CONTENTS

CHAP.
PREFACE [v]
LIST OF REFERENCES [vii]
I. INTRODUCTION [1]
II. PRECEDENTS FOR SUPPRESSION [19]
III. AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL SUPPRESSION [30]
IV. PRELIMINARIES TO THE GENERAL SUPPRESSION [42]
V. THE FINANCES OF BURTON ABBEY [72]
VI. MONASTIC BALANCE SHEETS [92]
VII. THE GENERAL SUPPRESSION: FIRST STAGE [133]
VIII. THE GENERAL SUPPRESSION: SECOND STAGE [160]
IX. LOSS AND GAIN [188]
APPENDICES OF ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS
NO.
I. EXAMPLE OF A LICENSE TO CONTINUE GRANTEDTO A “LESSER MONASTERY” (CROXDEN ABBEY) [214]
II. DEED OF SURRENDER OF CROXDEN ABBEY [220]
III. INVENTORY OF THE SALE AT BREWOOD NUNNERY [224]
IV. INVENTORY OF THE SALE AT ST. THOMAS’S PRIORY, STAFFORD [229]
V. INVENTORY OF THE SALE OF DIEULACRES ABBEY [237]
VI. SALE OF GOODS AT THE GREY FRIARS, STAFFORD [245]
VII. SALE OF GOODS AT THE AUSTIN FRIARS, STAFFORD [249]
VIII. SALE OF GOODS OF THE GREY FRIARS, LICHFIELD [252]
IX. SALE OF GOODS AT CROXDEN ABBEY [255]
X. SALE OF GOODS AT ROCESTER ABBEY [256]
XI. SALE OF GOODS AT HULTON ABBEY [257]
XII. THE DISSOLUTION OF BURTON “COLLEGE” [258]
1. INVENTORY AND VALUATION OF GOODS [258]
2. SALE OF GOODS [264]
3. PAYMENTS TO DISBANDED HOUSEHOLD, ETC. [268]
4. EXPENSES OF ROYAL OFFICIALS [271]
5. PENSIONS [277]
6. SUMMARY [278]
XIII. THE DISSOLUTION OF BURTON COLLEGE:SCUDAMORE’S RECEIPT FOR GOODS UNSOLD [279]
XIV. LIST OF BOOKS AT BURTON ABBEY [281]
INDEX [286]
SKETCH MAP OF STAFFORDSHIRE [end of book]

The Dissolution of the Monasteries

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

In one of the earlier chapters of a brilliantly written history[1] dealing with the sixteenth century the glory of English hospitality is enlarged upon. It was a time, we are told, “when every door was opened to a request for a meal or a night’s lodging,” and among other examples we are given the instance that “two hundred poor were fed daily at the house of Thomas Cromwell.” Moreover, we are assured that “there was little fear of an abuse of such license.” Yet presently we find the monasteries censured in the severest language for their demoralising charity, and picturesquely and forcibly condemned as “nurseries of dishonest mendicancy.” No explanation is vouchsafed as to why the alms of the monks were more demoralising than those of the nobles.

This is a good illustration of the way the whole subject of the Dissolution of the Monasteries has been often treated.

Sentiment and prejudice enter largely, and perhaps inevitably, into the whole subject. Even so prosaic an aspect as the financial one has given occasion for the most contradictory opinions. The vast possessions of the monasteries, their enormous wealth, the large immunities from taxation which they enjoyed, their robbery of the parish churches, have all been dilated upon for three centuries and a half. The monastic income, where figures have been given, ranges from Speed’s £171,300 to Burnet’s £131,607. Abbot Gasquet says the monastic lands amounted to two million acres. A Jacobite pamphleteer of 1717 asserted that the monks possessed seven-tenths of the whole land: more sober writers have estimated less extravagantly. J. R. Green said it was a fifth, and Dr. Gairdner says a third. Writers have often told of “hordes of idle men and women” in the religious houses. Dr. Gasquet affirms that the number was 8,081, with “more than ten times that number of people who were their dependents or otherwise obtained a living in their service:” the total population of England being some four millions, this gives a proportion of one in forty-three.

It is obvious that there remains much to be desired in the way of definiteness and exactness on many points. The following pages are an attempt to do something in this direction by investigating facts and by going to the fountain head. All unsupported statements and mere opinions have been rigorously disregarded: they are generally, and sometimes obviously, guesswork only. The actual figures of authoritative documents alone have been dealt with. In this way it is hoped that some conclusions have been reached which rest upon solid foundations.

Only the county of Stafford has been considered. If it be objected that, the work being thus restricted in scope, the results must be of limited application, it may be pointed out that there are compensating advantages. The material is comparatively manageable. The details, bewildering and difficult of explanation though they often are, are comparatively amenable. Acquaintance with localities may sometimes render assistance. The results, therefore, may gain in precision what they lack in range, and though the writer does not suppose he has succeeded, or nearly succeeded, in solving all or many of the problems which arise, yet he hopes that he has been able to accomplish something. Possibly the national aspect of the whole subject must wait for final treatment until the work of local investigators has been completed.

Reliable information has been sought on such points as the following: the amount of the monastic wealth, its sources and burdens, the relative proportions from temporal and spiritual sources, the extent to which parish churches were “robbed,” the solvency or otherwise of the religious houses, the extent of their charity, the amount of educational work they carried on, their character as landlords, the part they took in the agricultural changes of the period, the material effects of their suppression, and other subjects of a kindred nature. It must be acknowledged at once that the results vary much in character. The data are often difficult to interpret and are sometimes too scanty to be of much use in drawing general conclusions of any value.

In particular it has proved to be quite impossible to attempt any estimate of the area of monastic lands. The situation and character of the various possessions can be found, and the income derived from each, but the acreage is seldom given, and no attempt has been made to reckon the extent from the value. Such an attempt has been sometimes made, usually by proposing a ratio between income and acreage. It is generally supposed that the occupied area of England was about thirty-two millions of acres. Thorold Rogers states that at the time of the Dissolution “the rent of agricultural land was from 6d. to 8d. an acre.” It is true that the greater part of the land held by the monasteries was probably agricultural, so that if we divide some estimates which have been given of the total monastic income by 7d. we obtain the following results:

£171,300 (Speed) ÷ 7d. = 5,873,143 acres or about two-elevenths of the whole.

£131,607 (Burnet) ÷ 7d. = 4,512,240 acres, or more than one-seventh of the whole.

A similar calculation for Staffordshire (748,433 acres), taking the figures to be given in Chapter IV, would give the following results:

Gross total monastic income, £1,874 0s. 1½d. ÷ 7d. = 64,251 acres, or more than one-eleventh of the whole county;

Net monastic income, £1,608 5s. 2¾d. ÷ 7d. = 55,140 acres, or more than one-thirteenth of the whole county.

