and expenses at the abbey and on its manor houses was £414 1s 9d, again roughly £100 per annum.43 Fuller details survive from the vacancy account for the two years between Michaelmas 1210 and 1212, when Henry de Radman and Gilbert Fitz Reinfrid acted as receivers. The income of the abbey was as follows: £205 2s 8d from rents from assized lands and the farm of mills £17 13s 4d from fisheries £28 9s 6d from the profits of the forests £99 3s 6d from the farm and pensions of churches £51 7s 8d from pleas and perquisites of courts £4 10s 6d from the sale of wool, lambs, and small tithes £6 5s 4½d the profits of Ugglebarnby.44 Of this income (£412 12s 6½d), a sum of £161 18s 6d was deducted for the food and clothing of the monks; £20 was expended in pensions; and there remained £230 14s 0½d for the Crown. Roughly half Whitby’s income, therefore, derived from its manors and mills, a quarter from its churches, and a quarter from forest, fishery, the perquisites of courts, and the sale of surplus produce (roughly one-hundredth of the income).45 The vacancy accounts from St Mary’s for the financial years 1184–5 and 1185–6 are more complex and give fuller details of expenditure. At Michaelmass 1185 Godfrey de Lucy rendered account of £14 4s 4d from the remainder of the farms of the abbey in the time of the abbot (Clement, who died in August 1184). He also accounted for: £28 1s 8d remaining from the auxilium promised to the abbot 42 On him see F. W. Brooks, ‘William de Wrotham and the office of keeper of the king’s ports and galleys’, EHR, 40 (1925), 570–9. 43 Farrer (EYC, II, 233) assumed a vacancy from 1206 to 1213, but Abbot Peter was evidently still alive in 1211. For the accounts of 1206–9 see Pipe Roll 11 John, p. 124. The expenses also included those on the horses and dogs of the king. In the roll for Devon William accounted for the tin mines of Devon and Cornwall: it was recorded: ‘et in suo superplus quod habet in compoto abbatie de Whitebi de anno preterito cccc et iiij li(bras) et viijd. Et habet de superplus cccc et iiij li(bras) et viijd’ (‘and in surplus which he has in the account of the abbey of Whitby from the previous year £404 8d. And he has in surplus £404 8d’)(p. 145). The account for Whitby for 12 John, Michaelmas 1210, is badly damaged (p. 219). 44 One of the abbey manors, about 3 miles south-west of the monastery. 45 These may be compared with the abbey accounts from the late fourteenth century: see Cart. Whitby, II, 553–85.

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Page 252 £,194 7s 5d from the farms of the abbey manors and the free tenants and mills, for the whole year £116 3s 7d from tithes and churches paying an annual pension £81 9s 0d from aids, pleas and gersum £2 0s 0d relief from Alexander and Thomas de Etton £31 9s 9d from grain, wool and other sales £467 15s 9d TOTAL [sic] The abbey expenses were: £46 13s 4d to the court of the chamber, by the king’s order £20 same £4 7s 0d for the clothes of almspeople (prebendarios) each year £4 9s 0d for the works of the church, this year £1 11s 4d to the precentor for the making of books for the church £10 11s 8d to the sacrist for lights, vestments, and church ornaments £36 17s 2d to the chamberlain for the clothes of the monks £157 17s 2d to the sustenance of the monks £14 7s 9d to the cellarer for the monks’ food £22 3s 2d for turves, and for hiring ships to carry wood for the abbey fires, and to collect hay, and for utensils for the offices of the abbey £19 15s 0d for wages for the abbey servants £38 17s 4d for food and wages for servants in the manors and working the abbey lands £3 10s 0d to the provost of Beverley for service on land in Poppleton £0 12s 0d to Josce the Jew of York as a pledge which he holds in Hessay on the land of Thomas, who owes £84 14s 10d £5 5s 8d in old money to the monks of the church to make a chalice and a gospel book (textus) in the service of the church, on the order of the king The receiver owed £79 9s 2d, and rendered account of the debt. The accounts for 1186–7 show only minor variations. It is clear from these sets of accounts that the three independent Benedictine houses in the county were subsisting in much the same way. Their income derived from the farms of manors, from judicial pleas, and from the exercise of lordship, which brought them payments for relief and custody. There is no indication that the Yorkshire houses were participating in the direct exploitation of estates which was beginning to be characteristic of southern and midland houses.46 46 This was a slow process, and at houses such as Westminster took a long time to implement: see Burton, Monastic and Religious Orders, pp. 250–2, for some examples.

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Page 253 URBAN LANDLORDS It was demonstrated in the previous chapter that a number of Yorkshire religious houses obtained considerable urban property, particularly in York. Those houses which were located at a distance from the city would presumably have retained some property in their own hands to accommodate an abbot or prior when he visited York, or officials on business, although the canons of Malton preferred to use suburban property for their visits and continued to lease their urban tenements.47 As early as the ‘1134 codification’ the Cistercians had conceded that their abbeys might acquire urban property, but laid down that no monks nor conversi should reside there.48 In the case of houses which themselves had an urban or suburban location, the widespread leasing brought in considerable revenue. As is to be expected, St Mary’s was the largest monastic urban landlord, and its cartulary bears witness to the practice of leasing.49 Under Abbot Geoffrey messuages in Fossgate were rented out, and under his successor, properties in Ousegate, Bretgate, and St Saviourgate. By the time of Abbot Clement (1161–84) property all over York was being rented to tenants, usually for life only; only those in Bootham, just outside the city and adjoining the abbey, brought in labour services as well as money rent.50 Tenants included Josce the Jew, who paid 4s yearly for a messuage in Fossgate, and Gerard son of Lewin, who leased a messuage in the churchyard of St Michael Spurriergate for 16s.51 Leasing of urban properties was a lucrative, if for most houses not a large, proportion of their income.52 If lordship over manors was a source of revenue, then so too was lordship over towns, not merely possession of urban property, but powers such as control over entry and exit, communication, the transfer of property, and the issue of justice. The clearest evidence of a northern monastic borough derives from Whitby. The vill and port had been granted to the monks by the founder of the abbey, and royal and archiepiscopal charters had confirmed the monks in their considerable liberties, including a fair at the feast of St Hilda, the seaport, and seaweed along the strand.53 Some idea of the nature of, and income from, the 47 See above, pp. 234–5. For Malton see Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, p. 438. 48 Canivez, Statuta, I, 30 (no. 71). In 1189 the chapter attempted to limit Cistercian urban property to one house per abbey in any given town: ibid., p. 112 (no. 11). 49 See especially Manchester, John Rylands Library Latin MSS 220–221; EYC, I passim. 50 EYC, I, nos. 310–12; John Rylands Library Latin MSS 220–221, fos. 123r–125v; the service included finding one man in the autumn for hay making. 51 John Rylands Library Latin MSS 220–221, fos. 100r–101r. 52 For the rents due from the York property of the religious orders c. 1230, see PRO E/25/1. 53 For this grant by Henry II: EYC, II, no. 870.

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Page 254 monastery’s urban lordship can be derived from the charter which Abbot Richard and the convent granted to the burgesses of Whitby, probably between 1175 and 1181. This appears to have been an unusually early recognition, by a monastic landlord, of the growing corporate spirit of townspeople, for it granted considerable liberties to them.54 They were allowed free laws and privileges; rights to common pasture; and four roads by which they could enter and leave the borough. The obligations which were due from them were: 5d yearly from every toft, half payable at Whitsuntide and half at Martinmas; to offer any land for sale to the abbot for first refusal, and, if he did not wish to purchase it, to obtain his consent to the sale (the purchaser, on receiving seisin, was to pay 4d to the abbey and 1d to the burgesses); and to attend the three yearly hearings of pleas, at Epiphany, Easter, and the feast of St Hilda.55 However, Richard’s successor, Abbot Peter, saw the liberties granted by the abbey as detrimental to its own interests, and challenged its right to make such a grant. In 1199 he offered 100 marks if the burgesses ceased using the charter which they had been granted until its validity had been tested in the king’s court, and by 1201 had proved his case. The position of the abbey as lord of the town clearly brought sizeable profits which the granting of liberties to its burgesses would undermine. THE CISTERCIAN GRANGE The Exordium parvum and statutes contain several important statements about economic practice. Two of these were discussed in the previous chapter; the third introduced the principles of Cistercian land management: estates were to be administered through granges, run by lay brothers. Granges were to be no more than one day’s journey (dieta) from the mother house, thus allowing the conversi to hear mass regularly and monks to visit the grange and return within the day, safeguarding their vow of stability. No women were allowed within the grange, and further rulings regulated the minimum distance deemed appropriate between granges.56 The grange system accordingly allowed for economic activity while preserving monastic discipline. Its novelty lay in the consolidation of estates for the greater efficiency of management and in the reliance on conversi and hired labour rather than manorial services. Initially a Cistercian house might fail to attract any but local attention and its early estates were usually within a fairly small distance from the abbey. As they 54 For monastic borough lords generally see N. M. Trenholme, The English Monastic Boroughs (Columbia, Miss., 1927). 55 EYC, II, no. 886; see also pp. 232–4. 56 Canivez, Statuta, I, 14 (no. 8), 20 (no. 32), 29 (no. 68), 30 (no. 72), 45 (no. 1), 60 (no. 3).

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Page 255 widened their circle of benefactors and patrons the monks were able to expand into new areas, and to consolidate existing holdings. It was at this stage that a grange was established, the word applying both to the estate and to the buildings at its centre. The creation of the cistercian grange The eight Yorkshire houses created among them by 1215 a total of 83 granges.57 In his pioneering article of 1936 Bishop argued that a distinctive feature of Yorkshire granges was the speed with which they were established.58 The table on pages 274–6 bears out his assessment: most Cistercian granges were in existence by 1215, and many a good deal earlier. Even allowing for the difficulties of precise dating (the thirteen granges of Fountains of which the first record is the 1199 confirmation of Richard I, for instance, may have been created some years earlier), we can be confident that Fountains, Kirkstall, Byland, and Meaux embarked on a programme of grange creation within ten years, Rievaulx within twenty and Sallay and Roche within thirty years. Frequently, though not always, the earliest grange to be established was the home grange. That of Meaux was created by the depopulation of the existing vill of Melsa (‘ubi ipsurm villa seu manerium de Melsa fuerat situatum extat modo grangia nostra quae Northgrangia nuncupatur’ (‘in that place where the same vill or manor of Meaux was located, there now exists our grange which is called North Grange’)) and was confirmed as ‘grangia juxta abbatiam’ (‘the grange near the abbey’) in 1154. The Historia of Byland Abbey records the reduction of the vill of Old Byland to a grange following the abandonment of the site in 1147, and this was also the fate of the former abbey sites of Kirkstall (at Barnoldswick) and Jervaulx (Dale). In addition to these, both the abbey and the home grange of Sallay evidently involved some depopulation. The creation, between 1147 and 1167, of Rievaulx’s home grange at Griff may have involved the displacement of population, since Everard de Ros confirmed as one of the boundaries of his assart and woodland ‘the ancient road by which the men of the vill of Griff used to go to the mill of Sproxton’.59 57 For a pioneer study of the Yorkshire grange, see T. A. M. Bishop, ‘Monastic granges in Yorkshire’, EHR, 51 (1936), 193–214, 758. This has been extended and amplified through the researches in particular of Waites, ‘Monastic grange’; Colin Platt, The Monastic Grange in Medieval England: A Reassessment (London, 1969); R. A. Donkin, ‘The Cistercian grange in England in the 12th and 13th centuries, with special reference to Yorkshire’, Studia Monastica, 6 (1964), 95– 144, and The Cistercians. For a discussion of Gilbertine granges see Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, pp. 394–419. 58 Bishop, ‘Monastic grange’, 200. 59 Cart. Riev., no. 44.

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Page 256 There is some evidence that elsewhere lands were cleared of their peasant settlers to make way for a grange. When, between 1190 and 1193, the monks of Kirkstall lost the important grange of Cliviger to Richard son of Eland, Abbot Lambert accepted from the abbey patron, Robert de Lacy, the vill of Accrington. The inhabitants were expropriated and a grange created; the ill-feeling which ensued led to the burning of the grange and the killing of three conversi.60 When the monks of Sallay were granted land in Acreland they had to promise that those working the land would be allowed to finish the growing season.61 At Thorpe Underwood Geoffrey Haget, brother of the abbot, granted the whole vill, evidently displacing the rural population; a grange was in existence by 1199.62 The grant to Roche of Little Todwick and whatever belonged to the vill suggests that depopulation took place in order to create the abbey grange of Todwick. In all these places—and others—it is likely that the displaced rustici were recruited as conversi or hired labour, like the tenants at Revesby who, on the foundation, were given the choice of remaining or obtaining new lands.63 In other instances benefactors granted labour services and villeins which secured the transfer of land held by unfree tenants and provided the basis for hired labour. Roger de Mowbray’s grant to Rievaulx of Welburn, which later became part of Angram grange, included all the rustici who wished to remain rather than depart.64 Byland accepted from Roger, Alfnaf his man of Kirkby Malzeard, and from Fulk Paynel the service of Robert son of Henry and his heirs in Nether Silton. The monks of Kirkstall received one carucate of land in Cliviger with all the villeins there, Siward the carpenter cum tota sequela sua, and the services of Hugh son of David de Tong.65 The previous chapter drew attention to the clearance of new lands by the Cistercians. Both Rievaulx and Fountains lay close to areas which in 1086 contained ‘conspicuous clusters of wasted and low-value holdings’.66 Although the degree of recovery by the 1130s is uncertain, it is significant that, as Donkin calculated, between 50 per cent and 60 per cent of the granges of these two abbeys lay in areas waste or mostly waste in 1086.67 The most important of these was Rievaulx’s Pickering grange. In 1157 Henry II ordered royal officials to make recognition of the waste below Pickering, and to cause the monks to be put in possession of it; his charter of 1158, which granted the waste to the monks, 60 Foundation of Kirkstall, pp. 183–4. 61 Mon. Ang., V, 515, Cart. Sallay, I, no. 207. 62 Memorials of Fountains, I, 125; Cart. Fount., II, 718–19, nos. 3–6. 63 Mon. Ang., V, 454–5, no. 1. 64 EYC, IX, no. 152. 65 Mowbray Charters, no. 66; EYC, VI, no. 43; Kirkstall Coucher, nos. 275, 296; EYC, III, no. 1766; cf. the remarks of Hill, English Cistercian Monasteries, p. 67. 66 Donkin, The Cistercians, p. 57; see above, pp. 224–7. 67 Ibid., p. 58; the Yorkshire average was 44 per cent.

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Page 257 was renewed between 1176 and 1179 ‘ut infra ipsas divisas domos et bercharias aedificant et terram colant et exerceant per totum sicut eis placuerit’ (‘so that they shall build houses and sheepfolds there and cultivate the land, and use it throughout as they wish’).68 In 1206 the grange is recorded by the name of Kekmarish, and by 1307 there was a second grange below Pickering at Loftmarishes (Allerston). At Cowton grange Earl Conan confirmed the grant of land on Moulton Moor made by his father, including the sixty acres which the monks had assarted since the time of his father.69 As Bishop pointed out, the absence in the section of the Fountains cartulary containing the Bramley charters of any quitclaims suggests that the grange was established in previously uncultivated lands.70 The Cistercians created granges both by depopulation and by the clearance of new lands, sometimes a combination of both. Consolidation of granges The granges of Rievaulx below Pickering were, because of the unencumbered nature of the land, quickly consolidated. In other areas tenurial complexity meant that gaining complete control took longer. The speed with which granges were apparently created may therefore be deceptive. It is significant that when accepting grants of land in a new area, monks might seek licence to obtain further parcels by grant, purchase, and exchange.71 To give a full account of the consolidation of their granges by the Yorkshire Cistercians is not possible here. A useful example of the process is provided by Meaux Abbey, which is unusually well documented both in its charters and in the chronicle of Thomas Burton, who was able to list the lands acquired and the granges created under successive abbots.72 Granges were begun under the first abbot, Adam (1150–60), of which one, the North Grange, has already been mentioned. A second, Bealeys, was confirmed to the monks as early as 1151, but not retained.73 Blanchemarle Grange (Warter) originated in a grant by Geoffrey Dagon of one carucate called Arras, lying between North Dalton and Warter, ‘where no one else ever enjoyed common rights’, for which the monks agreed to pay the donor I mark per annum as long as he lived. The grant was confirmed by William de Roumare and Agnes his wife, who added sixty acres to the north of the grange which Adam had 68 Cart. Riev., p. 261 and nos. 189, 205–10; EYC, I, nos. 401–7. 69 EYC, IV, no. 45. 70 Bishop, ‘Monastic grange’, 214. 71 See, for example, Cart. Riev., no. 55. 72 Burton clearly had access to a cartulary, or a collection of original charters, and perhaps a list of benefactions such as has survived from Rievaulx (for which see Cart. Riev., pp. 260–2). 73 See below, p. 268.

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Page 258 begun; and further pasture and arable land was acquired.74 The heirs of Geoffrey were unwilling to relinquish the yearly payment, which continued to be paid to the time of the ninth abbot (1249–69). The grange was extended by the acquisition of pasture lands in Warter and Prestowe ‘infra curtem grangie nostre’ (‘within the court of our grange’).75 Salthaugh Grange (Keyingham) initially comprised pasture by the river Humber and one carucate of arable. It was the grant of the founder of the abbey, William of Aumale, but the monks still found it prudent to expend 60 marks in order to compensate those who felt they had a claim before ‘grangiam unam ibidem apud Saltagh incepimus aedificare’ (‘we began to build a grange there at Salthaugh’).76 Hayholme Grange was constructed on the ‘holme’ of one carucate of land between Leven and ‘Brystyllia’ granted by Robert de Scures when he became a novice at Meaux (between 1150 and 1160); Burton noted that it was on this site that the manerium of the monks was constructed. By 1177 Hayholme was confirmed as a grange, but claims were still being made to it between 1182 and 1197.77 Octon Grange was a deliberate purchase. Robert de Octon, former sheriff of York, had become a monk at Meaux. His son, Henry, sold two and a half carucates and the site of the grange to the monks for 40 marks when he left for Jerusalem, and the monks were obliged to perform forinsec service on the land. Godfrey de Harpham, to whom much of the service was due, augmented the grant, and later, when he became a novice at Meaux, quitclaimed the right he had to the land on which the grange was built, the exterior wall which enclosed the court, and the enclosures for the sheep which the monks had built in front of the gate of the grange. Burton hints at the gradual process of consolidation when he stated ‘et ibi tunc continuo grangia est incepta’ (‘and there at that time the grange was begun and continually [expanded]’).78 Wharram le Street, the most distant of the abbey granges, was begun with a grant made by William Fossard in compensation for his failure to guarantee to the monks his earlier grant of Bealeys. He therefore granted two carucates of land in Wharram le Street, a spring and a water course to 74 Chron. Melsa, I, 99, 101–2. The grants (unspecified) of Geoffrey, William de Roumare, and Agnes of Aumale, were confirmed by King Stephen and by Henry II in January 1154; the grange of Blanchemarle was confirmed by Pope Anastasius IV in January 1154: EYC, III, nos. 1384–6. 75 Chron. Melsa, I, 230. 76 Ibid., I, 85–9; Burton claims that the grange was confirmed by King Stephen (p. 87). It was relocated by Abbot William (1249–69) because of inundations of the river. Pasture in Salthaugh was confirmed by Pope Hadrian IV in 1156: EYC, III, no. 1388. 77 Chron. Melsa, I, 96, 221; Burton notes also that Robert was the second man to die during his noviciate. For the confirmation of 1177 see EYC, III, no. 1392. 78 Chron. Melsa, I, 102–3. This is a phrase he also uses to describe the creation of Wawne grange (p. 104). The earliest charter evidence for Octon grange occurs in the bull of Alexander III (1172): EYC, III, no. 1391. For the quitclaim of Godfrey see EYC, II, no. 1064.

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Page 259 bring water to the vill for a mill, which was to be solely for the use of the brethren.79 Wharram was confirmed to the monks as a grange in 1172,80 and a series of incidents recorded by Abbot Burton indicates how the grange estate was built up in the time of Abbot Philip (1160–82). William Fossard the younger had fallen into debt to Aaron the Jew of Lincoln to the tune of over 1,800 marks (£1,200) and had pledged his lands to him. He then approached the abbot with the suggestion that the abbey take over the debt in return for Wharram, and lands in Bainton and Neswick were offered as pledges. The abbot was at first unwilling, but was tempted by Aaron’s offer, that should the abbey take on the debt he would reduce the amount by 500 marks. Philip therefore agreed to pay off a debt of 1,260 marks at the rate of 60 marks a year. However, the death of Aaron shortly afterwards, and the reversion of his debts to the Crown, began a series of disasters for the abbey, for the Crown claimed the full amount of the debt, including the 500 marks which Aaron had remitted. William Fossard, too, denied responsibility and it was only after lengthy litigation that the monks won the case. It was to be a short-lived respite, for in the time of Abbot Alexander (1197–1210) the grange was plundered by Robert de Turnham, the servants and all but two conversi expelled, and a number of buildings demolished.81 Similarly beset by difficulties was Philip’s creation of granges in Moor (Beeford), Myton, and Wawne.82 Having acquired half a carucate in Moor fields, pasture for 300 sheep in the northern part of Beeford, and a further six acres missing from the initial half carucate, Abbot Philip decided on the creation of a grange and began to construct houses. He faced opposition, however, in particular from the canons of Thornton, who claimed rights of common pasture. In the time of Philip’s two successors the canons went so far as to occupy pasture lands right up to the gates of the grange. The grange estate was, however, extended by Abbot Thomas (1182–97). Acer of Beeford granted two sellions in Beeford near to Moor Grange, and five perches within the court, a portion of land to the west of the enclosure, measuring 2 perches by 44 perches, and one to the east, measuring 2 perches by 20, all of which abutted the grange.83 As late as the years between 1197 and 1210 the monks acquired from 79 Chron. Melsa, I, 103–4; the grange of Bealeys subsequently passed to the nuns of Swine. 80 EYC, III, no. 1391. 81 For a detailed description of the episode, see Chron. Melsa, I, 175–8, 231–2, 289–91. 82 Alexander III confirmed the granges of Wharram, Blanchemarle, Octon, Myton, and Moor in 1172, and Wawne, Salthaugh, Moor, Hayholme, Wharram, and Myton in 1177: EYC, III, nos. 1391–2. Donkin (‘Cistercian grange’, 131) includes Croo as a grange of Meaux by 1182, but although Abbot Philip did acquire lands there, the implication in Chron. Melsa, I, 165, is that the grange was a later creation. 83 Chron. Melsa, I, 163–4, 225–6.

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Page 260 Amandus son of John de Owstwyk land ‘quam habuit apud grangiam nostram de la More, quam de eodem prius ad terminum tenebamus’ (‘which he had in our grange of Moor, which we formerly held of him for a fixed term’).84 For some decades, therefore, the monks had evidently been leasing land within their grange enclosure. Myton Grange began with the promising grant of four bovates, pasture for 400 sheep, a fishery on the Humber, and two parts of a saltpan as well as the toft where the hall was sited, and in the course of the twelfth century the estate was augmented by exchanges. A monk of Meaux was bequeathed 40 marks by his brother, and when he died the sum was used to purchase one carucate of land in Thorpe near Aldbrough from William de Caux when he became a Templar; this was later exchanged for land in Myton.85 The earliest grants of Wawne had been made at the time of the foundation, but repeated and unsuccessful attempts by the monks to secure possession of the church from the abbey of Aumale, and temporary resumptions of grants—made by Henry Murdac—by Archbishop Roger, delayed the implementation of a grange until the 1170s.86 Abbot Thomas (1182–97), as we have seen, consolidated holdings around Moor and Hayholme Granges, and he is also recorded as having repaired existing grange buildings while adding new ones.87 He is credited with the creation of only one grange, at Tharlesthorpe (Patrington). Robert the constable, an elderly knight of William of Aumale, took the cross with Richard I, and before departing for the Holy Land he granted, in exchange for 160 marks, all his demesne (500 acres) at Tharlesthorpe, and the capital messuage which became the focus of the grange.88 The creation of four granges by Abbot Alexander (1197–1210) is a similar tale of acquisition and consolidation. From grants of just a few bovates of land he began the creation and consolidation of granges in Arnold and Wassand, and Innocent III also confirmed Arram and Skerne as granges.89 Finally, Abbot Hugh (1210–20) bought three bovates of land in Routh for 20 marks, and with a grant of a further half carucate began the construction of a grange.90 After 1215 few granges were added to the estates of Meaux. The story of the first sixty-five years of the abbey’s existence, in terms of its economy, is one of mixed fortunes. As we will see, there were times when the monks suffered severe financial crises. 84 Ibid., I, 309–10. 85 Ibid., I, 168–9, 220. By the fourteenth century the grange had been devastated by floods. 86 Ibid., I, 83–4, 93–5, 178, 217–18. On the significance of their attempts to secure the church see below, p. 267. 87 Chron. Melsa, I, 217. 88 Ibid., I, 220. Patrington is now a lost vill: see EPNS, ER, p. 25, recording the inundation and disappearance of Tharlesthorpe in the fourteenth century, described in Chron. Melsa, III, 183, 243. 89 Chron. Melsa, I, 329. 90 Ibid., I, 362–5.

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Page 261 However, these years are also ones of remarkable persistence and tenacity. By grants (some linked to the entry of a novice), purchase, and exchange the monks of Meaux built up a series of classic Cistercian granges, which they enclosed and hedged by ditches and dykes. Even allowing for the unusually rich and detailed records which make Meaux uniquely well documented, the achievement of the abbots of Meaux was a remarkable one, and one which left its imprint on the landscape of the East Riding. The nature of the documentary sources for the other Yorkshire Cistercian abbeys does not permit such a full reconstruction of the consolidation of the grange estates. However, there is sufficient to suggest that the monks did not always wait to acquire the whole of their estate before creating a grange, and the notion of the Cistercian grange agriculture being practised in isolation from lay agriculture must be modified. Just as at Meaux’s granges of Blanchemarle, Octon, and Moor, the laity held land within the grange court or enclosure for years after the creation of the grange, so at granges of Fountains and Kirkstall lay and monastic landowners apparently worked side by side, at least until the monks were able to buy out their rivals. In 1172 Fountains and John son of Fulk reached a final concord concerning a ditch or embankment which John had constructed outside the gate of the grange of Kirk Hammerton, and land which he ploughed between the gate of the grange and the road.91 At Kirkstall’s grange of Bessacar a lay person held land within the court of the grange in the monks’ enclosure next to the bercary and the croft in front of the gate and within the alder grove of the monks.92 One charter at least shows the monks of Fountains collaborating with neighbouring lay persons in the clearance of lands at their grange of Long Marston, for it referred to the assart which the monks, with their collaborators (participibus) had caused to be cleared at their own expense.93 The Cistercian desire to cultivate their lands in isolation from lay agriculture, reiterated in 1214, was evidently not easy to achieve in practice.94 The Yorkshire Cistercians, however, embarked on an ambitious programme of grange creation from their very beginning. The establishment, by Fountains Abbey, of granges at Warsill, Sutton, Cayton, Cowton, Dacre, and Aldburgh95 within ten years of the abbey being absorbed into the Cistercian order bears striking testimony to the rapid recovery of its fortunes after 1135 and the administrative skill of its personnel. The siting of a grange to some extent depended on the land which benefactors were willing to give, and this, along with the possibilities for 91 EYC, II, no. 738. 92 Ibid., II, no. 823. 93 Cart. Fount., II, 522–3, no. 20. 94 Canivez, Statuta, I, 428–9 (no. 58). 95 Aldburgh had been intended as the site for a new abbey: see above, p. 107.

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Page 262 future expansion and consolidation, in turn conditioned whether abbeys observed the ruling that granges should be within a dieta of the mother house. In many cases this was observed. Of the granges of Fountains, only those of Bradley, Wheldrake, Busby, and Eston lay more than—and very little more than—twenty miles from the abbey. Although, as Waddell has pointed out, monks and conversi travelling by horse rather than on foot could cover a fair distance,96 the Westmorland granges of Byland, for instance, would have infringed the regulations. The willingness of Byland to undertake expansion there was conditioned by its relatively unexploited state and the absence of other monastic interests in the area. Indeed, the lands acquired by Byland in the vicinity of the abbey led to clashes with the nearby monastery of Rievaulx, some four miles away.97 Before 1145 Byland had been forced to concede to Rievaulx the right to make a ditch across their land at the foot of Ashberry Hill.98 A more extensive agreement highlights the problems caused by the proximity of estates in three areas: Rievaulx’s grange of Griff and Byland’s lands in Deepdale, as well as lands both houses enjoyed in Scawton; Hesketh Grange (Rievaulx) and Old Byland Grange; and between the West Riding industrial sites of Rievaulx at Shitlington and Byland at Emley.99 Also enjoying interests in the same areas as Rievaulx was Malton, whose canons the monks of Rievaulx accused of encroaching on the waste land below Pickering.100 The competing interests of Rievaulx and Fountains in Cleveland led to an investigation and a decision, confirmed by the abbots of Cîteaux and Clairvaux, that the granges of both houses should remain where they were at present located, but no encroachment of lands or fishing rights was to be made.101 Types of granges It was Bishop’s judgement that most granges were predominantly arable; indeed, he pointed to the derivation of the word ‘grange’ and its association with granary. However, recent research has modified his view, and demonstrated that granges could have been the focus of varied economic activity depending on their location, the terrain, and the nature of the monks’ interests. As we have seen with Meaux, many granges comprised a mixture of pastoral and arable lands. Other granges were more specialized. In 1176 Roger de Mowbray granted the monks of Fountains a 96 Waddell, ‘Cistercian institutions’, 30. 97 The second site of Byland, at Old Byland, occupied between 1142 and 1147, was only one mile from Rievaulx. 98 Cart. Riev., no. 244. 99 Ibid., no. 243 (1147 × 67). 100 Ibid., no. 267. 101 Ibid., no. 241. No granges are named but the coastal location suggests Eston (Fountains) and Normanby (Rievaulx).

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Page 263 road leading from Aldburgh, where they had a grange, to the moor between Swinton and Nidderdale, for their cattle, and by the thirteenth century the whole of Nidderdale was devoted to cattle farming.102 There is reference to a cattle station on the Fountains grange of Baldersby.103 The moorland granges of Byland and Rievaulx were predominantly given over to sheep farming, and the frequent reference to bercarie on the grange estates of Meaux shows their importance in the region of Holderness. At Allerston, associated with the Marishes granges of Rievaulx, one grant alone conveyed to the monks pasture for 500 sheep and the enclosure of a sheepfold, while the donor reserved for himself the right to take dung.104 In the Tees valley the granges of Fountains and Rievaulx were probably mainly occupied with the production of salt and the farming of fish. At Normanby Rievaulx received pasture for sheep and other animals, and fisheries.105 The property of Fountains at Eston on the Tees is not recorded as a grange in the period to 1215. However, it may well have functioned as one, since Stephen de Mainhill granted to the monks all the sand of his vill of Eston where the tide flows as far as the river Tees, to construct as many fisheries in whatever location they wished, together with two acres to make more buildings and a road to them through his land.106 Several granges were devoted to industrial activities. Rievaulx acquired land in Stainborough on which forges were constructed by 1150, and the land was enclosed by ditches and hedges. They were given a monopoly of iron production in the vill, and by 1185 at the latest this had become a grange.107 The industrial site at Faweather (Bingley) and the four vills of Halton, Shipley, Heaton, and Chellow, which yielded dead wood and minerals, were evidently productive, as two granges were established in the area, at Halton and Faweather.108 A third industrial site was Shitlington, a centre of iron production. Between 1150 and 1160 the monks received land there on which to construct a grange, but there is no further reference to a grange, and it is possible that the assets there were administered from Stainborough Grange.109 In the same region, and for 102 Mowbray Charters, no. 129. 103 Cart. Fount., I, 90, no. 2. 104 Cart. Riev., nos. 86, 167–8. 105 Ibid., nos. 116–19, 169; EYC, II, nos. 739–40, 742–3. 106 Cart. Fount., I, 296, no. I. See also the reference to the conveying and buying of fish: ibid., 297–8, nos. 5–6. 107 Cart. Riev., nos. 91–8, 345; EYC, III, nos. 1725–6, 1737. 108 For Faweather see Clay, ‘Bradley’, 97 (1260, then called Rumblesmoor); for Halton the documentary evidence for a grange is late, but given that the endowment comprised the whole vill it is likely that it was created soon after its acquisition. For the identification of the monastic forges, see Faull and Moorhouse, West Yorkshire, III, 774, 779. 109 For the grant of the site of the grange see Cart. Riev., no. 99, EYC, III, no. 1727, and for licence to improve their pond in order to construct a mill above the river running to Blacker in Upper Hoyland, Cart. Riev., nos. 95–6, EYC, III, no. 1728.

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Page 264 the same purpose, Byland established granges at Bentley in Emley and Denby (Upper Whitley). The boundaries of the forges in Shitlington and Emley had to be carefully delineated, as did the source from which minerals were to be drawn. This area of West Yorkshire appears to have been the prime industrial site, but there were others, such as the forge at Fountains’ Aldburgh grange and at Bradley grange, which would become in the thirteenth century a centre for the production of pottery. Byland’s grange at Old Byland had a tile kiln.110 Tithes A cornerstone of Cistercian economic policy was the exemption, granted by Innocent II in 1132, of freedom from the payment of tithes on lands which the monks cultivated themselves, a privilege which was restricted in 1215 to lands newly brought into cultivation (novalia). It is in the operation of their grange policy that we can detect the most fierce defence and assertion of this right. The monks of Rievaulx moved quickly to secure from the canons of Kirkham, who held the parish church of Helmsley, freedom from the payment of tithes on their initial endowment of Griff and Stilton.111 By 1152 the monks had secured control of land in East Cowton, which was quickly converted into a grange. They agreed to pay 3 silver marks a year to the monks of Durham for the loss of tithes incurred by their church of Northallerton, in which parish Cowton lay, although in later decades the sum was challenged.112 There was also potential conflict with Durham over the tithes due to its church of Leake, in which parish Rievaulx had developed a grange at Crosby; this was averted by the monks agreeing to pay 2 marks a year in lieu of tithes.113 Low Bolton (East Bolton) was developed into a grange following the initial grant by Acaris de Tunstall (1173) and its increment by the men of the vill. This is a clear instance of the resettlement of an existing population. In a settlement reached by judgesdelegate between 1196 and 1214 the monks agreed to pay to Alexander the clerk 3s yearly for life in lieu of the tithes of corn yielded by their land in Bolton lying between their grange and Deepdale.114 Controversy raged over the tithes due from Hoveton and Welburn.115 An agreement between the monks and the canons of Newburgh, who had been granted the church of Welburn by Roger de Mowbray—also Rievaulx’s chief benefactor in this 110 Mon. Ang., V, 351. 111 Cart. Riev., nos. 234–5. 112 Ibid., nos. 53, 236, 258; EYC, II, no. 956; PUE, I, no. 194. 113 Cart. Riev., nos. 50, 221; EYC, II, nos. 954–5. 114 EYC, IV, no. 99. 115 Although Welburn is not recorded as a grange until 1301, the monks had come into possession of the entire vill, apart from the church, by 1157, and it is unlikely that the creation of a grange was delayed.

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Page 265 area—specified which lands were to be free from tithes and which liable for payment.116 Even areas which were apparently newly brought into cultivation were subject to claims, and a useful example is provided by the Pickering granges of Rievaulx. In 1206 the monks agreed to pay 20s annually to the dean and chapter of York for tithes on land which they held in the parish of Pickering, belonging to their grange at Kekmarish, but the agreement proved to be in need of frequent renegotiation.117 There was trouble for Abbot Alexander and the monks of Meaux over the tithes at Myton Grange from Richard Duchet, the clerk who had obtained the church of Hessle in which parish part of the grange lay. The problem, Abbot Burton later claimed, related to the tithes on land which the monks cultivated themselves. Abbot Alexander’s predecessors had paid a sum of money—but never more than a mark a year—to keep the peace. The abbot, however, claimed that he had never actually paid anything and refused. Richard allegedly invaded the grange and seized 40 wagons and 3 ploughs. It was only after an appeal to the pope, and considerable expense, that an agreement was reached whereby the abbot, for the lifetime of Richard only, promised to pay 20s yearly for the tithes pro bono pacis.118 Abbot Alexander also entered into a dispute over the tithes of the grange of Wharram le Street, the church of which was held by Nostell Priory as part of its prebend in York Minster.119 The creation of Cistercian granges improved the efficiency of the White Monks but at the same time the privileges which they enjoyed threatened vested interests. Emulators of the Cistercian grange So successful was the Cistercian grange system that it came to be emulated by members of other orders, and in particular the Premonstratensians and the Gilbertines. Of the granges of the White Canons details are few, but it can be established that Easby created granges at Middleton Tyas and Easby itself by 1184.120 By 1191 the abbey had also established granges at Scales, Brompton on Swale, and Carperby.121 The Gilbertines evidently adopted the Cistercian system early, for by 1164 the two orders reached an agreement regulating the distance between their granges in the same way as between Cistercian granges.122 Was the Gilbertine grange merely a carbon copy of the Cistercian? Or did it have a parallel, though separate, 116 Cart. Riev., no. 332. 117 Ibid., nos. 363–6; see also no. 277. 118 Chron. Melsa, I, 311–13. 119 For details see ibid., I, 323–5. 120 EYC, IV, no. 110, V, no. 149. 121 PUE, I, no. 278; BL MS Egerton 2827, fo. 310v (mentioned in EYC, V, 138). 122 For the most recent discussion of the Gilbertine economy, and especially the grange, see Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, pp. 394–419.

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Page 266 development? There are clearly some borrowings. In many ways—the process of consolidation, the organization, and the reliance on hired labour (which the Gilbertines admitted earlier than the Cistercians)—the canons imitated the White Monks. By the time the surviving Gilbertine institutes had been drawn up in the early thirteenth century the Cistercian practice of confining granges to within a day’s journey had been adopted. However one major distinction between the Cistercian and the Gilbertine grange was the control of the parish church or glebe which Golding sees as the imperative for the Gilbertine grange.123 The possession of church land and tithes could, he demonstrates, be the catalyst for the creation of a grange estate: the majority of Gilbertine granges were created in parishes where the canons and nuns held title to the church, and where they failed to gain title, attempts to establish a grange foundered. His example of Watton, ten of whose eleven medieval granges lay either in the parish of Watton or in another parish controlled by the canons, is a convincing one.124 Malton, in contrast, lay in an area where other religious houses, notably Kirkham, had already been granted a large number of advowsons before the arrival of the Gilbertines. Malton established granges at Mowthorpe (ER), Kirby Misperton, and Wintringham, by 1178.125 In its other granges the church—like that of Rillington, a moiety of which was appropriated to Byland—lay in other hands, and this impeded the development of the grange estate. Bishop cited examples where Augustinian granges were apparently centred on the parish church;126 however, the late date of some of these references and the lack of precision in the way in which the term ‘grange’ was used by the Augustinians make it difficult to get a sense of the nature of the estate and its management. Between 1154 and 1157 Ralph de Thurnscoe confirmed the lands held by Nostell in Thurnscoe, namely, the land outside the canons’ grange at ‘Cherebarue’; another charter locates the land near Holwell, now represented by Howell House in Thurnscoe.127 Roche Abbey’s interests in Thurnscoe, and the three-way dispute among Roche, Sallay, and Holy Trinity for the possession of the 123 This point is also made in more general terms by Waites, ‘Monastic grange’, 638–9, who shows that there was an almost complete correlation between what, in the later Middle Ages, were referred to as the granges of Whitby, and the churches controlled by the abbey. 124 Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, p. 405. It is not easy to establish which of these were created before 1215. 125 PUE, I, no. 154. Malton held the advowson of Wintringham alone. Only two other granges, Malton and Norton, coincided with the possession of the church: Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, pp. 398–406. 126 Bishop, ‘Monastic granges’, 205, citing, for example, Guisborough’s granges of Marton and Ormesby, which appear to have been created c. 1200 after the surrender of glebe land to the priory. 127 See EYC, VI, no. 130; BL Cotton MS Vespasian E XIX, fo. 28r–v; EPNS, WR, I, 92.