But all such calculations are really worthless. It is quite impossible to arrive at any figure which represents the average income per acre. No doubt Thorold Rogers is correct enough when he gives the rent. But all sorts of deductions and allowances have to be made from the rent before the net income is obtained. Moreover, the monastic income was not wholly derived from land, and the land was held by a great variety of tenures, etc. The only possible way of arriving at anything like a correct estimate of the total area of monastic land, failing a complete rent roll and survey for each house, would be to work carefully through the surveys which were made when the property came into the hands of the Crown, the “particulars for grants” which were drawn up on behalf of applicants for grants and leases, and the grants and leases themselves. Even so the task would be one of extraordinary difficulty and complexity. More often than not the monastic lands were not granted in their entirety. They remained in the hands of the Crown till a good purchaser could be found for all or part, and a good bargain struck. There was sub-letting to a bewildering extent. The process went on for years, and all sorts of people obtained grants and leases of the monastic property, often in quite small portions. In 1540 John Smythe, a Yeoman of the Guard, obtained a grant for life of most of the possessions of the Dominican Friars at Newcastle, while in the following year Francis, Earl of Shrewsbury, is found negotiating for a single messuage and lands in Rocester which had belonged to the Abbey there, and at the opposite end of the social scale we find a butcher of Stone, named William Plante, obtaining lands in Walton which had belonged to Stone Priory. Again and again lands are no sooner obtained than they are re-sold. For instance, Trentham was only surrendered in 1536, yet in 1538 the Duke of Suffolk procured a license to alienate; James Leveson secured Rushton Grange from the spoils of Hulton Abbey in 1539, and immediately sold it to Biddulph of Biddulph; in 1541 Sir John Gifford obtained license to alienate the rectory and advowson of Milwich, which had belonged to Stone Priory. In March, 1541, Sir John Dudley obtained a grant in fee of most of the possessions of Dudley Priory: in a couple of months he received a license to alienate part. Such examples, a few out of many, illustrate the appalling complexity of the task to which we have alluded, and show also that any inquiry into the original grants of the lands of the religious houses would throw little light upon the permanent results of the transfer of the monastic property. It would indicate at best who were the shrewdest bargainers and the readiest speculators.

The merely financial aspects of the problem can be investigated with better prospect of success. Bishop Stubbs, with characteristic caution, said that “the income from the monasteries cannot be stated in reasonable figures”[2] and this is no doubt true if we desire to estimate the whole extent of the wealth which passed from the Church at the time of the Dissolution. Full details, especially of the valuables in the churches and other movables, can never be obtained. But there is a good deal of material for arriving, approximately at any rate, at such things as annual income and expenditure, and if we can discover those we shall obtain figures and facts which will be of great service in many ways.

Many counties had far wealthier monasteries than Staffordshire. The richest counties in England in this respect were Yorkshire and Middlesex, but both of these are exceptional, the former by reason of its disproportionate area, and the latter because it contains the City of London and many of its suburbs. Somerset and Lincolnshire were placed next by their trading centres, and Kent by its position on the main road between the capital and the Continent. Of the remaining thirty-four English counties (excluding Monmouthshire), Staffordshire came twenty-fifth in monastic wealth, the following being poorer: Durham, Cumberland, Northumberland, Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, Derby, Hereford, Westmoreland and Rutland. The last-named possessed only a single house.

Staffordshire, with a total monastic wealth of some £1,600 annual net income,[3] comes in a group which includes the following counties: Shropshire (£1,966), Lancashire (£1,698), Durham (£1,515), Cumberland (£1,311) and Northumberland (£1,177).[4] It takes its comparatively low position not because it possessed any houses of exceptional smallness or poverty at the time the valuation from which the above figures were taken (1535), but because all the houses were of moderate size without there being any very wealthy abbeys to inflate exceptionally the total. The richest house in the county, Burton Abbey, was only rated at £412 5s. net income.[5] On the whole the Staffordshire houses represent the monasteries of average income, with no great and famous abbeys to monopolise the attention and interest and to introduce exceptional elements. The history of the suppression in Staffordshire will illustrate the suppression of the ordinary religious houses. That of the great and famous abbeys is well known, but it will be interesting to see how the ordinary average houses fell.

The Staffordshire monasteries were, however, sufficiently varied in situation and character to make their history worth studying. They were by no means all of one type, nor were they all, in the sixteenth century, similarly circumstanced. They represented the four great orders of monks: Benedictine, Austin, Cluniac, and Cistercian, and there were houses of Dominican and Franciscan Friars, as well as of the later Austin Friars. Burton Abbey was a house large enough to be involved in national politics; Calwich was so insignificant that the Government was able to suppress it illegally without protest or remark. Between these were some dozen houses, small enough to come within the scope of the Act for the dissolution of the lesser monasteries, yet nearly all able to purchase exemption from its provisions. Some, like Stone, stood close to busy highways; some, like Croxden, in its secluded valley, lay remote from towns and even villages; others stood near the well-to-do market towns of Stafford, Leek, and Lichfield. They had originated in various ways. St. Modwen’s Abbey at Burton-on-Trent was the foundation of Wulfric Spot, patriot and soldier, in 1004; where the road crossed the Trent he founded and richly endowed the Benedictine abbey on a site which already had sacred associations. Beside it grew a flourishing town. In its Scriptorium was compiled one of the most valuable of the English monastic chronicles. Kings and prelates lodged within its walls. Burton Abbey played a part in national history more than once. Another Benedictine house arose before the Norman Conquest. Burchard, the third son of Algar, whose other sons were the traitors Edwin and Morcar, accompanied Archbishop Aldred to Rome when he went to fetch his pallium and to obtain papal authorization for the privileges of the Confessor’s new abbey at Westminster. Returning, Burchard fell ill at Rheims, and, dying, was buried within the precincts of the Abbey of St. Remigius there. In gratitude Algar gave to St. Remigius the “villa” of Lapley in Staffordshire, and a priory was built there as a cell dependent on the house at Rheims. In acknowledgment of the help which the Norman invaders had received from the prayers of the Norman monks, Henry de Ferrers established near his castle at Tutbury a priory dependent on the great Abbey of St. Peter-sur-Dive. More worldly motives caused the erection of other houses. Trentham was founded by Hugh, Earl of Chester, as a help towards re-establishing the authority and pre-eminence he had lost in Staffordshire when the Palatine Earldom of Chester was created. Robert de Stafford re-founded Stone as an Austin Priory in order to assist in the building up of a great estate in the district (c. 1130). Trentham became an Austin Priory when Earl Ralf of Chester left, on his death-bed, 100 solidates of Trentham Manor to restore it. The vicar of the parish, John, who was the Earl’s Chaplain, became Prior, and for thirty years the endowment continued to be paid to him alone. Not till 1195 was it transferred to “the Canons.”

Such an arrangement illustrates the distinctive feature of the Austin Canons. They lived in modified seclusion. They were parish priests living in community. The rule of St. Augustine represented an attempt at monastic reform by the method of compromise. Other Austin Priories were: Rocester, founded in 1146 by Richard Bacon, nephew of the Earl of Chester; Calwich, given to Kenilworth by Nicholas de Gresley Fitz Nigel; St. John’s, Lichfield, built by Bishop Roger de Clinton when he raised strong walls round the Cathedral close in the reign of Stephen; Ronton, founded by Robert Fitz Noel, who had obtained an estate in Staffordshire through his marriage to the daughter of Bishop Robert de Limesey (1086–1117), as a cell to Haughmond; and St. Thomas’s, Stafford. The origin of the last was particularly interesting. Richard de Peche, Bishop of the Diocese, was one of the friends of Becket. He took part in his consecration, and soon after the murder he dedicated a priory at Stafford to the memory of St. Thomas the Martyr, on land given by a wealthy burgess. When he felt his own end approaching, soon after, he resigned the bishopric and retired to the priory, where shortly after he died and was buried (1182).

The relations between the Austin Canons and the parishes were close, as we have seen. Portions of their houses were often used as parish churches. Just as the Vicar at Trentham became the head of the priory also, so at Stone the priory absorbed the church. At Rocester there was such doubt in the fourteenth century as to the proper place at which the parishioners ought to make their Easter Communions that the matter had to be referred to Bishop Norbury, and he left the matter undecided. At the dissolution of the Priory the parishioners were able to secure three bells for their own use on the plea that these had wont to be rung for parochial services as well as for those of the Canons. When the bishop cited to his visitations the churchwardens and synodsmen (“sidesmen”) of the churches served by Austin priories, he wrote to the Convents. It was often the practice, for instance at Rocester, for the senior canon, next after the Prior, to hold the vicarage.

The Cluniac Order was a revision of the Benedictine rule. Its object was to bring reform; but the abolition of the obligation to perform manual labour, which formed so excellent a feature of the original Benedictine system, merely increased opportunities for idleness. The earliest Cluniac house in Staffordshire arose at Canwell, in the reign of Stephen. It was the foundation, in 1142, of the widow of Justice Geoffrey Ridel, who had perished twenty years before in the disaster to the White Ship. Another Cluniac house was built at Dudley, as a cell to Wenlock. It was founded by Gervase Paganel, Baron of Dudley (1161), in fulfilment of his father’s intentions.

The Cistercian Order was another revision of the Benedictine rule. Instead of relaxing the strictness of the original rule, the Cistercians aimed at increased austerity and simplicity. In the reign of Stephen a small company of recluses fled from the anarchy and lawlessness around them to Radmore, in the recesses of Cannock Chase. For some years they lived, men and women, independently of any of the recognised Orders, but the place was too remote and the state of the country too disorderly for such a defenceless position. They soon had to join one of the great Orders. By the advice of the Empress Matilda they chose the Cistercian and dismissed the women. But food was difficult to obtain, the foresters made frequent depredations, life became impossible even for Cistercians, and they had to remove to Stoneleigh, in Warwickshire.

The Cistercians, whose rule ordered in civitatibus, castellis, villis, nulla nostra construenda sunt cenobia, sed in locis a conversatione hominum semotis, had to wait another generation before they could obtain a footing in the county. They must follow, not precede, order and police. The establishment of a Cistercian house, therefore, is an evident token that law reigned in the district where it arose. The Cistercians aimed at being, not scholars and statesmen such as the Benedictines had become, but farmers, and this feature commended them to all who desired the cultivation and civilisation of the waste tracts into which the Benedictines had never penetrated. The latter had become great landowners, with numerous flourishing towns belonging to them, and wide estates well cultivated. The land unoccupied by the Benedictines was wild and rough, but offering opportunities for pasturage. To pasturage, therefore, the Cistercians devoted themselves; and the growth of the wool trade, which arose almost at the same time as they came into favour, made them masters of the most profitable branch of English industry.

Bertram de Verdun, lord of Alton, occupied a middle position between the old feudal aristocracy and the new men who were becoming their rivals. He married Earl Ferrers’ niece, and by his father’s marriage was connected with Geoffrey de Clinton, Henry I’s Chamberlain. He himself was one of Henry II’s most trusted and trustworthy officials. On a visit to his relative, the Constable of Normandy, he was taken to see the Cistercian house which the Constable’s step-father had founded. De Verdun was so impressed that he determined to found a similar house in Staffordshire, where the growth of law and order gave opportunity for developing his lands. He requested the Abbot of Aunay to send some of his monks to the site he offered near Alton. Two years later (1180) they removed to a more suitable spot a few miles distant, where the beautiful ruins of Croxden Abbey still stand. They well illustrate the simplicity which characterised Cistercian architecture, though the church was almost unique among houses of the order in England in having a semi-circular apse with five radiating chapels, instead of the usual plain square end.[6] This was copied from the parent house at Aunay, and it emphasises the peculiarity that Croxden, unlike most of the Cistercian abbeys in England, was the offshoot of a foreign house.

Farther northwards the Cistercians could not yet penetrate. But the Earls of Chester were meanwhile engaged in developing the estates they held there, and early in the thirteenth century Ralf Blundeville, who played an independent and honourable part in the difficult and dishonourable times of King John’s reign, was strong enough to take definite steps. He established a market at Leek in 1208. In 1214, the very year when the Papal Legate received at Burton Abbey Archbishop Langton’s spirited protest against his intrusion into the affairs of the State and Church of England, Ralf Blundeville founded the abbey at Dieulacres. The site was a little north of Leek. He gave it to the Cistercians, the skilful farmers and agriculturists, bestowing upon them wide lands and extensive privileges. They were to be his agents for the civilisation of the Moorlands, and well they performed their work. Soon afterwards a third Cistercian house was founded at Hulton by Henry de Audley, constable of the neighbouring castle of Newcastle-under-Lyme, who had for some time been engaged in building up an estate there. Hulton Abbey had, later, a pottery where tiles and other articles were made. There were nunneries at Brewood, on the western border of the county, and at Fairwell, near the road between Lichfield and Rugeley. Both were Benedictine. The friars reached Staffordshire in the reign of Henry III. There were Grey Friars at Lichfield and Stafford and Black Friars at Newcastle-under-Lyme. At Radford, near Stafford, a house of Lepers, with a master and friars of the Holy Sepulchre, stood for some time. The house of the Austin Friars, at Stafford, was founded by Ralf, Baron of Stafford, in the reign of Edward III. At Lees the Priory of Rocester maintained a chantry, or cell. The Knights Templars had a Preceptory at Keele.

The monasteries and nunneries were usually well endowed, and most of them became possessed of considerable worldly possessions. The records of the Dissolution disclose lists of manors, granges, tenements, water-mills, fulling mills, and salt pans, which produced large revenues. From appropriated livings, tithes and oblations were drawn away from the places where they were paid, for the benefit of the distant monastery. Fees were sometimes paid on admission to the Community. Did a son obtain ordination through the help of the monks, how could the father better show his gratitude than by making them a gift? Lights and masses were endowed. The monks had command of ready money and were able to lend to those who required cash, it might be to those overtaken by sudden necessity or to some desirous of making a pilgrimage. When a verderer of Cannock, in the thirteenth century, rendered himself liable to the severe penalties of the Forest Laws, he fled for his life beyond the seas and sold his manor to St. Thomas’s Priory at Stafford.[7] Corrodies originally were a form of life assurance.[8] For a lump sum Dieulacres sold a corrody to a Jew, consisting of food and clothing for life.[9] It was an attractive though shortsighted method of obtaining money or lands, for the corrodies sometimes entailed a severe strain, and there are complaints of the non-fulfilment of the obligations. In 1294 the Prior of Stone was fined for having wrongfully deprived a man of his corrody, which consisted of a daily loaf of bread and a gallon of ale, with a canon’s habit worth a mark yearly, provender for horse and keep for groom, four cartloads of wood annually, and two candles a night from Hallowmas to Candlemas.[10] Corrodies led to further difficulties. Founders and kings claimed the right of nomination. So early as Edward I’s reign Dieulacres had a contention with the King on the subject. Such demands often became a grave abuse, and there are numberless instances, especially in such reigns as those of Edward II and Richard II, of the quartering on the monasteries of discharged soldiers and worn-out officials. The Bishop of Lichfield once demanded from Tutbury a corrody for his cook, but Archbishop Peckham forbade it to be granted. The practice continued to the very end. Even so late as 1532 we find the servants of the Duke of Richmond, Henry VIII’s natural son, billeted in the English monasteries during their master’s absence on the Continent.[11]