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Page 267 church, may have been due in part to Roche’s ambitions to establish a grange.128 The canons of Drax had, by the late twelfth century, a grange on the marshland one and a half miles from the priory, at Newhay; this may have functioned like a Cistercian home grange.129 The acquisition of the advowson and glebe was clearly an important factor in the development and maintenance of influence within a parish, and was sufficient to cause other houses to withdraw from the competition to consolidate a grange. In 1152 Rievaulx acquired a grange site at Willerby, and twenty years later was still developing it. However, by 1175 it had ceded the land to Bridlington, which, having acquired the church, began the consolidation of a grange estate.130 Given the Cistercian reluctance to accept churches, their acquisition could not have had the same imperative in the development of the grange as it did for canons. Although the regulations were being broken by the late twelfth century, there is little correlation between the few churches held by the Yorkshire Cistercians and their granges. However, this did not mean that attempts were not made to secure churches. Byland held the church at its grange of Old Byland, and acquired the church of Warcop in its grange of Bleatarn, although it lost it to Easby. Roche attempted to secure Roxby church.131 Meaux tried on numerous occasions to gain control of the church of Wawne. At the foundation of the abbey the count of Aumale granted ‘whatever he had in Wawne of his own patrimony and of the patrimony of the archbishop, and the church of the vill’.132 However, without real explanation, Burton noted that ‘because of many adverse circumstances they never possessed the church of Wawne’. Henry Murdac, as archbishop, had granted two carucates in Wawne to the monks, but they were resumed by Archbishop Roger. Some time later Abbot Thomas brought a case against the rector of Wawne in the presence of papal judges-delegate concerning what he claimed was unjust exaction of tithes contra tenorem privilegiorum nostrorum. His successor, Alexander (1197–1210), made a renewed attempt to claim the church by virtue of the grant of the founder, but dropped it at the instance of Countess Hawise. At least one nunnery claiming Cistercian identity appears to have operated a grange economy. Swine Priory was granted twelve acres in Spaldington (Bubwith) on which to erect granges, as well as woodland and pasture for grazing cows, sheep, mares, and foals.133 Moreover the 128 See above, p. 237. 129 EYC, VI, no. 38; Cal. Pat. R. 1307–13, p. 347. 130 Cart. Riev., no. 147; Cart. Brid., pp. 114–15; EYC, II, nos. 1228, 1230. 131 See above, p. 237. 132 Chron. Melsa, I, 83–4, and, for what follows, I, 93–5, 217–18, 296–9. 133 EYC, XII, no. 65.

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Page 268 territorial ambitions of the nuns led to the loss to them, by Meaux Abbey, of one of its early granges, Bealeys. An agreement reached between the two houses in the second decade of the thirteenth century allowed for the free flow of water from Lambwath, previously impeded by ‘Monkdyk’, through the nuns’ grange of Fairholme.134 There are indications of a grange economy at another ‘Cistercian’ nunnery. A papal bull for Sinningthwaite granted to it, as a Cistercian house, protection that ‘no-one shall dare to commit violence, rapine or theft, to set fire, or capture or kill a man within the cloisters of your places or granges’.135 The grange was a dynamic force in the agrarian transformation of the county. By cutting across parochial and manorial boundaries it enabled the Cistercians and those who emulated them to consolidate their holdings for greater efficiency of management. As this study has shown, we must guard against generalizations. Cistercian granges were usually begun early, but their full consolidation could take years and was achieved at different rates according to the nature of the land and the tenurial complexity of the area. The granges of the regular canons were not pale imitations of those of the White Monks, for they appeared to have their own dynamic for creation, the possession of church, glebe, and tithe. Although there are indications that the Cistercians attempted to gain control of a limited number of churches in the parishes in which they created granges, the two developments remained, on the whole, distinct. The grange has long been seen as the force which enabled the Cistercians to fulfil their ambition to live outside the manorial economy.136 Isabel Alfonso has argued that this presents a misleading picture. She suggests that it is an assumption which derives from the admiration for large, compact, estates worked by a productive work force, which is characteristic of nineteenth-century historiography, and was not necessarily part of the Cistercian agenda. Further, she maintains that the Cistercians exercised seigneurial power early; that is, from the beginning they were indeed part of the manorial structure. The Yorkshire evidence shows that the White Monks placed a high premium on consolidating their estates, and their efforts in this direction distinguished them from houses of other orders. The administration of those estates also suggests a distinctive approach. It is true that there is evidence that peasants on some of the estates that were taken over by the Cistercians became lay brothers, or remained as rural workers on those estates, and that, in consequence, the Cistercian economy, like the manorial one, was based on ‘relations between domination and subordination’. The archaeological evidence suggests that peasant settlements could exist alongside granges. However, 134 Chron. Melsa, I, 356–7. 135 Mon. Ang., V, 466, no. VII. 136 Alfonso, ‘Cistercians and feudalism’.

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Page 269 there is nothing in the period before 1215 to suggest that the Cistercians operated as rentiers, and the assumption that the dominium exercised over lay brothers could be equated with feudal power cannot be sustained. MONASTIC HOUSES AND THE MARKET PLACE The production of surplus on monastic estates led to their involvement in commercial activities. A number of religious houses profited from having their own fairs, Nostell at the house itself and at Woodkirk, Bolton at the house, Whitby within the town, and St Mary’s, York, at Boston.137 Others were aided by freedom from toll when they went to market to sell their goods—the monks of Byland at Helmsley, for instance138—or by benefits which enabled them to transport their goods without paying toll; the canons of Drax had a ferry over the river Don, the monks of Meaux a ferry across the Humber at Wawne, and the canons of Guisborough free passage at Hessle.139 Other benefits brought by urban lordship included control over harbours.140 By 1204, when the merchants of English seaports were taxed, the Yorkshire ports were Selby, Yarm, Coatham, Whitby, Scarborough, Hedon, Hull, and York, in all of which monastic houses were property holders. Meaux controlled the port of Wyk, later Kingston upon Hull, which was part of Myton, until 1293.141 Of all the monastic economic activities in the Middle Ages it is the engagement in the production and export of wool that has figured largest in the historiography of the period. Yet the origins and development of the monastic wool trade before 1215 are poorly documented, and early references to the movement of goods overseas are ambiguous. As early as 1133 Rievaulx received royal licence for its men and horses to travel freely, though as the dictates of the order required movement overseas once a year it is uncertain whether this related to trading activities, or to journeys to and from the General Chapter.142 Henry II granted similar freedom of passage to Byland and Kirkstall, and to Fountains, Meaux, and Jervaulx, that their men and goods should be quit of toll, pontage, and passage in England and Normandy.143 The very scale of monastic, and particularly Cistercian, pasture lands and flocks suggests that some houses would from an early date have had 137 RRAN, III, nos. 621–2; EYC, VII, no. 20; ibid., IV, no. 8. 138 EYC, X, no. 95. 139 EYC, I, nos. 40, 489–90, II, no. 764; Chron. Melsa, I, 93. In addition Pontefract had a ferry at South Ferriby (Cart. Pont., II, no. 400). 140 EYC, II, no. 1146 (Bridlington). 141 See J. Bilson, ‘Wyke upon Hull in 1293’, Transactions of the East Riding Antiquarian Society, 26 (1929), 37–105. 142 Cart. Riev., no. 195. 143 Mon. Ang. V, 343, Kirkstall Coucher, no. 310; EYC, I, no. 74; III, no. 1389, V, no. 374.

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Page 270 considerable surplus wool for disposal. Reference was made in the previous chapter to grants of pasture for a specified number of sheep, and it is important to remember both that these might be a minimum number, with pasture being overused, and that monasteries frequently received swathes of moorland where numbers were not specified. Monastic flocks could number several thousand sheep. Fragmentary though the evidence is, there are some indications of monastic involvement in trade and financial dealing before 1215.144 In the time of Abbot Denis of Roche (1159–71) the house was in debt to the Flemish wool merchant and financier, William Cade of St Omer, to the tune of 22 pounds of wool and 2,200 fleeces in sacks, indicating not only the practice of borrowing, but the production of wool and its sale in advance.145 A recognition of the dominance of the Cistercians generally in wool production came in 1193, when for the ransom of Richard I they, along with the Premonstratensians and Gilbertines, were required to give, as their contribution, a year’s wool clip—an event which led the Yorkshire chronicler, William of Newburgh, to remark that wool was the chief part of the Cistercians’ livelihood.146 Such prominence suggests that the sparsity of documentary traces of overseas wool dealings before the end of the twelfth century masks an established and thriving trade. However, the Cistercian monks were clearly not alone, for in the 1190s Martin son of Edric paid 5 marks for the recovery of six sacks (1,200 fleeces) and four stones of good wool, and four sacks of other wool which he claimed from the nuns of Swine; and William son of Elias paid 20 marks for the recovery of 7,000 fleeces for which he had already paid the abbot of St Mary’s. In 1200 and again in 1204 William son of Robert sued the nuns of Swine for twenty sacks of wool (4,000 fleeces) and 10 marks.147 By the early thirteenth century the picture starts to be less ambiguous. In 1212 Fountains was evidently trading with the Flemish merchants of St Omer.148 In 1224 the abbots of Fountains, Kirkstall, and Roche received licence for free movement and protection of a shipload of their wool. The abbot of Meaux was permitted to have one shipload of wool taken abroad for sale; and the abbots of Byland and Jervaulx received licence to sell wool in Flanders, or anywhere else abroad except for the kingdom of France.149 Of the eight Yorkshire Cistercian houses, six received licence to sell wool abroad, and the only non-Cistercian house to receive similar permission was St Mary’s, York, which was allowed free movement of its 144 For a brief discussion see Donkin, The Cistercians, appendices 9–10. 145 H. Jenkinson, ‘William Cade, a financier of the twelfth century’, EHR, 28 (1913), 209–27, 731–2 (p. 221). 146 Howden, Chronica, III, 210; Newburgh, Historia, I, 399. 147 T. H. Lloyd, The English Wool Trade in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1977), p. 289. 148 Canivez, Statuta, I, 401–2 (no. 55). 149 Cal. Pat. R. 1216–1225, pp. 449, 461, 492, 509.

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Page 271 wool under the conduct of William, nephew of Hereward de Lenn.150 By the fourteenth century Yorkshire houses were among the leading wool producers noted by Francesco Balducci Pegolotti. Fountains was top of the list with 76 sacks of wool, approximately 15,000 fleeces, for sale. Rievaulx was next with 60 sacks (12,000 fleeces), followed by Jervaulx and Bridlington, 50 sacks (10,000), Malton, 45 sacks (9,000), and Watton, 40 sacks (8,000). Byland, Kirkham, Whitby, and St Mary’s were reckoned to have between 30 and 40 sacks, Meaux, Kirkstall, Guisborough, Roche, and Warter between 20 and 30; Sallay, Newburgh, Easby, Egglestone, Ellerton, Arden, Rosedale, and Nostell, between 10 and 20, and Coverham, Swine, Marrick, Hampole, Drax, Wykeham, Thicket, St Andrew’s, York, and St Clement’s, fewer than 10.151 Monastic sheep flocks supplying for this one market could, therefore, run into the thousands. Pegolotti’s list suggests that the White Monks were the major force in, but did not overwhelm, wool production. ECONOMIC STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES Finally, how sound was the economic basis of the religious houses in Yorkshire in the period 1069 to 1215? The thousands of charters conveying land to the monastic order in the county before 1215 are witness to its considerable success. They also give a hint of the problems it faced, for from a monastic desert Yorkshire had turned into an area with clusters of monasteries competing for lands and endowments. This rendered necessary the kind of agreements between individual houses in close proximity mentioned above, and led also, on occasion, to opposition from lay landholders who stood to lose from the expansion of the monastic order. Numerous instances could be cited, from Torphin son of Robert’s quarrel with Easby over the mill there, and that of William de Marton with Sallay Abbey over a road to its grange at Stainton, to the dispute between Rievaulx and Alan de Ryedale over the boundaries of Welburn, Hoveton, and Bowforth.152 From time to time monasteries made claims of poverty, which appear to have been intended to secure a change of site (Jervaulx, Kirkstall), an additional endowment (Sallay) or the appropriation of a church. However, when the dispersal of a convent took place this seems to suggest that serious, if temporary, problems were being encountered. Before the removal of the convent of Fors to Jervaulx (1156) its disbandment was 150 Ibid., p. 459. 151 Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, La Pratica della Mercatura, ed. A. Evans, Medieval Academy of America, 24 (Cambridge, Mass., 1936). 152 EYC, V, no. 150; Cart. Sallay, I, no. 65; Cart. Riev., no. 153 (EYC, IX, no. 157).

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Page 272 contemplated.153 The dispersal of Kirkstall (1174) seems to have been the result of the combination of disease among the abbey flocks, a failure of the crops, internal dissension, the loss of the grange of Micklethwaite, and the poor judgement of Abbot Ralph Haget in attempting to bribe Henry II to secure its return. After the reassembly of the community the abbot agreed to try to modify expenses.154 In the late 1180s Sallay was in financial trouble, and the abbots of Clairvaux, Igny, and Mortemer advised that the abbey be disbanded totally or removed to another site.155 Despite the apparent success of Meaux in expanding its estates, it was after only ten years that the first recorded dispersal took place. Abbot Adam’s ambitions to increase the numbers to forty monks were limited by his resources; Abbot Burton recorded the tradition that the house was so poor that the abbot could not afford clothing for the novices, and was forced to disperse the community.156 Adam’s successor, Philip, reassembled the convent, expanded the abbey’s estates, and, as we saw earlier, entered into a risky transaction with William Fossard in order to secure land in Wharram le Street.157 After a promising start Abbot Thomas (1182–97) was forced once again to disband the community, the economic problems being caused by a series of disasters: the loss of lands in Wharram, a fire at Cottingham mill, the failure of the crops, the low market value of grain, and the financial burden of giving up a year’s wool clip in 1193. Reassembly was made possible by William Rule, parson of Cottingham, who on his entry as a novice granted the abbey the sum of £20.158 It is difficult to know how unusual the problems encountered by Meaux were. Certainly it had its fair share of bad luck, though many of the factors mentioned in connection with the dispersal of 1193 would have hit most Yorkshire Cistercian houses, and others. What seems to have affected Meaux in particular—and it was not unusual in this—was the presence of abbots with grand ambitions and little head for business. Abbot Philip’s decision to take on Fossard’s Jewish debt, coupled with the money spent on consolidation of granges, and the ambitious building programmes of both Philip and Thomas, were in no small part responsible for Meaux’s financial problems. In other cases, however, there is evidence of more shrewd financial acumen, and self confidence. The instances, cited above, of selling wool in advance by a small number of houses,159 argue for a degree of confi153 Mon. Ang., V, 571–2. 154 Foundation of Kirkstall, pp. 182–3. 155 Cart. Sallay, II, no. 615. 156 Chron. Melsa, I, 107. 157 See above, pp. 258–9. 158 Chron. Melsa, I, 233. 159 But, interestingly, comprising a Cistercian and a Benedictine monastery and a Cistercian nunnery.

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Page 273 dence in a convent’s ability to produce. Moreover, the willingness of some abbeys to enter into financial arrangements with money-lenders suggests a purposeful expansion of property. In the time of Abbot Hugh of Roche (1179–84), only a few years after the record of the wool owed to William Cade, the abbey was in debt to the Jews.160 The borrowing of money for the purpose of buying up encumbered estates is likely to be what lay behind the debt owed to Aaron of Lincoln, in 1186, by a group of Cistercian houses (Rievaulx, Kirkstall, Roche, Newminster, Kirkstead, Louth Park, Revesby, Rufford, and Biddlesden). In that year Aaron died, and Richard I later commuted the debt owed by these nine houses from 6,400 marks (£4,266) to 1,000 marks, payable to himself.161 That the debt was recorded as a joint one might indicate that the Yorkshire Cistercians were acting together with houses outside the county and their own monastic families in order to purchase land. The twelfth century was the period in which the monastic houses of Yorkshire accumulated most of the estates that they were to acquire. Although it is not possible to rank houses in terms of relative wealth, it is likely that in most cases the houses rated as most wealthy by the Taxatio ecclesiastica (1291) and the Valor ecclesiasticus (1535)—for all the defects of these sources—were the most wealthy by 1215. This would place St Mary’s, York, Whitby, Selby, Fountains, and Guisborough high on the list. There were a few anomalies, however, and it is unlikely that the relatively low value of Rievaulx (£278 10s 2d in 1535) was reflected throughout its history.162 For the period before 1215 the only glimpses we have of the financial health or otherwise of houses are recorded in narrative sources, and the assessment of a number of Cistercian houses for Danegeld in 1161–2.163 Any such traces are of limited value, however, for against the ‘paper’ value of a monastery needed to be set its considerable expenses, the daily maintenance of the community, land acquisition—the monks of Fountains paid out over £500 within a few years to the Mowbray family alone—and ambitious building programmes. Nevertheless within the course of a century and a half the monastic order in Yorkshire had become the controller of a high proportion of its wealth. 160 Mon. Ang., V, 505, no. XIV. 161 See H. G. Richardson, The English Jewry under Angevin Kings (London, 1960), pp. 90–1. 162 VE, V, 144. 163 Pipe Roll 8 Henry II, p. 52, assessing Rievaulx at 1 mark, Byland at 12s 8d, Fountains at 9s 10d, Meaux at 9s 8d, Jervaulx at 7s 5d, Sallay at 6s 9d and Kirkstall at 6s 8d. Easby was assessed at 5s.

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Page 274 APPENDIX Table of Cistercian granges The date represents the earliest recorded date for the existence of the grange. Fountains Abbey Cayton Aldburgh Warsill Cowton Kilnsey Marton le Moor Dacre Sutton Morker Baldersby Kirk Hammerton Kirby Wiske Brimham Bouthwaite Greenberry Thorpe Underwood Arnford Busby Bradley Sleningford Bramley Bordley Galphay Malham Marston

1135 × 38 1135 × 38 1146 1146 1143 × 47 1143 × 47 1146 1146 1156 1160 1172 1181 1189 1199 1199 1199 1199 1199 1199 1199 1199 1199 1199 1199 1199

Memorials of Fountains, I, 56 Ibid. EYC, I, no. 79 Ibid.; Memorials of Fountains, I, 86 Ibid. Ibid. EYC, I, no. 79 Ibid. EYC, I, no. 80 EYC, XI, no. 269 EYC, II, no. 738 EYC, V, no. 285 Memorials of Fountains, II, 8–10 Ibid. Ibid., II, 13–18 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

Meaux Abbey North Grange Bealeys Blanchemarle Hayholme

1151 1151 (lost) 1154 1150 × 1160

Chron. Melsa, I, 81 EYC, III, no. 1383 Ibid., no. 1384 Chron. Melsa, I, 96

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Page 275 Octon Wharram le Street Salthaugh Myton Moor (Beeford) Wawne Tharlesthorpe Wassand Arram (Atwick) Arnold Skerne Routh

1150 × 1160 1150 × 1160 1150 × 1160 1172 1172 1177 1182 × 1197 1197 × 1210 1197 × 1210 1197 × 1210 1197 × 1210 1210 × 1220

Ibid., I, 99 Ibid., I, 99 Ibid., I, 87 EYC, III, no. 1391 Ibid. Ibid., no. 1392 Chron. Melsa, I, 220 Ibid., I, 308 Ibid., I, 329 Ibid., I, 305–6 Ibid., I, 329 Ibid., I, 362–5

Rievaulx Abbey Cowton Crosby Hesketh Griff Welburn Hunmanby Low Bolton Morton (Harlsey) Normanby Little Broughton Skiplam Stainborough Halton (Bingley) Kekmarish

1152 1152 1157 1147 × 67 1147 × 67 1160 (lost) 1173 1170 × 1176 1170 × 1180 1180 × 1188 1189 1185? c. 1185 1206

Cart. Riev., p. 260 Ibid. Ibid., no. 58 Ibid., no. 243 Ibid., no. 57 Ibid., nos. 78–9, 197, 250, p. 260 Ibid., nos. 139–40, p. 262 Ibid., nos. 87–8 Ibid., no. 241 Ibid., nos 123–5, p. 262 EYC, IX, no. 148 Cart Riev., p. 284 (Falthwaite) Ibid., p. 283 Ibid., no. 363

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Byland Abbey Wildon 1142 Old Byland 1147 Thorpe (Coxwold) 1160 × 70 Murton Shap Asby Bleatarn Denby Bentley (Emley) Snilesworth

Mon. Ang., V, 350 Ibid., 351; Cart. Riev., no. 243 Historic Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of his Grace the Duke of Rutland, IV, 4 1170 × 1190 EYC, III, no. 1839 1189 Cal. Ch. R. I, p. 314 1189 Ibid. 1189 Ibid. late twelfth century BL Add. chs 7427, 7432, 7414–5; Yorkshire Deeds, VI, 6 late twelfth century BL Add. chs 7456, 7453; Yorkshire Deeds, VI, 72–3 1207 HMC, Rutland, IV, 76

Kirkstall Abbey Barnoldswick

1152

Foundation of Kirkstall

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Riddlesden Micklethwaite Roundhay Bessacar Cliviger

1152 × 1162 1167 1177 × 1185 1187 c. 1200

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Page 276 Accrington Hooton Pagnell

c. 1200 1191 × 1216

Ibid. Ibid., 528

Sallay Abbey Barrowby Ellenthorpe Sallay (home) Stainton Sunderland (Lancs) Wolfington Askwith Elam Tadcaster

1172 1172 1172 1172 1172 1189 1189 1189 1217 × 1223

Cart. Sallay, I, 63–5 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Cal. Ch. R., II, 163 Cart. Sallay, II, 138–9 Ibid. Ibid., no. 578

Roche Abbey Brancliffe Corby Armthorpe Barnby Kirk Bramwith Aggacroft Roxby Todwick

1176 × 1189 1179 × 1184 1186 1186 1186 1186 1189 × 1199 1186 × 1213

EYC, III, no. 1412 Mon. Ang., V, 505, no. XIV Ibid., no. XIII Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Cal. Ch. R., I, 146 EYC, VI, nos. 111–12

Jervaulx Abbey Dale

1156

Mon. Ang., V, 571, 573; EYC, V, no. 372

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Page 277 Chapter 10 CULTURAL INFLUENCES AND IDENTITIES Monasteries and nunneries were institutions which were, in some senses, cut off from the world. Some were independent, self-governing institutions; others were members of a wider, international order or organization. Yet how did members of the Yorkshire religious houses view themselves? What did they perceive to be their cultural identity? Was it determined by their monastic affiliation and belonging? Or did they, despite the universal and international character of their vocation, continue to feel their cultural leanings to be rooted in the locality from which they came? Such questions are not easy to answer, but the traces are there in the literary and material culture—the books, manuscripts, and buildings—which the monastic order in the county has bequeathed. The evidence is once more incomplete. Manuscripts can be identified from only a minority of houses;1 the production of literary, historical, and theological writings are limited to a few individuals; and the surviving buildings dating from before c. 1215 are dominated by the large male houses. The first part of this chapter reviews the evidence for the collection and transmission of manuscripts, and the writings produced in Yorkshire monasteries, and discusses the implications for their cultural contacts and identities. The second part considers the material remains of the monastic buildings primarily from the point of view of what they suggest about cultural contacts and influences. 1 For example, only one twelfth-century manuscript (Cambridge, King’s College MS 18) has been identified as being in the possession of a Yorkshire nunnery (Swine), and even then, the evidence suggests that it did not come to the house until later; see D. N. Bell (ed.), The Libraries of the Cistercians, Gilbertines and Premonstratensians, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 3, (London: British Library and British Academy, 1992), pp. 144–6; D. N. Bell, What Nuns Read: Books and Libraries in Medieval English Nunneries, Cistercian Studies Series, 158 (Kalamazoo, Mich. and Spencer, Mass., 1995), pp. 168–71.

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Page 278 MANUSCRIPTS AND WRITERS In contrast to the cathedral priory of Durham and the great Benedictine abbeys of the south and the midlands, the evidence for the contents of the libraries of the Yorkshire monasteries is meagre. There are only two surviving library catalogues from before the fourteenth century, from Benedictine Whitby and Cistercian Rievaulx, both of them dating from the late twelfth century.2 The Whitby catalogue lists eighty-six volumes, some containing more than one work. There appears to have been an emphasis on patristic writing and biblical commentaries, and works of Bede are well represented. Twelfth-century writers included Hugh of St Victor, Peter Lombard, Ivo of Chartres, St Bernard, and Gratian. The library evidently contained many biblical glosses, and works on monastic observance. The saints’ lives, a staple of the monastic lectio, included Cuthbert, Mary, Andrew, Margaret, Maclovius (Malo), Brendan, Mary Magdalene, Benedict, Katherine, Firminius, and Faith; a book of Theophilus ‘and other saints’; and the book of Thomas de sancta Hilda. An interest in Durham is shown by the presence of De situ Dunelmensis ecclesie. Finally, there are a number of works listed under the general heading Isti sunt libri grammatici; these are classical works and teaching books including Prudentius, Boethius, Plato, Juvenal, Cicero, Cato, and Homer. The Rievaulx catalogues show some similarities and some contrasts. Rievaulx had, apparently, few classical, or grammar books, but like Whitby it boasted a collection of law books.3 Also in contrast to Whitby, Augustine is well represented, with around thirty works listed.4 Of the catalogue entries, 85 per cent relate to biblical texts and commentaries, theological works, and moralia. There are works by Boethius, Ambrose, Jerome, Isidore, Bede, and Cassian; twelfthcentury writers included Hugh of St Victor, Ivo of Chartres, Anselm, and Bernard, and local authors—the Augustinian prior, Robert of Bridlington, and the Rievaulx writers Ailred, Maurice, and Walter Daniel.5 Perhaps the greatest contrast 2 The Whitby catalogue was entered at the end of the cartulary preserved at Whitby Museum, in the same hand as the Memorial of foundation, and printed in Cart. Whitby, I, 341, and R. Sharpe, J. P. Carley, R. M. Thomson, and A. G. Watson, ed., English Benedictine Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 4 (London: British Library and British Academy, 1996), pp. 633–42; for a fifteenth-century list from St Mary’s, see ibid., pp. 677–785. There are two Rievaulx catalogues, both thirteenth-century copies, of separate lists from the last decade of the twelfth century; they are preserved in Cambridge, Jesus College, MS 34, and printed from there in A. Hoste, Bibliotheca Aelrediana: A Survey of the Manuscripts, Old Catalogues, Editions and Studies concerning St Aelred of Rievaulx, Instrumenta Patristica, 2 (Steenbrugge, 1962), pp. 149–76, and Bell, Libraries of the Cistercians, pp. 87–137. 3 Section A of the catalogues contains standard law texts such as Justinian and Gratian. 4 Sections B and C. 5 Walter Daniel’s life of Ailred, is, however, not mentioned.

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Page 279 comes in the area of historical works, of which there were few at Whitby. Like Whitby, Rievaulx had a copy of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History,6 but in addition possessed another Historia ecclesiastica (perhaps Eusebius), a summary of Josephus, the works of Henry of Huntingdon, a history of Jerusalem, and the Historia Brittonum of Nennius.7 Finally there were the saints’ lives and monastic writers such as John Cassian; and it was evidently the practice at Rievaulx to preserve in the library the glossed psalters of former abbots.8 Evidence for the contents of Yorkshire monastic libraries in the period before 1215 derives also from surviving manuscripts, identifiable either from their contents, contemporary inscriptions, or ex libris and pressmarks.9 In most cases the survival rate for the period is very low. From Selby the only extant books (apart from the Easter tables) are a copy of Bede, and possibly the Sentences of Peter Lombard.10 No manuscripts survive at all from Whitby, and from the two Cluniac houses only a Bible, a breviary, and a copy of Augustine. Manuscripts from St Mary’s, York, indicate an interest in the classics (Plato, Ovid, Boethius) and history (the foundation narrative of Abbot Stephen, Ralph Diceto, Osbern’s life of Dunstan), with a single volume of Richard of St Victor.11 There has been a higher survival rate among Cistercian and Augustinian manuscripts, particularly from Fountains, Byland, and Rievaulx, and from Bridlington, Guisborough, and Kirkham. The surviving collections include sermons and expositions; biblical glosses; classical works; patristic writings; the works of twelfth-century scholars and theologians;12 histories;13 legal texts and collections of letters;14 Yorkshire writers such as Ailred of Rievaulx and Robert of Bridlington;15 and saints’ lives. The evidence is incomplete. However, one may note that the surviving books from Cistercian houses mirror the interest in history shown in the Rievaulx 6 Section I is devoted to the works of Bede. 7 Section K contained the historical works. 8 Contained in Section L. 9 The starting point for discussion remains N. Ker (ed.), Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 3, 2nd edn (London, 1964), and Supplement, Guides and Handbooks, 15, ed. A. G. Watson (1987). 10 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 695; see O. Pächt and J. J. G. Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1966–73), III, no. 217. 11 Cambridge, University Library MS Ee. 6.40 and Corpus Christi College BL MSS 309, 451; BL MSS Add. 38816, 40007, Burney 220, Harley 56; Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 224. 12 Peter Cantor (Byland); Peter Comestor (Byland); Peter Abelard (Rievaulx); Hugh of St Victor (Fountains, Rievaulx); Peter Lombard (Rievaulx); Bernard (Byland, Fountains, Rievaulx); William de Montibus (Rievaulx). 13 Orosius (Rievaulx); Nennius (Kirkstall, Sallay); Historia Dunelmensis (Sallay); Henry of Huntingdon (Byland); William of Newburgh (Newburgh); Roger of Howden (Rievaulx); Geoffrey of Monmouth (Rievaulx, Bridlington); William of Malmesbury (Byland, Rievaulx, Bridlington). 14 For example, papal letters (Byland); Ivo of Chartres (Fountains, Newburgh). 15 Works of Ailred survive from Byland, Rievaulx, Sallay, and Kirkham, and Robert, from Byland.

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Page 280 catalogue, and that six houses (Selby, and three Cistercian and two Augustinian houses) are known to have copies of Bede. Some books found their way into monastic libraries by way of donation from those who entered the religious life, and from benefactors. We know of one recruit, Dean Hugh of York, who on his entry into Fountains brought with him his books. This, so Hugh of Kirkstall commented, first breathed life into the abbey library.16 A commentary on the Apocalypse, with an ex libris mark from Bridlington, has a twelfth-century note indicating that it had been given by W. de Berewik.17 It has been suggested that Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 66, produced at Durham and later to be found at Sallay, might have been secured for the Cistercians by their patron, Matilda de Percy, whose family had a connection with Durham through Bishop Hugh du Puiset.18 The minor historical works of Ralph Diceto, dean of St Paul’s, preserved in BL MS Add. 40007, are prefaced by a letter to William de Longchamp, chancellor of England; the manuscript was later to be found in the library of St Mary’s Abbey, York, where Longchamp’s brother, Robert, became abbot in 1197.19 The consequence of such bequests was that the contents of a monastic library need not necessarily reflect the interests of the monks, their ‘collecting policy’. It is a useful reminder that in the case of the Cistercians, control of decoration (in terms of manuscript illumination) would not have been easy.20 Evidence for the collection of books also comes from inscriptions, for instance, the note in the twelfth- or thirteenth-century copy of Plato at St Mary’s which states: ‘iste liber fuit Gerardi et est in monumentum apud nos in vadimonio’ (‘this book was Gerard’s, and it is among our muniments, as a pledge’).21 Other books may have come through purchase, or the acquisition of materials for copying might have been financed by a specific benefaction. A rare grant was that made to Whitby ‘ad faciendum et scribendum libros ecclesie’ (‘to make and copy books for the church’).22 Books might be borrowed in order to be copied, and the implications of this are discussed below. Abbot Alexander of Meaux acquired a reputation as a ‘librorum… 16 Memorials of Fountains, I, 53; cf. Catalogi veteres librorum ecclesiae cathedralis Dunelm., ed. B. Botfield, Surtees Soc., 7 (1838), 7–8. 17 Ripon Cathedral, MS 4. 18 Meehan, ‘Durham twelfth-century manuscripts in Cistercian houses’, pp. 439–49 (445–6). 19 A. G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Dateable Manuscripts c. 700–1600 in the Department of Manuscripts, The British Library, 2 vols. (London: British Library, 1979), I, 83, item 401. Watson dates BL MS Add. 40007 to c. 1195. 20 See Anne Lawrence, ‘English Cistercian manuscripts of the twelfth century’, in Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture, pp. 284–98. 21 Cambridge, University Library MS Ee.6.40. 22 EYC, II, no. 898. A number of thirteenth-century benefactors made grants for the purchase or repair of books, or for the abbey almarius: see Cart. Whitby, I, nos. 10, 13–15.

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Page 281 maximus perquisitor’ (‘a very great acquirer of books’), doubtless through a combination of purchase, the promotion of grants, and borrowing; sadly, there is only one identifiable manuscript from Meaux from this period.23 Finally, evidence for the cultural milieu of the Yorkshire monasteries is furnished by the works which are known to have been produced in Yorkshire monasteries during this period. Any discussion is dominated by one house, Rievaulx, and one man, Ailred. The three independent Benedictine houses and the Cistercian houses of Byland, Kirkstall, and Fountains are known only to have produced histories of their own communities;24 the sole exception is the verse account, possibly written by Serlo of Fountains/Kirkstall, on the Battle of the Standard, described by Rigg as ‘a combination of rhythmical, fastmoving verse with invective and abusive puns’.25 Three Augustinian priories produced writers, one, William of Newburgh, a historian of note and theologian, another, Maurice of Kirkham, concerned to set the Gilbertines straight on a matter of theology, and the third, Robert, prior of Bridlington, the author of a treatise on the Augustinian way of life, and biblical commentaries. In comparison Rievaulx, with at least eighteen works of Ailred, ten of Walter Daniel, and four of Maurice, distorts the picture. A northern cultural tradition? Examination of the evidence of manuscripts and writers seems to indicate a strong northern cultural influence. Let us return to the question of the acquisition of books, and the dissemination of texts. One method by which monasteries amassed a library was by borrowing books to copy. It is important to remember the problems which faced new monasteries, particularly in the early period of expansion. All of them needed books: service books for liturgical use, as well as volumes of edificatory material for reading aloud at mealtimes and for private study during the periods of lectio divina. It was a particular requirement that all Cistercian houses keep an up-to-date copy of the Carta caritatis, and a copy of the Exordium 23 Chron. Melsa, I, 326; Pächt and Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts, III, no. 215. For a library inventory from Meaux, dating to 1396, see Bell, Libraries of the Cistercians, pp. 34–82. 24 One of these, the ‘Memorial of Foundation and benefaction of Whitby’, is a brief work only. 25 A. G. Rigg, A History of Anglo-Latin Literature 1066–1422 (Cambridge, 1992), p. 53. Baker, ‘English Cistercian Chronicles’, I, rejects Serlo’s authorship on the grounds that (i) there is no other testimony to his literary talents, and (ii) ‘the poem… could not have been written until after the battle in 1138, and if Serlo had entered Fountains by that date he would have had little enough time or scope at that early stage in the community’s existence to indulge in literary pursuits’ (pp. 29–30). However, by 1137 the community at Fountains was stable enough to begin to send out colonies; and the profuse literary output from Ailred of Rievaulx does not suggest that the Yorkshire Cistercians felt constrained by the official attitude towards literary pursuits.

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Page 282 parvum, and Stephen of Sallay (d. 1252), in his Speculum novitii, listed what he deemed to be essential study for the Cistercian novice, and by implication what a Cistercian library should contain.26 With the Cistercian emphasis on uniformity of books, we can suppose that new colonies brought their basic library requirements from the mother house, and in turn supplied their own daughter houses. These can scarcely have been adequate, however. Where did a new Yorkshire foundation—of whatever order—turn for gifts of books or exemplars to copy? At first sight, in the early years of the monastic expansion, a likely candidate might seem to be York and the cathedral church of St Peter. There is, however, little evidence to suggest that this was the case. Indeed, given York’s recent past—its ravaging during the harrying of the north—the cathedral canons might have had their own problems. Evidence increasingly reveals how the Yorkshire monks and canons turned not to York but to the north, to the great cathedral priory of Durham. Recent work of scholars of palaeography and manuscript studies, in particular Anne Lawrence and Bernard Meehan, has done much to illuminate the nature of the contacts between Durham and the Yorkshire houses.27 The evidence is both textual and artistic. Bernard Meehan has noted the close relationship between the texts contained in a number of Durham manuscripts, particularly those given to the cathedral by Bishop William of St Calais, and others found in Cistercian manuscripts. As examples he has cited Durham Cathedral Library MS B II 11 (Jerome) and MS B III 16 (Raban Maur), and the Rievaulx manuscripts, now preserved as York Minster Library MS XVI.I.8, and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 86. The parallels suggest that Durham supplied the exemplars for copying at Rievaulx. Of particular interest is the way in which manuscripts of Bede circulated, and textual similarities suggest that Durham supplied the exemplars for copies of Bede made at Newminster, Worksop, and Tynemouth. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 139, a composite manuscript containing some unique material, such as Symeon of Durham’s Historia regum, has been the focus of debate for many years. It has a late-twelfth- or early-thirteenth-century ex libris from Cistercian Sallay, but its contents reveal layers of influence and levels of contact. Its text of the Historia Brittonum of Nennius is related to a 26 Liber Usuum, Antiphonarium, lives of the fathers, the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, the Rule of St Benedict, certain of Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos and his Confessions, Gilbert of Hoyland’s sermon on the Song of Songs, Cassian’s Collationes, Jerome’s letters, the Scripta of Ailred, and William of St Thierry’s Epistola ad fratres de Monte Dei: Bell, Libraries of the Cistercians, p. xxiv. 27 The following sections are indebted to Meehan, ‘Durham twelfth-century manuscripts in Cistercian houses’, and Anne Lawrence, ‘The artistic influence of Durham manuscripts’, in Anglo-Norman Durham, ed. Rollason, Harvey, and Prestwich, pp. 439–49 and 451–69.

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Page 283 Kirkstall manuscript of the same, and to Cambridge University Library MS Ff.I.27, associated with Durham. Close analysis has led Meehan to suggest that Corpus Christi College MS 139 was a rough copy which formed the exemplar for three manuscripts, Liège University Library MS 369C (for Kirkstall), Cambridge University Library MS Ff.I.27, and Durham Cathedral Library MS B II 35; and that the third—itself the exemplar for three others—was retained at Durham while Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 139 was sent to Sallay. One unambiguous piece of evidence for copying relates to Reginald of Durham’s life of Godric of Finchale, which was lent to the monks of Fountains by Durham. The context in which this information occurs is a miracle story—Godric intervened to restore the manuscript after it had been damaged; the interest lies not only in the reference to Durham lending the book to Fountains, but also in the detail that when the book was lent it was not illuminated, so the monks of Fountains decided to supply the decoration before returning the volume. Durham was evidently willing to part, temporarily at least, with a recent product of the scriptorium.28 The artistic evidence also suggests a strong, though complex, Durham connection; and similarities in the design of capital letters, and in decorative motifs, again suggest Durham as the source for exemplars for the Yorkshire houses. Anne Lawrence has drawn attention to the occurrence of Durham features, for instance, in Rievaulx copies of the sermons of Peter Chrysologus, Hugh of St Victor, and the letters of Cyprian.29 Byland had a copy of what was in the period a fairly uncommon text, Palladius, Opus agriculture, which was also at Durham, and may have been borrowed from there for copying; Durham, Byland, and Fountains all had Remigius of Auxerre’s exposition on the mass, again, not a common text. With the daughter houses of Rievaulx and Fountains it is less clear if Durham influence came directly from the cathedral, via exemplars, or was filtered via the mother houses; indeed, it is not certain how soon the Yorkshire Cistercians themselves developed their own Durham-inspired style. For instance, does the occurrence of Durham-style capital letters in Roche’s Flores Psalterii of Lethbertus signify direct Durham influence, or the influence of Roche’s ‘grandmother’ house of Fountains or mother house of Newminster? Among the Augustinians, Kirkham, Guisborough, Bridlington, and Newburgh have manuscripts showing Durham features, though again whether the influence derives direct or via the Cistercians is unclear. Anne Lawrence has suggested that Kirkham’s Bede 28 Libellus de vita et miraculis S. Godrici heremitae de Finchale, auctore Reginaldo monacho Dunelmensi, ed. J. Stevenson, Surtees Soc. 20 (1847), pp. 466–8; Lawrence, ‘Artistic influence’, p. 462. 29 For this and what follows, see Lawrence, ‘Artistic influence’, and ‘English Cistercian manuscripts of the twelfth century’, pp. 284–98.

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Page 284 and Possidius were copied direct from Durham manuscripts, while Ker noted the close similarities between the copies of Jerome at Kirkham and Rievaulx.30 The direction of borrowing is not always clear; what is beyond doubt is the importance of Durham in the provision of books and manuscripts for copying, and in the dissemination of a distinctive decorative style which it shared with its neighbours to the south. Northern cultural influences can also be discerned in the field of writing, especially that of Ailred of Rievaulx. Ailred was a man of the north, a product of Hexham, itself a centre of historical scholarship in the twelfth century, and he enjoyed close Durham and Scottish connections. It is not surprising that his historical writings reflect these interests, and that it was Ailred who was, in a sense, heir to Symeon of Durham, and the continuator of the Historia regum, John, prior of Augustinian Hexham. First among his historical works Ailred produced a lamentation for David I of Scotland (d. May 1153) to which, according to Walter Daniel, he appended a genealogy of the kings of England, culled from the chronicles available to him.31 It was addressed to Henry, duke of Anjou, whose accession as Henry II in December 1154 Ailred welcomed as the ‘hope of the English’ who would restore peace and harmony after the reign of Stephen, just as he would restore the line of Wessex, of which David of Scotland was a part. The dual loyalties—to the English and the Scottish kings—reflect Ailred’s own background and dilemmas. This can also be seen in the Relatio de standardo, a retrospective view of the defeat of the Scots by the barons of Yorkshire in 1138, written between 1155 and 1157.32 Ailred avoided political issues and comment, but instead celebrated the role of Archbishop Thurstan and the relics of the cathedral church at York which rallied the Yorkshiremen, and the person of Walter Espec, Rievaulx’s own patron, who, according to tradition, retired to Rievaulx at about the time the Relatio was written. Praise for both David and Walter Espec would not, perhaps, have commended the work to a wider audience, and Gransden has suggested that it was written for the enjoyment of the Rievaulx community.33 If so, it sheds an unusual light on the nature of private reading or mealtime collations. Ailred was one of only a few Yorkshire representatives of another 30 See especially Anne Lawrence, ‘Artistic influence’, and ‘A northern English school? Patterns of production and collection of manuscripts in the Augustinian houses of Yorkshire in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, in Yorkshire Monasticism, Archaeology, Art and Architecture from the 7th to 16th Centuries, ed. L. R. Hoey, The British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, 16 (1995), pp. 145–53. 31 PL 195, 711–38; Life of Ailred, p. 41. For the possible sources see A. Squire, Aelred of Rievaulx: A Study (London, 1969), pp. 91–2. 32 PL, 195, 701–12; Chron. Stephen, III, 181–99. 33 A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England c. 550 to c. 1307 (London, 1974), pp. 212–16.

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Page 285 genre of writing, hagiography. Here again, productions are dominated by his northern background. De sanctis ecclesiae Hagulstedensis, the lives of the saints of Hexham, was written to celebrate the translation of their bones on 3 March 1155, and the opening sentence makes it clear that this was a text for reading aloud at the ceremony.34 In this, and in the De spirituali amicitiae, Ailred refers to his own boyhood at Hexham. De sanctis was supplemented by an account of the Scottish invasions under David I, which was probably based on a Hexham chronicle. Ailred’s secular connections with Scotland in the days of his youth had their monastic counterparts in the Scottish daughter houses of Rievaulx, Melrose, and Dundrennan, which Ailred would have been expected to visit as a matter of course.35 Between 1154 and 1160 Ailred wrote a life of St Ninian, possibly at the invitation of Christian, second bishop of the revived see of Whithorn.36 In this work, which combined standard hagiography, derived from the life of Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus, with a portrait of Ninian based on an earlier life (sermo barbaricus), he commemorated the saint who brought Christianity to Galloway. Ailred was the author of a now lost metrical life of Cuthbert, and the Rievaulx catalogue records a work, De translatione corporis sancti Cuthberti, by Maurice of Rievaulx. Moreover, the testimony of Reginald of Durham reveals that his own book of the miracles of Cuthbert was encouraged by Ailred, and that on many occasions he received information from him.37 Ailred thus wrote as a man of the north, who celebrated northern saints, and transmitted their cults for future generations. Ailred was not the only Yorkshire monk to provide a personal link with the north. His predecessor as abbot of Rievaulx was Maurice, former subprior of Durham, one of the northern Benedictines to be drawn to the more ascetic life of the Cistercians. This Maurice, so Walter Daniel informs us, ‘had drunk the wine of spiritual gladness in the cloister at Durham, and, refreshed by the bread of Cuthbert… had climbed so high as to be called by his companions a second Bede’.38 Maurice resigned after two years (1147), but then spent three months as abbot of Fountains before returning to Rievaulx. The presence of such a man strengthened 34 The Priory of Hexham, its Chroniclers, Endowments and Annals, I, ed. J. Raine, Surtees Soc., 44 (1864), 173–203. 35 See above, p. 179. 36 Life of Ailred, p. xcvii; The Historians of Scotland, ed. A. P. Forbes, 5 (Edinburgh, 1874), pp. 137–57; W. Levison, ‘An eighth-century poem on St Ninian’, Antiquity, 14 (1940), 280–91. 37 Reginaldi monachi Dunelmensis libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti virtutibus, ed. J. Raine, Surtees Soc. I (1835), p. 1. 38 Life of Ailred, p. 33; on Maurice see F. M. Powicke, ‘Maurice of Rievaulx’, EHR, 36 (1921), 17–29. The Rievaulx catalogue lists his works as Epistolae, Specula monastice religionis, Apologia eiusdem, Itinerarium pacis, Rithmus eiusdem, De translatione corporis sancti Cuthberti: Bell, Libraries of the Cistercians, pp. 104–5. None has survived.

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Page 286 the cultural contacts between the northern Cistercians and Durham, and provided one of the contexts for the interchange of manuscripts. Indeed, the close personal contacts between Rievaulx and Espec’s other foundation at Kirkham spread wider the connections, particularly in the period in which it was ruled by Ailred’s friend from their Scottish days, Waldef. The evidence suggests a lively interchange between the Yorkshire Cistercians and Augustinians. Perhaps the most telling example is provided by Newburgh Priory, whose most famous son, the chronicler William, was commissioned to write the Historia rerum Anglicarum by Abbot Ernald of Rievaulx because his own monks were not allowed to engage in writing,39 and the copy of the work surviving from Newburgh itself shows Cistercian influence in its capital letters.40 Clearly there were personal contacts which go some way to explaining the northern, particularly Durham, connections, and it may have been simply a matter of convenience that the Yorkshire houses had recourse to Durham for their manuscripts and texts. However, the manuscript and literary evidence does suggest deeper cultural and intellectual influences and identities. The revival of monasticism in Yorkshire after the Conquest was heavily influenced by the northern, Bedan tradition. It was demonstrated in chapter I that Reinfrid’s resettlement of Whitby was a product of the deliberate attempt to recreate the centres of Northumbrian religious life, part of the same movement which revived Monkwearmouth and Jarrow and brought Benedictine monks to Durham. It was further argued that the geography of the monastic settlement in Yorkshire was dictated by the Anglo-Saxon pattern, with the revival of monastic life, however temporary, at Hackness and Lastingham. Evidence of sustained links with the north exists in the Durham Liber vitae, which commemorated the monks of these communities.41 That the Whitby catalogue should therefore record the presence in the library of the works of Bede, and De situ Dunelmensis ecclesie, need not surprise us. Moreover some of the saints’ lives, Cuthbert, Maclovius, Brendan, and Hilda, have a distinctively northern or Celtic flavour. Several Yorkshire monasteries possessed copies of the works of Bede. It could be argued that they did so because they felt that they were themselves heirs to the Bedan monastic tradition, and because they felt themselves to belong, culturally and historically, to the ancient kingdom of Northumbria. However, we may also be seeing the historical traditions of Durham, and beyond Durham, of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, deliberately disseminated from the cathedral, in an attempt to gather to 39 Newburgh, Historia, I, 3–4. For the Cistercian ruling against writing without permission of the General Chapter, see Canivez, Statuta, I, 26 (no. 58). 40 Lawrence, ‘Artistic influence’, p. 469. 41 See above, p. 278.

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Page 287 itself a ‘cultural empire’. In other words, the northern Cistercians and Augustinians might have been supplied with copies of Bede, along with histories of Durham, because the monks of the cathedral priory felt that these works were essential to a monastic library. They created, or constructed, a past for the religious houses of Yorkshire, one which linked them firmly to the north. However, are all these instances evidence of an exclusively northern monastic identity? Here it is important to recall that although the natural association of Bede is northern or Northumbrian, he did not ‘belong’ solely to the north. One of the party of monks who journeyed north in the early 1070s, Aldwin, prior of Winchcombe, had been inspired by his reading of Bede; and we know that Winchcombe in the twelfth century and Gloucester and Worcester in the eleventh possessed copies of the Ecclesiastical History.42 Although the evidence for the Yorkshire Benedictine libraries is woefully thin, it is worth noting the presence, at Selby, of a text of Bede which Anne Lawrence has suggested was copied at Canterbury.43 Manuscripts of the Ecclesiastical History survive from France and the Empire as well as England. Indeed there is extant a twelfth-century manuscript from Cîteaux itself. All this seems to confirm that the attraction of Bede lay in his being a monastic historian, not exclusively as an Anglo-Saxon or a Northumbrian. His monasticism was ‘strongly influenced by Celtic monasticism… unashamedly attracted by the traditions of saints Aidan and Cuthbert’.44 This was the link with the Cistercians of twelfth-century Yorkshire. The status of Durham as an intellectual and literary centre meant that the monks of Yorkshire became part of a northern cultural world. However, through this, they were also heirs to a wider, international monastic tradition. Monastic identities The Yorkshire monasteries were thus subject to cultural influences which apparently transcended the boundaries between houses of different orders, giving them a local and regional identity. However, their literary and intellectual activities also reveal that monasteries were defined by their monastic ideology and order or congregation. This is most apparent when monks turned their hand to writing their own histories. The noted Yorkshire exponents of this genre were the Cistercians, but they were not the earliest. Abbot Stephen of York (d. ?1112) produced a brief 42 BL MS Royal C. V (Latin), and CUL MS Kk.3.18 (Old English); cited in R. H. C. Davis, ‘Bede after Bede’, in Studies in Medieval History presented to R. Allen Brown, ed. C. Harper-Bill, C. J. Holdsworth, and J. L. Nelson (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 103–16. 43 ‘Artistic influence’, p. 466. 44 Davis, ‘Bede after Bede’, p. 109.

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Page 288 narrative of the foundation of St Mary’s.45 Over sixty years later an unnamed monk of Selby succumbed to the pressure he alleged had been brought to bear on him by his (also unnamed) patron and the prior of his house to record the foundation of Selby; he was further persuaded to bring the narrative, originally intended to cover the period to 1122, up to the time of writing (1174).46 Then, at the very end of the century, the torch passed to the Cistercians, to Abbot Philip of Byland (1196–8), chronicler of Byland and Jervaulx, and to a monk of Kirkstall, most probably Hugh, who after he had completed the history of his own house (1204), turned to record that of Fountains. It is perhaps surprising that the premier northern Cistercian abbey, Rievaulx, produced no such narrative, but it may be that Walter Daniel’s life of Abbot Ailred, written shortly after his death in 1167, was thought to fill that role. Moreover, as we have seen, a later abbot of Rievaulx, Ernald (1189–99) was apparently resistant to literary activity by his monks, and may have dampened any enthusiasm at Rievaulx for a history to match that of Byland. All these narratives share a common stated purpose—to record for posterity the circumstances of the foundation. In different ways and with varying degrees of elaboration, the authors outline their aim to preserve the corporate memory of the community, and to hold up a mirror of the pioneer days for the present generation. Abbot Stephen instructed his readers that although the mother church was a universal church, it nevertheless embraced many churches, and his intention was therefore to commit to writing how he, as abbot of St Mary’s reached that office, or how the church of St Mary at York, of which I, by the authority of God, am first abbot, was founded… for the memory of those in the future… that those of our monks who are present now and those who are to come may know who and what kind of men were the founders of our church, and what great disturbances it sustained from the machinations of its enemies.47 The Byland history began by reminding its audience that ‘human memory becomes so clouded and faded that whatever happens or occurs in this temporal life, unless expressly commended to writing, vanishes and slips into oblivion within a brief space of time as if it had never been’.48 The ‘human memory’ on which Abbot Philip relied was that of Roger, recently retired as abbot of Byland after fifty-four years, and over seventy in the monastic life. The Selby author revealed a second purpose, and urged his audience to recall Pope Gregory’s maxim, that ‘miracles are performed outwardly so that human minds may be led to inner things’; for reasons of edification, therefore, he included the visions and miracles 45 See above, pp. 13–14. 46 See above, pp. 12, 23–4. 47 Translated from BL MS Add. 38816, fo. 29v. 48 Translated from Mon. Ang., V, 349.

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Page 289 of St Germanus.49 The Selby history therefore stands alone in this sequence of texts, as one composed for the community, for expressly didactic purposes, presumably for reading aloud as well as private meditation. It combined the supernatural and the miraculous with the historical. At the same time it defined the identity of Selby and its monks by celebrating its patron saint. Despite the stated intention of the foundation account of St Mary’s, it is not merely a record of events as seen by Abbot Stephen. It was suggested earlier that there was a subtext, and that was to define the constitutional status of the house, both as independent from Whitby, and as a royal foundation. The narrative also, briefly but firmly, recorded the settlement of the dispute with Archbishop Thomas I of York. The theme is one of power, and of independence. A similar dual purpose, to record the pioneer days of the era of foundation and to settle questions of status, is found in the Cistercian history of Byland and Jervaulx, compiled between 1196 and 1198.50 Two questions were addressed: the status of Byland as a daughter house of Savigny rather than Furness; and of Jervaulx as a daughter of Byland. Both communities had experienced troubled origins, Byland in the destruction of the first monastery at Calder, the rejection of the refugee monks at Furness, their search for a suitable site, and the claim by Furness to jurisdiction; Jervaulx in the unorthodox foundation at Fors, and the unwillingness of the abbot of Savigny to allow the convent to continue.51 These days were long gone by 1198, but with Abbot Roger probably the only eye-witness still alive, the moment for a first hand record could not be delayed. What influenced Abbot Philip in his writing? Antonia Gransden stressed a second theme in the Byland history, namely, the abbey’s debt to its lay patrons, the Mowbray family, implying that the work may have been designed to please a patron. This is possible, though the principal founder, Roger de Mowbray, had died in the Holy Land in 1188, and his son, Nigel, met a similar fate in 1191.52 Gransden also suggested that ‘Philip was stimulated to write history by the example of Ailred, who took an active interest in the affairs of Byland Abbey’, or by William, canon of Newburgh Priory, Mowbray’s second foundation.53 William was writing at roughly the same time as Philip, and so some influence is possible. The direct influence of Ailred is, perhaps, less likely as he had been dead for thirty years; moreover, Philip was not a native of the north, 49 Hist. Selb., fo. 31v (pp. 34–5). 50 For the argument that the two were compiled as a sequence see Janet Burton, ‘Abbeys of Byland and Jervaulx’, pp. 119–21. 51 See above, pp. 110–12, 116–17. 52 Mowbray Charters, p. xxxii. 53 Gransden, Historical Writing, p. 290.

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Page 290 but until 1196 abbot of Lannoy in the diocese of Beauvais. It is more probable that the model for writing, first at Byland, then at Kirkstall, and finally at Fountains, came from the mother house of the order, Cîteaux itself, and from the Exordium parvum, of which all Cistercian houses possessed a copy. Neither the Exordium parvum nor the shorter Exordium Cistercii represents a contemporary narrative of the secession from Molesme. The earliest dating would place composition in the early 1120s, a later one after 1134, perhaps later still.54 The tone of the Exordium parvum is heavily justificatory. The preface states the conventional aim of recording events for future generations of monks, but the main text constantly justifies the decision of the monks under the leadership of Robert to leave Molesme because of the failure to observe the Rule of St Benedict there, a failure which amounted to perjury. Words such as ‘canonical’ and ‘authority’ occur again and again. The authority of the written word is provided not just by the text but by letters of archbishops, of popes, of members of the ecclesiastical establishment, interspersed in the text. The Exordium parvum combined narrative with material from the abbey archives to justify the foundation and very existence of Cîteaux and to prove its legality, apparently just at the time when the debate between the Black Monks and the White, Peter the Venerable and Bernard, about monastic observance, was reaching its peak. It also used the medium, or genre, of historical writing to create an identity for the Cistercians, both through its powerful language and images of poverty, hardship, and the desert, and by the Institutes which defined what was distinctive about their way of life. The debate about the emergence, indeed the creation, of a Cistercian identity continues. For our purposes it is sufficient to note that by the time that the Yorkshire Cistercians were recording their past, the Exordium both in its early forms and as the Exordium magnum (1165 × 1190) was an established part of the historiography of the order, and could have provided a model for regional writing. In the work of Abbot Philip we can see the influence of the Exordium parvum. The pattern of writing—narrative interspersed with charters and letters—is the same. Moreover, although the story is continued up to the move to New Byland in 1177, a fitting ending for the history of a community that encountered so many difficulties in finding a permanent home, the real climax was Ailred’s ruling in 1155 that Byland was not subject to Furness but was a daughter of Savigny. Similarly, little is written of Jervaulx after its formal inclusion on the roll of Cistercian houses as a daughter of Byland. The 54 For the questions of dating, and bibliographical references, see above, p. 9.

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Page 291 parallels with the Exordium parvum, where the two high points are the papal privilege marking the final break between Cîteaux and Molesme, and the emergence of the community from a period of instability, are striking. It is, however, in the Narratio de fundatione of Fountains that we see most clearly the proclamation of a Cistercian identity.55 The Narratio was commissioned by Abbot John of York (1203–11), and written over a period of some twenty years by Hugh, who had been professed a monk of Kirkstall by Abbot Ralph Haget in 1184. Ralph, who in 1190 or 1191 became abbot of Fountains, was a first-hand witness for later events, and the subject of a sensitive verbal portrait.56 The much shorter and more workaday history of Kirkstall may well have been Hugh’s apprenticeship for this more ambitious project.57 For the Fountains Narratio, Hugh purported to rely, as Philip did at Byland, on a senior member of the community, this time the even older monk, Serlo.58 Hugh clearly had access to the abbey archives, for he paraphrased the letter from Bernard to Henry I, brought by the Rievaulx colony in 1131, and included the text of other letters from Bernard to Abbots Geoffrey of St Mary’s and Richard of Fountains, and the much debated letter of Thurstan.59 He used, as well, the abbey charters.60 This documentary material is interspersed in the narrative, which draws its influence from Cistercian texts, the Exordium parvum and the Vita prima of St Bernard. Throughout the description of the rising discontent of the monks of St Mary’s, the debate about reform, the expulsion of the monks, the troubles of the early community at Fountains, and the reversal in their fortunes, the picture that emerges is of St Mary’s and Fountains as the English Molesme and Cîteaux. The parallels are there in the failure to observe the Rule of St Benedict; the longing of the monks for the desert; the physical description of the site at Fountains;61 the despair of two monks who returned to York; the community teetering on the brink of dispersal; and their rescue by the appearance of new recruits and well-wishers. 55 Memorials of Fountains, I, 1–128. For discussion of the Narratio see principally Baker, ‘English Cistercian chronicles’. 56 Memorials of Fountains, I, 117–25. 57 See Foundation of Kirkstall. The name of the author is not given. 58 See Memorials of Fountains, I, 2–3. The date of Serlo’s birth can be conjectured as c. 1107/8; he is stated to have been brought up at St Mary’s as a child, witnessed the events of 1132, and became a monk at Fountains in 1137. He was one of the founding colony at Baroldswick in 1147, and in 1205 would have been approaching 100 years old. On his testimony see Baker, ‘English Cistercian chronicles’, I, 28–32. 59 Memorials of Fountains, I, 11–29 (Thurstan), 36–45 (Bernard). On the way in which these letters were employed in the text, see Baker, ‘English Cistercian chronicles’, I, 20–1. 60 For example, Memorials of Fountains, I, 32; EYC, I, nos. 61, 502. 61 Memorials of Fountains, I, 32: this is a ‘standard’ description of a Cistercian site.

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Page 292 Moreover, the early-thirteenth-century Fountains manuscript containing a copy of the ‘letter of Thurstan’ prefaces it by two versions of the Exordium parvum, proclaiming even more vividly the comparison between Fountains and Cîteaux.62 Now this is not to argue that the Fountains Narratio is without value; in particular the vivid evocation of the abbacies of Richard II and Ralph Haget provides a permanent recollection of the vital spirituality of Cistercian monasticism in its pioneering days and beyond. It suggests, however, that Hugh of Kirkstall sought inspiration, and an identity, in the foundation narratives of the mother house of the order. The influence of the Cistercian writings emanating from the continent, and in particular the Apologia, can also be seen in Ailred’s Speculum caritatis which Walter Daniel judged to be the ‘best of all his works’; this was written when he was novice-master at Rievaulx (1142–3), at a time when Ailred began his voluminous correspondence.63 It is a work on charity, true love, but in two places Ailred launches into an Apologia-style attack on excess.64 The Speculum was written at the request of St Bernard, whom Ailred encountered at Clairvaux during his mission to Rome in 1142, and in some manuscripts the work is preceded by a letter from Bernard urging Ailred to undertake the task. The significance of the Speculum lies in its manifestation of a Cistercian cultural world. In this and other works—De spirituali amicitia, a contemplation on the significance of friendship which was heavily influenced by Cicero’s De amicitia,65 and De Anima,66 his last work, which owed much to the works of Augustine and Gregory—Ailred draws on common themes used by other Cistercian writers: Bernard himself, William of St Thierry, Alcher of Clairvaux, and Isaac of Etoile.67 Ailred’s own work may have had its imitators; in the sixteenth century the antiquary John Leland claimed to have seen at Rievaulx a copy of a work by Walter Daniel entitled De vera amicitia,68 an echo of Ailred’s De spirituali amicitia. 62 Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 209. In the later twelfth century Fountains also possessed a copy of Bernard’s Apologia: BL MS Harley 3173. 63 Life of Ailred, pp. 25–6. For the manuscripts see Hoste, Bibliotheca Aelrediana, pp. 41–6; translations appear as The Mirror of Charity, trans. G. Webb and A. Walker (London, 1962), and Mirror of Charity, trans. E. Connor (Kalamazoo, 1990). For comment on the Speculum, see Squire, Aelred, pp. 25–50, and, for the part of Bernard, A. Wilmart, ‘L’instigateur du Speculum Caritatis d’Aelred, abbé de Rievaulx’, Revue d’Ascétique et de Mystique, 14 (1933), 369–94. 64 See particularly part II, chapters 4 (‘The threefold concupiscence’), 21 (‘The pleasures of hearing’), and 22 (‘The wandering of the eyes’): Webb and Walker, Mirror, pp. 42, 72–6. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud misc. 109, of the late twelfth century and deriving from Rievaulx, contains a copy of the Apologia. 65 For manuscripts and editions see Hoste, Bibliotheca Aelrediana, pp. 62–73. 66 Ibid., pp. 81–2; Ailred of Rievaulx, De anima, ed. C. H. Talbot, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, supplement I (London, 1952). 67 Life of Ailred, pp. ci-cii. 68 Bell, Libraries of the Cistercians, p. 138.

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Page 293 The wider world Their manuscripts and writings also reveal that the Yorkshire monasteries were aware of a wider world beyond the cloister, the immediate locality, and the order. There are, for instances, hints of an interest in the southern province of the English church. One of the few surviving books of the period from St Mary’s is Osbern of Canterbury’s life of Archbishop Dunstan of Canterbury. Ailred’s most famous piece of biographical writing was his life of Edward the Confessor, a reworking of Osbert of Clare’s Vita beati Edwardi.69 This was commissioned by Ailred’s kinsman, Abbot Laurence of Westminster, following Edward’s canonization by Alexander III in 1161. Ailred himself attended the translation of the relics in 1163 and also prepared a liturgical homily, Nemo accendit lucernam, for his feast day.70 For Ailred, this was no standard piece of hagiography. As we have seen, he rejoiced in the succession of Henry II, and the production of the life of the Confessor gave Ailred the opportunity to glorify Henry’s saintly ancestor, and the harmony and peace which Henry’s succession brought; in the preface he hailed Henry as the cornerstone of the Norman and English races. In the light of Ailred’s loyalties to the Angevin king, his sympathies would not naturally lie with Archbishop Thomas Becket. Indeed, as Professor Powicke pointed out long ago, Ailred addressed his sermons on Isaiah to Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London, and Becket’s leading opponent among the episcopate.71 However, at the beginning of his quarrel with the king, Becket sought the prayers of the Cistercians of Rievaulx, and received in return a letter of advice and warning from a man whom Powicke first identified as Maurice, and then as Ailred.72 Ailred did not live to see the violent conclusion of the quarrel between king and archbishop, but an intriguing interest in the event is illustrated by Byland Abbey’s compilation of letters relating to the Becket affair. London, BL MS Cotton Faustina B I (fos. 2–11) contains six letters concerned with the elections of Alexander III and the anti-pope, Victor IV, in 1159, eight concerned with Becket, and a transcription of Alexander III’s bull canonizing the archbishop. Anne Duggan has suggested that this is a specially collected justificatio designed to promote the cause of the dead Becket.73 Moreover, a second manuscript deriving from Byland, BL MS Cotton Julius A XI, contains a version of William Fitz Stephen’s life of 69 PL, 195:737–90; Squire, Aelred, pp. 92–7. 70 Life of Ailred, pp. 41–2. 71 Life of Ailred, pp. xlix–l. 72 Powicke, ‘Maurice of Rievaulx’, 21–2 and 26–9; Life of Ailred, pp. l–li. 73 Anne Duggan, Thomas Becket: A Textual History of His Letters (Oxford, 1980), pp. 162–3. The compilation is in three hands, and probably contemporary.

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Page 294 Becket, with extracts from that by John of Salisbury, suggesting a continued interest in the cult of the saint.74 The majority of monastic writings, whether devotional or theological works, were probably produced for internal consumption. Just occasionally they were intended for a wider audience. Maurice of Kirkham wrote the tract Contra Salomitas at the request of Gilbert of Sempringham, who feared that Gilbertine communities were becoming tainted by the heresy of the Salomites.75 Maurice based his argument on his ability to read the works of Josephus in Hebrew, and distinguish between the various individuals named Salome. According to the antiquary John Leland, there was at Rievaulx in the sixteenth century a copy of Walter Daniel’s De conceptione beate Marie contra Nicholaum monachum.76 There is no known extant copy of this, but it appears to have been a response to the tract of Nicholas, monk of St Albans, concerning the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. If so, Walter was entering into the mainstream of theological debate in Europe, and aligning himself with the views of St Bernard. Other Marian writings, such as Walter Daniel’s De virginitate Marie, and Expositio super ‘Missus est angelus Gabrielus’, and William of Newburgh’s Explanatio sacri Epithalamii in matrem sponsi,77 were probably treatises concerned with devotion to the Virgin, and uncontroversial on matters of doctrine. Until the middle of the twelfth century the writing of history was for the most part the prerogative of the monastic orders, and in England was dominated by names like Symeon of Durham and William of Malmesbury. From twelfth-century Yorkshire only one name emerges to rival these authors, and that was William, canon of the Augustinian house of Newburgh, whose Historia rerum Anglicarum, completed in 1198, was one of the four great historical works of the latter part of the reign of Henry II. It was written at the request of Abbot Ernald of Rievaulx because, William explained in his preface, his own monks were unable to write without the consent of the General Chapter.78 William was born in 74 Ibid., p. 191. 75 They believed that the woman Salome, who accompanied Mary the mother of Christ and Mary Magdalene to Christ’s tomb, was a man, the husband of St Anne, mother of the Virgin. For the tract see Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Hatton 92, fos. 4–30; folios 30–7 contain a letter from Maurice to Archbishop Roger of York. On Maurice see Burton, Kirkham Priory, pp. 16–17, and on his connections with the Gilbertines, Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, pp. 12, 177. On his mastery of Hebrew, see R. B. Dobson, The Jews of Medieval York and the Massacre of March 1190, Borthwick Paper 45 (York, 1974), pp. 3–5. 76 Life of Ailred, pp. xvii-xix; Bell, Libraries of the Cistercians, p. 138. 77 Wilham of Newburgh, Explanatio sacri Epithalamii in matrem sponsi, ed. J. C. Gorman, in Spicilegium Friburgense, 6 (1960), ed. G. Meersseman and A. Hånggi; and see review by C. N. L. Brooke in EHR, 77 (1962), 554. 78 Newburgh, Historia, I, 3–4. Canivez, Statuta, I, 26 (no. 58).

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Page 295 Bridlington in 1135 or 1136, was associated with Rufford near York, and spent most of his life at Newburgh; he refers to it as the place que me in Christo a puero aluit.79 William’s introductory chapters to the Historia, covering the period to 1066, relied heavily on Bede, and attacked Geoffrey of Monmouth and his fabulae about Arthur.80 For the postConquest years he made extensive use of Symeon of Durham, Henry of Huntingdon, Jordan Fantosme, and the itinerary of Richard I. This use of other authors does not, however, detract from William’s originality. Although sharing his contemporaries’ delight in the miraculous and the supernatural, he was a judicious and impartial historian. R. B. Dobson has cited his treatment of the massacre of the York Jews in March 1190 as an example of William ‘at his very considerable best: well-informed and emotionally involved… yet sufficiently detached from the atrocities to provide a comparatively impartial and well-balanced if sometimes over-calculated story’.81 With Roger of Howden, William stands as one of the most outstanding of medieval Yorkshire historians. His history is the only work produced in a Yorkshire monastery in this period which aimed to give a comprehensive coverage of the events of recent English history. Much of his research may have been conducted in the library of his Augustinian priory, and if so, the books available to him were wide ranging. His mention of the fables of Arthur hints at the possible circulation of the works of Geoffrey of Monmouth in the Yorkshire monasteries. Geoffrey’s Historia was clearly available to William; moreover, in his verse Lestoire des Engleis, written shortly before 1140, the Anglo-Norman poet Gaimar describes how he obtained a copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth from Walter Espec.82 The religious houses of Yorkshire attracted some recruits of high intellectual calibre. The nature of the sources means that we can name only a handful of them, those who produced historical, hagiographical, theological, and devotional works, and those who have left a reputation as scholars: Alexander, fourth abbot of Meaux, ‘homo bonus et bene litteratus’ (‘a good man and well educated’); Thorald, monk of Rievaulx and briefly abbot of Fountains, ‘in scripturis sacris non mediocriter edoctus et in liberalibus studiis apprime eruditus’ (‘not a little learned in the holy scriptures and exceedingly erudite in the liberal arts’).83 More than we can know, the monasteries of Yorkshire contained an intellectual élite. Having said this, it is noticeable that one house, Rievaulx, domi79 Newburgh, Historia, I, 51. On William see H. E. Salter, ‘William of Newburgh’, EHR, 22 (1907), 510–14. 80 Newburgh, Historia, I, 11–19. 81 Dobson, Jews of Medieval York, p. 24; see also the remarks by Gransden, Historical Writing, pp. 264–7. 82 Gransden, Historical Writing, p. 209. 83 See above, p. 165.

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Page 296 nates the picture; that the Yorkshire Benedictines produced no literary tradition to compare with St Albans or Ely; and that the Augustinians, Robert the Scribe and William of Newburgh apart, apparently lacked men of the calibre of Norman, Ralph, and Peter of Cornwall, priors of Aldgate, Clement of Llanthony, and the canon-writers of Merton, St Osyth, Cirencester, and St Frideswide. Monastic writings were, on the whole, written and copied for those within their walls. Some may have anticipated a wider audience. If Walter Daniel wrote his life of Ailred as a piece of hagiography, a proof of his sanctity, then it was presumably intended for wider circulation than Rievaulx and the other northern Cistercian houses. Moreover, William of Newburgh would hardly have written his Historia simply for his own priory. There is no evidence that the foundation narratives of individual houses passed into the possession of any other establishment. Yet if they were intended, as was argued earlier, to serve a dual purpose of holding up a mirror to the past by providing a role model for a current generation, and laying to rest constitutional uncertainties, then the possibility that a wider readership or audience was envisaged cannot be discounted. Monasteries, even if they were primarily inward looking, could not be cultural oases. In the books which they were given, which they borrowed or were lent for copying, and which passed into the monastic library, and in the works which were commissioned or which arose from personally felt needs, they showed themselves to be part of different cultural communities. These influences helped to shape their own identities and self-image. Some of these influences were distinctly northern, bringing the monasteries of Yorkshire into the orbit of Durham and the tradition of Bede. Others were felt through the vibrant contact among the Yorkshire houses themselves; and others were created and maintained by the sense of belonging to an order. Clearly this is most discernible in the case of the Cistercians, the only true international order with the means and ambition to foster and maintain communication and uniformity. Yet the intellectual community which was created in the twelfth century must surely have exceeded the modest expectations of the early fathers. The literary and intellectual capacity, and the European stature, of Bernard meant that, ironically for an order which approached academic and intellectual activity with caution, it was the Yorkshire Cistercians who were dominant. Through their affinities with Bedan monasticism they became a part of northern culture. Through contacts with their order, their culture was also distinctively Cistercian.

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Page 297 ARCHITECTURE When William of Malmesbury wrote of the impact of the coming of the Normans to England, he singled out for special comment their building activities.84 Within a few years of the foundation of Selby, Yorkshire began to be covered, in town but predominantly in the countryside, by monasteries and nunneries the like of which had not been seen before. It was not just their magnificent churches, which now tend to dominate the surviving sites, that must have been striking. Monastic precincts, surrounded by walls and containing workshops, stables, barns, and mills, might run to seventy acres (Fountains) and even, in the case of Rievaulx, to over ninety acres.85 At Byland the clearance and drainage of the site led to the creation of artificial lakes and canals. Moreover, the planning of the inner court, the heart of the monastery, might involve, as it did at Roche, Rievaulx, and Fountains, the diversion of rivers to provide adequate sites and water for drainage of the monastic buildings. Woods were felled for building material as well as for church furnishings, and quarries were opened up for stone of varying quality.86 In more ways than one, the coming of the monastic order made a significant impact on the Yorkshire landscape. For some monastic houses in Yorkshire the sound of building work must have been almost a constant feature of their existence. Temporary buildings were replaced by stone structures; the church and offices might be expanded, either to accommodate increased numbers or changing monastic practices, or to conform to architectural fashion; and the process of construction might be delayed by the costs involved. Not all were as fortunate as Kirkstall in having a patron like Henry de Lacy, who ‘had a part in providing the buildings, laid with his own hand the foundations of the church, and himself completed the whole fabric at his own cost’.87 Even a good supply of local stone did not necessarily mean the speedy completion of work. A nearby quarry was used for the fine ashlar of the nave of Fountains, but the care needed in cutting meant that work continued over a long period. On the other hand there were undoubtedly houses where lack of funds and limited size meant a relatively undisturbed existence over the centuries.88 84 See above, p. I. 85 Coppack, Fountains Abbey, p. 62. 86 For grants of timber see, for example, Cart. Guis., I, nos. 1–2, Mon. Ang., V, 502–3, no. II (Roche), and for quarries, Cart. Sallay, I, no. 101, J. Weatherill, ‘Rievaulx Abbey, the stone used in its building, with notes on the means of transport, and a new study of the diversions of the river Rye in the twelfth century’, YAJ, 38 (1952–5), 333–54. 87 Foundation of Kirkstall, p. 180. 88 Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture, pp. 120–3, notes that nunnery plans tend to remain static, and that major rebuilding was uncommon.

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Page 298 The survival of the physical remains of the Yorkshire religious houses has been uneven, although where architectural and archaeological evidence is lacking, the documentary record can suggest a sequence of building.89 At Nostell, for instance, of whose buildings there are no traces, the Act Book records that the original site was abandoned by Prior Ethelwold (resigned 1153), who built the crypts of the new church, though the choir was evidently not constructed until the time of Prior Ansketil (1175–91).90 At Meaux the earliest temporary building, the large mud-and-wattle hall of which the ground floor served as dormitory and the upper floor as oratory, was replaced by Abbot Adam (1150–60) with a similar structure using wood from the destroyed castle of Montferant (Birdsall).91 Philip (1160–82) acquired quarries in Brantingham and Brough and began the construction of the stone monastery with the church and the dormitory; and the chapter house, a vaulted structure, had evidently been completed by 1180.92 His successor, Thomas (1182–97), built the warming house, kitchen, and refectory and then began to rebuild the church, which he considered to be unfashionable. Under Alexander (1197–1210) the refectory of the conversi was completed, and their dormitory as well as a stone cloister begun—these were not completed until the following decade—and he tore down the ‘old’ church to construct it afresh. Even then the work was not finished, as the Chronicle records further progress: the commencement of the monks’ infirmary (1221–35), the completion and furnishing of the church (1235–40), and the construction of a wooden vault there (1249–69). Building could therefore be a slow process, and houses might be subject to changing influences. Of the first phase of post-Conquest monastic building in Yorkshire, the earliest survival derives from Lastingham and perhaps the most striking from Selby—Whitby and St Mary’s were both later extensively rebuilt. Lastingham, abandoned as a monastic church in 1086, is the second major Romanesque church in the north, and a recent assessment places it in the ‘tradition of Romanesque architecture that stems from Canterbury and Caen’ as well as in a regional context which encompasses Durham and Tynemouth.93 The Historia Selebiensis monasterii records that 89 See above, pp. 18–19. 90 Leeds District Archives MS NP/C1, p. 88. 91 Chron. Melsa, I, 82, 105–7. This is the most vivid description of an early Cistercian settlement; see Peter Fergusson, Architecture of Solitude: Cistercian Abbeys in Twelfth-century England (Princeton, NJ, 1984), pp. 24, 133–6. 92 For these, and the details which follow, see Chron. Melsa, I, 171, 178, 217, 234, 326, 380, 433, II, 64, 119. Although excavation reports of the earthworks at Meaux have not been published, Peter Fergusson had information from the owner (1984) which suggested that the east end was similar to that of Byland; Architecture of Solitude, p. 136. On Byland see below, p. 304. 93 R. Gem and M. Thurlby, ‘The early monastic church of Lastingham’, in Hoey, Yorkshire Monasticism, pp. 31–9 (p. 37).