Monastic hospitality was often grievously abused. No doubt when kings and other great men lodged in the monasteries they usually made some acknowledgment. But the Priory of Stone complained to Bishop Norbury (1322–59) that it was impoverished by the many claims which were made on its hospitality by travellers of every degree in consequence of its being juxta viam regiam, and in 1382 Burton made a similar complaint to the Pope. In the early years of Henry VI’s reign Burton was absolutely insolvent and was put into commission for seven years.[12]

Many houses had the privilege of holding fairs and markets. Croxden, Dieulacres, Rocester and Burton did a brisk trade with foreign wool merchants in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and their wool was almost unexcelled in England. Edward III once exacted 600 sacks of wool from Staffordshire at a low rate, and the Croxden annalist says he failed to pay even that. Sometimes the business transactions of the monks were questionable: In 1457 the Prior of St. Thomas’s, Stafford, was sued for £10 damages for having sold a horse sciens equum illum in varias infirmitates collapsum et ad laborandum impotentem.[13] Sometimes, especially in the case of the friars in the towns, strong opposition was raised. In 1282 the King had to intervene to protect the friars minors at Stafford, as it appeared that certain regrators put hindrances in the way of their purchasing even daily victuals, and at times even snatched out of their hands what they had bought.[14]

But the religious rendered real services to the towns. Burton grew up beside the Abbey walls, built very largely under the direction of the abbots through many generations. Abbot Nicholas built the first street in the twelfth century, and the fifteenth abbot, Thomas de Felde, built the great hall in the market place. Later still Abbot Beyne founded the Grammar School.

Of these houses the following remained till the sixteenth century: Brewood Nunnery, Burton Abbey, Calwich Priory, Canwell Priory, Croxden Abbey, Dieulacres Abbey, Dudley Priory, Fairwell Nunnery, Hulton Abbey, Rocester Abbey, Ronton Priory, Sandwell Priory, St. Thomas’s Priory at Stafford, St. John’s Priory at Lichfield, Stone Priory, Trentham Priory, and Tutbury Priory; and the friaries at Lichfield, Stafford and Newcastle-under-Lyme. It is with the dissolution of these that we shall be concerned. They were not pre-eminent for size, wealth, vice or virtue; they did not give to the history of the Reformation any famous names or contribute any striking episodes. They represent, rather, the ordinary “rank and file” of the religious houses. For that reason they are, perhaps, the better worth investigation, because they are typical of the average.

It is the exceptional which attracts attention, but it is the ordinary which better represents the truth. If, therefore, we can obtain a correct estimate of the conditions of the Staffordshire houses at the time of their surrender we may fairly safely accept it as a tolerably accurate picture of the condition of English monasticism as a whole. The accounts which the records give of the manner and details of the suppression in Staffordshire represent in all probability the ordinary course of that great undertaking everywhere. The results which followed, the settlements which were made, and the new arrangements which became necessary in Staffordshire, are probably typical of those which followed in the great majority of places. By restricting our scrutiny we may obtain a better view.

CHAPTER II
PRECEDENTS FOR SUPPRESSION

The Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII is popularly represented as an isolated act, standing alone in the nation’s history. Except that it was on an exceptionally large scale, such is very far from being the fact. It was, indeed, only the last stage in a process which had long been in progress. The Suppression, in 1312, of the Knights Templars, who had a Preceptory in Staffordshire at Keele, was the first great destruction of a Religious Order, and it must not be forgotten that it was the work of the Papacy. A century later Henry V, for financial and political reasons, suppressed the Alien Priories, Lapley, in Staffordshire, among them. During the following hundred years, which intervene before we arrive at the time with which we are more immediately concerned, such great ecclesiastics as Wykeham, Chichele, Waynflete, Fisher, and Alcock, had all laid hands on monastic wealth for educational purposes. Even the great Dissolution of the sixteenth century was no idea suddenly conceived at the moment. It was itself, again, the last phase of a movement which naturally developed. It was one of the Acts of a great drama.

The suppressions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had fatally weakened the idea that property devoted to religious purposes was for ever inviolable. The intentions of Founders could no longer be sacrosanct. The tendency was, not even to ask whether the monasteries were fulfilling the objects for which they had been founded, but rather, whether they were needed. The New Learning had little respect for old foundations, and Staffordshire had an early example of the way it would deal with endowments.

William Smythe was Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry from 1493 to 1496. As Lord President of the Welsh Marches he was mainly employed in unepiscopal work, Thomas Fort, Prior of Stone, acting as his suffragan. He founded Brasenose College, at Oxford, and boldly diverted monastic endowments into new channels. In 1495 he suppressed the Austin Priory of St. John at Lichfield, and used the site and property for a Grammar School and Almshouses. Such action obviously indicates that at Lichfield, at any rate, there was neglect of charity and education by the “religious,” otherwise Bishop Smythe would have had no need to suppress St. John’s Priory.

Bishop Smythe was an early Wolsey, on a small scale. The Cardinal, like the Bishop, was a politician rather than an ecclesiastic, and he, too, laid bold hands on monastic endowments for educational purposes.

Of course Wolsey’s work was much more important than Bishop Smythe’s, and the history of Staffordshire shows in some measure how it was accomplished. He became Chancellor in 1515 and sought from the Pope visitatorial powers over the English monasteries. Such authority for a royal official was little of a novelty. The King had always claimed to have considerable power in the religious houses, and had often exercised it. The royal license was necessary before a new Superior could be elected, and during the vacancy the temporalities were taken over and administered by royal officials. The election, when made, required the royal assent. In all sorts of ways the royal power made itself felt in the religious houses. It was continually interfering in their internal affairs, as we shall see fully when we approach the time of the General Dissolution. It was able to bring such considerable influence to bear in elections that requests were made for headships just as for other appointments which were properly in the gift of the Government.[15] The right of nominating to corrodies, always claimed and constantly exercised, would of itself ensure the presence of representatives of the King and his opinions in the religious houses. How widely the right was interpreted in the sixteenth century may be gathered from the claim made by the Duke of Richmond, Henry VIII’s illegitimate son, in 1532. In that year he wrote from Calais to the Prior of Tutbury, informing him that he had been sent on a mission to France and that the King’s pleasure was that such of his servants as remained behind in England should be established in religious houses, “of whom,” the letter says, “Robert Amyas, clerk of my jewel house, is appointed to abide at your monastery.”[16] Even so recently as 1490 the King had exercised the powers which Wolsey desired, and by papal authorisation.

Wolsey, therefore, knew he was on safe ground in making his request to the Pope. After some delay, Leo X granted the desired authority (1518), and Wolsey issued statutes for the Austin Canons next year.