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Page 299 it was in the time of Abbot Hugh (c. 1096–1122) that the wooden buildings were replaced in stone. In a vivid account its author records that Hugh himself joined the labourers constructing the abbey buildings: dressed like a workman he could be seen lifting stones and other materials needed for the work and carrying them on his shoulders, and each Saturday he queued with the rest for his wages, which he then distributed to the poor.94 The surviving sections of his church, namely parts of the transepts, crossing, and eastern section of the nave, and most strikingly the decorative features of the nave piers, show strong influence from Durham Cathedral, which Hugh visited in 1104.95 Selby is therefore one of a family of churches, including Waltham, Lindisfarne, Dunfermline, and Tynemouth, that descend directly from Durham, though reconstruction of the earliest part of the transepts also shows affinities with early post-Conquest work at Lastingham and Blyth.96 Lastingham and Selby, like Durham, were part of an architecture of conquest. Any discussion of monastic architecture in Yorkshire is dominated by the Cistercians, whose abbeys at Fountains, Rievaulx, Byland, and Kirkstall rank among the finest in Britain. Interest, always strong, among scholars has been stimulated by increased excavation at major sites such as Fountains. It is not possible here to rehearse the arguments of scholars such as Richard Halsey, Christopher Wilson, Glyn Coppack, and Peter Fergusson, to whom any historian of Yorkshire monasticism must be indebted. What follows is a summary of the aspects of Cistercian architecture which shed light on the main theme of this chapter, the cultural diversity of Yorkshire monasticism. By the 1130s the Cistercians had developed decided views on the appearance of their churches, inside and out, although the lack of detailed legislation on architectural matters leaves open to debate the precise nature of the ‘form of the order’ according to which certain buildings were said to have been constructed.97 The earliest surviving Cistercian stone building in Yorkshire is the nave and transepts of Rievaulx Abbey, although the 94 Hist. Selb., fo. 21r–v (pp. 22–3). 95 E. C. Fernie, ‘The architectural influence of Durham Cathedral’, in Rollason, Harvey, and Prestwich (ed.), AngloNorman Durham, pp. 269–79, and ‘The Romanesque church of Selby Abbey’, in Hoey, Yorkshire Monasticism, pp. 40– 9. 96 S. Harrison and M. Thurlby, ‘Observations on the Romanesque crossing tower, transepts, and nave aisles at Selby’, ibid., pp. 50–61. The monastic buildings have disappeared, but the Historia suggests that the chapter house was completed by the time of Hugh’s death in 1122: Hist. Selb., fo. 23v (p. 25). 97 The statutes stipulate the buildings to be provided before a site could be occupied, but say nothing of their form. There is specific legislation against stone bell-towers (1157) and coloured glass (before 1159), but little else. For references to buildings ex ordine see, for instance, Foundation of Kirkstall, p. 178, and Canivez, Statuta, I, 150 (no. 23), 151–2 (no. 31), for buildings at Longpont ‘contra formam… ordinis’ (‘against the form of the order’) (1192), and ‘aedificium sumptuosum nimis… et superfluum’ (‘a building too costly and excessive’) at Vaucelles.

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Page 300 dating is uncertain, and suggestions have ranged from the 1130s to the mid 1140s, or even the abbacy of Ailred (1147– 67).98 There is general agreement, however, that the earliest building at Rievaulx shows Burgundian influence; that is, its architectural features derive their inspiration from the continental cradle of Cistercian monasticism. Rievaulx had an aisleless square-ended presbytery (replaced in the thirteenth century), square-ended transepts, and an aisled nave of nine bays, and was planned from the outset for a sizeable community—with three chapels in the transepts, and an overall length of 240 feet, it was one of the largest of the ‘Bernardine churches’ in Europe.99 The affiliations with Burgundy are strong, both in the ground plan and the conjectured elevation of the nave, notably the transverse barrel-vault and pointed windows. Rievaulx marks an advance on the primitive Cistercian churches at Waverley, Tintern, and Fountains II; however—for all the disagreements about when the church was begun—the plan and design of Rievaulx predate mature Cistercian churches such as Fontenay and Clairvaux II, and therefore appear to be an intermediary design. It has become common to describe Rievaulx as ‘an early Bernardine church’; however, Fergusson has suggested that the model may have been Cîteaux II rather than Clairvaux.100 How personal were the channels through which these architectural similarities were transmitted remains a matter for debate. In Rievaulx’s early years there would have been a section of the community—the original colony—with direct knowledge of the Burgundian mother house, and Abbot William and his successors would have attended the General Chapter at Cîteaux, and stopped at various Cistercian abbeys en route. Fergusson stressed the role of the ‘monkplanners’, men like Geoffrey d’Ainai, sent by Bernard from Clairvaux to Fountains in 1133, who may also have visited Rievaulx. Halsey, however, suggests that similarities with Burgundian architecture owed less to a Burgundian architect, or master mason, on site, than to local masons working to a description of a Cistercian ‘architectural aesthetic’, transmitted by an intermediary such as William.101 Our understanding of the earliest Cistercian buildings in the north has been transformed by the excavations of Glyn Coppack at Fountains Abbey, especially his discovery of the earliest wooden buildings (c. 1133), and the first stone church (Fountains II) beneath the south transept of the 98 Richard Halsey, ‘The earliest architecture of the Cistercians in England’, in Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture, pp. 77–80; Fergusson, Architecture of Solitude, pp. 31–8 (c. 1134), and G. Coppack and P. Fergusson, Rievaulx Abbey (English Heritage, 1994), p. 15 (‘begun during Ailred’s abbacy’). Peter Fergusson and Glyn Coppack have at press a major study of Rievaulx. 99 The community may have numbered 300 in 1142: Ailred, Speculum caritatis, II, 17: PL 195:263. 100 Fergusson, Architecture of Solitude, pp. 31–8. 101 Ibid., pp. 165–72; Halsey, ‘Earliest architecture’, pp. 67, 80, 85.

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Page 301 present church (Fountains III). These have added greatly to our knowledge of what was to become the wealthiest of the Yorkshire Cistercian houses, and have confirmed the claim of the Narratio de fundatione and John of Hexham, that the monastery was burnt in the raid by Fitz Herbert supporters in 1146 or 1147.102 Fountains I, indeed, has furnished very rare archaeological evidence for the nature of early wooden Cistercian structures and has shown them to be, in this instance at least, quite sophisticated, the product of skilled work undoubtedly not by monastic hands.103 The first stone church, which encompassed the wooden buildings and was itself engulfed by Fountains III, was begun after the fabric fund was established in 1135. Coppack’s excavations show it to have been closely related to other first-generation Cistercian churches characterized by small, square east ends, square-ended transepts, and aisleless naves, namely Waverley, Tintern, Lysa, and Sallay, as well as French churches constructed before the mid 1130s (for example, Cîteaux I, Pontigny I). They bear comparison, too, with contemporary houses of Augustinian canons, such as Portchester (Hampshire) and Kirkham, as well as Benedictine Ewenny (Glamorgan).104 Despite obvious affinities between Fountains II and other Cistercian monasteries—not all of them belonging to the Clairvaux family—there is evidence, uncovered by Coppack, to suggest that the early community did not easily shed its recent Benedictine past. Traces of coloured window glass survive, and the layout of the east end indicates that although it was square, it was stepped in imitation of Benedictine apsidal east ends. Accordingly, though emphasis is often laid on the tightness of the Cistercian organization in the maintenance of uniformity, the building at Fountains II seems to have been—by Cistercian standards—so unrestrained that when Henry Murdac arrived in 1144 he was evidently horrified by what he found. His reforms, which included the destruction of ‘images’, ran to the lengthening of the nave and addition of nave aisles, and the building of a stone cloister to replace the more informal arrangement. His model may well have been his own monastery at Vauclair, which was then in the process of construction.105 In 1146 or 1147 came the fire which severely damaged parts of the church and the eastern range of the cloister, and although the church shows signs of repair, the decision was taken, probably around the mid 1150s, to construct a new 102 See above; Coppack, Fountains Abbey, and R. Gilyard-Beer and G. Coppack, ‘Excavations at Fountains Abbey, north Yorkshire, 1979–80: the early development of the monastery’, Archaeologia, 108 (1986), 147–88. The Narratio makes the attack on Fountains one of the causes of Fitz Herbert’s deposition in early 1147, while John of Hexham has it as a result. 103 Carpentarii and operarii were at work on the site before 1135: Memorials of Fountains, I, 50. 104 Coppack, Fountains Abbey, p. 26; Halsey, ‘Earliest architecture’, pp. 70–2. 105 Coppack, Fountains Abbey, pp. 28–35.

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Page 302 church.106 It is clear that Fountains III owed much of its plan and elevation to Burgundian influence mediated through the sister house of Rievaulx, in particular the barrel-vault and pointed windows of the southern nave aisle, which link it, through Rievaulx, to Clairvaux. In its final form, c. 1160, the church at Fountains resembled Clairvaux II, supervised by Geoffrey d’Ainai and Archardus.107 The transepts echo, as well as Rievaulx, Bernardine churches such as Clermont (1150), while the west front (c. 1160) shows similarities in the doorway mouldings with French houses such as Silvacane and Trois Fontaines.108 Much of the layout and design of Fountains III was transmitted to its daughter house of Kirkstall, where the church is recorded as having been completed in the time of the founder, Henry de Lacy—that is, between 1152 and 1177—and it was also the prototype of Louth Park.109 Although still strongly influenced by continental Cistercian design and an ideology of austerity, some features of the church of Fountains III developed a distinctive Anglo-Norman style. Whereas Rievaulx, in Coppack’s words, shows ‘detailing… severe almost to the point of non-existence’, Fountains III exhibits architectural decoration which probably derives from an English tradition via its granddaughter house of Sallay.110 Although Sallay appears to have been begun after Fountains III and not long before Kirkstall, it adhered to a severe, primitive plan, with an aisleless nave, showing affinities in its dimensions with Fountains II, and in its elevation with French churches such as Ourscamp and Pontigny.111 However Sallay developed decorative features which have no Burgundian prototype, which it passed to Fountains, from where they were shared with other Cistercian houses, notably Kirkstall. The clear similarities cannot, however, admit easy resolution of one of the central problems of interpretation, that of whether it was links between monastic families or geographical proximity that led to affinities in design and decorative features. This difficulty is compounded by similarities with the architecture of contemporary non-Cistercian houses in the region: the interplay between Cistercian and non-Cistercian architecture is not easy to pinpoint. We have noted already the close contacts which existed between the Yorkshire Cistercian and Augustinian houses, but the poor survival of 106 Coppack, ibid., p. 36, attributes the decision to Abbot Richard III, after the death of Murdac. Halsey, however, suggests that the construction of a new church had already begun before the fire: ‘Earliest architecture’, pp. 73–6. 107 Fergusson, Architecture of Solitude, p. 169. 108 Ibid., 37–8, 44. For Rievaulx and Fountains see Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture, plates 4–5. 109 Fergusson, Architecture of Solitude, pp. 43, 48–51; Halsey, ‘Earliest architecture’, pp. 82–3; M. Thurlby, ‘Some design aspects of Kirkstall Abbey’, in Hoey, Yorkshire Monasticism, pp. 62–72. On Louth Park see Halsey, ‘Earliest architecture’, pp. 83–5. 110 Coppack, Fountains Abbey, pp. 36–7. 111 Fergusson, Architecture of Solitude, p. 51.

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Page 303 twelfth-century Augustinian buildings makes it difficult to see if this was carried through into the sphere of architecture. Kirkham’s nave—its east end was sumptuously rebuilt in the thirteenth century—is plain and austere, though whether that was the result of close contact with the Cistercians of Rievaulx or the canons’ own sense of reformed monasticism we cannot know.112 The Cluniac monastery of Pontefract is known only through excavation. How far its earliest buildings reflected the architectural grandeur normally associated with the congregation cannot be known, as it was rebuilt after damage sustained in the 1140s and 1150s, and the church was reconsecrated in 1159. Like its daughter house of Monk Bretton, the rebuilt church of Pontefract had a square east end, suggesting that Cistercian influence—direct or indirect—had become pervasive.113 Fergusson sees the period in which Fountains III, Kirkstall, Louth Park and Sallay were begun—that is around 1150 to 1160—as the second phase of Cistercian building in England, when the strong Burgundian flavour with its ‘unremitting austerity’ gave way to a style still recognizably Cistercian but which admitted local, English, influence. The nave at Kirkstall, for instance, although derived from that of Fountains, shows innovation in the rib vaults, which Fergusson relates to Durham and Lincoln.114 Rievaulx’s chapter house, reconstructed in the late 1150s, may reveal the influence of Durham, though Professor Fergusson has more recently pointed to several notable differences; nevertheless, Rievaulx, and contemporary chapter houses at Fountains and Kirkstall, all broke free from continental Cistercian models.115 A third phase of Cistercian building commenced about 1160 and lasted some twenty years. During this period there was renewed interest in France, resulting in the introduction of early Gothic forms of architecture, but unlike the period 1128 to c. 1150 continental influence was not just Cistercian in origin but of much wider derivation. The buildings which show Cistercian influence are the edificia sumptuosa of Abbot Robert of Pipewell at Fountains (1170–80), that is the impressive west range, and the south range (refectory, warming house, and kitchen);116 and the west nave bays and west front of Kirkstall; these two reflect Cistercian influence from Clairvaux III. Early Gothic details, such as 112 For a description of Kirkham’s church furnishings in the 1130s or 1140s see Burton, Kirkham Priory, pp. 7–8. 113 Bellamy, Pontefract Priory Excavations; R. Graham and R. Gilyard-Beer, Monk Bretton Priory (London, 1966). 114 Architecture of Solitude, p. 50. 115 P. Fergusson and S. Harrison, ‘The Rievaulx Abbey chapter house’, The Antiquaries Journal, 74 (1994), 211–55. 116 On refectories see Peter Fergusson, ‘The twelfth-century refectories at Rievaulx and Byland Abbeys’, in Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture, pp. 160–80.

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Page 304 water-leaf and volute capitals, are to be found at Fountains in its chapter house and guest houses. From the mid to late 1160s these details appear in churches as well as monastic buildings, in particular at Furness, Roche, Dore (Herefordshire), and Byland. There is still debate as to the sequence of these and other early Gothic buildings in the north and their sources of influence and inspiration. Wilson argued that the Cistercians were the first to use Gothic forms in the north, and that their ‘pioneering efforts’ as ‘missionaries of Gothic’ created a northern school of early Gothic which influenced the form of York and Ripon. The innovators appear to have been Kirkstead and Furness, and Wilson argues for their importance as intermediaries between French Gothic and the north. More mature in its Gothic form was Roche (1170–80), which made the earliest systematic use of the pointed arch, moulded ornament, and comprehensive stone vaults.117 All of these appear to have been influenced by Cistercian and non-Cistercian prototypes in the Aisne valley of north-eastern France. After 1180 a more advanced form of Gothic emerged, which owed less to French models. An exceptional example is Byland, the most sumptuous and ambitious Cistercian church, which marked, according to Fergusson, ‘a fundamental shift in the appearance and values of Cistercian architecture’.118 Whether its inspiration was Cistercian or nonCistercian is not clear, as the last decades of the twelfth century were exceptionally active ones in church building. However, the northern Cistercians can be shown to have been part of a diverse architectural group, which included Cistercian (Kirkstead, Dundrennan, and Newminster) and non-Cistercian houses, notably Ripon Minster and York Minster, reconstructed by Roger de Pont L’Evêque, and St Andrews.119 The merging of architectural practices and designs continued in the early thirteenth century. The east ends at Fountains, Rievaulx, Kirkham, Bridlington, Guisborough, and Whitby were all extended at about the same time; and this was part of a general trend of the period. The reasons were diverse. At Kirkham the impetus seems to be the adoption of the priory as the mausoleum of the Ros patrons. At Rievaulx it may have been the elaboration of the setting of the tomb of Ailred. Hugh de Kirkstall alleged that at Fountains the growth of the community led to the need for a larger choir, and an increase in the number of monk-priests to a need for more altars—although Nicola Coldstream has demonstrated that the monks’ choir was never moved further 117 Christopher Wilson, ‘The Cistercians as ‘‘missionaries of Gothic” in northern England’, in Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture, pp. 86–116. On Roche see also Peter Fergusson, Roche Abbey (English Heritage, 1990), and Architecture of Solitude, pp. 62–6. 118 Fergusson, Architecture of Solitude, pp. 69–90 (p. 88). 119 To these David A. Stocker has suggested adding Holy Trinity, York: see ‘The priory of Holy Trinity, York: antiquarians and architectural history’, in Hoey, Yorkshire Monasticism, pp. 79–96.

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Page 305 east.120 In form the Cistercians appear now to have been recipients of fashion, for it seems likely that Benedictine Whitby and Augustinian Hexham transmitted to Jervaulx and Rievaulx the aisled, square-ended presbytery.121 The departure from Cistercian austerity did not go unnoticed. Hugh of Kirkstall referred to John of York’s church (the eastern arm) as ‘opus inusitatum et admirandum’ and recalled that many disapproved of a building ‘tam insolitum et tam. sumptuosum’.122 This discussion has concentrated on the interchange of architectural fashion among large, male monastic establishments, those with the wealth and motivation to build and rebuild. What is often most hidden from us is the role of the patron, how much influence he or she had, beyond the grant—and perhaps selection—of a site, the provision of temporary buildings, and financial assistance. One indication comes from the surviving and excavated remains of the Yorkshire nunneries. The physical environment of women religious has in the past been dismissed as too exiguous to be worthy of study, though Roberta Gilchrist’s research has demonstrated how much can be learnt, and how women constructed a distinctive gendered space within their monasteries.123 Their churches were often aisleless parallelograms rather than cruciform, and had few altars; these features reflect different liturgical practices in male and female churches, and the way in which nuns often shared them with parishioners.124 Moated nunnery sites show more affinity with the domestic establishments of the knightly class, from whom their patrons were mostly drawn, rather than the large male monastic houses.125 More specifically the similarities in the sites and architectural features of Nun Monkton, Nun Appleton, and Nunkeeling, whose founders enjoyed close family connections, and the quality of the work, suggest that the patrons played a considerable role in the planning and financing of building work, and that such work reflected their own tastes.126 The cultural influences on nunnery architecture appear, therefore, to be more local and secular, rooted in the parish and in the circles of their patrons. This is in keeping with the conclusions of earlier chapters of this book. A study of the literary and material culture of the monastic houses of Yorkshire reveals that they were open to cultural influences on many 120 Memorials of Fountains, I, 128; Nicola Coldstream, ‘Cistercian architecture from Beaulieu to the Dissolution’, in Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture, pp. 139–59 (p. 145). 121 Coldstream, ‘Cistercian architecture’; also L. A. Hoey, ‘The 13th-century choir and transepts of Rievaulx Abbey’, in Hoey, Yorkshire Monasticism, pp. 97–116 (p. 107). 122 Memorials of Fountains, I, 128; sumptuosus was a common term of disapproval; see, for example, Canivez, Statuta, I, 151 (no. 31). 123 Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture. 124 Ibid., pp. 92–109. 125 Ibid., pp. 126–7. 126 Ibid., pp. 53–4; see above, pp. 132–4.

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Page 306 levels. Their identity was defined, first and foremost, by the rules which they followed, but Yorkshire monasticism derived much of its strength and vitality from a fusion of two impulses, on the one hand the cosmopolitan monastic world of which it was a part, and on the other the close interaction with both the local ecclesiastical nexus and the local community of founders, patrons, and benefactors.

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Page 307 CONCLUSION The significance of the developments described in this book needs no particular urging. In a little over a century and a half the monastic order had transformed the county of Yorkshire. By 1215 its landscape was graced by the presence of monastic buildings, some modest enough, others in the forefront of European fashion and architectural sophistication. These, in turn, influenced and enriched the building of non-monastic ecclesiastical establishments. The traveller through the county could now find hospitality in the guest houses of monasteries and nunneries. The poor could receive alms, and the sick care, at their gates. Meanwhile a not inconsiderable proportion of the landed wealth of the shire had passed into monastic hands as, in varying degrees, their houses became urban landlords, lords of the manor, and patrons and corporate rectors of parish churches. The White Monks in particular were in the forefront of the reorganization of agrarian estates into the consolidated granges characteristic of their order; and in this were soon emulated by others. The impact on the landscape, through clearance of scrub and forest, the drainage of marsh, and the construction of ditches and waterways, has made an even more lasting impression. Such developments were not achieved in isolation, but often alongside—in cooperation with and not in opposition to—local people. Above all, the revival of monasticism offered the opportunity to men and women to live a life of prayer, devotion, and contemplation in their own locality. The monastic order became an integral part of society, by its prayers and intercessions fighting the vicarious battles of humankind, and by providing special services for their founders and patrons. As this study has demonstrated, monasteries and nunneries were at one and the same time part of an integral monastic world, held together in some instances by their order, in all by the universality of their vocation; they were also a vital part of the local community. Of the success of the monastic order in Yorkshire during this, its most

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Page 308 vibrant, period there can be no doubt. However, with success came criticism and suspicion. The emergence of the ‘critics of the monks’ in the latter part of the twelfth century, in particular those of the Cistercians, has long been known to historians; and the precise reasons for the animosity of those most trenchant of monastic critics, Walter Map and Gerald of Wales, have often been discussed. In Yorkshire itself there are traces of mounting opposition by 1200. Quite what provoked the remark made by Roger de Pont L’Evêque, archbishop of York (1154–81), as recorded by William of Newburgh, that his predecessor, Thurstan, had never made a worse mistake than when he founded Fountains Abbey, can never be known.1 It can scarcely have been the diminution of archiepiscopal resources, for Fountains was far from lavishly endowed by the archbishop. Was Roger’s a general comment on the pervasive influence of the monastic order, which Fountains seemed to typify? Or a comment on the tenacity with which the monks pursued their rights? Whatever provoked such a reaction—be it symptomatic of fierce opposition or mild exasperation—it was part of a climate which was beginning to see the Cistercian order not as new, exciting, and austere, but rather as a pillar of landed interests. The Yorkshire Cistercians, indeed, did not escape the fierce satire of Walter Map, archdeacon of Oxford. In a famous passage in De Nugis Curialium he related the story of the tree which marked the boundary between the property of the ‘Hebrews’ (the White Monks) and one of their neighbours, and which mysteriously moved at night—to the advantage of the monks.2 Although he did not name the abbey concerned, his identification of the neighbour as a knight of Coxwold suggests that the monks were those of Byland, and the knight William de Stuteville: the latter had engaged the monks in a lawsuit concerning land in Kilburn and Coxwold. Walter Map elaborated this accusation of greed with tales of tricks practised by the monks to add to their landed wealth: fields sown with salt, and the transformation of pasture into ploughed land overnight, the violent seizure of lands, and even murder, from what was clearly a common stock of stories, also drawn on by Gerald of Wales. How seriously these accusations were intended to be taken is not clear—it is unlikely that they would be accepted without question—and they were probably the result of deliberate exaggeration and indeed parody. However, it is surely significant that the lawsuit between the monks of Byland and the Stutevilles spread beyond the locality of the abbey. It became notorious enough to form part of the fund of stories to be brought out to 1 Newburgh, Historia, II, 226. 2 Walter Map, ‘De Nugis Curialium’: Courtiers’ Trifles, ed. and transl. M. R. James, rev. edn C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1983), p. 106.

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Page 309 highlight the successful economic activity—here portrayed as greed and over-ambition—of the White Monks. Such was the price of success. Just as the Black Monks, supreme at the beginning of our period in their hold on recruits and founders, came to face rivals among the regular canons and the White Monks, so too after 1215 the monastic order as a whole faced the challenge of holding the affections of the people of Yorkshire in the face of a radical religious movement, that of the friars. With their marriage to ‘Lady Poverty’, and a rejection of property so severe that they refused even to own the houses in which they lived, the friars pushed the boundaries of religious austerity well beyond those of the ‘new’ orders of the twelfth century. Moreover, by their sense of evangelism and mission the friars seemed to combine outward concern for the world with their own spiritual vocation. Although the monastic order in Yorkshire, as elsewhere in England and Wales, was to survive for another three centuries and more, a growing sense of the individual vocation and individual forms of commemoration meant that it never again held that pre-eminent position which it achieved in the period surveyed in the pages of this book.

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Page 310 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY MANUSCRIPT SOURCES Alnwick Castle, Northumberland X series, division 2, section 6, box 36 (charters of Nun Monkton) Leeds District Archives Nostell Priory MS C1 (act book of the priors of Nostell; xv) London, British Library Add. MSS 4715 (cartulary of Whitby; xiii); 18276 (register of Fountains; xvi); 36652 (Selby Easter tables; xii); 37770 (cartulary of Fountains, vol. 3; xv); 37771 (cartulary of Selby; xiii-xiv); 38816 (foundation history, charters, etc., St Mary’s, York; xii); 40008 (cartulary of Bridlington; xiv); 40009 (cartulary of Fountains, vol. 2; xv); 50754 (cartulary of Pontefract; xiii); 50755 (cartulary of Monk Bretton; xiv) Cotton MSS Claudius D XI (cartulary of Malton; xiii); Cleopatra D II (cartulary of Guisborough; xiii); Julius D I (cartulary of Rievaulx; xii); Otho C VIII (cartulary of Nunkeeling; xvi); Tiberius C XII (cartulary of Fountains, vol. I; xv); Vespasian E XIX (cartulary of Nostell; xiii); Vitellius E XVI (charters of Selby; xiv); F IV Egerton MSS 2823 (cartulary of Byland; xv); 2827 (cartulary of Easby; xiii) Harleian MSS 112 (cartulary of Sallay; xiv); 236 (cartulary of St Mary’s, York; xiv); 3053 (fragment of cartulary of Fountains; xiii) Lansdowne MSS 207c (transcripts of Aumale charters; xvii); 405 (cartulary of Monk Bretton; xiii); 424 (cartulary of Meaux; xiv) Add. charters 7427, 7432 (Byland); 7491 (Fountains); 11292 (Holy Trinity, York); 20544 (Arden); 20562 (Bolton); 20564 (Rievaulx) Cotton charter xi.42 (Marton); xi.66 (charter of St Clement’s, York) Egerton charter 585 (Byland and Newburgh) Stowe charters 503 (Byland); 504 (Guisborough) London, Public Record Office E/135/25/1 (survey of York; xiii) Duchy of Lancaster Miscellaneous Books 7 (cartulary of Kirkstall; xiii)

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Page 311 Manchester, John Rylands Library Latin MSS 220–221 (cartulary of St Mary’s, York; xiv); 224 (cartulary of Fountains, vol. 4; xv) Oxford, Bodleian Library Add. MS C 51 (fragment of cartulary of North Ferriby; xiv) Bodley MS 39 (foundation history of St Mary’s Abbey, York; xiii) Dodsworth MSS 8 (charters of Roche); 9 (Monasticon Boreale) 63 (foundation history of Byland and Jervaulx; xvii); 76 (fragment of cartulary of St Mary’s, York; xiii); 91 (Newburgh charters; xvii); 144 (Bolton charters; xvii); 159 Fairfax MSS 7 (cartulary of Kirkham; xv); 9 (cartulary of Warter; xiv) Laud MS Misc. 722 (foundation chronicle of Kirkstall; xv) Rawlinson MS B 449 (cartulary of Fountains; xiii) Top.Yorkshire MS C 72 (cartulary of Drax; xiv) University College MS 170 (continuation of Rawlinson B 449) Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale Latin MS 10940 (Historia Selebiensis monasterii; xii) Whitby Museum Strickland MSS, cartulary of Whitby (xii–xvi) York, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research Archbishops’ registers 9 (Melton); 10 (Zouche) Cause Papers CP E 51 (Nostell; xiv); F 307 (xv) York, Minster Library MSS A 1–2 (cartularies of St Mary’s, York; xiv) L(2) 1, Magnum registrum album (cartulary of York Minster; xiv) PRINTED SOURCES Abstracts of the Charters and other Documents contained in the Chartulary of the Cistercian Abbey of Fountains, ed. W. T. Lancaster, 2 vols. (Leeds, 1915) Abstracts of the Charters and other Documents contained in the Chartulary of the Priory of Bridlington, ed. W. T. Lancaster (Leeds, 1912) Abstracts of the Chartularies of the Priory of Monkbretton, ed. J. M. Walker, YASRS, 66 (1924) Ailred of Rievaulx, Opera omnia, PL, 195 (1855) Relatio de standardo, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, 4 vols. (RS, 1884– 9) III, 181–99 De anima, ed. C. H. Talbot, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, supplement I (London, 1952)

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Page 312 The Mirror of Charity, ed. and trans. G. Webb and A. Walker (London, 1962) Augustine of Hippo and his Monastic Rule, ed. G. Lawless (Oxford, 1987) Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Cistercians and Cluniacs: St Bernard’s Apologia to Abbot William’, trans. M. Casey, in Treatises I, Cistercian Fathers Series, I (Spencer, Mass., and Shannon, 1970) Bernard of Clairvaux, The Letters of St, ed. and transl. B. Scott James (London, 1953) Bernardi Opera, Sancti, ed. J. Leclercq, C. H. Talbot, and H. M. Rochais (editors), 8 vols. (Rome 1957–77) The Book of St Gilbert, ed. and trans. R. Foreville and G. Keir, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1987) Calendar of Documents preserved in France, Illustrative of the History of Great Britain and Ireland, I, AD 918–1206, ed. J. H. Round (London, 1899) Calendar of the Charter Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office, 6 vols. (London, 1903–27) Calendar of the Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office (London, 1891–) Cartularium abbathiae de Rievalle, ed. J. C. Atkinson, Surtees Soc., 83 (1889) Cartularium abbathiae de Whiteby, ed. J. C. Atkinson, 2 vols., Surtees Soc., 69, 72 (1879–81) Cartularium prioratus de Gyseburne, ed. W. Brown, 2 vols., Surtees Soc., 86, 89 (1889–94) Catalogi veteres librorum ecclesiae cathedralis Dunelm., ed. B. Botfield, Surtees Soc., 7 (1838) Chapters of the Augustinian Canons, ed. H. E. Salter, Oxford Historical Society, 74 (1922) Charters of the Honour of Mowbray 1107–1191, ed. D. E. Greenway, British Academy Records of Social and Economic History, NS I (London, 1972) Charters for Roche Abbey, XVI, ed. S. O. Addy (Sheffield, 1878) ‘Charters to St Peter’s, York and to Byland Abbey’, ed. F. W. Ragg, TCWAAS, 9 (1909), 236–70 The Chartulary of St John of Pontefract, ed. R. Holmes, 2 vols., YASRS, 25, 30 (1899–1902) The Chartulary of the Cistercian Abbey of Sallay in Craven, ed. J. McNulty, 2 vols., YASRS, 87, 90 (1933–4) ‘The Chartulary of Tockwith, alias Scokirk, a cell to the priory of Nostell’, ed. G. R. Ransome, Miscellanea III, YASRS, 80 (1931), 151–206 Chronica monasterii de Melsa, ed. E. A. Bond, 3 vols. (RS, 1868–8) Chronica Rogeri de Houedene, ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols. (RS, 1868–71) The Chronicle of Melrose, facsimile edition, ed. A. O. and M. O. Anderson (London, 1936) The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, previously edited as the Chronicle of Walter of Hemingford or Hemingburgh, ed. H. Rothwell, Camden 3rd series, 89 (1957) Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, 4 vols. (RS, 1884–9) Collectanea Anglo-Praemonstratensia, ed. F. A. Gasquet, 3 vols. Camden 3rd series, 6, 10, 12 (1904–6) Collectanea topographica et genealogica, ed. T. S., v (1838) The Coucher Book of the Cistercian Abbey of Kirkstall, ed. W. T. Lancaster and W. Paley Baildon, Thoresby Soc., 8 (1904) The Coucher Book of Selby, ed. J. Fowler, 2 vols., YASRS, 10, 13 (1891–3) Domesday Book seu liber censualis… , ed. A. Farley et al., 4 vols. (London, 1783–1816) Dugdale, W., Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. J. Caley, H. Ellis, and B. Bandinel, 6 vols. in 8 (London, 1817–30) Durham Episcopal Charters 1071–1152, ed. H. S. Offler, Surtees Soc., 179 (1968) Early Yorkshire Charters, vols. I-III ed. W. Farrer (Edinburgh, 1914–16); vols. IV–XII, ed. C.

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Page 313 T. Clay, YASRS, extra series (1935–65) English Episcopal Acta, I: Lincoln 1067–1185, ed. D. M. Smith (London, British Academy, 1980) English Episcopal Acta, v: York 1070–1154, ed. J. E. Burton (London, British Academy, 1988) Feodarium prioratus Dunelmensis, ed. W. Greenwell, Surtees Soc., 58 (1872 for 1871) The Foundation of Kirkstall Abbey, ed. and trans. E. K. Clark, in Miscellanea, Thoresby Soc., 4 (1895), 169–208 ‘Four early charters of Arthington nunnery’, ed. W. T. Lancaster, in Miscellanea, Thoresby Soc., 22 (1915), 118–28 Gervasii Cantuariensis opera historica, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols. (RS, 1879–80) Gesta abbatum Sancti Albani, ed. H. T. Riley, 3 vols. (RS, 1867–9) The Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops, ed. J. Raine, 3 vols. (RS, 1879–94) Historic Manuscripts Commission, Reports on Manuscripts in Various Collections, II (London, 1903) Historic Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of his Grace the Duke of Rutland, presewed at Belvoir Castle, IV (London, 1905) Hugh the Chanter, The History of the Church of York 1066–1127, ed. C. Johnson, rev. edn. M. Brett, C. N. L. Brooke, and M. Winterbottom, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1990) The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. G. Constable, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1967) The Letters of Pope Innocent III concerning England and Wales: A Calendar with an Appendix of Texts, ed. C. R. and M. G. Cheney (Oxford, 1967) Libellus de vita et miraculis S. Godrici heremitae de Finchale, auctore Reginaldo monacho Dunelmensi, ed. J. Stevenson, Surtees Soc., 20 (1847) Liber vitae ecclesiae Dunelmensis, ed. J. Stevenson, Surtees Soc., 13 (1841) The Life of Ailred of Rievaulx by Walter Daniel, ed. and trans. F. M. Powicke (London, 1950; repr. Oxford, 1978) The Life of Christina of Markyate, A Twelfth-Century Recluse, ed. and trans. C. H. Talbot, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1959, repr. 1987) Matthaei Parisiensis Historia Anglorum, ed. F. Madden, 3 vols. (RS, 1866–9) Memorials of the Abbey of St Mary of Fountains, ed. J. R. Walbran and J. T. Fowler, 3 vols., Surtees Soc., 42, 67, 130 (1863–1918) Notes on the Religious and Secular Houses of Yorkshire, I, ed. W. P. Baildon, YASRS, 17 (1895) Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall, 6 vols., Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1969–80) Papsturkunden in England, ed. W. Holtzmann, 3 vols., Abhandlungen der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Phil.-Hist. Klasse, neue Folge, xxv.–2; Dritte Folge, 24–5; 33 (Berlin and Göttingen, 1930–52) Pegolotti, Francesco Balducci, La Pratica della Mercatura, ed. A. Evans, Medieval Academy of America, 24 (Cambridge, Mass., 1936) Pipe Rolls 5 Henry II to 5 Henry III (London, Pipe Roll Society, 1884–1986) Les plus anciens textes de Cîteaux, ed. J. de la Croix Bouton and J.-B. van Damme, Commentaria Cistercienses, Studia et Documenta II, 2nd edition (Achel, 1985) The Priory of Hexham, ed. J. Raine, 2 vols., Surtees Soc., 44, 46 (1864–5) Radulfi de Diceto decani Lundoniensis opera historica, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols. (RS, 1876) Records of the Templars in England in the Twelfth Century, ed. B. A. Lees, British Academy

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Page 314 Records of Social and Economic History, 9 (1935) Regesta regum Anglo-Normannorum 1066–1154, ed. H. W. C. Davies, C. Johnson, H. A. Cronne, and R. H. C. Davis, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1913–69) Reginaldi monachi Dunelmensis libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti virtutibus, ed. J. Raine, Surtees Soc., I (1835) The Register of John le Romeyn, Lord Archbishop of York, 1286–1296, ed. W. Brown, 2 vols., Surtees Soc., 123, 128 (1913–17) The Register of the Priory of St Bees, ed. J. Wilson, Surtees Soc., 126 (1915) The Register of Walter Giffard, Lord Archbishop of York, 1266–1279, ed. W. Brown, Surtees Soc., 109 (1904) The Register, or Rolls, of Walter de Gray, Lord Archbishop of York, ed. J. Raine, Surtees Soc., 56 (1872) The Register of William Melton, Archbishop of York, 1317–1340, ed. R. M. T. Hill, D. Robinson, and R. Brocklesby, 4 vols., Canterbury and York Soc., 70–1, 76, 85 (1977–97) The Register of William Wickwane, Lord Archbishop of York, 1279–85, ed. W. Brown, Surtees Soc., 114 (1907) The Registrum Antiquissimum of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln, ed. C. W. Foster and K. Major, 10 vols., Lincoln Record Society (1931–73) Robert of Bridlington, The Bridlington Dialogue: An Exposition of the Rule of St Augustine for the Life of the Clergy, ed. and trans. by a religious of the C.S.M.V. (London, 1960) Rotuli litterarum patentium 1201–1216 (Record Commission, 1835) Rouleaux des morts du IX au XVsiècle, ed. L. V. Delisle, Société de l’Histoire de France (Paris, 1866) Rufford Charters, ed. C. J. Holdsworth, 4 vols., Thoroton Soc. Record Series, 29, 30, 32, 34 (1972–81) The Rule of St Benedict, ed. J. McCann (London, 1972, frequently reprinted) Statuta capitulorum generalium ordinis Cisterciensis ab anno 1116 usque ad annum 1786, ed. J. M. Canivez, 8 vols. (Louvain, 1933–41) Symeonis monachi opera omnia, ed. T. Arnold, 2 vols. (RS, 1882–5) Taxatio ecclesiastica Angliae et Walliae auctoritate Papae Nicholai IV, ed. T. Astle, S. Ayscough, andJ. Caley (Record Commission, 1802) Valor ecclesiasticus, ed. J. Caley andJ. Hunter, 6 vols. (Record Commission, 1810–34) Walter Map, ‘De Nugis Curialium’: Courtiers’ Trifees, ed. and transl. M. R. James, rev. ed. C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1983) Willelmi Malmesbiriensis de gestis regum Anglorum, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols. (RS, 1887–9) William of Newburgh, Explanatio sacri Epithalamii in matrem sponsi, ed. J. C. Gorman, in Spicilegium Friburgense, 6 (1960), ed. G. Meersseman and A. Hånggi Historia rerum Anglicarum, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, 4 vols. (RS, 1884–9), I–II The Works of St Bernard of Clairvaux, I, Treatises I, Cistercian Fathers Series, I (Spencer, Mass. and Shannon, 1970) Yorkshire Deeds, 10 vols., ed. W. Brown (I–III), C. T. Clay (IV–VIII), M. J. Hebditch (IX), M. J. Stanley Price (X), YASRS 39, 50, 63, 65, 69, 76, 83, 102, 111, 120 (1909–55)

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Page 315 SECONDARY WORKS Books Addleshaw, G. W. O., Rectors, Vicars and Patrons in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, St Anthony’s Hall Publications no. 9 (York, 1956) Auberger, J.-B., L’unanimité Cistercienne primitive: mythe ou réalité, Cîteaux: Studia et Documenta, 3 (Achel, 1986) Aveling, J. W., The History of Roche Abbey (London, 1870) Baker, D. (ed.), Medieval Women, Studies in Church History Subsidia, I (Oxford, 1978) Barlow, F., The English Church 1000–1066, 2nd edn (London, 1979) Barnes, G. D., Kirkstall Abbey, 1147–1539: An Historical Study, Thoresby Soc., 58 (1984) Barrow, G. W. S., The Kingdom of the Scots (London, 1973) The Anglo-Norman Era in Scottish History (Oxford, 1980) Bates, D., Normandy before 1066 (London, 1982) Bell, D. N., The Libraries of the Cistercians, Gilbertines and Premonstratensians, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 3 (London: British Library and British Academy, 1992) What Nuns Read: Books and Libraries in Medieval English Nunneries, Cistercian Studies Series, 158 (Kalamazoo, Mich. and Spencer, Mass., 1995) Bellamy, C. V., Pontefract Priory Excavations, 1957–1961, Thoresby Soc., 49 (1965) Berman, Constance Hoffman, Medieval Agriculture, The Southern French Countryside, and the Early Cistercians, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 76, no. 5 (Philadelphia, 1986) Binns, A., Dedications of Monastic Houses in England and Wales 1066–1216 (Woodbridge, 1989) Blair, John (ed.), Minsters and Parish Churches: The Local Church in Transition 950–1200, Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, monograph no. 17 (Oxford, 1988) Bouchard, Constance Brittain, Holy Entrepreneurs: Cistercians, Knights and Economic Exchange in Twelfth-Century Burgundy (Ithaca and London, 1991) Brett, M., The English Church under Henry I (Oxford, 1975) Burton, Janet, The Yorkshire Nunneries in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Borthwick Paper no. 56 (York, 1979) Monastic and Religious Orders in Britain 1000–1300 (Cambridge, 1994) Kirkham Priory from Foundation to Dissolution, Borthwick Paper no. 86 (York, 1995) Cheney, C. R., From Becket to Langton: English Church Government 1170–1213 (Manchester, 1956) Medieval Texts and Studies (Oxford, 1973) Episcopal Visitation of Monasteries in the Thirteenth Century, 2nd edn (Manchester, 1983) Clay, C. T. (ed.), York Minster Fasti, 2 vols., YASRS, 123–4 (1958–9) Notes on the Family of Clere (privately printed, 1975) Clay, C. T. and Greenway, D. E. (ed.), Early Yorkshire Families, YASRS, 135 (1973) Colvin, H. M., The White Canons in England (Oxford, 1951) Constable, G., Monastic Tithes from their Origins to the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1964) Coppack, G., Fountains Abbey (London, 1993) Coppack, G. and Fergusson, Peter, Rievaulx Abbey (English Heritage guidebook, London, 1994)

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Page 316 Coss, P., Lordship, Knighthood and Locality: A Study in English Society c. 1180–c. 1280 (Cambridge, 1991) Cowan, Ian B. and Easson, D. E., Medieval Religious Houses: Scotland, 2nd edn (London, 1976) Crouch, D., The Image of Aristocracy in Britain, 1000–1300 (London and New York, 1992) Dalton, Paul, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship: Yorkshire, 1066–1154 (Cambridge, 1994) Darby, H. C. and Maxwell, I. S., The Domesday Geography of Northern England (Cambridge, 1962) Davis, G. R. C., Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain (London, 1958) Davis, R. H. C., King Stephen 1135–1154, 3rd edn (London, 1990) Dickinson, J. C., The Origins of the Austin Canons and their Introduction into England (London, 1950) Dobson, R. B., The Jews of Medieval York and the Massacre of March 1190, Borthwick Paper no. 45 (York, 1974) Dobson, R. B. and Donaghey, Sara, The History of Clementhorpe Nunnery, The Archaeology of York, vol. 2, Historical Sources for York Archaeology after AD 1100, fasc. I (York Archaeological Trust, 1984) Donkin, R. A., The Cistercians: Studies in the Geography of Medieval England and Wales, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts, 38 (Toronto, 1978) Donnelly, James S., The Decline of the Medieval Cistercian Laybrotherhood, Fordham University Studies, History Series, 3 (New York, 1949) Elkins, S., Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1988) English, B., The Lords of Holderness 1086–1260: A Study in Feudal Society (Oxford, 1979) English Place Name Society v, The Place-Names of the North Riding of Yorkshire, XIV, The Place-Names of the East Riding of Yorkshire and York, XXX-XXXVII, The Place-Names of the West Riding of Yorkshire, ed. A. H. Smith (Cambridge, 1928–63) Fasti parochiales, 5 vols., ed. A. Hamilton Thompson and C. T. Clay (I–II), N. A. H. Lawrance (III), N. K. M. Gurey and C. T. Clay (IV), N. A. H. Lawrance (v), YASRS 85, 107, 129, 133, 143 (1933–82) Faull, M. L. and Moorhouse, S. A. (ed.), West Yorkshire: An Archaeological Survey to A.D. 1500, 4 vols. (Wakefield, 1981) Fergusson, Peter, Architecture of Solitude: Cistercian Abbeys in Twelfth-Century England (Princeton, N.J., 1984) Roche Abbey (English Heritage guidebook, 1990) Fleming, R., Kings and Lords in Conquest England (Cambridge, 1991) Fletcher, J. S., The Cistercians in Yorkshire (London, 1919) Forey, Alan, The Military Orders from the Twelfth to the Early Fourteenth Centuries (London, 1992) Gilchrist, Roberta, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women (London, 1994) Gilchrist, Roberta and Mytum, H. (ed.), The Archaeology of Rural Monasteries, BAR, British series, 203 (Oxford, 1989) Given-Wilson, C., The English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages (London and New York, 1987) Gold, P. S., The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude and Experience in Twelfth-Century France (Chicago, 1985) Golding, Brian, Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertine Order c. 1130 to c. 1300 (Oxford, 1995)

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Page 317 Graham, Rose, English Ecclesiastical Studies (London, 1929) St Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertines (London, 1903) Gransden, A., Historical Writing in England c. 550 to c. 1307 (London, 1974) Green, Judith A., The Government of England under Henry I (Cambridge, 1986) English Sheriffs to 1154, Public Record Office Handbooks no. 24 (London, 1990) Greene, J. Patrick, Norton Priory: The Archaeology of a Medieval Religious House (Cambridge, 1989) Hartridge, R. A. R., A History of Vicarages in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1930, repr. 1968) Hey, D., Yorkshire from AD 1000 (London, 1986) Hill, B. D., English Cistercian Monasteries and their Patrons in the Twelfth Century (Urbana, 1968) Hoey, L. R. (ed.), Yorkshire Monasticism, Archaeology, Art and Architecture from the 7th to 16th Centuries, The British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, XVI (1995) Holdsworth, Christopher, The Piper and the Tune: Medieval Patrons and Monks, The Stenton Lecture, 1990 (Reading, 1991) Holt, R., The Mills of Medieval England (Oxford, 1988) Hoste, A., Bibliotheca Aelrediana: A Survey of the Manuscripts, Old Catalogues, Editions and Studies Concerning St Aelred of Rievaulx, Instrumenta Patristica, II (Steenbrugge, 1962) Janauschek, P. L., Originum Cisterciensium (Vienna, 1877) Johnson, P., Equal in Monastic Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France (Chicago and London, 1991) Kapelle, W., The Norman Conquest of the North: The Region and its Transformation, 1000–1135 (London, 1979) Kemp, R. L. with C. Pamela Graves, The Church and Gilbertine Priory of St Andrew, Fishergate, 2 vols., The Archaeology of York, vol. II: The Medieval Defences and Suburbs, fasc. 2 (York, 1996) Ker, N. (ed.), Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 3, 2nd edn (London, 1964); Supplement, ed. A. G. Watson, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 5 (1987) English Manuscripts in the Century after the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1960) Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1969–92) Kershaw, I., Bolton Priory: The Economy of a Northern Monastery, 1286–1325 (Oxford, 1973) King, E. (ed.), The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign (Oxford, 1994) Knowles, D., The Monastic Order in England, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1963) The Religious Orders in England, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1948–59) Great Historical Enterprises. Problems in Monastic History (London, 1963) Knowles, D., Brooke, C. N. L., and London, V. C. M. (ed.), The Heads of Religious Houses: England and Wales 940– 1216 (Cambridge, 1972) Knowles, D. and Hadcock, R. N., Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1971) Leclercq, J., The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture (New York, 1961; repr. 1982) Lekai, L. The White Monks (Okauchee, Wis., 1953), revised as Les Moines Blancs (Paris, 1957) The Cistercians: Ideals and Reality (Kent, Oh., 1977) Leyser, H., Hermits and the New Monasticism: A Siudy of Religious Communities in Western Europe, 1000–1150 (London, 1984)

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Page 318 Little, Lester K., Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (London, 1978) Lloyd, T. H., The English Wool Trade in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1977) Lynch, J. H., Simoniacal Entry into Religious Life from 1000 to 1260: a social, economic and legal study (Columbus, Ohio, 1976) McDonnell, J., Inland Fisheries in Medieval Yorkshire 1066–1300, Borthwick Paper no. 60 (York, 1981) Matthew, D. J. A., The Norman Monasteries and their English Possessions (Oxford, 1962) Milis, L., L’ordre des chanoines réguliers d’Arrouaise, 2 vols. (Bruges, 1969) Angelic Monks and Earthly Men: Monasticism and its Meaning to Medieval Society (Woodbridge, 1991) Morgan, M., The English Lands of the Abbey of Bec (Oxford, 1946, repr. 1968) Morrell, W. W., The History and Antiquities of Selby (Selby, 1867) Morris, C., The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (Oxford, 1989) Mullin, F. A., A History of the Work of the Cistercians in Yorkshire, 1131–1300 (Washington, 1932) Newman, Barbara, From Virile Woman to Woman Christ (Philadelphia, 1995) Newman, Charlotte A., The Anglo-Norman Nobility in the Reign of Henry I: The Second Generation (Philadelphia, 1988) Newman, Martha G., The Boundaries of Charity: Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform, 1098–1180 (Stanford, Calif., 1996) Nicholl, D., Thurstan, Archbishop of York (1114–1140) (York, 1964) Norton, C. and Park, D. (ed.), Cistercian Art and Architecture in the British Isles (Cambridge, 1986) Oliva, M., The Convent and the Community in the Diocese of Norwich from 1350 to 1540 (Woodbridge, 1994) Owen, D. M., Church and Society in Medieval Lincolnshire, History of Lincolnshire, 5 (Lincoln, 1971) Pächt, O. and Alexander, J. J. G., Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1966–73) Parsons, D. (ed.) Tenth-Century Studies (London, 1975) Platt, Colin, The Monastic Grange in Medieval England: A Reassessment (London, 1969) Postan, M. M., The Medieval Economy and Society (London, 1972) Pressouyre, L., L’Espace Cistercien (Paris, 1994) Richardson, H. G., The English Jewry under Angevin Kings (London, 1960) Robinson, D. M., The Geography of Augustinian Settlement in Medieval England and Wales, 2 vols., British Archaeological Reports, British Series 80 (Oxford, 1980) Rollason, D., Harvey, M., and Prestwich, M. (ed.), Anglo-Norman Durham 1093–1193 (Woodbridge, 1994) Saltman, A., Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1956) Salzman, L. F., Building in England down to 1540 (Oxford, 1952) Scammell, G. V., Hugh du Puiset, Bishop of Durham (Cambridge, 1956) Sharpe, R., Carley, J. P., Thomson, R. M., and Watson, A. G., English Benedictine Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 4 (London: British Library and British Academy, 1996) Solloway, The Alien Benedictines of York (Leeds, 1910) Sommerfeldt, J. R. (ed.), Bernardus Magister, Cistercian Studies Series, 135 (Spencer, Mass., 1992)

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Page 319 Southern, R. W., Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, 1970) Squire, A., Aelred of Rievaulx: A Study (London, 1969); reprinted as Cistercian Studies Series, 50 (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1981) Taylor, J., Medieval Historical Writing in Yorkshire, St Anthony’s Hall Publications no. 19 (York, 1961) Thompson, A. Hamilton, History and Architectural Description of the Priory of St Mary, Bolton in Wharfedale, Thoresby Soc., 30 (1928 for 1924) Thompson, S. P., Women Religious: The Founding of English Nunneries after the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1991) Trenholme, N. M., The English Monastic Boroughs (Columbia, Miss., 1927) The Victoria History of the Counties of England (London, 1900– , in progress) Waites, Bryan, Moorland and Vale-land Farming in North-East Yorkshire: The Monastic Contribution in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, Borthwick Paper no. 32 (York, 1967) Monasteries and Landscape in North East England (Oakham, Rutland, 1997) Wardrop, J., Fountains Abbey and its Benefactors, 1132–1300, Cistercian Publications, 91 (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1987) Warren, W. L., Henry II (London, 1973) Watson, A. G., Catalogue of Dated and Dateable Manuscripts c. 700–1600, in the Department of Manuscripts, The British Library, I (London, 1979) Welldon Finn, R., The Making and Limitations of the Yorkshire Domesday, Borthwick Paper no. 41 (York, 1972) Wightman, W. E., The Lacy Family in England and Normandy 1066–1194 (Oxford, 1966) Wood, S., English Monasteries and their Patrons in the Thirteenth Century (London, 1955) Wormald, F. and Wright, C. E. (ed.), The English Library before 1700 (London, 1958) Articles and Papers Alfonso, Isabel, ‘Cistercians and feudalism’, Past & Present, 133 (1991), 3–30 Baker, D., ‘The foundation of Fountains Abbey’, Northern History, 4 (1969), 29–43 ‘The desert in the north’, Northern History, 5 (1970), 1–11 ‘Viri religiosi and the York election dispute’, in Councils and Assemblies, Studies in Church History, 7, ed. G. J. Cuming and D. Baker (Oxford, 1971), pp. 87–100 ‘The genesis of English Cistercian chronicles: the foundation history of Fountains Abbey’, I, Analecta Cisterciensia, 25 (1969), 14–41, and II, ibid., 31 (1975), 179–212 ‘Patronage in the early twelfth-century church: Walter Espec, Kirkham and Rievaulx’, in Traditio-Krisis-Renovatio aus theologischer Sicht: Festschrift Winfried Zeller, ed. B. Jaspert and R. Mohr (Marburg, 1976), pp. 92–100 ‘Legend and reality: the case of Waldef of Melrose’, in Church, Society and Politics, Studies in Church History, 12, ed. D. Baker (Oxford, 1975), pp. 59–82 Barrow, G. W. S., ‘King David I and the honour of Lancaster’, EHR, 70 (1955), 85–9 ‘The Scots and the North of England’, in King, The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign, pp. 231–53 Bates, D., ‘Normandy and England after 1066’, EHR, 104 (1989), 851–80 Beck, E., ‘The Order of the Temple at North Ferriby’, EHR, 26 (1911), 498–501 Beckett, L., ‘Arden Priory’, The Ryedale Historian, 8 (1976), 10–18 Bell, H. E., ‘Esholt Priory’, YAJ, 33 (1938), 5–33

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Page 320 Berman, Constance Hoffman, ‘Cistercian development and the order’s acquisition of churches and tithes in southwestern France’, Revue Bénédictine, 91 (1981), 193–203 ‘Men’s houses, women’s houses: the relationship between the sexes in twelfth-century monasticism’, in Medieval Studies at Minnesota, 2, ed. A. MacLeish (St Cloud, Minn., 1988), pp. 43–52 ‘The development of Cistercian economic practice during the lifetime of Bernard of Clairvaux: the historical perspective on Innocent II’s 1132 privilege’, in Sommerfeldt, Bernardus Magister, pp. 303–13 Bethell, D., ‘The foundation of Fountains Abbey and the state of St Mary’s York in 1132’, JEH, 17 (1966), 11–27 Bilson, J., ‘Hackness church’, YAJ, 27 (1924), 406–7 ‘Wyke upon Hull in 1293’, Transactions of the East Riding Antiquarian Society, 26 (1929), 37–105 Bishop, T. A. M., ‘Monastic granges in Yorkshire’, EHR, 51 (1936), 193–214, 758 Bouchard, Constance Brittain, ‘Cistercian ideals versus reality: 1134 reconsidered’, Cîteaux 39 (1988), 217–31 Brooke, C. N. L., ‘Princes and kings as patrons of monasteries’, in Il Monachesimo e la Riforma Ecclesiastica 1049– 1122, Miscellanea del centro di studi medieovali, 6 (Milan, 1971), pp. 125–52 ‘Monk and canon: some patterns in the religious life of the twelfth century’, in Monks, Hermits, and the Ascetic Tradition, Studies in Church History, 22, ed. W. J. Sheils (Oxford, 1985), pp. 109–29 ‘St Bernard, the patrons and monastic planning’, in Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture, pp. 11–23 ‘King David I of Scotland as a connoisseur of the religious orders’, in Mediaevalia Christiana, ed. C. E. Viola (Paris 1989), pp. 320–34 Burrows, T., ‘The foundation of Nostell Priory’, YAJ, 53 (1981), 31–5 ‘The geography of monastic property in medieval England: a case study of Nostell and Bridlington Priories (Yorkshire)’, YAJ, 57 (1985), 79–86 Burton, Janet, ‘A confraternity list from St Mary’s Abbey, York’, Revue Bénédictine, 89 (1979), 325–33 ‘Charters of Byland Abbey relating to the grange of Bleatarn, Westmorland’, TCWAAS, 79 (1979), 29–50 ‘The settlement of disputes between Byland Abbey and Newburgh Priory’, YAJ, 55 (1983), 67–72 ‘The foundation of the British Cistercian houses’, in Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture, pp. 24–39 ‘Monasteries and parish churches in eleventh- and twelfth-century Yorkshire’, Northern History, 23 (1987), 39–50 ‘The abbeys of Byland and Jervaulx, and the problems of the English Savigniacs, 1134–1156’, in Monastic Studies, II, ed. J. Loades (Bangor, 1991), pp. 119–31 ‘The Knights Templar in Yorkshire in the twelfth century: a reassessment’, Northern History, 27 (1991), 26–40 ‘The eremitical tradition and the development of post-Conquest religious life in northern England’, in Eternal Values in Mediaeval Life, ed. N. Crossley-Holland, Trivium, 26 (1991), pp. 18–39 ‘The monastic revival in Yorkshire: Whitby and St Mary’s, York’, in Rollason, Harvey, and Prestwich, Anglo-Norman Durham, pp. 41–51

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Page 321 ‘Yorkshire nunneries in the Middle Ages: recruitment and resources’, in Government, Religion and Society in Northern England 1000–1700, ed. John C. Appleby and Paul Dalton (Stroud, 1997), pp. 104–16 ‘Historical evidence’, in Kemp and Graves, Church and Gilbertine Priory of St Andrew, I, 49–67 Priory and parish: Kirkham and its parishioners, 1496–-7’, in Monasteries in Medieval Britain, Proceedings of the 1994 Harlaxton Medieval Symposium, ed. B. Thompson (Stamford, forthcoming) Burton, Janet and Stalley, Roger, ‘Tables of Cistercian affiliations’, in Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture, pp. 394–401 Bynum, Caroline Walker, ‘The spirituality of regular canons in the twelfth century’, in Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1982), pp. 22–58 Cambridge, E., ‘Early Romanesque architecture in north-east England: a style and its patrons’, in Rollason, Harvey, and Prestwich, Anglo-Norman Durham, pp. 141–60 Cantor, N., ‘The crisis of western monasticism 1050–1130’, American Historical Review, 66 (1960–1), 47–67 Chadwick, S. J., ‘Kirklees Priory’, YAJ, 16 (1902), 319–68 and 17 (1903), 420–33 Cheney, C. R., ‘The papal legate and English monasteries in 1206’, EHR, 46 (1931), 443–52 ‘English Cistercian libraries: the first century’, in Medieval Texts and Studies, pp. 328–45 Chibnall, M., ‘Monks and pastoral work: a problem in Anglo-Norman history’, JEH, 18 (1967), 165–72 Monastic foundations in England and Normandy, 1066–1189’, in England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, ed. D. Bates and A. Curry (London, 1994), pp. 37–49 Clay, C. T., ‘The seals of the religious houses of Yorkshire’, Archaeologia, 78 (1928), 1–36 ‘ Bradley: a grange of Fountains’, YAJ, 29 (1929), 97–106 ‘A Worcester charter of Thomas II, archbishop of York, and its bearing on the early history of the church of Leeds’, YAJ, 36 (1947), 132–6 ‘The early abbots of the Yorkshire Cistercian houses’, YAJ, 38 (1952–5), 8–43 ‘The early priors of Pontefract’, YAJ, 38 (1952–5), 456–64 Coldstream, N., ‘Cistercian architecture from Beaulieu to the Dissolution’, in Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture, pp. 139–59 Constable, G., ‘Monastic possession of churches and ‘‘spiritualia” in the age of reform’, in Il Monachismo e la Riforma Ecclesiastica (104)–1122), Miscellanea del centro di studi medioevali, 6 (Milan, 1971), pp. 304–31 ‘Aelred of Rievaulx and the nun of Watton: an episode in the early history of the Gilbertine order’, in Baker, Medieval Women, pp. 205–26 Dalton, P., ‘William earl of York and royal authority in Yorkshire in the reign of Stephen’, Haskins Society Journal, 2 (1990), 55–65 ‘Eustace Fitz John and the politics of Anglo-Norman England: the rise and survival of a twelfth-century royal servant’, Speculum, 71 (1996), 358–83 Davis, R. H. C., ‘Bede after Bede’, in Studies in Medieval History presented to R. Allen Brown, ed. Christopher HarperBill, Christopher J. Holdsworth, and Janet L. Nelson (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 103–16 Dawtry, A., ‘The Benedictine revival in the north: the last bulwark of Anglo-Saxon monasticism?’, in The Church and National Identity, Studies in Church History, 18, ed.

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Page 322 S. Mews (Oxford, 1982), pp. 87–98 Delisle, L., ‘Documents relative to the abbey of Furness, extracted from the archives of the abbey of Savigny’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 6 (1851), 419–24 Denholm-Young, N., ‘The foundation of Warter Priory’, YAJ, 31 (1934), 208–13 Desmond, Lawrence A., ‘The appropriation of churches by the Cistercians in England to 1400’, Analecta Cisterciensia, 31 (1976 for 1975), 246–66 Dickinson, J. C., ‘The origins of the cathedral of Carlisle’, TCWAAS, NS, 45 (1946), 134–43 ‘English regular canons and the continent in the twelfth century’, TRHS, 5th series, 1 (1951), 71–89 Dobson, R. B., ‘The first Norman abbey in northern England’, Ampleforth Journal, 74 (1969), 161–79 ‘Les origines de l’abbaye Bénédictine de Selby dans le Yorkshire (1069–1100) et ses rapports avec Saint-Germain d’Auxerre’, Etudes ligeriennes d’histoire et d’archéologie médiévales (Paris, 1975), 157–64 Donkin, R. A., ‘Settlement and depopulation on Cistercian estates during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, especially in Yorkshire’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 33 (1960), 141–65 ‘The Cistercian grange in England in the 12th and 13th centuries, with special reference to Yorkshire’, Studia Monastica, 6 (1964), 95–144 ‘The English Cistercians and assarting c. 1128–c. 1350’, Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis, 20 (1964), 49–75 ‘Cattle on the estates of medieval Cistercian monasteries in England and Wales’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 15 (1962–3), 31–53 Donnelly, James S. ‘Changes in the grange economy of English and Welsh Cistercian abbeys, 1300–1540’, Traditio, 10 (1954), 399–458 Duckett, G., ‘Charters of the priory of Swine in Holderness’, YAJ, 6 (1881), 113–24 Dutton, Marsha L., ‘The conversion and vocation of Aelred of Rievaulx: a historical hypothesis’, in England in the Twelfth Century, Proceedings of the 1988 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. D. Williams (Woodbridge, 1990), pp. 31–49 Dyson, A. G., ‘The monastic patronage of Bishop Alexander of Lincoln’, JEH, 26 (1975), 1–24 Eckenrode, T. R., ‘The English Cistercians and their sheep during the Middle Ages’, Cîteaux, 24 (1973), 250–66 Elkins, S., ‘All ages, every condition, and both sexes: the emergence of a Gilbertine identity’, in Medieval Religious Women. I: Distant Echoes, ed. J. A. Nichols and L. T. Shank, Cistercian Studies Series, 71 (Kalamazoo, 1984), pp. 169– 82 Fergusson, Peter, ‘The twelfth-century refectories at Rievaulx and Byland Abbeys’, in Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture, pp. 160–80 Fergusson, Peter and Harrison, S., ‘The Rievaulx Abbey Chapter House’, The Antiquaries Journal, 74 (1994), 211–55 Fernie, E., ‘The architectural influence of Durham Cathedral’, in Rollason, Harvey, and Prestwich, Anglo-Norman Durham, pp. 269–79 ‘The Romanesque church of Selby Abbey’, in Hoey, Yorkshire Monasticism, pp. 40–9 Galbraith, V. H., ‘Monastic foundation charters of the eleventh and twelfth centuries’, CHJ, 4 (1934), 205–22, 296–8 Gem, R., and Thurlby, M., ‘The early monastic church of Lastingham’, in Hoey, Yorkshire Monasticism, pp. 31–9

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Page 323 Gilchrist, R., ‘Community and self: perceptions and use of space in medieval monasteries’, Scottish Archaeological Review, 7 (1989), 55–64 ‘Blessed art thou among women: the archaeology of female piety’, in Woman is a Worthy Wite: Women in English Society c. 1200–1500, ed. J. Goldberg (Stroud, 1992), pp. 212–26 Gilyard–Beer, R. and Coppack, G., ‘Excavations at Fountains Abbey, North Yorkshire, 1979–80: the early development of the monastery’, Archaeologia, 108 (1986), 147–88 Golding, Brian J., ‘The coming of the Cluniacs’, in Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies, III, 1980, ed. R. Allen Brown (Woodbridge, 1981), pp. 65–77, 208–12 ‘Burials and benefactions: an aspect of monastic patronage in thirteenth-century England’, in England in the Thirteenth Century, Proceedings of the 1984 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. W. M. Ormrod (Harlaxton, 1985), pp. 64–75 ‘Anglo-Norman knightly burials’, in The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood, ed. C. Harper-Bill and R. Harvey (Woodbridge, 1986), pp. 35–48 ‘Gerald of Wales and the monks’, in Thirteenth-century England V, ed. P. R. Coss and S. D. Lloyd (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 53–64 ‘The Cistercians and Gerald of Wales’, Reading Medieval Studies, 21 (1996), 5–30 Graham, R., ‘The finance of Malton Priory, 1244–1257’, English Ecclesiastical Studies (London, 1929), 247–70 Graves, Coburn V., ‘The economic activities of the Cistercians in medieval England (1128–1307)’, Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis, 13 (1957), 3–60 ‘English Cistercian nuns in Lincolnshire’, Speculum, 54 (1979), 492–9 ‘The organization of an English Cistercian nunnery in Lincolnshire’, Cîteaux, 33 (1982), 333–50 Green, Judith, ‘Aristocratic loyalties on the northern frontier of England, c. 1100–1174’, in England in the Twelfth Century, Proceedings of the 1988 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. D. Williams (Woodbridge, 1990), pp. 83–100 Hallam, E. M., ‘Henry II as a founder of monasteries’, JEH, 28 (1977), 113–32 Halsey, R., ‘The earliest architecture of the Cistercians in England’, in Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture, pp. 65–85 Harper-Bill, C., ‘The piety of the Anglo-Norman knightly class’, in Proceedings of the Battle Conference on AngloNorman Studies II, 1979, ed. R. Allen Brown (Woodbridge, 1980), pp. 63–77, 173–6 Harrison, S. and Thurlby, M., ‘Observations on the Romanesque crossing tower, transepts, and nave aisles at Selby’, in Hoey, Yorkshire Monasticism, pp. 50–61 Haskett-Smith, W. P., ‘Fountains Abbey and Cumberland’, TCWAAS, 21 (1921), 152–8 Head, T., ‘The marriages of Christina of Markyate’, Viator, 21 (1990), 75–101 Herbert, J., ‘The transformation of hermitages into Augustinian priories in twelfth-century England’, in Monks, Hermits, and the Ascetic Tradition, Studies in Church History, 22, ed. W. J. Sheils (Oxford, 1985), pp. 131–45 Heslop, D. H., et al, ‘Excavation within the church at the Augustinian priory of Gisborough, Cleveland 1985–6’, YAJ, 67 (1995), 51–126 Hill, Bennett D., ‘The beginnings of the first French foundations of the Norman abbey of Savigny’, American Benedictine Review, 31 (1980), 130–52 ‘Archbishop Thomas Becket and the Cistercian order’, Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis, 27 (1971), 64–80 Hodgson, J. F., ‘Eggleston Abbey’, YAJ, 18 (1905), 129–82

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Page 324 Hoey, L., ‘The 13th-century choir and transepts of Rievaulx Abbey’, in Hoey, Yorkshire Monasticism, pp. 97–116 Hohl, C., ‘Une fille de Saint-Germain d’Auxerre?’, Bulletin de la Société des sciences de l’Yonne, 106 (1974), 31–9 Holdsworth, Christopher, ‘John of Ford and English Cistercian writing, 1167–1214’, TRHS, 5th series, 11 (1961), 117– 36 ‘The chronology and character of early Cistercian legislation on art and architecture’, in Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture, pp. 40–55 ‘St Bernard and England’, in Anglo-Norman Studies, VIII, Proceedings of the Battle Conference, 1985, ed. R. AllenBrown (Woodbridge, 1986), pp. 138–53 ‘The Cistercians in Devon’, in Studies in Medieval History presented to R. Allen Brown, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill, Christopher J. Holdsworth, and Janet L. Nelson (Wood-bridge, 1989), pp. 179–91 ‘The church’, in King, The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign, pp. 207–29 Holmes, R., ‘The foundation of St Clement’s in the castle of Pontefract’, YAJ, 14 (1896), 147–57 Hunt, R. W., ‘English learning in the late twelfth century’, TRHS, 4th series, 19 (1936), 19–42 Janin, P., ‘Note sur le manuscrit Latin 10940 de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, contenant l’Historia Selebiensis Monasterii et les Gesta abbatum Sancti Germani Autissiodorensis’, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes, 127 (1969), 216–24 Jenkinson, H., ‘William Cade, a financier of the twelfth century’, EHR, 28 (1913), 209–27, 731–2 Kemp, B. R., ‘Monastic possession of churches in England in the twelfth century’, JEH, 31 (1980), 133–60 King, Edmund, ‘The parish of Warter and the castle of Galchlin’, YAJ, 52 (1980), 49–58 ‘The foundation of Pipewell Abbey, Northamptonshire’, Haskins Society Journal, 2 (1990), 167–77 King, Peter, ‘The return of the fee of Robert de Brus in Domesday’, YAJ, 60 (1988), 25–9 Knowles, D., ‘The case of St William of York’, CHJ, 5 (1936), 162–77, 212–14; reprinted in The Historian and Character (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 76–97 ‘The revolt of the lay brothers of Sempringham’, EHR, 50 (1935), 465–87 Lawrence, Anne, ‘English Cistercian manuscripts of the twelfth century’, in Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture, pp. 284–98 ‘The artistic influence of Durham manuscripts’, in Rollason, Harvey, and Prestwich, Anglo-Norman Durham, pp. 451–69 ‘A northern English school? Patterns of production and collection of manuscripts in the Augustinian houses of Yorkshire in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, in Hoey, Yorkshire Monasticism, pp. 145–53 Le Patourel, J., ‘Medieval Leeds; Kirkstall Abbey’, Miscellanea, 13, Thoresby Soc. 46 (1963), 1–21 Lynch, J. H., ‘Monastic recruitment in the eleventh and twelfth centuries: some social and economic considerations’, American Benedictine Review, 26 (1975), 425–47 Martin, E. J., ‘The Templars in Yorkshire’, YAJ, 29 (1927–9), 366–85, and 30 (1930–1), 135–56 Martindale, J., ‘Monasteries and castles: the priories of St-Florent in England after 1066’, in England in the Eleventh Century, Proceedings of the 1990 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. C. Hicks (Stamford, 1992), pp. 135–56

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Page 325 Mason, E., ‘Pro statu et incolumnitate regni mei: royal monastic patronage 1066–1154’, in Religion and National Identity, Studies in Church History, 18, ed. S. Mews (Oxford, 1982), pp. 99–117 ‘Timeo barones et dona ferentes’, in Religious Motivation: Biographical and Sociological Problems for the Church Historian, Studies in Church History, 15, ed. D. Baker (Oxford, 1978), pp. 61–75 Mayr-Harting, H., ‘Functions of a twelfth-century recluse’, History, 60 (1975), 337–52 Meehan, B., ‘Durham twelfth-century manuscripts in Cistercian houses’, in Rollason, Harvey, and Prestwich, AngloNorman Durham, pp. 439–49 Moorhouse, S., ‘Monastic estates: their composition and development’, in Gilchrist and Mytum, Archaeology of Rural Monasteries, pp. 29–8. Morey, A., ‘Canonist evidence in the case of St William of York’, CHJ, 10 (1950–2), 352–3 Morgan, M., ‘The suppression of the alien priories’, History, 26 (1941), 204–12 Morris, R. K., ‘Alcuin, York, and the Alma Sophia’, in The Anglo-Saxon Church, ed. L. A. S. Butler and R. K. Morris, CBA Research Report, 60 (1986), 80–9 Mortimer, R., ‘Religious and secular motives for some English monastic foundations’, in Religious Motivation: Biographical and Sociological Problems for the Church Historian, Studies in Church History, 15, ed. D. Baker (Oxford, 1978), pp. 77–85 Newman, J. E., ‘Greater and lesser landowners and parochial patronage: Yorkshire in the thirteenth century’, EHR, 92 (1977), 280–308 Nichols, John A., ‘The internal organization of English Cistercian nunneries’, Cîteaux 30 (1979), 23–40 Norton, C., ‘Table of Cistercian legislation on art and architecture’, in Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture, pp. 315–93 ‘The buildings of St Mary’s Abbey, York, and their destruction’, The Antiquaries Journal, 74 (1994), 256–88 Palliser, D. M., ‘An introduction to the Yorkshire Domesday’, in The Yorkshire Domesday, ed. G. H. Martin and A. Williams (London, 1992), pp. 1–28 ‘The topography of monastic houses in Yorkshire towns’, in Advances in Monastic Archaeology, ed. R. Gilchrist and H. Mytum, BAR British series, 227 (1993), pp. 3–9 ‘Domesday Book and the “harrying of the north’”, Northern History, 29 (1993), 1–23 Postan, M. M., ‘The chronology of labour services’, TRHS, 4th series, 20 (1937), 169–93, repr. and revised in Essays in Agrarian History, ed. W. E. Minchinton, 2 vols. (Newton Abbot, 1968), I, 73–91 Powicke, F. M., ‘Ailred of Rievaulx and his biographer Walter Daniel’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 6 (1921– 2), 310–51, 452–521 ‘Maurice of Rievaulx’, EHR, 36 (1921), 17–29 ‘The dispensator of King David I’, Scottish Historical Review, 23 (1925), 34–41 Purvis,J. S., ‘The foundation of Bridlington Priory’, YAJ, 29 (1929), 241–2 ‘A foundation charter of Bridlington Priory’, YAJ, 29 (1929), 395 ‘New light on the chartularies of Monk Bretton Priory’, YAJ, 37 (1951), 67–71 Reyerson, K. L. ‘The way of Mary or that of Martha: conceptions of monastic life at Savigny, 1112–1180’, in Medieval Studies at Minnesota, 2, ed. A. MacLeish (St Cloud, Minnesota 1988), pp. 34–42 Roby, D., ‘Chimaera of the north: the active life of Aelred of Rievaulx’, in J. R. Sommerfeldt (ed.), Cistercian Ideals and Reality, Cistercian Studies Series, 60 (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1978), pp. 152–69

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Page 326 Rose, R. K., ‘Cumbrian society and the Anglo-Norman church’, in The Church and National Identity, Studies in Church History, 18, ed. S. Mews (Oxford, 1982), pp. 119–35 Rushton, J. H., ‘Keldholme Priory: the early years’, The Ryedale Historian, 1 (1965), 15–23 St John Hope, W., ‘The Gilbertine priory of Watton, in the East Riding of Yorkshire’, Archaeological Journal, 58 (1901), 1–34 Salter, H. E., ‘William of Newburgh’, EHR, 22 (1907), 510–14 Scammell, G. V., ‘Four early charters relating to York’, YAJ, 39 (1956–8), 86–90 Schaefer, J. O., ‘The earliest churches of the Cistercian order’, in Studies in Cistercian Art and Architecture, I, ed. M. P. Lillich (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1982), pp. 1–12 Scott, J. G., ‘The origins of Dundrennan and Soulseat’, Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society, 63 (1988), 35–44 Southern, R. W., ‘The place of Henry I in English history’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 48 (1962), 127–56; reprinted as ‘Henry I’ in R. W. Southern, Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford, 1970), pp. 206–33 ‘Aspects of the European tradition of historical writing: 4: the sense of the past’, TRHS, 5th series, 23 (1973), 243–63 Stevenson, W. H., ‘Yorkshire surveys and other eleventh-century documents in the York Gospels’, EHR, 27 (1912), 1–25 Stocker, David A., ‘The priory of Holy Trinity, York: antiquarians and architectural history’, in Hoey, Yorkshire Monasticism, pp. 79–96 Stringer, K., ‘A Cistercian archive: the earliest charters of Sawtry Abbey’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, 6 (1980), 325–34 ‘Galloway and the abbeys of Rievaulx and Dundrennan’, Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society, 55 (1980), 174–7 Suydam, M., ‘Origins of the Savigniac order: Savigny’s role within twelfth-century monastic reform’, Revue Bénédictine, 86 (1976), 94–108 Talbot, C. H., ‘New documents in the case of Saint William of York’, CHJ, 10 (1950–2), 1–15 ‘A letter of Roger, abbot of Byland’, Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis, 7 (1951), 218–31 ‘A list of Cistercian manuscripts in Great Britain’, Traditio, 8 (1952), 402–18 ‘Cîteaux and Scarborough’, Studia Monastica, 2 (1960), 95–158 Thomas, Hugh M., ‘A Yorkshire thegn and his descendants after the Conquest’, Medieval Prosopography, 8 (1987), 1–22 Thompson, A. Hamilton, ‘The monastic settlement at Hackness and its relation to the abbey of Whitby’, YAJ, 27 (1924), 388–405 Thompson, B., ‘From “alms” to “spiritual services”; the function and status of monastic property in medieval England’, in Monastic Studies, II, ed. J. Loades (Bangor, 1991), pp. 227–61 ‘Habendum et tenendum: lay and ecclesiastical attitudes to the property of the church’, in Religious Belief and Ecclesiastical Careers in Late Medieval England, ed. C. Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 199–203 ‘Free alms tenure in the twelfth century’, in Anglo-Norman Studies XVI, Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1993, ed. M. Chibnall (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 221–43 ‘The laity, the alien priories, and the redistribution of ecclesiastical property’, in England in the Fifteenth Century, Proceedings of the 1992 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. N. Rogers (Stamford, 1994), pp. 19–41 ‘Monasteries and their patrons at foundation and dissolution’, TRHS, 6th series, 4