He soon began his splendid educational schemes. With some difficulty he obtained the Pope’s consent (April, 1524) to use the revenues of St. Frideswide’s at Oxford (where Reginald Pole, a Staffordshire man, while a student at Oxford, had had a pension, though he was of Royal lineage) towards the endowment of the college he was founding.[17] This, of course, was quite insufficient for the splendid scheme he had in mind, and many further negotiations with the Pope resulted in a series of grudgingly granted Bulls during several years. Meanwhile, Wolsey proceeded with his work. The single house he had obtained was by no means all he intended to appropriate, and he had already drawn up the draft of a license for incorporating for the use of his college at Oxford twenty-one other houses, including those at Canwell and Sandwell,[18] in Staffordshire. It is a Latin document of eleven pages, and is in Wriothesley’s handwriting.

In 1514 there had been but a single inmate at Canwell available for appointment to the office of Prior. As a Cluniac house it had never received adequate supervision, and had often been unsatisfactory: long ago one of its canons had become a murderer.[19] Sandwell had been on the verge of bankruptcy, with discreditable canons, wasteful and unbusiness-like management, violent altercations with neighbours and armed “religious” rivals. Its buildings were in bad repair. Both houses were ripe for dissolution.

The deed for the dissolution of St. Mary’s, Sandwell, by William Burbank, LL.D., is dated February, 1524.[20] It is a Latin document of twenty-three pages, written on vellum, signed by Prior John and sealed by Burbank. The witnesses are Thomas Cromwell, John Clifton (chaplain), Roland Rokyn, and John Lupton. The house was not absolutely closed; provision was made for the religious services to be maintained, and the servants and inmates who were dismissed were recompensed. The yearly value was £12 in spiritualities and £26 8s. 7d. in temporalities.[21]

Clement VII’s Bull authorising this did not issue till six months later. It permitted the suppression of monasteries to the value of 3,000 ducats, and was dated September 11th. It received the royal assent on October 1st.[22] It included Sandwell and, obviously, Canwell, though the writing is partly defaced. On the 13th of January, 1526, Letters Patent were signed at Greenwich, and delivered at Westminster on January 20th, granting to Wolsey the sites, etc., of St. Mary’s, Sandwell, and St. Giles’s, Canwell,[23] with lands in Staffordshire at Sandwell, West Bromwich, Dudley, Tipton, Magna and Parva Bar, Harborne, Wernell, Coston, Wombourn, Wednesbury, Feccham, Canwell, Drayton, Hyns, Wyfford, Packington, Bittertone, Tamworth, Whittington, Elford, and Farysley. Canwell was worth £10 in spiritualities and £15 0s. 3d. in temporalities. No time was lost. On February 10th the houses were transferred to John Higden, dean of Cardinal’s College, the grant being sealed with Wolsey’s seal, which, enclosed in an iron case at the foot of the vellum, remains to this day a splendid impression.[24] The records of the estates were put into excellent order. William Brabazon surveyed the Manor of Canwell, and has left a full and detailed description of church, manor-house, ou-buildings, and land, with full details, measurements, rental, amount of timber, etc. The church was 84 feet long and 23 feet wide, with a tiled roof. It had a ruinous Lady Chapel on the north side 42 feet long and 14 feet wide, and bells worth £33 6s. 8d. The manor-house was 69 feet long by 15 feet wide, with one side tiled and the other thatched, and three rooms above and below, but its timber was in a bad state. There was a hall and kitchen, the latter also ruinous, a three-roomed stable, a kiln, bolting house, and chamber for corn, dove-house, and a large barn 112 feet by 28 feet. We have also a detailed list of the cottagers by name, with their rents (1d. per annum per cottage), dated the 13th of March, 1526.[25] A præcipe for a fine relating to the possessions of Canwell, and a lease and a conveyance of Sandwell, show that the former had been dissolved by the year 1527.[26] Its founder, Lord Lisle, had released his title by fine. The latter was “given” by Edward, Lord Dudley.

The same business-like procedure was followed in making over the endowments to the College. The estates having been carefully and fully surveyed, a complete “Register” of all the documents was delivered to Dr. Higden, under date 21st of June, 1527. The Dean himself was a keen business man, like all the men who enjoyed Wolsey’s favour, and at once set about improving the revenues, visiting the estates, and raising the rents where it was possible to do so.[27]

The suppression of the monasteries formed part of the charges laid against Wolsey on his impeachment. Dean Higden’s raising of the rents was charged against the Cardinal, who was also accused of “shamefully slandering many good religious houses and good virtuous men living in them,” as well as often forcing suppressions by “crafty persuasions.” The houses alleged to be so wrongfully suppressed were, however, by no means restored on his fall. Full details of them were obtained by Commissions of local gentry: Sir John Gifford, Sir Edward Aston, Edward Lyttleton, and John Vernon, acted in Staffordshire. Then, whatever still remained was sold. William Burbank and Thomas Cromwell did this work at Canwell and Sandwell.[28] The sale at the former reached £8 and at the latter £21. The bells at Sandwell were worth £33 6s. 8d., and at Canwell £13 6s. 8d., and debts and rents due at Lady-day amounted to £189 10s. On the other hand, there were the costs of Burbank and Cromwell for their journey from Tickford to Sandwell, and for their five days’ stay at Sandwell and three days’ at Canwell. The fees of the “Praysors” were 3s. 4d.; and one of the monks at Canwell was paid £1 in wages, and another 6s. 8d. The Prior’s father and the servants also received payments. The work was done thoroughly. The establishment evidently had been leniently dealt with, and indeed to a considerable extent maintained, so long as Wolsey lived, but now the religious life, at least, ceased, for we may conclude that the sale of the bells implies that the churches were closed or put to secular uses.

In the re-arrangement of the endowments of Wolsey’s College, Canwell was spared for it, and so was Sandwell, but the rectories belonging to the latter and the manor at the former were assigned to the College at Windsor. The Prior of Shene also received some of the lands at Sandwell, and John Voysey, alias Harmon, Bishop of Exeter, made purchases at Canwell. The “total issues” from the Staffordshire houses are set down in the Account Book of the College for 1530 as £31 7s. from Sandwell and £14 6s. from Canwell.[29]

Bishop Geoffrey Blythe was another of the products of the New Learning: a suspect by reason of his advanced opinions, yet a burner of heretics; the ordainer of Colet and the rejector as indoctus et indignus of a Canon of Ronton nominated to a vicarage in 1530; the acceptor so early as 1530 of Henry VIII’s refusal to allow an appeal to Rome which the Bishops of the Province of Canterbury made against Archbishop Warham in regard to probate.

While Wolsey was appropriating monastic endowments for the benefit of learning, Bishop Blythe was engaged in similar work, and he obtained Wolsey’s help in suppressing the Benedictine Nunnery at Fairwell.

In 1526 the diocese had received a visit from the Cardinal in person. In March he came to the Cathedral in his capacity of Legate a latere, formally to investigate a complaint of the vicars. It did not contribute to his popularity, and was met by a protest on the part of the Great Chapter. However, he examined and ratified the Cathedral statutes; and probably during the Visitation, which lasted from March 5th to April 4th, Bishop Blythe discussed the condition of Fairwell with the Cardinal, and received from him advice and encouragement.