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Page 327 (1994), 103–25 Thompson, M. W., ‘Associated monasteries and castles in the Middle Ages: a tentative list’, Archaeological Journal, 143 (1986), 305–21 Thompson, S. T., ‘The problem of the Cistercian nuns in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries’, in Baker, Medieval Women, pp. 227–52 Thurlby, M., ‘The roles of the patron and the master mason in the first design of the Romanesque cathedral of Durham’, in Rollason, Harvey, and Prestwich, Anglo-Norman Durham, pp. 161–84 ‘Some design aspects of Kirkstall Abbey’, in Hoey, Yorkshire Monasticism, pp. 62–72 Ullman, W., ‘A forgotten dispute at Bridlington Priory and its canonistic setting’, YAJ, 37 (1951), 456–73 Van Engen, J., ‘The ‘‘crisis of cenobitism” reconsidered: Benedictine monasticism in the years 1050–1150’, Speculum, 61 (1986), 269–304 Waddell, C., ‘The Cistercian institutions and their early evolution: granges, economy, lay brothers’, in Pressouyre, L’Espace Cistercien, pp. 27–38 Waites, B., ‘The monastic settlement of north-east Yorkshire’, YAJ, 40 (1959–62), 478–95 ‘The monastic grange as a factor in the settlement of north-east Yorkshire’, YAJ, 40 (1959–62), 627–56 ‘The monasteries of north-east Yorkshire and the medieval wool trade’, YAJ, 52 (1980), 111–21 Weatherill, J., ‘Rievaulx Abbey, the stone used in its building, with notes on the means of transport, and a new study of the diversions of the river Rye in the twelfth century’, YAJ, 38 (1952–5), 533–54 Wightman, W. E., ‘Henry I and the foundation of Nostell Priory’, YAJ, 41 (1963–6), 57–60 ‘The significance of “waste” in the Yorkshire Domesday’, Northern History, 10 (1975), 55–71 Wilmart, A., ‘L’instigateur du Speculum Caritatis d’Aelred, abbé de Rievaulx’, Revue d’Ascetique et de Mystique, 14 (1933), 369–94 Wilson, C., ‘The Cistercians as “missionaries of Gothic” in northern England’, in Norton and Park, Cistercian Art and Architecture, pp. 86–116 Wilson, J., ‘Foundation of the Austin priories of Nostell and Scone’, Scottish Historical Review, 7 (1910), 141–59 Wormald, F., ‘A liturgical calendar from Guisborough Priory, with some obits’, YAJ, 31 (1934), 5–35

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Page 328 INDEX The pre-1974 county is noted after each place name. Patronymics are indexed under the name of the son. The following abbreviations have been used: Aug. Augustinian Ben. Benedictine Cist. Cistercian ER East Riding Gilb. Gilbertine NR North Riding Prem. Premonstratensian WR West Riding Aaron, Jew of Lincoln, 259, 273 Abraham, marshal/steward of the abbot of St Mary’s, York, 245 Acaris de Tunstall, 264 Acaris Fitz Bardolph, 191, 194 Acaster Selby (WR), 42, 160, 202, 249 Accrington (Lancs.), 256 grange, 256, 276 Acer of Beeford, 259 Acklam (Middlesbrough, NR), 78 Acre, siege of, 92 Acreland (Sallay, WR), 256 Adam, abbot of Meaux, 121, 151, 166, 257, 272, 298 Adam, chaplain of Adam de Brus, 236 Adam I de Brus, 168 Adam II de Brus, 77n, 78, 131, 202, 237 Adam de Crosland, 233 Adam de Flinthil, 66 Adam de Montbegon, 66 Adam Fitz Swain, 63–6, 107n, 191, 200, 204, 211, 212 Adam, prior of Monk Bretton, prior of Pontefract, 63–6 Adam, son of Orm, 66 Adam, son of Peter de Birkin, 50, 132n, 210–15, 232–3, 248 Adel (Leeds, WR), 47, 50, 51, 237, 238, 241 Adeliza, countess of Aumale (mother of Count Stephen), 51 Adwick le Street, 172 Adwick on Dearne (WR), 77n, 238 Aelfwig, monk of Evesham, 13, 32, 39 Aggacroft (Maltby, WR), grange, 276 Agnes, daughter of William de Plaiz, 168 Agnes de Arches (Catfoss), 133 Agnes, prioress of Nun Appleton, 149 Agnes, sister of Geoffrey de Lascelles, 169 Agnes, sister of William of Aumale, wife of William de Roumare, 85–6, 257, 258n Agnes, wife of Eustace Fitz John, 137–8, 144, 187 Agnes, wife of Robert de Brus, 78n Ailred abbot of Revesby, 116, 123 abbot of Rievaulx, 17, 79, 102, 103, 108, 109, 110, 113, 117, 165, 175, 178, 179, 195, 200, 281, 286, 289, 290, 293, 300, 304 writings of, 195, 278, 279, 281, 284–5, 292–3 Life of, by Walter Daniel, 17, 109, 288, 296 Ailric, 63, 191 Aire, river 220, 221, 222, 225, 232 Airmyn (Snaith, WR), 42 Airyholme (Hovingham, NR), 111, 219

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Page 329 Aiskew (Marrick, NR), 169n Akenbergh (ER, lost), 228 Alan I, count of Brittany, 35, 40, 41, 185 Alan III, count of Brittany, earl of Richmond, 107, 190, 198, 202, 234 Alan de Catton (son of Elias) 128, 143 Alan de Holme, 227 Alan de Ling, 169 Alan I de Percy, 38, 196 Alan de Ryedale, 271 Alan de Wilton, 91 Alan, master of Wykeham, 171, 173 Alan, son of Adam 169n Alan, son of Agnes de Arches, 133 Alan, son of Hervey, 55 Alan, son of Walter, 249 Alberic, abbot of Cîteaux, 9 Alberic, papal legate, 107 Albinus, master of Hampole, 171 Alchemont, 45 Alcher, monk of Clairvaux, 292 Aldbrough (ER), 51, 53, 121n, 260 Aldburgh (Masham, NR), 107, 234 grange, 226, 261, 263, 264, 274 Aldwin, abbot of Ramsey, 180 Aldwin, prior of Winchcombe, 12, 13, 32–3, 39, 287 Alexander, abbot of Barnoldswick/Kirkstall, 118, 120, 194, 197 Alexander, abbot of Meaux, 165, 166, 167, 259, 260, 265, 267 Alexander ‘The Magnificent’, bishop of Lincoln, 95, 107n, 108n, 126, 136, 151 Alexander, canon of Swine, 173 Alexander, clerk [of East Bolton], 264 Alexander [?de Etton], 252 Alexander I, king of Scotland, 96 Alexander Paynel, 49 Alexander III, pope, 49, 147, 148, 150, 173, 240, 258n, 259n Alfnaf (of Kirkby Malzeard), 256 Alice, daughter of Ralph de Meltonby, 167 Alice de Gant, 62, 202, 203, 206, 226 Alice de Rumilly, 82–3, 110n, 188, 191, 197 Alice de Rumilly, the younger, 209 Alice de St Quintin, 133–4, 145 Alice Paynel, 50, 84n, 211n Alice, sister of Simon de Mohaut II, 168n Allerston (nr Pickering, NR), 229, 257, 263 Allerthorpe (ER), 247, 248 Allerton (now Chapel Allerton, Leeds, WR), 50 Allerton Mauleverer (WR), Ben. cell, xvii, 5, 15, 48–9, 51, 55 Alnwick (Northumb.), 137, 187 Prem. abbey, 8, 137n, 188, 205 Altofts (Normanton, WR), 57, 58 Alvered, 78 Alwin Child, 56 Amabel, sister of Peter, son of Torphin, 169 Amabel, wife of William de Neville, 66 Amandus, son of John de Owstwyk, 260 Ambrose, writings of, 278 Amesbury (Wilts.), nunnery, 11 Fontevraudine nunnery, 148


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Amfrey (of Featherstone), 72 Andrew, prior of Kirkham, master of Yedingham, 171 Angers (Maine-et-Loire), Ben. abbey of St Nicholas, 4, 224 Angram (NR), grange, 256 Annais, wife of Jordan de Aluoldelie, 145 Annandale (Scotland), 96 Anselm, monk of Bec, 17 archbishop of Canterbury, 126n, 278 Ansketil de Bulmer, sheriff of Yorkshire, 188 Ansketil, prior of Nostell, 298 Apolitus de Bramham, 49 Appleton-le-Moors (NR), 40 Appleton Wiske (NR), 43, 245 Appletreewick (Burnsall, WR), 168 Arbury (War.), Aug. priory, prior of, see William Archardus, monk of Clairvaux, 302 Arches (family), see Agnes de, Alan, son of Agnes de, Juetta de, Juetta II de, Matilda de, Osbern de, Walter, son of Agnes de, William de fee, 134 Arden (Hawnby, NR), nunnery, xix, 130, 172, 206, 271 Armagh, archbishop of, see Malachy Armthorpe (Doncaster, WR), grange, 276 Arncliffe (Craven, WR), 222 Arnford (WR), grange, 274 Arngar (of Allerthorpe), 248 Arnold (ER), grange, 260, 275 Arnulf of Montgomery, 52n Arram (Atwick, ER.), grange, 260, 275 Arras (Market Weighton, ER), 257 Arrouaise (Pas-de-Calais), Aug. abbey and order of, 84, 88, 91, 95, 96, 146, 174, 175 Arthington (WR), 47 nunnery, xix, 130, 141n, 149, 168, 172n Asby (Westm.), 222 grange, 275 Ashberry Hill (Old Byland, NR), 262 Ashby de la Laund (Lincs.), 47, 219 Ashby Puerorum (Lincs.), 160 Asketil (of Fimber), 249 Askham (Westm.), 84

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Page 330 Askham Richard (WR), 168 Askwith (Weston, WR), 224 grange, 276 Asswin of Birkin, 210 Atwick (ER), 220 Augustine, St, bishop of Hippo, 7, 278, 279, 292 Aumale (Seine-Maritime), Ben. abbey of St Martin, xvii, 5, 51, 52, 53, 235, 260 Auxerre (Yonne), Ben. abbey of St Germain, 12, 24–5, 28–9, 30, 31 Avice de Rumilly, 83, 84, 130, 168, 211n Avice de Tany, 134 Avice, sister of Gilbert, son of Alan, 169 Ayresome (Middlesbrough, NR) 78 Bainton (ER), 42, 259 Baldersby (Topcliffe, NR), grange, 263, 274 Baldwin de Alverstein, 168 Bamburgh (Northumb.), 75n, 76n, 187, 221; cell of Nostell Priory, 77 Barden family, 132n Bardney (Lincs.), Ben. abbey, 50, 95, 188, 189, 190, 237 Barnby Dun (WR), 66n grange, 276 Barnoldswick (WR), 119, 120, 194, 221, 238, 239 Cist. abbey, xix, 117–20, 197, 221; abbot of, see Alexander grange, 255, 275 Barnsley (WR), 58, 62, 68, 221 Barnstaple (Devon), Cluniac priory, 60n Barnwell (Cambs.), Aug. priory, 181 Barrow upon Humber (Lincs.), 52 Barrowby (Kirkby Overblow, WR), grange, 276 Barton (Westm.), 84 Barton-le-Street (NR), 47, 238, 241 Barton-upon-Humber (Lincs.), 203 Batley (WR), 239, 241n Battle Abbey (Sussex), Ben. abbey, 29, 30, 46, 48, 181 Battle of the Standard, 103, 111n, 112, 115, 137, 281 Baysdale (Westerdale, NR), nunnery, xix, 131, 135, 141n, 147, 149, 169, 172, 173 Beal (Kellington, WR), 62, 232 Bealeys (Lockington, ER), 257, 258 grange, 257, 259n, 268, 274 Beamsley (WR), 82 Beatrice de Chevrecurt, 68 Beatrice de Vescy, 91, 138, 187 Beatrice, prioress of Wilberfoss, 176 Beaumont family, 47 Beauvais (Oise), Ben. abbey of St Lucien, 51 Bede, 32, 278, 279, 280, 282, 283, 286, 287, 295, 296 Belton (Lincs.), 87 Benedict, abbot of Selby, 12, 23–32, 38, 39, 41, 156, 158, 163, 185 Benedict, abbot of Whitby, 161 Bentley (Emley, WR), grange, 233, 264, 275 Berengar de Todenai, 42 Bermondsey (Surrey), Cluniac priory/abbey, 6, 56 Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, 10, 11, 17, 98–102, 106–7, 109, 113, 114, 116, 122, 124, 137, 165, 166, 278, 279n, 290, 291, 292, 294, 296, 300 Apologia, 10, 104, 105, 217, 292 Vita prima, 103, 291 Bernard, abbot of Tiron, 31 Bernard, bishop of St David’s, 108n


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Bernard de Balliol, 162n Bernard, prior of Bridlington, 129 Bernard, prior of Holy Trinity, York, 50 Bernewin, priest (? of Featherstone), 72 Bernulf, 45 Bertram de Bulmer, sheriff of Yorkshire, 87–8, 129, 188 Bertram Haget, 129, 134, 141, 151, 168, 192, 249 Bessacar (Doncaster, WR), 229 grange, 209, 261, 275 Bessingby (ER), 70, 238, 245 Beverley (ER), 161, 235 provost of, 252 Bewholme (Nunkeeling, ER), 133, 223 Biddlesden (Bucks.), Cist. abbey, 118, 273 Bilbrough (WR), 45 Billington (Lancs.), 232 Bilsdale (NR), 101 Bilton (WR), 152, 168 Bingley (WR), 83, 211, 221, 239 Birkin (WR), 212, 215 hospital of St Michael, 212, 214 Birley (WR), 54 Birstall (ER, lost vill), Ben. cell, xvii, 5, 51, 52, 53, 55, 190, 235; prior of, see Gilbert church, 51, 52 Bishop Monkton (WR), 126 Bishop Wilton (ER), 126 Blacker (Hoyland, WR), 212, 231, 263n Blanchemarle (Warter, ER), grange, 257, 258n, 259n, 261, 274 Bleatarn (Westm.), grange, 267, 275 Blyth (Notts.), Ben. priory, 55, 171, 299 Boethius, works of, 278, 279 Bolton (WR), 82, 188 Aug. priory, xviii, 8, 15, 18, 81–3, 92, 94, 95,

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Page 331 188, 197, 199, 219n, 221, 223, 225, 234, 238, 240, 245, 269 Bolton by Bowland (WR), 226 Bolton on Swale (NR), 249 Bolton Percy (WR), 77n Bootham, see York, streets/areas in and around Bordley (Burnsall, WR), 222 grange, 274 Boroughbridge (WR), 232 Bossall (NR), 43, 172n Boston (Lincs.), 42, 235, 269 Bourne (Lincs.), Arrouaisian priory, 95 Bouthwaite (Kirkby Malzeard, WR), grange, 274 Bowforth (Kirkby Moorside, NR), 271 Bowland (WR), 222 Boy of Egremont, 83 Bracewell (WR), 119, 238n Brackenhill (Pontefract, WR, lost), 57, 58 Bradfield (WR), 54 Bradley (WR), 233 grange, 222, 231, 262, 264, 274 Bradmere (Thorne, WR, lost), 232 Brafferton (NR), 238 Bramham (WR), 49, 77n, 230 Bramley (Grewelthorpe, WR), 257 grange, 257, 274 Bramley (Maltby, WR), 221 Brampton Bierlow (WR), 63 Bramwith (Kirk Bramwith, WR), 160, 221 grange, 276 Brancliffe (Anston, WR), grange, 276 Bransdale (NR), 130 Brantingham (ER), 298 Brayton (WR), 27, 160, 248 Brewood (Salop.), nunnery, 148 Bridlington (ER), 69, 70, 220, 230, 295 Aug. priory, xviii, 8, 15, 16, 69–71, 76, 79, 86, 89, 92, 93, 94, 95, 129, 188, 190, 192, 194, 195, 199, 204, 205, 207, 210, 220, 226, 227, 230, 234, 235, 238, 240, 241n, 245, 267, 271, 279, 280, 283, 304; priors of, 140, 172, 176, and see Bernard, Hugh, Robert (the Scribe) church of St Mary, 69, 71 Brignall (NR), 223n Brimham (WR), 206, 226 grange, 274 Brittany, counts of, see Alan I, Alan III, Conan IV Brogden (WR), 119 Brompton on Swale (NR), 222 grange, 265 Broomfleet (ER), 225 Brough (ER), 298 Broughton (Lincs.), 47, 50 Broughton (Northants.), 53 Broughton (Craven WR), 82 Broughton (NR), hospital, 90 Broxa (Hackness, NR), 38 Brus, family, 43, 78, and see Adam I, Adam II, Agnes, wife of Robert de, William de, fee, 187, 202 Buckton (ER), 70 Bugthorpe (ER), 245 building activities in Yorkshire monasteries, 297–305


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Bullington (Lincs.), Gilb. priory, 134, 137n burial requests by benefactors and patrons, 145, 209–10 Burghwallis (WR), 66n Burneston (NR), 249 Burnley (Lancs.), 61, 221 Burnsall (WR), 87 Burton Agnes (ER), 43, 78n Burton Pidsea (ER), 52n, 53 Busby (Stokesley, NR), grange, 262, 274 Bustardthorpe (WR), 45 Buttercrambe (NR), 42 Butterwick (ER), 249n Byland (NR), Savigniac/Cist. abbey, xix, 11, 14, 16, 17, 18, 86–7, 110–12, 116–17, 124, 156, 164–6, 178, 183, 190, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 204, 205, 206, 207, 213, 218, 222, 223, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 232, 233, 234, 236, 239, 255, 256, 262, 263, 264, 266, 267, 269, 270, 271, 273n, 275, 279, 281, 283, 288, 289, 290, 291, 293, 297, 299, 304, 308; abbots of, see Gerald, Philip, Roger; conversus of, see Ligulf Historia fundationis, 16, 17, 101n, 110, 111, 156, 288–91 Bytham (Lincs.), Cist. abbey, 121, 190 Caen (Calvados), Ben. abbey, 298 Calder I (Cumb.), Savigniac abbey, 110, 111, 116, 164, 200, 206, 289; abbot of, see Gerald Calder II (Cumb.), Savigniac/Cist. abbey, 116; abbot of, see Hardred Calder, river 220, 221, 222 Calixtus II, pope, 9, 71, 74, 77, 79, 93, 100 Calverley (WR), 131 Cam (Kilburn, NR), 111, 219, 228 Camaldoli, order of, 9 Cambuskenneth (Stirling), Aug. priory, 96 Cambridge, St Radegund, nunnery, 139 Cannington (Som.), nunnery, 139 Canterbury archbishops of, 31, 106, and see Anselm, Hubert Walter, Theobald, Thomas Becket, William of Corbeil

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Page 332 cathedral, 287, 298 hospital of St Gregory/Aug. priory, 7 St Sepulchre (nunnery), 126n Cargo Fleet (Caldecotes) (Middlesbrough, NR), 78 Carham on Tweed (Northumb.), 80 Carleton (Skipton, WR), 81, 238 Carlisle (Cumb.), 114 Aug. cathedral priory, 95, 96; prior of, see Walter bishop of, see Ethelwold Carlton (Aldbrough, ER), 52n Carlton (Royston, WR), 64, 66, 213 Carlton Scroop (Lincs.), 51 Carperby (NR), 169, 218n, 229 grange, 265 Carta caritatis, 9, 10, 164, 177–9, 281 Castle Acre (Norfolk), Cluniac priory, 6, 56, 60n, 181 Castleford (WR), 58 Cato, works of, 278 Catterick (NR), 42 Catwick (ER), 62 Cawood (WR), 126 Cawthorne (WR), 59n, 191, 224 Caythorpe (ER), 42, 248, 249 Cayton (NR), 162 Cayton (South Stainley, WR), 107 grange, 261, 274 Cecilia, mother of William de Percy, 168 Cecilia, wife of Hugh de Bolton, 168 Cecily de Rumilly, Lady of Skipton, 80, 81, 82, 188, 198, 230 Cedd, St, 39 Celestine III, pope, 82, 240, 242 Chatteris (Cambs.), nunnery, 11 Chebsey (Staffs.), 221 Chellow (Bradford, WR), 212, 232, 263 Chepstow (Monm.), 11 Chester (Ches.), Ben. abbey, 44 constable of, see Robert, William Fitz Nigel earl of, 33, 117, 201, 202, 203, and see Ranulf nunnery, 139 Chester-le-Street (Durham), 1 Christian, bishop of Whithorn, 285 Christina of Markyate, 18, 126, 140, 142, 152 Christina, prioress of Sinningthwaite, 141n, 148 Cicero, works of, 278, 292 Cirencester (Glos.), Aug. abbey, 296 Cistercian order, origins and growth, 9–10, 98 attitude to architecture, 299 and note attitude to economic activities, 216–18, 234, 236, 254–5 official attitude to Cistercian nuns, 146–7 see also General Chapter, visitation Cîteaux (Côte-d’Or), Cist. abbey, 9, 10, 98, 104, 147, 218, 241, 287, 290, 291, 292, 300, 301; abbots of, 150, 262, see also Alberic, Robert, Stephen Harding; see also Cistercian order Clairvaux (Aube), Cist. abbey, 98–101, 104, 106, 107, 108n, 112, 113, 116, 178, 292, 300, 302, 303; abbot of, 262, 272, and see Bernard monks of, see Alcher, Archardus, Geoffrey d’Ainai Clayton-le-Dale (Lancs.), 226, 227 Clement, abbot of St Mary’s, York, 161n, 162n, 249, 250, 251, 253 Clement, cleric of Warter, 84n


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Clement, prior of Llanthony, 296 Clermont (Oise), 302 Clifton, see York, streets/areas in and around Clitheroe (Lancs.), 61, 118, 221 castle, 61, 120 Cliviger (Lancs.), grange, 256, 275 Clover Leys (Claverlay, Upper Denby, WR), 233 Cluny (Sâone-et-Loire), Ben. abbey, 5, 6, 56, 57, 65, 143, 147, 159, 180, 245; abbots of, see Hugh, Peter the Venerable Coatham (Kirkleatham, NR, lost), 78, 232, 269 Coddenham (Suffolk), 133 Colchester (Essex), Aug. priory, 7, 181 Cold Kirby (Old Byland, NR), 247 Coleville, family of, 132, 168 Colloquium magistri et discipuli of Robert the Scribe, prior of Bridlington, 16 Compostella (Spain), 48 Conan, 30 Conan IV, duke of Brittany and earl of Richmond, 54, 141, 194, 198, 257 Conan de Aske, 169 Conan de Manfield, 169 Coneysthorpe (Barton-le-Street, NR), 49 confraternity links between monastic houses, 35, 180–1 requests for, from benefactors, 68, 145, 195, 207–9, 213 Conisborough (WR), 56, 172n Corby (Lincs.), grange, 276 Cornborough, family of, 168 Cottingham (ER), 232, 272 Covenham (Lincs.), 38 Coverham (NR), Prem. abbey, xviii, 8, 90, 229, 271 Cowton (NR), grange, 257, 261, 264, 275 Cowton, see Temple Cowton Coxwold (NR), 42, 308 Crambe (NR), 47, 50, 51

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Page 333 Crasgarth (near Amcotts, Lincs.), 232 Craven (WR), 223, 225, 227 critics of the monastic orders, 308–9 Croft on Tees (NR), 249 Croo (ER), grange, 259n Crosby (Leake, NR), grange, 264, 275 Crosland (Almondbury, WR), 233 Crowle (Lincs.), 28 Croxton (Leics.), Prem. abbey, 172 crusades, 38, 92, 122, 206 Cudworth (WR), 66 Culgaith (Cumb.), 63 Cullingworth (WR), 213 Cuthbert, prior of Guisborough, 113, 245 Cuthbert, St, 1, 33, 157, 164, 278 Cyprian, works of, 283 Dacre (Ripon, WR), grange, 261, 274 Dalby (NR), 40n, 248 Dale Grange (NR), 255, 276 Dalton Travers (NR), 169 Danby (NR), 78, 249 Daniel, steward of the abbot of St Mary’s, York, 245 Darrington (WR), 57, 58, 61, 66n, 206, 221 Daventry (Northants.), Cluniac priory, 56 David I, king of Scotland, 96, 102, 103, 107, 114–15, 119, 124, 191, 284, 285 Dearne, river, 221 Deepdale (Handale, NR), 127 Deepdale (? near Coxwold, lost, NR) 262, 264 Deira kingdom of, 2 people of, 3 Denby (Kirkheaton, WR), 232 grange, 232, 264, 275 Denis, abbot of Roche, 270 Derwent, river 219, 220, 221, 232 Dodworth (WR), 57, 58, 59, 221 Domesday Book, 15, 37, 45, 79 Don, river, 220, 221, 225, 232, 269 Doncaster (WR), 42, 160 Dorchester (Oxon.), Aug. priory, 95 Dore (Heref.), Cist. abbey, 304 Drax (WR), 47, 83, 160, 239 Aug. priory, xviii, 8, 15, 18, 50, 83–4, 92, 94, 95, 189, 199, 211, 219, 220, 232, 237, 239, 267, 269, 271 castle, 199 siege of, 160 Dringhouses (WR), 50 Dudland (Gisburn, WR), 120n Dundrennan (Kirkcudbrightshire), Cist. abbey, 115, 165, 166, 179, 285, 304; abbot of, see Silvanus Dunfermline (Fife), Ben. abbey, 299 Dunsforth (WR), 49 Dunsley (NR), 127 Durand, abbot of Selby, 158–9, 164 Durham, 1, 75, 158, 187 bishops of, 202, and see Hugh du Puiset, Ranulf Flambard, Walcher, William of St Calais cathedral priory, 12, 13, 14, 24, 25, 32, 44, 102, 108, 157, 164, 180, 206, 264, 278, 280, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 296, 298, 299, 303; monk of, see Symeon of Durham Duva, see Keldholme


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Eagleshope (Teesdale), 228 Easby (NR) Prem. abbey, xviii, 8, 15, 18, 88–9, 92, 199, 210, 220, 222, 227, 228, 229, 232, 235, 238, 239, 241n, 265, 267, 271, 273n minster of St Agatha, 88–9 grange, 265 Easington (ER), 51, 52n, 53 Easington (NR), 78 East Bolton (Low Bolton, NR), 224, 225, 226 East Cowton (NR), 169, 264 East Headingley (WR), 50 East Heslerton (ER), 219, 224 East Lilling (NR), 249 Easton (Bridlington, ER), 70, 71 Ebberston (NR), 228 Ecclesfield (WR), 53, 54 Ben. cell, xvii, 5, 15, 53, 54, 55, 219n church, 241 clerk and vicar, see Jeremiah hermitage, 54 Edenham (Lincs.), 70 Edgar, king of Scotland, 96 Edith, abbess of Godstow, 143 Edulf de Kilnsey, 208 Edward of Salisbury, sheriff of Wiltshire, 25, 26, 28, 29 Edward the Confessor, king of England, 63, 293 Edwin, earl of Mercia, 33, 185 Egglesclive, family of, 132n Egglestone (NR), Prem. abbey, xviii, 8–9, 90, 271 Eilaf, priest of Hexham, 102 Eilsi, 226 Elam (East and West Morton, Bingley, WR), grange, 276 Eleanor, widow of William de Cornborough, 145 elections of abbots and priors, 64–6, 156–67 Elfwynstrop (Barnoldswick, WR, lost), 119 Elias, abbot of Kirkstall, 152, 165 Elias, abbot of Rievaulx, 164, 165

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Page 334 Elias de Ho, 168 Elias Paynel, prior of Holy Trinity, York, abbot of Selby, 49, 159, 160, 163, 200, 201 Elizabeth, daughter of William de Plaiz, 168 Ellenthorpe (Gisburn, WR), grange, 276 Ellerton (ER), Gilb. priory, xviii, 8, 90, 91, 271 Ellerton on Swale (Downholme, NR), 169 nunnery, xix, 132, 147–9, 169 Elwicks (Little Ouseburn, WR), 168 Ely (Cambs.), Ben. cathedral priory, 224, 296; prior of, see Robert de Longchamp Embsay (WR), 81 Aug. priory, 8, 80–3, 92, 110n, 118, 188, 197, 198, 221, 230, 231, 245; prior of, see Reginald Emley (WR), 228, 233, 262, 264 Emma de Lascelles, 210, 211 Emma, wife of Walter de Dinant, 215 Emswell (Great Driffield, ER), 41 Eppleby (NR), 169n Epworth (Lincs.), 87 Ermengata de Cornborough, 168 Ernald, abbot of Melrose, abbot of Rievaulx, 165, 166, 286, 288, 294 Ernald I de Percy, 78 Ernald II de Percy, 131 Ernegata de Burton, 173 Erneis de Burun, sheriff of Yorkshire, 29 Ernisan Musard, 199 Ernisius de Neville, 250 Ernisius, prior of Marton, 87 Escrick (ER), 42 Esholt (WR), nunnery, xix, 131–2, 141n, 144, 147, 149, 213, 214, 227 Eskdale, 78 Essolf, 210 Eston (Ormesby, NR), ? grange of, 262, 263 Ethelwold, prior of Nostell, bishop of Carlisle, 73, 75n, 76, 95, 240n, 298 Eudo, duke of Brittany, 54 Eugenius III, pope, 107n, 110n, 114, 136, 162n Euphemia Haget, prioress of Sinningthwaite, 141n Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 279 Eustace de Mersc, 133 Eustace Fitz John, 8, 88, 89, 90, 91, 95, 107n, 137–8, 141, 144, 187, 188, 192, 199, 205, 223n Eustace, son of King Stephen, 237 Eustace, steward of Guisborough Priory, 245 Everard de Ros, 200, 255 Everley, 37, 38, 250 Evesham (Worcs.), Ben. abbey, 32, 181; abbot of, 162n; monks of, see Aelfwig, Reinfrid Ewenny (Glamorgan), Ben. priory, 301 Exordium Cistercii, 9, 10, 217, 290 Exordium magnum, 290 Exordium parvum, 9, 10, 103, 104, 106, 216, 217, 218, 281–2, 290, 291, 292 Fadmoor (NR), 47 Fairburn (WR), 212 Fairholme (Swine, ER), grange, 268 Falthwaite (WR), grange, 275 Farndale (NR), 130 Faweather (Bingley), 212, 233, 263 Faxfleet (ER), 247 Featherstone (WR), 60, 72, 74, 239 Felkirk (WR), 77n, 239, 241n Fergus of Galloway, 115n


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Ferry Fryston (WR), 66n Filey (ER), 70, 210, 220 Fimber (ER), 249 Finghall (NR), 249 fisheries, 231–2, 262n, 263 Flanders, exports to, 270 Flaxley (WR), 27 Flaxton (NR), 42 Fleury (Loiret), Ben. abbey, 5 Flockton (Thornhill, WR), 211, 212, 233 Foggathorpe (ER), 249 Folkton (ER), 224, 229 Fontevrault (Maine-et-Loire), nunnery, 146, 171, 174, 236 food renders to monasteries, 111, 218–19 Forde (Devon), Savigniac/Cist. abbey, 111, 165, 166, 178n Fors (NR), Savigniac/Cist. abbey, xix, 11n, 190, 192, 194, 198, 223, 271, 289 Fossard family, 42, 49, 187 fee, 211 Fosse (Hill or Bridge, Skeffling, ER), 52 Foston (NR), 42, 239, 249 Foukeholme (St Stephen, Thimbleby, NR), nunnery, xix, 132, 169 Fountains (WR), Cist. abbey, xix, 11, 16, 17, 18, 49, 102–15, 117–21, 124, 127, 156, 162, 164–6, 168n, 173, 191, 205– 10, 213, 215, 220, 221, 222, 223, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 255, 256, 257, 261, 262, 263, 264, 269, 270, 271, 273, 274, 279, 280, 281, 283, 285, 288, 290, 291, 292, 297, 299–305, 308; abbots of, 113, 179, 180, and see Henry Murdac, John of York, Maurice, Ralph Haget, Richard I, Richard II, Richard III, Robert, Thorald, William; monks of, 181, and see Gervase, Ralph, Serlo Narratio de fundatione, 16–17, 100, 103, 104, 105, 177, 291–2, 301 Foxholes (ER), 249n Fraisthorpe (ER), 173

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Page 335 Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, 271 Fulford (ER), 249 Fulk Paynel (son of Ralph), 48n Fulk Paynel (son of William), 46n, 189, 256 Furness (Lancs.), Savigniac/Cist. abbey, 10, 11, 104, 110, 116–17, 164, 178, 181, 200, 289, 304 G. prior of La Charité, 65 Gaimar, Lestoire des Engleis, 295 Gainford (NR), 239 Galclint, castle, 202 Galphay (Kirkby Malzeard, WR), grange, 274 Gamel, son of Arthur, 248 Gant (family), 192, and see Alice de, Gilbert I de, Gilbert II de, Robert de, Walter de Ganton (ER), 70 Gargrave (WR), 120 Garriston (NR), 169 Garton on the Wolds (ER), 80, 220, 237 rector of, see William Gate Fulford (ER), 42 Gaterigg (Middlesbrough, NR, lost), 232 Gauthier, abbot of Arrouaise, 96 General Chapter Cist., 8, 11, 101, 107, 136, 170, 177, 178, 179, 200, 239, 269, 294, 300 Prem., 8 Savigniac, 116, 117, 178, 200 Geoffrey, abbot of Rievaulx, 164 Geoffrey, abbot of Sallay, 166n Geoffrey, abbot of St Mary’s, York, 42, 67, 105, 106, 107, 111, 157, 162n, 164, 248, 253, 291 Geoffrey, archbishop of York, 161n Geoffrey Bainard, 71n, 78n Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances, 41 Geoffrey, chaplain of Sinningthwaite, 173 Geoffrey, cleric of Warter, 84n Geoffrey Dagon, 257, 258 Geoffrey d’Ainai, monk of Clairvaux, 106, 300, 302 Geoffrey de Lascelles, 169 Geoffrey de la Wirche, 28 Geoffrey de Lucy, archdeacon of Cleveland, 241n Geoffrey Fitz Pain, 73n, 84, 85, 86, 189 Geoffrey Fitz Peter, 91 Geoffrey Haget, 129, 141n, 151, 152, 256 Geoffrey, master of Keldholme, 171 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 279n, 295 Geoffrey, prior of Kirkham, 87, 200 Geoffrey, son of Gamel, 209 Geoffrey Trussebut, 84, 85n George, steward of Roger de Mowbray, 219n Gerald, abbot of Calder I, abbot of Byland, 110, 111, 116 Gerald of Wales, 308 Gerard, archbishop of York, 157 Gerard, son of Lewin, 253 German, prior of Tynemouth, abbot of Selby, 160, 161, 163 Germanus, St, 12, 24–9, 158 Gervase, monk of St Mary’s, York, and of Fountains, 106, 111 Gilbert I de Gant, 42 Gilbert II de Gant, 86, 117, 122, 190, 194, 199, 202, 203, 204, 205, 209 Gilbert de Vere, abbot of Selby, 161, 163, 250 Gilbert Fitz Reinfrid, 251 Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London, 293


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Gilbert, monk of Marmoutier, hermit of Healaugh Park, 8n Gilbert of Sempringham, 126, 135–7, 138n, 140, 142, 146, 149, 170, 174, 175, 176, 294 Gilbert, prior of Bristall, 53 Gilbert, prior of Holy Trinity, York, 49 Gilbert, son of Alan of Downholme, 169 Gilbert Tison, 186 Gilbertine order, 7, 135–7, 151, 170–1, 174–6, 208, 236, 265–6, 294; master of, see Gilbert of Sempringham, Roger, prior of Malton Gilling (Richmond, NR), 42 Gilling in Ryedale (NR), 249 Gilmonby (NR), 249 Givendale (Allerston, NR), 229 Glastonbury (Som.), Ben. abbey, 181 Gloucester, Ben. priory, 287 Goathland (NR), cell of Whitby Abbey, xvii, 246 Godfrey de Harpham, 258 Godfrey de Lucy, 251 Godric of Finchale, 283 Godstow (Oxon.), nunnery, 139, 143; abbess of, see Edith Goodmanham (ER), 131, 168 Gorze (Moselle), Ben. abbey, 5 Gospatrick, 45 Goxhill (ER), 220 Grafton (WR), 48 Grande Chartreuse, La, order of, 9, 236 Grandmont, order of, 236 granges, 254–68 grants to religious houses for specific purposes, 206–10 Gratian, 278 Great Ayton (NR), 162, 239 Great Langton (NR), 238–9, 241n Greenberry (Bolton on Swale, NR), grange, 274

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Page 336 Gregory the Great, works of, 288, 292 Griff (Helmsley, NR), 101, 255, 264 grange, 255, 262, 275 Grimsby (Lincs.), 235 Grimston (Hanging Grimston, ER), 41 Grindale (ER), 70 Grinton in Swaledale (NR), 70 Guisborough (NR), 78, 219 Aug. priory, xviii, 8, 15, 16, 77–9, 92, 93, 96, 97, 165, 177, 188, 199, 208, 219, 220, 230, 231, 234, 236, 237, 238, 239, 241n, 242, 245, 248, 266n, 269, 271, 273, 279, 283, 304; priors of, 82, 97, and see Cuthbert, Ralph, William de Brus; steward of, see Eustace Gundreda d’Aubigny, 102, 111–12 Gundreda de Warenne, 56 Gundreda Haget, 152, 168 Gundulf, bishop of Rochester, 126 Gurwald of Cowton, 207 Guy, clerk, 237 Guy de Balliol, 162n, 186 Guy de Bovingcourt, 131 Guy de Rannelcurt, 28 Guy de Vere, 161 Hackness (NR), 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 239, 245, 286 Ben. cell, xvii, 245 Hadrian IV, pope, 258n Haget family, see Bertram, Geoffrey, Gundreda, Ralph Haines (Thorne, WR), 232 Haines (Lincs.), cell of St Mary’s, York, 43 Haldenby (Adlingfleet, WR), 42 Hallamshire (WR), 53 Haltemprice (ER), Aug. priory, 8 Halton (Bingley, WR), 212, 231 grange, 263, 275 Hambleton (WR), 28, 245 Hambye (Manche), Ben. abbey, 189, 222 Hampole (WR), 50 nunnery, xix, 134, 141n, 145, 147, 148, 149, 172n, 174, 176, 213, 214, 271; brother of, see William; masters of, see Albinus, Peter Handale (NR, lost), nunnery, xix, 125, 127, 141, 141n, 147, 149, 169, 172, 173, 190, 205, 228 Harden (WR), 213 Hardred, abbot of Calder II, 117 Harewood (WR), 82, 198 Harian (WR, lost), 63 Harlington (WR), 230 Harrold (Beds.), Arrouaisian nunnery, 95 harrying of the north, 3, 27, 29, 32, 47, 101, 185, 224, 282 Hart (Durham), 78 Hartlepool (Durham), 235 Harton (NR), 42 Haseley (Oxon.), 221 Hattin, Battle of, 206 Haverholme (Lincs.), Cist. abbey (to Louth Park), 107 Gilb. priory, 126, 136, 151, 213 Hawise, countess of Aumale, 267 Hawise, wife of Ilbert I de Lacy, 194 Haxey (Lincs.), 87 Hayholme (Leven, ER), grange, 258, 259n, 260, 274 Headley (WR), Ben. cell, xvii, 5, 49, 55, 213, 214; monk of, see William