Fairwell Nunnery had been founded by Bishop Roger de Clinton (1129–1148), a few miles from Lichfield. Bishop Norbury, on a visitation, had found various delinquencies which caused him to issue a series of detailed injunctions in 1331.[30] They had to be translated into French as the nuns did not understand Latin. In 1367 Bishop Stretton again exercised his authority and in the same way. From the orders he issued[31] we are able to gather the nature of the things complained of. The laudable practice of going for walks in common was commended, but none were to go out without two others for company, and then only by leave of the Prioress. The threefold vow was to be observed, and also the periods of silence. Such secular women, except necessary servants, as were living within the nunnery were to obtain the Bishop’s license or to be dismissed, and the same order was issued with regard to male children. The accounts were to be laid before the whole Convent yearly at least, and grants of land were to require the Bishop’s authorization. There had been too much luxury, and all were ordered to take their meals in the Guest Hall, where, alone, except in cases of sickness or other reasonable cause, a fire was permissible.

In March, 1527, a Commission was sealed by Wolsey at Hampton Court empowering Richard Strete, B.D., Archdeacon of Salop and Canon of Lichfield, and William Clayborough, LL.D., Canon of York, to complete the suppression of Fairwell.[32] The nuns and chaplains were to be translated to other houses, and the goods of the house were to go to the Dean and Chapter of Lichfield for the support of the choristers. The formal grant to the Dean and Chapter, of the Nunnery and all its possessions, was made on August 28th following.[33] In return they bound themselves to say an annual Obit for the Bishop.

Such work as that which has been described—work on a small scale by Bishops Smythe and Blythe, and on a larger scale by Wolsey—became of very great historical importance. It revived the memory of the destruction of the Knights Templars and the confiscation of the Alien Priories, and familiarised public opinion in the earlier years of the sixteenth century with the idea of monastic dissolutions. That no suspicion of personal cupidity or of self-interest could be laid against any of the authors was in itself of great value to the men who afterwards followed in their footsteps with very different motives. The genuine disinterestedness of purpose which prompted these earlier “reformers” went far to blind the public to the real objects of the later. And Wolsey’s dissolutions did much more. They not only supplied contemporary examples and revived old precedents; they not only gave practical effect to the tendency of the New Learning to disparage old forms of religious life; they actually trained up experts in the work of suppressing religious houses. Thomas Cromwell made, as Wolsey’s secretary, his first essays in the art which was afterwards to gain for him the name of the “Hammer of the Monks.” We have seen him busy in the case of both the Staffordshire houses which were dissolved by the Cardinal. Richard Strete, too, we shall soon meet again.

Cromwell, even at this early stage of his career, earned a reputation for unscrupulous harshness, and susceptibility to bribery; but on the whole it is evident that these suppressions were accomplished with the least possible friction. The interests of all who were involved—patrons, monks, servants, tenants, were considered and recognised. And the general results to learning were undoubtedly good.

CHAPTER III
AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL SUPPRESSION

When the assembly, which has gained for itself the name of the Reformation Parliament, met, the air was full of rumours of attacks upon the clergy. The French Ambassador reported: “it is the intention, when Wolsey is dead or destroyed, to get rid of the Church and spoil the goods of both.” Parliament assembled on November 3rd, 1530, and to the Convocation which was called at the same time the heads of the following religious houses in Staffordshire were summoned: Burton, Rocester, Dieulacres, Hulton, Croxden, Tutbury, Stone, St. Thomas (Stafford), Trentham, Ronton, Calwich, and Dudley. Sandwell and Canwell had, of course, disappeared recently. The Bishop of the diocese was Geoffrey Blythe. Archdeacon Strete was one of the Proctors for the clergy.

The Prior of Calwich, who was summoned, died just at this juncture, and the dispute which arose as to the appointment of a successor enabled the Crown to assert its supremacy at the expense of all parties concerned.

Calwich had originally been a hermitage, and had been given by Nicholas de Gresley Fitz Nigel in the twelfth century to the Priory of Kenilworth. It had thus become a cell of that house, and came under the rules of the Austin Canons. A considerable amount of building had been done at Calwich in the latter part of the fourteenth century: in 1391 the Pope granted Indulgences to those who visited the place and made contributions to the fabric on the feast of St. Margaret and certain other days. The history of Calwich illustrates how the dependent “cells” were a source of weakness to the monastic system. Such houses were often unsatisfactory. They were sometimes looked upon as places of banishment for brethren who deserved punishment: a method of discipline akin to the later system of penal settlements like Botany Bay, and as likely to be productive of the very worst results. The very men who needed supervision would be freed from it, and the remedy would intensify the evil. In any case, such small communities would easily become engrossed in secular pursuits: their interests were narrowed, and their occupation small.

Disputes arose between the dependent cells and the parent house, and the inmates of the cells often became unpopular with their neighbours. In 1293 the dependence of Calwich on Kenilworth was made the excuse for depriving its Prior of pasture rights in the Wootton Woods, it being asserted that he was removable at the will of the Prior of Kenilworth. This, indeed, was strikingly shown to be the case in 1334, when the Prior, although duly instituted, was recalled by the Prior of Kenilworth. The Prior of Calwich in 1293 denied that he held such a dependent position, but the local jury, to whom the case was referred, decided against him. Local feeling was hostile to the Canons, much as it was afterwards against the Alien Priories, and Calwich had to forego further rights of gallows and free warren, etc., in the manor of Ellastone. The parent house did not relax its hold or lessen its claims at the bidding of a Staffordshire jury. In 1334 the Bishop inquired into the matter and decided in favour of Kenilworth. This apparently brought matters to a crisis, for in 1349 the four resident Canons pleaded that they could no longer endure the uncertainty of their position and the unpopularity they experienced. They succeeded in having their house declared independent, under the patronage of the original founders, who undertook to pay yearly a sum of sixty shillings to Kenilworth in acknowledgment of its rights.

The house gained nothing by its independence, but rather the reverse. The Prior found his subjection to the lay-patron involved him in litigation, without gaining him protection from the jealousy of neighbours. The house shared in the general decline in wealth and numbers after the Black Death. In 1384 Bishop Robert de Stretton appointed the Prior and Canons of Calwich to be the collectors in the Archdeaconry of Stafford of the Convocation grant, but they petitioned to be excused on the plea of infirmity, poverty, and smallness of numbers (there were only two Canons besides the Prior).

It sank lower and lower. In 1438 the Prior was charged with the forcible detention of ten oxen and eight cows, for which damages to the amount of £20 were claimed. Twenty years after he was troubled by neighbours breaking into his close, cutting down his underwood and letting loose their cattle to graze upon his pastures.

Accordingly, when the Prior died in 1530, the house was a poor place with a bad record. In accordance with the usual practice, the Priory was taken into the royal hands during the vacancy; and the subsequent story affords an interesting illustration of the way in which the attack on clerical privileges which was carried on in the early years of the Reformation Parliament, was supported by irregular movements in detail. It also helps us to see how the great work of the Suppression of the Monasteries was the independent work of the Government. They made use of Parliamentary support and sanction when it was convenient or wise, but the work was in reality their own. The suppression of Calwich was never referred to Parliament. It aroused no feeling and evoked no protest from anyone. It was evidently looked upon as quite a natural exercise of the royal power.

On the Prior’s death there was but one remaining canon, Dr. David Pole, or Powle;[34] and the representative of the original founder of the Priory, Ralf Longford, claimed the right of presentation, and sent an agent, furnished with means, to London to press his claim. Dr. Roland Lee was one of the King’s Chaplains, and Chancellor of Lichfield. Richard Strete, the Archdeacon of Salop, Cromwell’s agent in the district, wrote to Lee in London informing him of the position of affairs at Calwich, on April 6th, 1530, adding that he could find no record of such a right as Longford claimed, and arguing that it should not be allowed. It was convenient now to assert the Bishop’s right of appointment. Lord Shrewsbury also put forward claims in virtue of donations to the house by past members of his family. There were other claimants, and the result was that various persons were recommended for the preferment. All this helped to play into the hands of the enemy. Strete’s conclusion was that it would be well to consult with Cromwell as to what should be done. Later, Strete wrote fully to Cromwell himself, repeating the same information and giving in detail an account of the spoil that might be expected from the house.[35]

“My duty done, according to your lettres datyd penultimo die Aprilis, I have ben at Calwich, and takyn an inventary of the goodes of that house by indenture and committyd the keping and garding of all thinges ther to thabbott of Rowceter ij myles thens, and on of his brethren abidith at Calwich to overse them who hath kept the sequestre syns the departur of the late prior. The valour of the goodes and laundes foloith.

Inprimis, household very course, as doith appere by particlars in the inventaryxvli.xiijs.ijd.
Item, in catall, as oxen, kye, horses, mares, shepe old and yongelxxixli.xvs.iiijd.
Item, in corne, apon the groundexjli.vjs.viijd.
Item, stuff for the church, as chales and vestmentes, etc.xli.ixs.viijd.
Summacxvijli.iiijs.xd.
Item, the demeanes lyen roundabowt the house, and ben worth yerelyxxiijli.xijs.
Item, other tenthes yerelyxvijli.viijs.jd.ob.
Item, the paroch church of Ellaston to that monastery appropriat, besyde the Vicar indomentxiijli.vjs.viiijd.

“In these is no harde peneworth: the house and other byldinges be in mean good state of reparacion. I have dischargyd and put forth such persons as were not mete to be ther, and laft such as be husbaundes, and I have made sure the convent saill, and the evidence.

“The first founder ther was Nich. Gresley, in whose title now claymyth Mr. Longford (as men here report). Ther be diverse benefactours that hath gyffyn landes to that house, as it doith appere, viz., my lord Stuard, sir Henrie Saucheverell, Mr. Oker, and other thair ansetors. And thus ye may partly perceyve, and what I can do ferther shalbe redy by God his grace.... Lich. xijo, Maij.

“Yours,

“Richard Strete, preist.”

Wolsey died on November 29th, 1530. Bishop Blythe soon followed him. The exact date does not appear in his Act Books, but it was apparently not long before January 21st, as on that date the Archbishop’s Commission was issued to the Vicar-General to act during the vacancy. Archdeacon Strete was appointed in May “to receive the rents and profits of the same [Bishopric] to the King’s use” during the vacancy. At the same time he received the following letter from Cromwell:[36]

“Mr. Strete after most hertie commendacions these shalbe to advertise you that by the berers hereof ye shall receyve the Kinge’s comission and warraunte gevyng you auctoryte to Survey the londes of the bisshopriche of Coventre and Licheld and to receyve the rentes and profites of the same to the Kinges use. And also ye shall receyve his gracious letteres directed to the Eschetor of the Countie palentyne of Chester uppon the sight whereof I doubte not but he will not onelie Surcease to medle any Ferther with the receipt of any rentes there, but also in case he have receyved any, will repay the same unto your handes accordinglie. Not dowbting but ye will diligentlie, effectuallie, and trewly put in execucion the teanour and effecte of your saide Commyssion in suche wise as shalbe most for your honestie to the Kinges most profite and advantage. And for your paynes and diligence alredy taken and susteyned aboute his affayres there his highnes hathe commaunded me to geve unto you his most hertie thankes. And trustith that ye will so indevour your self in the receipt of the said rentes and revenues as before the feaste of the Natyvyte of Saynt John Baptist next ye will bryng or send up the hole half-yeres rent or the most parte of the same and that ye will have good awayte and regarde to his haukes in the Cauke there wherein ye shall do and admynister unto his highnes right good and acceptable servyce.

“And as touching the Catell at the pryorie of Calliche the kinges gracious pleasure is that ye shall suffer the berers hereof named Fyndern and Curson to have the preferrement in the byeng of the same uppon suche reasonable prises as they may convenyently lyve on taking of them som money in hande and such sufficient bonde and suertie for the residue as the king may be trewly answered of the same. And so Fare ye well &c.

“Your mastership.”

An agreement was made between the King and Longford. The Patron surrendered his claim of presentation, and agreed to the suppression of the house in 1532. He was to hold the lands in farm from the King, and the rent was to be fixed by a local jury. Strete recommended the Abbot of Rocester, Sir William Bassett, Sir John Gifford, and himself, but the Sheriff refused to “affirm” the panel by reason of its manifest partiality.[37] Strete’s inclusion was in itself sufficient to condemn it: in the long letter in which he suggested it he maligned Longford for “slackness,” and recommended Cromwell to press him for £60 which was owing on account of Calwich.

Another claimant to the lands, or part of them, was the Earl of Shrewsbury, and the Sheriff’s panel consisted of the Earl’s tenants. It was, therefore, as little impartial as Strete’s, but it met with the approval of Brabazon,[38] one of Cromwell’s emissaries, who was sent down to Lichfield to help in the business; and evidently no idea of fairness entered the minds of any of the officials. There were other claimants, too, apparently Sir Henry Sacheverell and Mr. Oker (Okeover), but they could be disregarded. Strete and Brabazon used their powers of persuasion, and the members of the jury, having served their lord’s ends by deciding in favour of the Earl’s claim to “a small portion” of the property, were ready to give their decision as the Crown required. Yet they judged it wiser to save appearances by a show of hesitation; they insisted on an adjournment, though at the same time they promised the requisite verdict. This was in the third week in August, 1532. Of course Strete was able to write to Cromwell in due course (October 21st, 1532):[39] “The Office of Calwich is passed for the King.” At that time Longford owed £46 5s. 2d. He had also in his possession the tithes (£13 3s. 4d.) and the last Michaelmas rents (£11 16s.). These he undertook to deliver to Cromwell. An escheator was appointed to receive the dues on the King’s behalf, and on March 11th of the next year we have a note of Cromwell’s (11th March, 1533) that £30 had been received from Strete on the Calwich account. By April 26th the legal formalities were completed, and Strete was able to report to Cromwell: “The Priory of Calwich, now void, rests in the King’s pleasure.”[40] This was the year in which the Act was passed giving to the King the rights of visitation of the religious houses, and, of course, considerably before any Act was passed for their dissolution.

But all was not plain sailing for Longford. In 1534 among the “bills to be signed” was still that of “Sir Ralf Longford for the late Priory of Calwiche.” Moreover, Strete was instructed that Mr. Fitzherbert, Longford’s father-in-law, was to have the tithes and the growing corn “at such prices as may be deemed sufficient,” and Findern and Curson, already mentioned, were repudiated in his favour.