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Healaugh Park (WR), hermitage, 8, 192n, and see Gilbert Aug. priory, 8, 192n Healthwaite (Harewood, WR), 130, 168 Heaton (Bradford, WR), 212, 263 Hedon (ER), 52, 269 Helewise de Clere, 134–5 Helewise, widow of Robert, son of Ralph of Middleham, 90 Helmholm (Drax, WR), 83 Helmsley (NR), 79, 80, 187, 227, 236, 264, 269 castle, 101, 102, 199 Heloise, abbess of the Paraclete, 146 Henry I, king of England, 5, 7, 11, 14, 30, 42, 49, 51, 58, 60, 61, 62, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78, 79, 93, 94, 96, 97, 99– 100, 106, 157, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189, 193, 221, 291 Henry II, king of England, 14, 41, 43, 49, 50n, 51, 62n, 66, 88, 90, 110n, 128, 129, 130, 134, 162, 173, 179, 196, 258n, 269, 272, 284, 293, 294 Henry, abbot of Warden, abbot of Rievaulx, 165, 179 Henry Bugge, 156 Henry de Lacy, 62, 118, 120, 183, 190, 191, 194, 197, 199, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 210, 219, 297, 302 Henry de Neville, 87 Henry de Octon, 258 Henry de Radman, 251 Henry de Wasprey, 156 Henry Fitz Swain, 66 Henry Murdac, abbot of Fountains, archbishop of York, 85, 86, 87, 89, 91, 99, 113–16, 118–19, 121, 124, 128, 132, 137, 141, 151, 159, 160, 161, 163, 165, 166, 175, 260, 267, 301 Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, 114 Henry of Huntingdon, 279, 295 Henry, prince of Scotland, 115, 122, 124 Henry, prior of Marton, proctor of Arden, 172

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Page 337 Herbert, abbot of Selby, 158 Herbert de St Quintin, 133 Herbert Fitz Herbert, 77n hermits and hermitages, 23, 28–36, 38, 39, 44, 54, 73–6, 92, 120, 135, 151, 152, 192n Hervey, son of Acaris, 169 daughter of, 169 wife of, 169 Hesketh (Felixkirk, NR), grange, 262, 275 Heslerton (ER), 229 Hessay (Moor Monkton, WR), 50, 249n, 252 Hesselton (NR), 222 Hessle (ER), 92, 237, 249, 265, 269 clerk of, see Richard Duchet rector of, see John Hexham (Northumb.), 75, 284, 285 Aug. priory, 14, 71, 75, 76, 81n, 92, 95, 102, 108, 305; prior of, see John minster church, 71, 75; priest of, see Eilaf saints of, 285 Hicmarus, prior of Holy Trinity, York, 48 Hilderthorpe (ER), 70, 71, 138, 187, 220 Hillam (WR), 28, 66n, 157 Hirsau, Ben. abbey, 5 Hirst (Lincs.), cell of Nostell, 73n Holbeck (WR), 50 Holderness, 223, 225, 263 Holme on Spalding Moor (ER), 160n Holmpton (ER), 52n Holwell (Howell House, Thurnscoe, WR), 266 Holy Land, 34, 95, 121, 206, 260, 289 Holystone (Northumb.), nunnery, 138 Homer, 278 Honorius, archdeacon of Richmond, 241n Hood (Kilburn, NR), Savigniac abbey, 11, 18, 86–7, 111, 112 monk of, see Robert d’Alneto Augustinian priory, 86–7, 92n, 206 grange, 87 Hooton Pagnell (WR), 47, 50, 51, 187, 192, 238, 241, 248 grange, 276 Hornby (NR), 43, 249 Hornsea (ER), 245, 249 Hornsea Mere, 232 Horsforth (WR), 212, 213 Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, 167n, 175 hospitals, 57, 61, 90 Hovedö (Norway), Cist. abbey, 165; abbot of, see Philip Hoveton (NR, lost), 264, 271 Hovingham (NR), 43, 236 Hubert Walter, archbishop of Canterbury, 164, 166 Huby (NR), 88 Huggate (ER), 222 Hugh, abbot of Cluny, 6, 56, 143, 145 Hugh, abbot of Meaux, 164, 166, 260 Hugh, abbot of Revesby, 213n Hugh, abbot of Roche, 273 Hugh, abbot of Selby, 156–8, 164, 299 Hugh Bigod, earl of Norfolk, 118


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Hugh the Chanter, precentor of York, 3, 31 Hugh, cleric of Warter, 84n Hugh de Bolton, 168 Hugh de Flammaville, 248–9 Hugh de Laval, 58n, 59n, 60–2, 76, 187, 188 Hugh de Leicester, sheriff of Northampton, 56 Hugh de Milford, 210 Hugh de Verli, 140n Hugh de Wildecher, 193 Hugh, dean of York, 107, 156, 280 Hugh du Puiset, archdeacon of the East Riding, bishop of Durham, 128, 129, 161n, 280 Hugh Fitz Baldric, sheriff of Yorkshire, 26–8, 30, 32, 42, 184, 185, 186, 187 Hugh Foliot, 133 Hugh, monk of Kirkstall, 16, 103, 205, 280, 288, 291, 292, 304, 305 Hugh Murdac, 91, 95, 250 Hugh of St Victor, 278, 279n, 283 Hugh Paynel, 189 Hugh, prior of Bridlington, 129 Hugh, son of David de Tong, 256 Hugh, son of Everard, 208 Hugh, son of Lewin, 210 Hulgod, abbot of Marmoutier, 48 Hull, river, 220, 221, 228, 232 Humber, river, 220, 232, 258, 269 Humphrey de Lascelles, 209 Hunmanby (ER), 229 grange, 275 Hunslet (Leeds, WR), 219, 231 Hunthow, hundred of, 188, 202 Huntingdon (Hunts.), Aug. priory, 7, 81, 82, 95, 181 Huntington (ER), 162n Hutton Cranswick (ER), 42 Hutton le Hole (NR), 43, 245, 249 Hutton Lowcross (NR), nunnery, xix, 131, 135 Igny (Marne), Cist. abbey, abbot of, 179, 272 Ilbert I de Lacy, 28, 42, 56, 57, 74, 185, 194, 201n Ilbert II de Lacy, 57, 58, 62, 187, 201, 202, 203 Ilderton (Northumb.), 80 Ilkeston (Derby.), 70 Immingham (Lincs.), 38, 229

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Page 338 industrial sites, 211–12, 232–3, 263–4 Ingelby Greenhow (NR), 162n, 239 Ingelram, rural dean of Welburn, 129 Ingoldmells (Lincs.), 62 Innocent II, pope, 53, 84, 100, 148, 218 Innocent III, pope, 148, 260 Irnham (Lincs.), 47, 50, 83, 237 Isaac of Etoile, 292 Isabel, daughter of Adam, son of Peter de Birkin, 211 Isidore, works of, 278 Isle of Axholme (Lincs.), 236 Isonda, daughter of Hugh de Bolton, 168 Ismania, daughter of Roald, constable of Richmond, 238 Ivo, abbot of Warter, 96n Ivo, cleric of Warter, 84n Ivo de Karkeni, 237 Ivo de Vescy, 187 Ivo of Chartres, 278, 279n Jarrow (Durham), Ben. priory, 31, 32, 33, 35, 39, 286 Jeremiah, clerk, vicar of Ecclesfield, 54 Jerome, works of, 278, 284 Jerusalem, 206, 207, 258 Jervaulx (NR), Savigniac/Cist. abbey, xix, 11, 16, 18, 101n, 117, 119, 124, 190, 194, 198, 199, 220, 222, 228, 229, 234, 255, 269, 270, 271, 273n, 276, 288, 289, 290, 305 Jocelin d’Arecy, 135 John, king of England, 130, 140, 166 John Cassian, works of, 278, 279 John, chaplain of St Clement’s, York, 173 John, chaplain of Sinningthwaite, 173 John de Hessle, 91, 92 John de Lascelles, 210, 211n John de Octon, steward of St Mary’s Abbey, York, 245n John Leland, 292, 294 John Luvetot, Sir, 55 John Malherbe, 66 John of York, abbot of Fountains, 16–17, 165, 291, 305 John, prior of Hexham, 100, 113, 204, 284, 301 John, rector of Hessle, 237 John, son of Adam de Birkin, 211, 212 John, son of Fulk, 261 John, son of Gamel, 249 John, son of Wihard, 249 Jordan, abbot of Mont St Michel, 55 Jordan de Alwoldelie, 145 Jordan de Lacy, 227 Jordan Fantosme, 295 Jordan (of Skelton), 247 Jordan Paynel, 49 Jordan, son of Gilbert, 128 Josce, Jew of York, 252, 253 Joseph, prior of Warter, 96n Josephus, works of, 279, 294 Judith, countess, 53 Juetta de Arches, 132, 141, 142, 168 Juetta II de Arches, 168 Juliana, daughter of Adam de Birkin, 213 Juliana, mother of Hugh de Milford, 210


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Jully (Côte-d’Or), nunnery, 147 Juvenal, works of, 278 Keighley (WR), 213, 221 Kekmarish (Pickering, NR), grange, 257, 265, 275 Keldholme (Duva, NR), nunnery, xix, 130, 141, 147, 148, 150n, 167, 171, 190; master of, see Geoffrey Kelfield (Stillingfleet, WR), 159 Kellingley (WR), 62 Kellington (WR), 66n Kettlewell (WR), 223, 229 Keyingham (ER), 51 Kilburn (Middx.), nunnery, 139, 140 Kilburn (NR), 226, 227, 308 Kildale (NR), 131 Kildwick (WR), 82, 83, 238 Killingwoldgraves (ER), 152 Kilnsea (ER), 51, 53 Kilnsey (Burnsall, WR), grange, 274 Kilvington (NR), 90 King’s Lynn (Norfolk), 26 kings of England, see Edward the Confessor, Henry I, Henry II, John, Richard I, Stephen, William I, William II Kingston-upon-Hull (ER), 269 Carthusian priory, 145 Kippax (WR), 57, 58, 61, 172n Kirby in Cleveland (NR), 162n Kirby Misperton (NR), 40n, 249 grange, 266 Kirby Ravensworth (NR), 169n Kirby Wiske (NR) grange, 274 priest of, see Richard Kirbygrindalythe (ER), 80, 237 Kirk Bramwith (WR), 221 Kirk Deighton (WR), 172n Kirk Ella (ER), 227 Kirk Hammerton (WR), 168, 261 grange, 261, 274 Kirkburn (ER), 78n Kirkby (Pontefract, WR), 57, 61 Kirkby Malzeard (WR), 87, 186, 220, 223, 236, 256

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Page 339 Kirkby Moorside (NR), 43, 130 Kirkham (ER), parish church, 79, 80, 237 Aug. priory, xviii, 8, 15, 16, 18, 46n, 50, 51n, 79–80, 89, 92, 93, 96, 97, 101, 171, 172, 183, 188, 195, 200, 220, 227, 234, 237, 245, 264, 266, 271, 283, 286, 301, 303, 304; canon of, see Maurice; priors of, 97, and see Andrew, Geoffrey, Waldef, William, rector of Garton Kirkheaton (WR), 231, 232, 233 Kirkleatham (NR), 78, 219 Kirklees (WR), nunnery, xix, 127, 141n, 145, 147, 149 Kirklevington (NR), 78, 219, 242 Kirkstall (WR), Cist. abbey, xix, 11, 16, 18, 50, 55, 117n, 118, 120, 123, 164, 165, 190, 194, 199, 209, 212, 213, 214, 221, 224, 225, 228, 229, 234, 237, 238, 239, 255, 256, 261, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 275, 281, 283, 288, 290, 291, 297, 299, 302, 303; abbots of, 242, and see Alexander, Elias, Lambert, Ralph Haget, Ralph of Newcastle, Turgisius; monks of, see Hugh, Serlo foundation history of, 16, 288 Kirkstead (Lincs.), Cist. abbey, 54, 136n, 165, 273, 304; abbot of, see Ralph Kirmond-le-Mire (Lincs.), 38 Knapton (Acomb, WR), 45 Knaresborough (WR), 137 priory of Holy Trinity and St Robert (Trinitarian friary), 79n, 172 Knights Hospitaller, 67, 206, 211, 248 Knights Templar, 67, 206, 213, 246 estates of, 246–8 inquest of c. 1185, 246–8 Knottingley (WR), 58 La Boissière (Seine-et-Marne), Cist. abbey, 180 La Charité sur Loire (Nièvre), Cluniac priory, 6, 56, 57, 60, 61, 64, 66, 72, 180, 186; prior of, 64, 65, 66, and see G., Odo, Wilencus La Ferté (Sâone-et-Loire), Cist. abbey, 10, 98 Lacy (family), lords of Pontefract, 62, 63, 72, 157, 212, and see Hawise, Henry de, Ilbert I de, Ilbert II de, Jordan de, Robert I de, Robert II de Lambert, abbot of Kirkstall, 164, 256 Landric de Ages, 156 Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, 3, 7 Langford (Notts.), 87 Langley (Brayton, WR, lost), 211, 248 Langthorne (NR), 249 Lannoy (diocese of Beavais), 165, 290 Las Huelgas (Spain), nunnery, 147 Lastingham (NR), Ben. priory, xvii, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 185, 286, 298, 299 Lateran Council (1139), 113 Lateran Council (1179), 239 Lateran Council (1215), 1, 7, 170, 177 L’Aumône (Loir-et-Cher), Cist. abbey, 11 Laurence, abbot of Westminster, 293 Le Loroux (Maine-et-Loire), Cist. abbey, 180 Le Mans (Sarthe), Ben. abbey of St Vincent, 224 Leake (NR), 264 Leamington Hastings (War.), 221 Lecia, daughter of Baldwin de Alverstein, 168 Ledsham (WR), 57, 58, 63, 203 Ledston (WR), 57, 58 Leeds (WR), 47, 50, 51, 211, 221, 238, 241 Les Moutiers-Hubert (Calvados), 46 Lethbertus, Flores Psalterii, 283 Leven (ER), 258 Lewes (Sussex), Cluniac priory, 6, 56, 60n, 219n Liber vitae of Durham, 35, 180, 286


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libraries in Yorkshire monasteries, 177–81; catalogues, 277–8; see also manuscripts Ligulf, conversus of Byland, 111, 218 Lilleshall (Salop), Aug. priory, 95 Lincoln Battle of (1141), 62, 86, 113, 116, 117, 201 bishop of, see Alexander ‘The Magnificent’ cathedral, 303 diocese, 31 earl of, see William de Roumare St Katharine’s, Gilb. priory, 90 St Mary Magdalene, cell of St Mary’s, York, 43 Lindisfarne (Northumb.), Ben. priory, 299 Lindley (Kirkstall, WR, lost), 50 Linthorpe (Middlesbrough, NR), 232 Linthwaite (Almondbury, WR), 63 Linton (Wintringham, ER), 138 Little Broughton (NR), grange, 275 Little Dunmow (Essex), Aug. priory, 71n Little Mareis (NR), 135 Little Midgely (Thornhill, WR) 212, 228 Little Ouseburn (WR), 168, 173n Little Selby (WR), 28 Little Todwick (WR), 256 Litton (WR), 229 Llanthony, Aug. priory, 181; prior of, see Clement Lockton (NR), 228 Loddington (Northants.), 137–8, 187 Lofthus (NR), 78, 127, 172n Loftmarishes (Pickering, NR), 257 Londesborough (ER), 172n

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Page 340 London, 28, 43 bishop of, see Gilbert Foliot cathedral of St Paul, dean of, see Ralph Diceto Holy Trinity, Aldgate, Aug. priory, 7, 73n, 96; priors of, see Norman, Peter of Cornwall, Ralph Long Marston (WR), 226 grange, 261, 274 Long Preston (WR), 221 Longpont (Aisne), 299n Longviliers (Pas-de-Calais), Cist. abbey, 180 Louth Park (Lincs.), Cist. abbey, 107n, 108n, 136n, 165, 273, 302, 303 Low Bolton (East Bolton, NR), 264, 275 Lucius III, pope, 132, 239 Ludford (Lincs.), 38 Lund (Lund Wood, WR), 63–4 Luvel family, 168 Lyme Regis (Dorset), 26 Lysa (Norway), Cist. abbey, 179, 301 Lythe (NR), 77n Mabel, sister of William de Octon, 169 Mabel, wife of Ralph de Clere, 135 Malachy, archbishop of Armagh, 95, 116, 137 Malham (WR), 82, 221, 222, 223 grange, 274 Malham Tarn, 232 Malling (Kent), nunnery, 126n Malton (NR), 137, 187 Gilb. priory, xviii, 8, 15, 88n, 89, 90, 95, 137–8, 188, 199, 205, 207, 223, 228, 232, 234, 235, 253, 262, 266, 271; prior of, 242, and see Roger grange, 266n hospital, 90 Manfield (NR), 169 manuscripts surviving from Yorkshire monasteries, 281–4, 286–7, 293–4 Mappa mundi (of Gervase of Canterbury), 148, 174 Mappleton (ER), 51, 53 Marcigny (Sâone-et-Loire), nunnery, 143, 145, 147 Marishes (NR), 263, and see Kekmarish, Loftmarishes Market Warsop (Notts.), 221 Markyate (Herts., formerly Beds.) 140, 152 Marmoutier (Indre-et-Loire), Ben. abbey, xvii, 4, 5, 8, 46, 48, 49, 51, 186, 224; abbot of, see Hulgod; monk of, see Gilbert Marr (WR), 42 Marrick (NR), 169 church, 129, 140 nunnery, xix, 129, 140, 141, 141n, 142, 169, 174, 210, 226, 271 Marske (NR), 78n Marston Grange (Long Marston, WR), 274 Martin, monk of Whitby, 161 Martin, son of Edric, 270 Marton (in the Forest, NR), 87 Aug. priory, xviii, 8, 18, 87–8, 92, 129, 172, 175, 189, 199, 206, 223, 227; priors of, 82, and see Ernisius, Henry Marton (Barnoldswick, WR), 119 Marton in Cleveland (NR), 78 grange, 266n Marton le Moor (NR), grange, 274 Marton (now Martons Both, WR), 229 Marton (Sinnington, NR), 169 Masham (NR), 87, 107, 220, 226


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Matilda, daughter of Swain, 66, 211 Matilda de Arches, prioress of Nun Monkton, 141 Matilda de Caux, 211, 212 Matilda de Percy, countess of Warwick, 179, 196–7, 209, 280 Matilda de Rouelle, 207 Matilda, empress, 122 Matilda, niece of Adam, son of Peter de Birkin, 213 Matilda, prioress of Sinningthwaite, 173n Matilda, queen, wife of King Henry I, 7, 73n, 96 Matilda, widow of Simon I de Senlis, 96n Matilda, wife of Adam son of Peter de Birkin, 211 Matilda, wife of Simon Ward, 132 Mattersey (Notts.), Gilb. priory, 138n Matthew Paris, monk of St Albans, 30 Maurice, abbot of Rievaulx, abbot of Fountains, 108, 114, 164, 165, 166, 278, 281, 285, 293 Maurice of Kirkham, 281, 194; Contra Salomitas, 294 Maxelinus, 92 Meaux (ER), 52n, 255 Cist. abbey, xix, 11, 17, 18, 121, 123, 150, 151, 164–6, 190, 225, 228, 229, 232, 234, 235, 255, 257–61, 262, 263, 265, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273n, 274–5, 281, 298; abbots of, see Adam, Alexander, Hugh, Philip, Thomas, Thomas Burton, William Melrose (Roxburghshire), 33 Cist. abbey, 97, 102, 115, 116, 165, 285; abbots of, see Ernald, Waldef, prior of Kirkham Melsonby (NR), 169 Meltonby (ER), 167 Mere, see Whitwood Merlay family, 132n

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Page 341 Merleswein, 47 Merton (Surrey), Aug. priory, 296 Mexborough (WR), 77n Michael de la Pole, 145 Micklethwaite (WR), grange, 272, 275 Mickley (Leeds, WR, lost), 50 Middle Haddlesey (Chapel Haddlesey, Birkin, WR), 66n Middle Rasen (Lincs.), 83 Middleholm (Drax), 83 Middlesbrough (NR), 162, 220 cell of Whitby, xvii, 246 Middlethorpe (WR; parish of St Mary Bishophill Senior, York), 160, 201 Middleton (Ilkley, WR), 50 Middleton (Rothwell, WR), 61 Middleton Tyas (NR), 265 Midgely (Thornhill, WR), 212 Milburga, St, 56 Mirfield (WR), 191, 211 Missenden (Bucks.), Arrouaisian priory, 95 Moissac (Tarn-et-Garonne), Ben. abbey, 5 Molesme (Côte-d’Or), Ben. abbey, 103, 104, 147, 217, 290, 291; abbot of, see Robert Monk Bretton (WR), Cluniac priory, xviii, 6, 15, 63–7, 107n, 191, 200, 204, 209, 212, 214, 221, 239, 241n, 303; prior of, see Adam Monk Fryston (WR), 28, 160 Monks Kirby (War.), Ben. priory, 162 Monkwearmouth (Durham), 286 Mont St Michel (Manche), Ben. abbey, xvii, 5, 51, 54, 55, 241; abbots of, see Jordan, Robert de Torigny Montacute (Som.), Cluniac priory, 60n Montferant (Birdsall), castle, 298 Montgomery, family of, 47, 52n Moor (Beeford, ER), grange, 259, 260, 261, 275 Moor Monkton (WR), 45, 46, 47 Moredale (Guisborough, NR), 248 Morimond (Haute-Marne), Cist. abbey, 98 Morker (Markington, WR), grange, 274 Mortain, count of, 187 Mortemer (Eure), Cist. abbey, abbot of, 179, 272 Morton (East Harlsey, NR), 229 grange, 275 Moulton Moor (NR), 257 Mowbray (family), 192, 273, 289, and see Gundreda d’Aubigny, Nigel de, Roger de honour of, 134, 206 Mowthorpe (Kirbygrindalythe, ER), grange, 266 Moxby (NR), nunnery, xix, 88, 129, 149, 171, 172; proctor of, see Henry Much Wenlock (Salop), Cluniac priory, 56 Murton (Hawnby, NR), grange, 275 Myton (ER), 229, 269, grange, 259, 260, 265, 275 Myton on Swale (NR), 205, 245, 249 Neath (Glam.), Cist. abbey, 178 Nennius, Historia Brittonum, 279, 282 Neswick (Bainton, ER), 259 Nether Silton (NR), 256 Newbiggin (WR), 247 Newbold Pacey (War.), 221 Newburgh (NR), Aug. priory, xviii, 8, 15, 86–7, 91, 92, 172, 190, 192, 196, 199, 206, 207, 220, 222, 226, 236, 238, 264, 271, 283, 286, 295; canon of, see William of Newcastle (Northumb.), 32


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nunnery, 138 Newhay (Drax, WR), grange, 267 Newhill (Wath on Dearne, WR), 63, 107n Newholm (Whitby, NR), 38, 245 Newhouse (Lincs.), Prem. abbey, 8 Newminster (Northumb.), Cist. abbey, 11, 107, 117, 120, 165, 231, 273, 282, 283, 304; abbots of, see Robert, William Newsham (NR), 232 Newstead (Lincs.), Gilb. priory, 138n Newton in Glendale (Northumb.), 80 Newton on Ouse (NR), 47, 50, 51, 168 Nicholas, abbot of Whitby, 161 Nicholas I de Stuteville, 130 Nicholas, monk of St Albans, 294 Nicholas, prior of Warter, 96n Nicholas, son of Edulf de Kilnsey, 208 Nicholas Ward, 144 Nidderdale, 206, 226, 227, 228, 234, 263 Nigel, canon of Wykeham, 173 Nigel d’Aubigny, 50n, 186, 190, 198, 201 Nigel de Mowbray, 196, 206, 289 Nigel de Plumpton, 144 Nigel, reeve/provost of the archbishop of York, 157 Nigel, son of Gurwald, daughters of, 215 Ninian, St, 97 Nisan, son of Other, 89 Norbert of Xanten, St, 8 Norman de Horton, 209 Norman, prior of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, 296 Normanby (Ryedale, NR), 40 Normanby (Ormesby, NR), 232 ? grange, 262n, 263, 275 North Dalton (ER), 257 North Ferriby (ER), Aug. priory, xviii, 9, 15, 16, 18, 91–2, 95 North Frodingham (ER), 51 North Grange (Meaux, ER), 255, 257, 274

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Page 342 North Ormsby (Lincs.), Gilb. priory, 134, 137n Northallerton (NR), 264 Northampton, 28 Cluniac priory, 56 earl of, see Simon de Senlis sheriff of, see Hugh de Leicester Northfield (Hackness, NR), 38 Northumbria, earldom of, 2, 3 kingdom of, 2, 3 Norton (Ches.), Aug. priory, 95, 188, 205; prior of, see Peter Norton (ER), hospital, 90 grange, 266n Norton (Campsall, WR), 66n, 230 Nostell (WR), Aug. priory, xvii, 8, 15, 16, 18, 49, 50, 60, 61, 63, 71–7, 79, 92, 93, 95, 96, 102, 118, 183, 186, 189, 190, 199, 204, 205, 207, 209, 221, 227, 230, 232, 234, 238, 240, 241n, 246, 265, 266, 269, 271, 298; priors of, see Ansketil, Ethelwold, Robert of Quixley, Savard; cells of, see Bamburgh, Hirst, Tockwith De gestis et actibus priorum monasterii sancti Oswaldi, 16, 72–4, 298 Nun Appleton (WR), nunnery, xix, 133–4, 141n, 143, 145, 147, 149, 168, 171, 172, 222, 226, 227, 228, 229, 305; brother of, see Richard; prioress of, see Agnes Nun Cotham (Lincs.), nunnery, 147, 148, 150 Nun Monkton (WR), nunnery, xix, 18n, 132–4, 141–2, 145, 149, 168, 234, 305; prioress of, see Matilda de Arches Nunburnholme (ER), church, 84 nunnery, xix, 132, 149 Nunkeeling (ER), church, 133, 140 nunnery, xix, 18, 133, 140, 141n, 143, 150, 172, 223, 305 Nunthorpe (Great Ayton, NR), nunnery, xix, 131, 135 Obazine (Corrèze), abbey, 136 Octon (Thwing, ER), grange, 258, 259n, 261, 275 Odelerius, chaplain, 193 Odo, bishop of Bayeux, 41, 56 Odo, count of Champagne, 41 Odo of Pickhill, vicar of Wath, 55 Odo, prior of La Charité, 60 Oggethwaite (Stainborough, WR), 211, 227 Old Byland (NR), 112, 239 grange, 112, 255, 262, 264, 267, 275 Orderic Vitalis, monk of St Evroul, 3, 10, 40, 109, 193, 217 Orkney, bishop of, see Ralph Orm de Ferriby, 137 Ormesbricge (on river Derwent), 34 Ormesby (NR), 78 grange, 266n Orosius, 279n Osbern de Arches, 42 Osbern, monk of Canterbury, Life of Dunstan, 279, 293 Osbert de Bayeux, archdeacon, 113, 160 Osbert de Cornborough, 168 Osbert of Clare, monk of Westminster, Vita beati Edwardi, 293 Osbert Salvain, 207 Oseney (Oxon.), Aug. priory/abbey, 222 Osgodby (Thirkelby, NR), 226 Osmund, abbot of Roche, 165 Otley (WR), 126 Otley (Lincs.), Cist. abbey, 108n Ourscamp (Oise), Cist. abbey, 302 Ouse, river, 25, 26, 30, 157, 225, 232, 234 Ouseburn (Great or Little, WR), 50


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Ousefleet (Whitgift, WR), 42, 225 Overton (NR), 42 Ovid, works of, 279 Owston (Lincs.), 87 Oxford, St Frideswide, Aug. priory, 296 Pagana, 208 Pain, cleric of Warter, 84n Palladius, Opus agriculture, 283 Patrick Brompton (NR), 169n Patrington (ER), 260n Paulinus de Ledes, 51 Paull (ER), 51, 52n Paynel (family), 187, 192, 221, and see Alexander, Alice, Elias, Fulk, Hugh, Jordan, Ralph, William fee, 211, 212 Pembroke (Pembs.), Ben. priory, 52n Penhill (West Witton, NR), Templar preceptory, 190, 246, 247 Percy (family), 13, 192, 208, 220, and see Alan I de, Matilda de, William I de, William II de Percy (family) of Bolton Percy, see Robert I de, William de Percy (family) of Dunsley, see William, son of Richard Percy (family) of Kildale, see Ernald I de, Ernald II de Peter, abbot of Whitby, 161, 250, 251, 254 Peter Abelard, 279n Peter Cantor, 279n Peter Chrysologus, 283 Peter Comestor, 279n Peter de Arthington, 130, 192 Peter de Cordanville, 208 Peter de Fauconberg, 249

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Page 343 Peter de Hoton (of Thirsk), 130, 192 Peter de Quinciaco, monk of Savigny, 124, 192, 198 Peter Lombard, 278, 279 Peter, master of Hampole, 171 Peter of Cornwall, prior of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, 296 Peter of Goxhill, 8 Peter, prior of Norton, 138n Peter, son of Adam de Birkin, 211, 212n Peter, son of Essulf, 210, 211 Peter, son of Toke, 207 Peter, son of Torphin de Askrigg, 169 Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, 10, 180, 290 Peterborough (Northants.), Ben. abbey, 224; prior of, see Richard Petribricus, prior of the order of the Temple of the Lord, 92 Philip, abbot of Byland, 16, 110, 165, 288, 289, 290, 291 Philip, abbot of Hovedö, abbot of Meaux, 165, 166, 259, 272, 298 Philip, master of Swine, 171, 173 Philip, prior of Holy Trinity, York, 49 Pickering (NR), 256, 257, 262 granges, 256, 265, and see Kekmarish, Loftmarishes Pickering moor, 225 Pickhill (NR), 90 rector of, 90 Picot de Percy, 77n pilgrimages, 48, 56, 158, 176 Pilley (Tankersley, WR), 226 Pinley (War.), nunnery, 139 Pipewell (Northants.), Cist. abbey, 165; abbot of, see Robert Plaiz family, 168 Plato, works of, 278, 279, 280 Pollington (Snaith, WR), 225, 226 Pontefract (WR), 56, 66, 71, 73, 120, 185, 221, 224 castle, 57, 60, 61, 76, 185; chapel of St Clement in, 57, 60 church of All Saints, 57, 58 church of St Mary, 60, 61 Cluniac priory, xviii, 6, 9, 15, 45, 55–68, 71, 72, 74, 105, 112, 118, 163, 171, 172, 180, 185, 186, 189, 190, 191, 199, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 212, 213, 214, 219, 221, 232, 250, 269n, 303; prior of, see Adam, prior of Monk Bretton; steward of, see Thomas honour of, 28, 56, 76, 157, 187, 191, 199 hospital of St Nicholas, 57, 58, 60, 61, 201 Pontigny (Yonne), Cist. abbey, 98, 179, 301, 302 popes, see Alexander III, Calixtus II, Celestine III, Eugenius III, Innocent II, Innocent III, Lucius III Poppleton (Upper and Nether, WR), 252 Portchester (Hants.), Aug. priory, 301 Possidius, 284 Potter Newton (Leeds, WR), 50 Preaux (Eure), Ben. abbey, 47 Prémontré, abbey and order, 7, 8, 88, 146, 174, 175, 236, 265 Prestebi (Whitby, NR, lost), 33, 37, 39n Preston in Holderness (ER), 51, 52n, 53 Prestowe (ER), 258 Prudentius, 278 Quarr (Isle of Wight), Savigniac/Cist. abbey, 178 Raban Maur, 282 Ragnild, wife of Robert de Sarz, 107 Rainborough (Wath on Dearne, WR), 63, 107n Raisanta, wife of William son of Eudo, 215


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Ralph, abbot of Kirkstead, 213 Ralph Adlave, 73, 74, 75n, 76 Ralph Baro, archdeacon of Cleveland, 131n Ralph, bishop of Orkney, 157 Ralph d’Aunay, archdeacon of Cleveland, 131 Ralph de Cattingwick, 62 Ralph de Chevrecurt, 62, 68 Ralph de Clere, 135, 176 Ralph de Everley, 36 Ralph de la Hay, 145 Ralph de Lenham, 90 Ralph de L’Isle, 77n Ralph de Meltonby, 167 Ralph de Merlay, 107 Ralph de Muleton, 90 Ralph de Neville, 131, 135 Ralph de Thurnscoe, 266 Ralph I de Tilly, 134 Ralph II de Tilly, 134 Ralph Diceto, dean of St Paul’s, London, 279, 280 Ralph Haget, abbot of Kirkstall, abbot of Fountains, 109, 151, 164–6, 213, 272, 291, 292 Ralph, monk of St Mary’s, York, monk of Fountains, 106, 111 Ralph Paynel, 46, 47, 48, 49, 83, 159, 185, 187, 201n, 219 Ralph, prior of Guisborough, 245 Ralph, prior of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, 296 Ralph, prior of Warter, 96n Ralph of Adwick, 209

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Page 344 Ralph of Newcastle, abbot of Kirkstall, 165 Ralph, son of Nicholas, 233 Ranulf (de Gernons), earl of Chester, 110n, 114 Ranulf Flambard, bishop of Durham, 157 Ranulf Meschin, lord of Cumbria, 43, 110 Raven de Halcton, 64 Ravensdale (Folkton, ER), 224 Ravenswyke (Kirkby Moorside, NR), 130 Rawcliffe (Snaith, WR), 27 Redbourne (Lincs.), 160 Reginald, abbot of Roche, 164 Reginald of Durham, 285; Life of Godric, 283 Reginald, prior of Embsay, 81 Regularis concordia, 5 Reighton (ER), 70 Reims (Marne), 75 council of (1119), 100 Reiner I the Fleming, 127 Reiner II the Fleming, 127 Reinfrid, monk of Evesham, prior of Whitby, 13, 32–9, 177, 286 Remigius of Auxerre, 283 Rennes (Ille-et-Vilaine), 54 Revesby (Lincs.), Cist. abbey, 86, 116, 123, 136n, 165, 256, 273; abbots of, see Ailred, Hugh Ribblesdale (WR), 186 Richard I, king of England, 161n, 239, 255, 260, 270, 271, Richard II, king of England, 55 Richard I, abbot of Fountains (former prior of St Mary’s, York), 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 177, 291 Richard II, abbot of Fountains (former sacrist of St Mary’s, York), 107, 108, 113, 164, 166, 292 Richard III, abbot of Fountains, 99, 114, 165, 178, 302n Richard, abbot of St Mary’s, York, 162 Richard, abbot of Selby, 161 Richard, abbot of Warter, 96n Richard I, abbot of Whitby, 161–2 Richard II (of Cornwall), abbot of Whitby, 161, 162, 250, 254 Richard, brother of Nun Appleton, 171 Richard de Busli, 120, 190 Richard de Curcy, 84n Richard de Luvetot, 53–4 Richard de Morville, 247 Richard d’Orival, 249 Richard de Rollos, 199 Richard de St Quintin, 133 Richard de Verli, 140n Richard Duchet, clerk of Hessle, 265 Richard Fitz Turgis, 120, 190 Richard Mauleverer, 48, 56 Richard of Hexham, 62 Richard of St Victor, 279 Richard, priest of Kirby Wiske, 215 Richard, prior of Peterborough, 161 Richard, prior of Wath, 55 Richard Rolle, 134 Richard, son of Eland, 256 Richard, son of Erfast, 45 Richard, son of Gleu, 208 Richmond (NR) castle, 88, 199


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church of St Martin, cell of St Mary’s, York, xvii, 42, 43; prior of, 89 constable of, see Roald counts of, see Alan III earl of, see Conan IV honour of, 54, 124, 192 steward of, see Wimar Riddlesden (WR), 221 grange, 275 Rievaulx (NR), Cist. abbey, xix, 11, 17, 18, 80, 84n, 99–104, 106, 108–9, 110, 112–13, 115–17, 120–2, 124, 164–6, 188, 193, 195, 197, 199, 206, 208, 211, 212, 213, 214, 222, 224, 225–6, 227, 228, 229, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 255, 256, 257, 262, 263, 264, 265, 267, 269, 271, 273, 275, 278, 279, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 288, 291, 293, 294, 295, 297, 299–300, 302, 303, 304, 305; abbots of, see Ailred, Elias, Ernald, Geoffrey, Henry, Maurice, Silvanus, William; monk of, see Walter Daniel Rillington (ER), 239n, 266 Ripon (WR), 105, 106 minster, 304 Roald, constable of Richmond, 88–9, 95, 192, 199 Robert, abbot of Molesme, abbot of Cîteaux, 104, 217, 290 Robert, abbot of Newminster, 120 Robert, abbot of Pipewell, abbot of Fountains, 165, 178, 213n, 303 Robert, abbot of St Albans, 160 Robert, archdeacon of Cleveland, 89 Robert Chambord, 162n Robert, constable of Chester, 137 Robert, constable of Holderness, 260 Robert d’Alneto, monk of Whitby, monk of Hood, 111 Robert I de Brus, 77–8, 94, 96, 97, 187, 188, 219, 238, 245 Robert de Caux, 211 Robert de Daiville, 227 Robert de Gant, 84n, 199, 211n, 219, 237

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Page 345 Robert I de Harpham, abbot of St Mary’s, York, 162n, 164 Robert I de Lacy, 28n, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 72, 74, 76, 185, 186, 187 Robert II de Lacy, 256 Robert de Longchamp, prior of Ely, abbot of St Mary’s, York, 162, 164, 280 Robert de Octon, sheriff of York, 258 Robert I de Percy, 162n Robert de Rumilly, 186, 188 Robert de Sarz, 107 Robert de St Quintin, 133–4 Robert de Scures, 258 Robert d’Esturmy, 78 Robert de Stapleton, 66 Robert I de Stuteville, 186 Robert III de Stuteville, 130, 141, 167, 190, 192, 198, 232 Robert V de Stuteville, 130 Robert de Torigny, abbot of Mont St Michel, 54–5 Robert de Turnham, 259 Robert de Verli, 129, 140, 150, 171 Robert, earl of Northumberland, 186 Robert, father of Walter le Nair, 176 Robert Fossard, 77n Robert Jordan, 143 Robert Malet, 187 Robert, master of Swine, 171, 173 Robert of Arbrissel, 146 Robert of Châtillon, 99n Robert (the Scribe), prior of Bridlington, 16, 16n, 181, 278, 279, 281, 296 Robert of Quixley, prior of Nostell, 16 Robert, prior of Holy Trinity, York, 50 Robert, prior of Scone, bishop of St Andrews, 96 Robert, son of Adam, son of Peter de Birkin, 211 Robert, son of Fulk, 133 Robert, son of Henry, 256 Robert, son of Ralph of Middleham, 90 Robert, son of Raven, 64 Robert, son of William de Aketon, 162n Robin Hood’s Bay, 220 Roche (WR), Cist. abbey, xix, 11, 18, 50, 117, 118, 120, 164–5, 190, 199, 205n, 221, 227, 237, 255, 256, 266, 267, 270, 271, 273, 276, 283, 297, 304; abbots of, see Denis, Osmund, Reginald Rochester (Kent), 28 bishop of, see Gundulf cathedral church, 31 Roger, abbot of Byland, 16, 110, 111, 164, 166, 178, 199, 236, 288, 289 Roger, abbot of St Wandrille, 53 Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk, 56 Roger de Aske, 129, 141, 142, 192 daughters of, 141 Roger d’Aubigny, 236 Roger de Busli, 53 Roger I de Clere, 135 Roger II de Clere, 135 Roger III de Clere, 135 Roger de Flammaville, 235n Roger de Luvetot, 53 Roger de Montbegon, 66, 212 Roger de Mowbray, 50n, 62n, 86–7, 92, 102, 111, 112, 117, 129, 130, 141n, 156, 160, 183, 190, 192, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 208, 218, 219, 223, 226, 227, 233, 238, 256, 262, 264, 289


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Roger de Pont L’Evêque, archbishop of York, 64, 128, 134, 152, 162n, 203, 204, 238, 240, 260, 267, 304, 308 Roger de Tilly, 134 Roger Fitz Gerold, 85 Roger of Howden, 279n, 295 Roger of London, abbot of Selby, 161 Roger of Montgomery, earl of Shrewsbury, 56, 193 Roger of Richmond, 55 Roger, prior of Malton, master of the Gilbertine order, 176 Roger, priest [of York], 49 Roger, son of Adam, son of Peter de Birkin, 211 Roger, son of Peter, 210 Roger, son of Roger, 131 Rohaise, widow of Gilbert II de Gant, wife of Robert de St Quintin, 134, 202 Rohaise, wife of Simon de Kyme, 134 Romsey (Hants.), nunnery, 11 Rookwith (NR), 229 Ros family, 195, 237, 304, and see Everard de Rosedale (NR), nunnery, xix, 130, 141, 147, 148, 149, 169, 189, 228, 271 Rossehirst (Wyke or East Keswick, WR, lost), 168 Rothwell (WR), 241n Rouen (Seine-Maritime), 51, 53 Roundhay (Leeds, WR), grange, 275 Routh (ER), 260 grange, 260, 275 Roxby (Lincs.), 47, 50, 83, 237, 267 grange, 267, 276 Royston (WR), 64, 66, 213, 239, 241n Rudston (ER), 249n Rufford (Notts.), Cist. abbey, 122, 179, 190, 273 Rufford (WR), 295 Rule of St Augustine, 7, 8, 9, 16, 71, 84n, 89, 137, 174, 177

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Page 346 Rule of St Benedict, 3, 7, 9, 10, 23, 29, 106, 146, 170, 177, 290, 291 Rule of Caesarius of Arles, 146 Rumbolds Moor/Rumblesmoor (Bingley, WR), 212, 263n Rumburgh (Suffolk), cell of St Mary’s, York, 42, 43 Ryther (WR), 50 St Albans (Herts.), Ben. abbey, 158, 160, 161, 163, 296; abbot of, see Robert; monks of, see Nicholas, Thomas Grammaticus St Andrews (Fife), Aug. cathedral priory, 96, 304; bishop of, see Robert, prior of Scone St Bees (Cumb.), Ben. priory, 43, 81n, 191 St David’s, bishop of, 166, and see Bernard St Dogmaels (Cards.), Tironensian abbey, 10 St Michael’s Hospital, see Birkin St Omer (Flanders), 270 St Osyth (Essex) Aug. priory, 296 St Wandrille (Seine-Maritime), Ben. abbey, xvii, 5, 51, 53, 54, 55, 241; abbot of, see Roger saints’ lives, 278, 279, 285, 286 Salesbury (Lancs.), 234 Salisbury (Wilts.), 25, 26, 29 Sallay (WR), 120n Cist. abbey, xix, 11, 18, 50, 83, 117, 118, 119, 120, 179, 190, 197, 205, 209, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 231, 232, 234, 235, 237, 239n, 255, 256, 266, 271, 272, 273n, 275, 280, 282, 283, 301, 302, 303; abbot of, 119, 235, and see Geoffrey grange, 255, 276 Salomites, heresy of, 294, 294n Saltby (Leics.), 83, 219 Salthaugh (Keyingham, ER), 258n grange, 258, 275 Samson d’Aubigny, 87, 207, 236 Sandtoft (Lincs.), cell of St Mary’s, York, 43 Saulieu (Côte d’Or), 100 Saumur (Maine-et-Loire), Ben. abbey of St Florent, 4 Savard, prior of Nostell, 204 Savaric, abbot of St Mary’s, York, 162n, 249 Savigny, abbey (Manche) and order, 9, 10, 11, 104, 116, 117, 136, 165, 200, 217, 231, 235, 289; abbot of, 117, 124, 200; monk of, see Peter de Quinciaco Sawtry (Hunts.), Cist. abbey, 118, 122 Saxby (Fylingthorpe, NR, lost), 162n Saxton (WR), 230 Scackleton (NR), 111, 219 Scalby (NR), 227, 241n Scales (Gilling West, NR), grange, 265 Scarborough (NR), 220, 235, 269 church, 238, 214n Scawby (Lincs.), 47, 219 Scawton (NR), 262 Scokirk, see Tockwith Scone (Perthshire), Aug. priory, 77, 96; prior of, see Robert Scotland, Cistercian abbots of, 178–9 kings of, see Alexander I, David I, Edgar links with Yorkshire monasteries, 96–7, 102–3, 114–15, 120–1, 124, 191 Scrayingham (ER), 43 Seacroft (WR), 50 Seamer (in Pickering Lythe, NR), 38 Seaton Ross (ER), 84, 86, 226, 229 Séez (Orne), Ben. abbey, 47, 52 Selby (WR), 25, 26, 27, 29, 203, 208, 210, 211, 214, 232, 245, 269 Ben. abbey, xvii, 3, 12, 14, 18, 23–32, 38–9, 40, 42, 43, 44, 49, 156–61, 181, 184, 185, 201–2, 205, 208, 220, 222, 225– 7, 231, 232, 234, 245, 248, 250, 273, 279, 287, 288, 289, 297, 298, 299; abbots of, 156–64, 202, and see Benedict,


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Durand, German, prior of Tynemouth, Gilbert de Vere, Herbert, Hugh, Richard, Roger of London; monk of, see William Grandus; prior of, 12, 288; Historia Selebiensis monasterii, 12, 23–9, 156, 161, 288–9, 298 castle, 201 Seleth, hermit of Kirkstall, 120 Selkirk (Selkirk), Tironsensian abbey, 10 Sempringham (Lincs.), church, 135, 151 Gilb. priory, 126, 136, 140, 151, 175 Serlo, canon of York, 107, 156 Serlo, cook, 207 Serlo de Percy, prior of Whitby, 34, 35, 36, 38, 142, 200 Serlo, monk of Fountains, monk of Kirkstall, 103, 281, 291 Serlo, son of Peter, 130 Seward, prior of Holy Trinity, York, 48 Shaftesbury (Dorset), nunnery, 11 Shafton (WR), 230 Shap (Westm.), grange, 275 Sheepscar (Leeds, WR), 50 Sheffield (WR), 54 Sherburn in Pickering Lythe (ER), 208, 219 Sherbun in Elmet (WR), 201, 202 Sheriff Hutton (NR), 129 castle, 87, 199 Shipley (Bradford, WR), 212, 232, 263 Shipton (NR), 42, 249 Shitlington (WR), 160n, 210, 211, 212, 218n, 231, 233, 262, 263, 264 Shouldham (Norfolk), Gilb. priory, 8, 91, 148

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Page 347 Shrewsbury (Salop), Ben. abbey, 44, 181, 193 earl of, see Roger of Montgomery Sibyl, daughter of Avice de Tany and William de Clerfai, 134 Silkstone (WR), 57, 58n, 59n Silsden (WR), 82, 198, 231 Silvacane (Bouches-du-Rhône), Cist. abbey, 302 Silvanus, abbot of Dundrennan, abbot of Rievaulx, 165, 166, 213n Simon de Cattingwick, 62 Simon de Kyme, 134 Simon de Lascelles, 210n Simon I de Mohaut, 168 Simon II de Mohaut, 168 Simon I de Senlis, earl of Northampton, 56, 96n Simon II de Senlis, earl of Northampton, 122 Simon de Skeffling, 52 Simon de Warwick, abbot of St Mary’s, York, 13 Simon, master of Wykeham, 171 Simon Ward, 132 Sinningthwaite (WR), 134 nunnery, xix, 129, 131–2, 141, 145, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 168, 172n, 173, 213, 268; chaplains of, see Geoffrey, John; prioresses of, see Christina, Euphemia Haget, Matilda Sinnington (NR), 135, 177 Siward, carpenter, 256 Siward, earl of Northumbria, 40 Siward (of Caythorpe), 248 Skeckling (ER), 51, 52n, 53 Skeffling (ER), 52, 53 Skelbrooke (South Kirkby, WR), 66n Skelton (in Galtres, NR), 42, 249 Skelton (Stanghow, NR), Templars, 247 Skelton in Cleveland (NR), 78, 187, 236, 239 castle, 188, 199 Skerne (ER), grange, 260, 275 Skibeden (Skipton, WR), 82 Skiplam (NR), grange, 275 Skipsea (ER), 51, 52n castle, 51 Skipton (WR), 118 castle, 82, 188, 199, 221 church of Holy Trinity, 81–2, 238 honour of, 127, 188, 191, 221 Lady of, see Cecily de Rumilly Skirlington (ER), 220 Skirpenbeck (ER), 162n, 229, 245 Slaidburn in Bowland (Lancs.), 58, 61 Sleningford (WR), grange, 274 Slingsby (NR), 162n Smeathalls (Birkin, WR), 50, 212, 213, 214 Smeaton (Kirk and Little, WR), 66n Snaith (WR), 27n, 157, 210, 250 Ben. cell, xvii Snilesworth (NR), grange, 275 Somerby (Lincs.), 38 Sookholme (Notts.), 221 South Ferriby (Lincs.), 70, 203 South Fyling (Fyling Thorpe, NR), 162


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South Kirkby (WR), 241n, 269n Southwell (Notts.), 126 Sowerby (Whitby, NR, lost) 37, 38, 39n Spaldington (ER), 218n, 229, 267 grange, 267 Spaunton (NR), 40 Speeton (ER), 245 Sproxton (NR), 255 Stainborough (WR), 211, 212, 228, 263 grange, 263, 275 Staincliffe (WR), 63 Stainsacre (NR), 38, 245 Stainsby (NR), 232 Stainton (Durham), 168 Stainton (NR), 122n, 190, 241n Stainton in Craven (WR), 222 grange, 271, 276 Stakesby (Whitby, NR), 245 Stanford on Avon (Northants.), 28, 245 Stanghow (Skelton, NR), Templar preceptory, 190, 246, 247 Stanley (Wilts.), Savigniac/Cist. abbey, 178n, 231 Stanwick St John (NR), 238–9, 241n Stapleton (Darrington, WR), 58, 221 Startforth (NR), 90 Stephen, king of England, 10, 49, 56, 62, 77n, 85, 97, 112, 113, 114, 116–18, 122, 159, 160, 190, 191, 196, 200, 201, 202, 203, 221, 237, 258n Stephen, abbot of Whitby, abbot of St Mary’s, York, 13, 14, 28, 32–33, 35–41, 48, 157, 162, 164, 177, 249, 279, 287, 288, 289 foundation narrative of, 13–14, 287–8, 289 Stephen, count of Aumale, 51, 52, 53, 186 Stephen Harding, abbot of Cîteaux, 9 Stephen de Mainhill, 263 Stephen of Sallay, Speculum novitii, 282 Stillingfleet (ER), 42 Stilton’s Farm (Helmsley, NR), 101, 274 Stirton (Bolton, WR), 82 Stixwould (Lincs.), nunnery, 139, 148 Stock (WR), 119 Stocking (Hovingham, NR), 112 Stokesley (NR), 131, 173, 249 Stonecroft (Northumb.), 228 Stranton (Durham), 78n

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Page 348 Strihac (Selby), 26 Sturton (Aberford, WR), 47 Stuteville (family), 42, 130, 204, 209, and see Nicholas de, Robert I, III, V de, William de Suffield (Hackness, NR), 37, 38 Sunderland (Lancs.), grange, 276 Sunderlandwick (ER), 43, 249 Surdeval family, 187 Sutton (Ripon, WR), 106 grange, 26, 274 Sutton upon Derwent (ER), 128, 162n, 172n Swain Fitz Ailric, 57, 59n, 63, 66, 77n Swain, son of Sigge, 27 Swain, son of Swain, 120n Swainby (NR), Prem. abbey, xviii, 8, 90, 92n; abbot of, 242 Swale, river, 220, 221, 222, 232 Swaledale, 226, 227, 228 Swine (ER), 150 nunnery, xix, 127, 129, 140, 141n, 145, 147, 149, 150, 151, 171, 172, 173, 176, 228, 229, 259n, 267, 268, 270, 271, 277n; canon of, see Alexander; master of, see Philip, Robert Swinefleet (Whitgift, WR), 225 Swinstead (Lincs.), 83, 237 Swinton (NR), 263 Symeon of Durham, 12, 13, 26, 32, 36, 37, 282, 284, 294, 295 Tadcaster (WR), church of, 197 grange, 276 Tanshelf (Pontefract, WR), 66n Tarrant (Dorset), nunnery, 148 Tart, nunnery, 147 Tealby (Lincs.), 47, 51, 219 Tees, river, 222, 225, 230, 231, 263 Temple Cowton (NR), Templar preceptory, 190, 246, 247 Temple Hirst (WR), Templar preceptory, 190, 247 Temple Newsam (WR), Templar preceptory, 190, 247 Temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, order of, 9, 91, 92; prior of, see Petribricus Thame (Oxon.), Cist. abbey, 108n Tharlesthorpe (Patrington, ER, lost), 260 grange, 260, 275 Theobald, clerk [? of Salisbury], 26 Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, 58, 63, 64n, 65, 160, 171 Theobald, son of Pain of Wykeham, 128, 129 Theobald, son of Uvieth, 169 Thetford (Norfolk), Cluniac priory, 56 Thicket (ER), nunnery, xix, 131, 141n, 149, 271 Thimbleby, see Foukeholme Thirkleby (NR), 172n Thirley Cotes (Hackness, NR), 38 Thirsk (NR), 186, 236 castle, 111, 199 Thixendale (ER), 80 Thomas, abbot of Meaux, 164, 166, 259, 260, 267, 272, 298 Thomas I, archbishop of York, 27, 41, 57, 289 Thomas II, archbishop of York, 41, 47n, 48, 58, 59, 60, 69–72, 76, 92, 102, 238, 241 Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, 70, 179, 293 lives of, 293–4 Thomas Burton, abbot of Meaux, 17, 257, 258, 259, 265, 267, 272 Thomas de Coleville, 227 Thomas de Etton, 252


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Thomas Grammaticus, monk of St Albans, 161 Thomas Hay, 131 Thomas, provost of Beverley, 99n Thomas, son of Archil, 211 Thomas, son of Peter, 210, 211, 213, 233 Thomas, son of Robert de Toulston, 207 Thomas, steward of Pontefract Priory, 245 Thorald, abbot of Fountains, 108, 114, 165, 295 Thorn (ER), 52n Thorndale (unidentified, ?NR), 89 Thornhill family, 210n Thornton (Lincs.), Aug. priory, 190, 259 Thornton le Clay (NR), 42 Thorp Arch (WR), 133, 168 Thorpe Audlin (WR), 58, 62 Thorpe in Craven (WR), 88 Thorpe (Garth, near Aldbrough, ER), 260 Thorpe (le Willows, near Kilburn, NR), 227 grange, 275 Thorpe Underwood (WR), 168, 256 grange, 256, 274 Thorpe Willoughby (WR), 160n Thurnscoe (WR), 47, 50, 237, 266 grange of ‘Cherebarue’ in, 266 Thurstan, archbishop of York, 47n, 59, 60, 67, 71, 72, 74–9, 81, 82n, 83, 84, 92, 93, 97, 99–102, 104–6, 107, 109, 110– 12, 124, 125, 126, 127, 140, 144, 157, 158, 159, 163, 177, 180, 184, 221, 238, 241, 284, 308 Letter of, 103–5, 291, 292 Tickford (Bucks.), Ben. priory, 48n Tickhill (WR), 190, 199, 241n Tinchebrai, Battle of, 78, 130 Tintern (Monm.), Cist. abbey, 11, 300, 301 Tiron, abbey and order of, 9, 10, 31; abbot of, see Bernard Titlington (Northumb.), 80

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Page 349 Tockwith (WR), 168 cell of Nostell, xviii, 73n, 189, 246 Todwick (WR), grange, 256, 276 Topcliffe (on Swale, NR), 232 Torphin de Allerston, 229 Torphin, son of Robert, 271 Tostig, canon of York, 156 Toulston (WR), 66n Tours (Indre-et-Loire), 46, 49 Towthorpe under Galtres (NR), 246 Tranby (Hessle, ER), 92 Tranmoor (WR), 248 Trois Fontaines (Marne), Cist. abbey, 165n, 302 Troutsdale (NR), 107n Tunstall (ER), 51, 52n, 53 Turbar hundred, 202 Turgis Brundos, 130n Turgis, son of William, 130 Turgisius, abbot of Kirkstall, 165 Tynemouth (Northumb.), Ben. priory, 160, 282, 298, 299; prior of, see German Ugglebarnby (NR), 162n, 250, 251 Ulbert, constable of William of Aumale, 173 Ulchil, 80 Uncleby (ER), 40 Upleatham (NR), 38, 78 Ure, river, 222, 232 Vallombrosa, order of, 9 Vaucelles (Nord), Cist. abbey, 299n Vauclair (Aisne), Cist. abbey, 165, 301; abbots of, see Henry Murdac, Richard III, abbot of Fountains Vaudey (Lincs.), Cist. abbey, 121, 190 Vavasour family, 237 Vendôme (Loir-et-Cher), Ben. abbey of La Trinité, 224 Vescy family, 91, 187, and see Beatrice de, William de visitation, Cistercian, 10, 179 W. de Berewick, 280 Wakefield (WR), 56 Walcher, bishop of Durham, 32 Waldef, prior of Kirkham, abbot of Melrose, 96–7, 102, 108, 109, 113, 202, 286 Waleran, son of Helewise, 90 Walter, clerk of Pickhill, 55 Walter Daniel, monk of Rievaulx, 17, 102, 109, 113, 123, 179, 278, 281, 284, 285, 288, 292, 294, 296 Walter de Boynton, steward of St Mary’s Abbey, York, 245 Walter de Dinant, 215 Walter de Fauconberg, 143, 223 Walter de Gant, 69, 70, 71, 95, 162n, 188, 202 Walter de Gray, archbishop of York, 2, 52–3, 242 Walter Espec, 79, 80, 84n, 94, 96, 100, 101, 102, 122, 183, 188, 193, 195, 199, 284, 286, 295 Walter Fitz Richard de Clare, 11 Walter Giffard, archbishop of York, 149 Walter le Nair, 176 Walter Map, 308 Walter of Hemingburgh, 16, 77 Walter of London, archdeacon of York, 113 Walter, prior of Carlisle, 89 Walter, prior of Pontefract, abbot of Selby, 59n, 159, 160 Walter, prior of Whitby, 161 Walter, son of Agnes de Arches, 133


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Waltham (Essex), Aug. priory/abbey, 299 Waltheof, earl, 53 Warcop (Westm.), 222 church, 267 Warden (Beds.), 79 Cist. abbey, 122, 165, 188; abbot of, see Henry Warin Fitz Gerold, 130 Warin (of Gilmonby), 249 Warin, son of Peter de Dalton, 169 Wark (Northumb.), 79, 187 Warmfield (WR), 239, 241n Warmsworth (WR), 42 Warner, son of Wimar, 169 Warsill (WR), grange, 261, 274 Warter (ER), 228n, 229, 257, 258 Aug. priory/Arrouaisian abbey, xviii, 8, 15, 18, 83, 84–6, 92, 95, 96, 116, 189, 220, 226, 229, 230, 232, 239, 271; abbots of, see Ivo, Richard; priors of, see Joseph, Nicholas, Ralph clerics of, see Clement, Geoffrey, Hugh, Ivo, Pain, William fee of, 85–6 Wassand (ER), grange, 260, 275 Water Fulford (ER), 42 Wath (Wath Cote, near Easby, NR), Ben. cell., xvii, 5, 15, 54–5, 241; prior of, see Richard vicar of, see Odo of Pickhill Wath on Dearne (WR), 127, 172n, 191 Watton (ER), 137–8, 166 Gilb. priory, xix, 8, 11, 88, 89, 135, 137–8, 141, 144, 151, 167, 175–6, 188, 207, 220, 266, 271 nun of, 175–6 Waverley (Surrey), Cist. abbey, 11, 108n, 300, 301

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Page 350 Wawne (ER), 51, 52n, 53, 150, 260, 267, 269 grange, 258n, 259, 260, 275 rector of, 267 Weaverthorpe (ER), 77n, 238n Weelsby (Lincs.), 52 Welburn (NR), 256, 264, 271 grange, 264n, 275 Welbury (NR), 229 Wellow (Lincs.), Aug. priory, 189 Wensleydale, 223, 228 West Cottingwith (ER), 42, 131, 168 West Hardwick (WR), 60, 72 West Headingley (Leeds, WR), 50, 224 West Heslerton (ER), 219 West Mareis (NR), 52 West Morton (WR), 228 West Rasen (Lincs.), 47, 50, 51 West Torrington (Lincs.), 135 Westerdale (NR), 131 Westminster, Ben. abbey, 181; abbot of, see Laurence Westminster, council of (1175), 170 Westow (ER), 245 Wetheral (Cumb.), Ben. priory, 43 Whalley (Lancs.), 61, 62 Wharfedale, 221, 222 Wharram le Street (ER), 77n, 258, 259, 272 grange, 258, 259, 265, 275 Wheldrake (ER), 131, 168 bailliwick, 168 castlery, 168 grange, 262 Wherwell (Hants.), nunnery, 11 Whiston (WR), 54 Whitby (NR) Ben. abbey, xvii, 3, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 23, 31, 32–9, 42, 43, 44, 78, 127, 161–4, 172, 173, 181, 183, 184, 185, 190, 196, 205, 208, 220, 234, 235, 239, 245, 246, 250, 251, 253, 254, 269, 271, 273, 278, 279, 280, 286, 289, 298, 304, 305; abbots of, 161–2, and see Benedict, Nicholas, Peter, Richard I, Richard II (of Cornwall), Stephen, William de Percy; cells of, see Goathland, Hackness, Middlesbrough, York, religious houses: All Saints Fishergate; monks of, see Martin, Robert d’Alneto; priors of, see Reinfrid, monk of Evesham, Serlo de Percy, Walter borough, 253–4; burgesses, 254 church, 239 port, 38, 253, 269 fair, 253, 269 town, 38, 162, 220, 245, 253, 269 Whitgift (WR), 27, 225, 232 Whithorn, bishop of, see Christian Whitkirk (WR), 247 Whitland (Carms.), Cist. abbey, 108n Whitnash (War), 221 Whitwell (NR), 80, 245 Whitwood (WR), 57, 58 Whitwood Mere, 57, 58 ‘Wictona’, 128 Widdington (Little Ouseburn, WR), 168 Wihtmai, aunt of Warin, son of Peter of Dalton, 169 Wilberfoss (ER), church, 128, 140, 177 nunnery, xix, 128, 140, 141n, 143, 149, 167, 172n, 176–7; prioress of, see Beatrice


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Wildon (NR), 111, 219 grange, 111, 275 Wilencus, prior of La Charité, 57 Willerby (ER), 70, 267 William I, king of England, 3, 6, 24, 26–7, 28, 29, 30, 32, 39, 40, 46, 47, 56, 57, 61 William II, king of England, 14, 28, 31, 36, 40, 41, 42, 47, 48, 56, 59, 61, 156, 163, 188 William, abbot of Meaux, 258 William, abbot of Newminster, abbot of Fountains, 165 William, abbot of Rievaulx, 99, 101, 103, 106, 114, 136, 193, 300 William Aguillun, 207 William, brother of Hampole, 174 William Cade, merchant of St Omer, 270, 273 William, chaplain of St Clement’s, York, 173 William, cleric of Butterwick, 249n William, cleric of Warter, 84n William, conversus of Marrick, 174 William de Arches, 132–3, 141, 142, 168, 186, 192, 223 William de Brus, prior of Guisborough, 78, 142, 200, 248 William de Caux, 260 William de Chimeli, archdeacon of Cleveland, 241n William de Clerfai, 134 William de Curcy, 84, 130, 168n William de Longchamp, chancellor of England, 164, 280 William de Luvetot, 53 William de Marton, 271 William de Montibus, 279n William de Neville, 66 William de Octon, 169, 173; nephews of, 169, 173 William I de Percy, 32–9, 127, 185 William II de Percy, 119, 120, 183, 205, 209 William de Percy, abbot of Whitby, 34, 35, 38, 162 William de Percy of Bolton Percy, 128, 168

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Page 351 William de Percy, son of Richard [of Dunsley], 127, 141, 192 William de Plaiz, 50, 168 William de Preston, 207 William de Roumare, earl of Lincoln, 84, 85, 86, 116, 230 William II de Roumare, 86, 257, 258n William de Stuteville, 198, 232, 257, 258n William de Vescy, 138 William de Warenne, 6, 41, 56, 61, 77n William III de Wennerville, 209 William de Wrotham, archdeacon of Taunton, 251 William Fitz Duncan, 82, 110, 118, 191 William Fitz Herbert, treasurer of York, archbishop of York, 77n, 87, 113–14, 121, 128, 133, 159, 164, 179, 202, 301 William Fitz Nigel, constable of Chester, 137, 187, 188 William Fitz Peter, 90, 91, 95 William Fitz Turgis Brundos (William of Rosedale), 130, 189 William Foliot, 57, 133 William Fossard, 137n, 207, 259, 272 William Giffard, bishop of Winchester, 11, 108n William Grandus, monk of Selby, 159, 160 William Maltravers, 62, 187, 188 William Meschin, lord of Copeland, 43, 80, 81, 82, 110n, 188 William, monk of Headley, 49 William, nephew of Hereward de Lenn, 271 William of Aumale, earl of York, 52, 85, 86, 112, 113, 121, 122, 133, 190, 201–5, 258, 260 William of Corbeil, archbishop of Canterbury, 103 William of Malmesbury, 1, 10, 217, 279n, 294, 297 William of Newburgh, 11, 100, 110, 121, 204, 270, 279n, 281, 286, 289, 294, 296, 308 Explanatio sacri epithalamii in matrem sponsi, 294 Historia rerum Anglicarum, 294–5 William of St Calais, bishop of Durham, 41, 282 William of St Thierry, 292 William Paynel, 50, 83, 84n, 189, 201, 205, 211, 237 William Paynel of Hooton Pagnell, 248 William Peitevin, 120 William, prior of Arbury, 138n William, rector of Garton, prior of Kirkham, 79, 142, 200 William Rule, parson of Cottingham, 272 William, son of Adam de Birkin, 211 William, son of Elias, 270 William, son of Eudo, 215 William, son of Fulk, 131 William, son of Hervey, 206–7 William, son of Osbert de Denby, 233 William, son of Pagana, canon of York, 208 William, son of Peter, 210 William, son of Rainer, 62n William, son of Robert, 270 William, son of Roger de Caratil, 248 William, son of Walding, 208 William, son of William, constable of Chester, 137 William Trussebut, 84, 85 William Ward, 132 Wilton (Little Mareis, NR), 135 Wilton (Upleatham, NR), 38 Wilton (Hants.), nunnery, 11 Wiltshire, sheriff of, see Edward of Salisbury Wimar, steward of Richmond, 141


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Winchcombe (Glos.), Ben. abbey, 287; prior of, see Aldwin Winchester (Hants.), 202 bishops of, see Henry of Blois, William Giffard nunnery, 11 Wintersett (WR), 77n Wintringham (ER), 138 grange, 266 Winwick (Lancs.), 77, 221 Wiske, river, 222, 232 Witham (Lincs.), 70 Withernsea (ER), 51, 52n Withernwick (ER), 51, 52n, 53 Wlmar, priest of Wykeham, 129, 140 Woburn (Beds.), Cist. abbey, 178 Wolfington, grange, 276 Woodkirk (WR), 77n, 269 wool trade, 269–71 Worcester, Ben. cathedral priory, 287 Worksop (Notts.), Aug. priory, 92, 176, 282 Worsborough (WR), 212 Wragby (WR), 75n, 76 Wrangbrook (WR), 66 Wroot (Lincs.), 232 Wroxall (War.), nunnery, 139 Wyk (Kingston upon Hull), 269 Wykeham (NR), 128–9, 140 nunnery, xix, 128–9, 140, 141n, 147, 148, 149, 150, 169, 171, 172, 173, 174, 271; canon of, see Nigel; masters of, see Alan, Simon priest, see Wlmar Yarm (NR), 235, 269 Yeadon (WR), 227

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Page 352 Yedingham (NR), nunnery, xix, 134–5, 141n, 143, 149, 168, 171, 172, 228, 232, 241n; master of, see Andrew York, 3, 15, 25, 26, 32, 40, 45, 49, 50, 80, 100, 101, 111, 114, 126, 162, 185, 202, 232, 234, 235, 253, 269 archbishops of, 31, 163, and see Geoffrey, Gerard, Henry Murdac, Roger de Pont L’Evêque, Thomas I, Thomas II, Thurstan, Walter de Gray, Walter Giffard, William Fitz Herbert; disputed election, 17, 104, 113–14, 123; reeve/provost of, see Nigel archdeacons of the diocese of, see Hugh du Puiset, Osbert de Bayeux, Ralph d’Aunay, Robert, Walter of London castle, 201 Castle Mills, 247 cathedral of St Peter (Minster), 28, 43, 93, 206, 265, 282, 284, 304; canons of, see Serlo, Tostig, William, son of Pagana; dean and chapter, 62–3, 84, 113, 126, 128, 160, 203, 265; dean of, see Hugh; precentor of, see Hugh the Chanter; treasurer of, see William Fitz Herbert churches and chapels All Saints, North Street, 50, 51 Christ Church, 45, 46 Holy Trinity, Micklegate, 45 St Andrew, Fishergate, 87, 91 St Benet, 62 St Crux, 42 St Gregory, Micklegate, 50 St Helen, Fishergate, 47 St James, 49n St Mary, Bishophill, Junior, 45 St Michael, Spurriergate, 40, 253 St Olave, 35, 36, 40 St Sampson, 62 St Saviour, 40 St Stephen, Fishergate, 41 St Wilfrid, 208 earl of, see William of Aumale kingdom of, 2 religious houses All Saints, Fishergate, cell of Whitby Abbey, xvii, 161, 234, 246 Alma Sophia, 45 Holy Trinity, Ben. priory, xvii, 5, 6, 8n, 15, 45–51, 55, 67, 71, 95, 105, 159, 163, 185, 186, 189, 201, 205–6, 219, 220, 234, 235, 237, 238, 241, 266, 304n; priors of, see Bernard, Elias Paynel, Gilbert, Hicmarus, Philip, Robert, Seward St Andrew’s, Gilb. priory, xviii, 8, 18, 91, 92, 234, 271 St Clement’s nunnery, xix, 91, 125–6, 138, 140, 144, 173, 184, 222, 234, 271; chaplains of, see John, William St Leonard’s (St Peter’s) Hospital, 48, 213, 214 St Mary’s, Ben. abbey, xvii, 3, 4, 12, 13, 14, 15, 23, 30, 32, 35, 36–9, 40–4, 47, 48, 49, 55, 81n, 91, 103–9, 112, 158, 163, 164, 177–8, 180–1, 184, 197, 205, 210, 221, 232, 234, 235, 239, 242, 245, 248–53, 269, 270, 271, 273, 279, 280, 288, 289, 291, 293, 298; abbots of, see Clement, Geoffrey, Richard, Robert I de Harpham, Robert II de Longchamp, Savaric, Stephen; officials of the abbot, see Abraham, Daniel; cells of, see Haines, Lincoln (St Mary Magdalene), Richmond, Sandtoft; dependent priories of, see St Bees, Wetheral; monks of, see Gervase, Ralph; prior of, see Richard I, abbot of Fountains; steward of, see John de Octon, Walter de Boynton St Thomas’s Hospital, 49 sheriff of, see Robert de Octon streets/areas in and around Aldwark, 234 Blake St., 234 Bootham, 42, 234, 235, 253 Bretgate, 234, 253 Clementhorpe, 125, 234 Clifton, 42 Coney St., 234 Fishergate, 50n, 234 Fossgate, 234, 253 Galmou, 42 Gillygate, 234


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Huggate, 48 Hungate, 234 Layerthorpe, 234 Marygate, 234, Micklegate, 45, 49n, 234, 235 North St, 235 Ousegate, 234, 253 St Andrewgate, 234 St Saviourgate, 234 Skeldergate, 234, 253 Spurriergate, 234 Stonegate, 234 Trinity Lane, 45 Walmgate, 234 Yorkshire, boundaries of, 2–3 sheriffs of, see Ansketil de Bulmer, Bertram de Bulmer, Erneis de Burun, Hugh Fitz Baldric

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Page 353 Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought Fourth series Titles in series 1 The Beaumont Twins: The Roots and Branches of Power in the Twelfth Century D. B. CROUCH 2 The Thought of Gregory the Great* G. R. EVANS 3 The Government of England Under Henry I* JUDITH A. GREEN 4 Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge MIRI RUBIN 5 Autonomy and Community: The Royal Manor of Havering, 1200–1500 MARJORIE KENISTON MCINTOSH 6 The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis JOSEPH CANNING 7 Land and Power in Late Medieval Ferrara: The Rule of the Este, 1350–1450 TREVOR DEAN 8 William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East* PETER W. EDBURY AND JOHN GORDON ROWE 9 The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England: A Study of West Saxon and East Anglian Cults SUSAN J. RIDYARD 10 John of Wales: A Study of the Works and Ideas of a Thirteenth-Century Friar JENNY SWANSON 11 Richard III: A Study of Service* ROSEMARY HORROX 12 A Marginal Economy? East Anglian Breckland in the Later Middle Ages MARK BAILEY 13 Clement VI: The Pontificate and Ideas of an Avignon Pope DIANA WOOD 14 Hagiography and the Cult of Saints: The Diocese of Orléans, 800–1200 THOMAS HEAD 15 Kings and Lords in Conquest England ROBIN FLEMING 16 Council and Hierarchy: The Political Thought of William Durant the Younger CONSTANTIN FASOLT 17 Warfare in the Latin East, 1192–1291* CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL 18 Province and Empire: Brittany and the Carolingians JULIA M. H. SMITH 19 A Gentry Community: Leicestershire in the Fifteenth Century, c. 1422–c. 1485 ERIC ACHESON 20 Baptism and Change in the Early Middle Ages, c. 200–c.1150 PETER CRAMER

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Page 354 21 Itinerant Kingship and Royal Monasteries in Early Medieval Germany, c. 936–1075 JOHN W. BERNHARDT 22 Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul WILLIAM E. KLINGSHIRN 23 Bishop and Chapter in Twelfth-Century England: A Study of the Mensa Episcopalis EVERETT U. CROSBY 24 Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain: The Commercial Realignment of the Iberian Peninsula, 900–1500* OLIVIA REMIE CONSTABLE 25 Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire within East-Central Europe, 1295–1345 S. C. ROWELL 26 Barcelona and Its Rulers, 1100–1291 STEPHEN P. BENSCH 27 Conquest, Anarchy, and Lordship: Yorkshire, 1066–1154 PAUL DALTON 28 Preaching the Crusades: Mendicant Friars and the Cross in the Thirteenth Century* CHRISTOPH T. MAIER 29 Family Power in Southern Italy: The Duchy of Gaeta and its Neighbours, 850–1139 PATRICIA SKINNER 30 The Papacy, Scotland, and Northern England, 1342–1378 A. D. M. BARRELL 31 Peter des Roches: An Alien in English Politics, 1205–1238 NICHOLAS VINCENT 32 Runaway Religious in Medieval England, c. 1240–1540 F. DONALD LOGAN 33 People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554 PATRICK AMORY 34 The Aristocracy in Twelfth-Century León and Castile SIMON BARTON 35 Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century: Money, Market Exchange, and the Emergence of Scientific Thought JOEL KAYE 36 Clement V SOPHIA MENACHE 37 England’s Jewish Solution: Experiment and Expulsion, 1262–1290 ROBIN R. MUNDILL 38 Medieval Merchants: York, Beverley and Hull in the Later Middle Ages JENNY KERMODE 39 Family, Commerce and Religion in London and Cologne: Anglo-German Emigrants, c. 1000–c.1300 JOSEPH P. HUFFMAN 40 The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 1069–1215 JANET BURTON *Also published as a paperback

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The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 1069-1215 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship: Yorkshire, 1066-1154 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

History and the Supernatural in Medieval England (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

History and the Supernatural in Medieval England (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

History and the Supernatural in Medieval England (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The Thought of Gregory the Great (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Kings and Lords in Conquest England (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Province and Empire: Brittany and the Carolingians (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The Early Humiliati (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The Government of England under Henry I (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The Making of Gratian's Decretum (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The Wandering Heretics of Languedoc (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Barcelona and its Rulers, 1096-1291 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Dominicans, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Dominicans, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Clement V (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Council and Hierarchy: The Political Thought of William Durant the Younger (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The Political Thought of William Ockham (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Third Series)

The Norman Frontier in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The Aristocracy in Twelfth-Century León and Castile (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Making Agreements in Medieval Catalonia: Power, Order, and the Written Word, 1000-1200 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The English in Rome, 1362-1420: Portrait of an Expatriate Community (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489-554 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Universities, Academics and the Great Schism (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Third Series)

The Church and the Two Nations in Medieval Ireland (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Third Series)

The Church and the Two Nations in Medieval Ireland (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Third Series)

Brittany and the Angevins: Province and Empire 1158-1203 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 1069-1215 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship: Yorkshire, 1066-1154 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

History and the Supernatural in Medieval England (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

History and the Supernatural in Medieval England (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

History and the Supernatural in Medieval England (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The Thought of Gregory the Great (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Kings and Lords in Conquest England (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Province and Empire: Brittany and the Carolingians (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The Early Humiliati (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The Government of England under Henry I (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The Making of Gratian's Decretum (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The Wandering Heretics of Languedoc (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Barcelona and its Rulers, 1096-1291 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Dominicans, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Dominicans, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Clement V (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Council and Hierarchy: The Political Thought of William Durant the Younger (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The Political Thought of William Ockham (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Third Series)

The Norman Frontier in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The Aristocracy in Twelfth-Century León and Castile (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Making Agreements in Medieval Catalonia: Power, Order, and the Written Word, 1000-1200 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

The English in Rome, 1362-1420: Portrait of an Expatriate Community (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489-554 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Universities, Academics and the Great Schism (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Third Series)

The Church and the Two Nations in Medieval Ireland (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Third Series)

The Church and the Two Nations in Medieval Ireland (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Third Series)

Brittany and the Angevins: Province and Empire 1158-1203 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

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