The letter, dated June 14th, 1533, which Cromwell wrote to Archdeacon Strete is as follows:[41]

“Maister Strete as hertelye as I Can I commend me unto you, and whereas by my last letteres I wrott unto you in the Favors of Curson and Fyndern to be prefferyd unto the Catell and Corn of late belongyng to the priorye of Colwyche, and Sythyn that tyme I wrotte unto you on the behalf of Mr. longford for his prefferment unto the demaynes of the sayd pryorye so hit ys that now the sayd maister longford by his Fatherinlaw, Mr. Fyzherbert moche desyryth to have the Tythys and also suche Corn as at thys tyme ys Sown uppon the demaynes of the sayd late pryorye for this yere whych tythe and corn sown uppon the demaynes I require yow that he may haffe at such prysys as ye shall thinke convenyent and in such wyse as the kynge’s highnes may be Substauncyallye answeryd of the proftyttes growing of the same without any Favour to be born to anye othre partye and wher as I wrott in myn other letter that Curson and Fyndern shold have the preffermentt of the Catell and Corn I dyd not wrytt for anye Corne growing on the grownde ne yet for any tythys which in no wyse ye shall Suffer them to have but to order hyt as ys afforsayd most to the kynge’s proffytte advauntage. I well persayve who grauntyth suchemen an Inche they wyll take an ell. I am Infformyd they avaunte them selfs to have Commyssyons and graunttes of the kyng which ys untrew I praye yew advyse them to use no such Facyons. Syr, the kynges highnes trustyth that ye with all spede will bryng up the halfyere’s Ferme and Renttes of the Busshopryche which I praye yow may be here before his gracyous departyng in progresse, and as to the Chanon off Colwyche ye may translate hym unto Sum good howse of that relygyon being nere unto yow and to gyve hym sumthing after your discrecyon suche as may stand with the kynges honour and also to his honest Contentacyon, and thus trustyng in your approvyd wysdom and experyence Commytt all the premysses unto your discrecyon trustyng ever that ye wyll have respect to your dew and charge and also that I may have short answer of thes and other my letteres, and so Fare ye well at London, the xiiiith daye of June.”

Where Dr. David Pole was placed we are not told, but in 1535 a David Pole is found as Prebendary of Tachebroke, in receipt of a stipend of £10 a year.[42]

On February 12th, 1534, Richard Harecourt became the escheator for the year, and remained till November 18th, when another was appointed, who proved to lack the necessary property qualification, so Longford had to pay the King’s dues direct. Next year (November 24th, 1535) Thomas Skrymsher was appointed.

The King now made one of those “exchanges” which became so frequent later. The manor of East Molesey was pleasantly situated on the southern bank of the Thames, in Surrey, and had obvious advantages over the remote estate in North Staffordshire. It belonged to the old and historic priory of Merton, where Becket had been educated, where the Parliament had sat which enacted the statutes of Merton, and which had provided a refuge for the patriot Hubert de Burgh in his days of adversity. Its past fame and present wealth seemed to warrant its inmates in a confident assurance of security, and they agreed to give the King their riverside manor of East Molesey in exchange for the distant and forlorn cell of their Order at Calwich. No doubt they hoped eventually to retrieve its fortunes and to re-establish it as a religious house, though for the present they had to acquiesce in the arrangements regarding it which had just been made. The exchange appears to have been made in 1535–6, and Merton renewed the lease to Longford for £43, with the obligation to discharge the pension of sixty shillings to “the late priory of Kelyngworth.”

Almost immediately the process of squeezing the larger houses began, and Merton Abbey soon succumbed. The date of its surrender, with Abbot and fourteen monks, is April 16th, 1538. The lease of Calwich to Longford was renewed in the same year. In 1540 he obtained an acknowledgment that he had paid all his dues to Cromwell and Gostwick, and was empowered to receive from the various escheators “tayles” (tallies, i.e., receipts) for them. The Augmentation Book in 1543 has a record of his twenty-one years’ lease, but the reversion was sold to John Fleetwood.

Longford soon found himself in financial difficulties. In spite of the grant of Calwich, for which Sir Anthony Fitzherbert wrote to thank Cromwell on April 18th, 1537, he could not pay the rent due. The royal escheators were hard taskmasters, exacting the uttermost farthing, and Fitzherbert’s letter shows Longford had been some time in debt. In 1541 they levied a distraint, and ejected from the estate the tenants to whom Longford had sublet it. He had to enter into a bond of £200 to settle the matter, and this only added to his embarrassments. In 1543 he was in the Fleet, the debtors’ prison, writing piteous appeals for loans wherewith to discharge his indebtedness to the King.

Ralf Longford, his successor in Elizabeth’s reign, on the expiration of the lease made an effort to retain the property, but without success, and Calwich passed to the Fleetwoods. The way they treated the buildings is well known from Erdeswicke’s oft-quoted description. Writing about 1593, he noted how the new owner “hath made a parlour of the chancel, a hall of the church, and a kitchen of the steeple.” It is strange to find the Fleetwoods of Calwich in the lists of Recusants in later years.[43]

CHAPTER IV
PRELIMINARIES TO THE GENERAL SUPPRESSION

For the sake of following up the story of the downfall of Calwich in a connected form it has been necessary to omit the mention of much that meanwhile had been happening. Bishop Blythe’s loyalty would have been severely strained had he lived a few weeks longer. Before the end of January (1531) the Convocation of Canterbury had been compelled to vote the enormous sum of £100,000 in atonement for the fault which had been committed in acknowledging Wolsey’s legatine authority. The Abbot of Croxden was too ill to attend the Session. The Northern Convocation subsequently voted an additional £18,840. The ease with which these huge amounts were raised was to have unsuspected effects. The clergy were also compelled to acknowledge the King “their singular protector, only and supreme lord, and, as far as the law of Christ allows, even Supreme Head,” though it must be remembered that Henry took pains to explain that he understood the expression in no blasphemous sense. Next, it was required that the Convocations should enact no new Canons without royal license. They made a vain attempt to retain some of their powers. On May 8th (1532) a deputation was appointed to wait upon the King to try to induce him to retain clerical immunities. The constitution of the deputation did not augur well for its success. It consisted of Roland Lee, already called Bishop of Lichfield, though he was not consecrated till April 19th next year, the Abbot of Burton-on-Trent, and four others.

The Abbot of Burton-on-Trent was Dr. William Boston. He had been originally a monk of Peterborough, and became Abbot of Burton in 1531. He was one of Cromwell’s satellites, and there are many notes in Cromwell’s “Remembrances” which show that the two were in frequent consultation. It was probably through Cromwell’s influence, and against the wishes of the Convent, that Boston was elected Abbot, for at the next vacancy a strong party still adhered to the monk who ought to have been previously advanced. Roland Lee is a personage who needs no introduction, and we shall have sufficient of him before long.[44]

The deputation failed, if it was intended to preserve any semblance of initiative for Convocation. On May 10th the famous “Submission of the Clergy” was introduced, and on May 15th it was accepted.

At the same time Henry’s passion for Anne Boleyn was driving him further and further from the Pope. The Annates Bill, empowering the King to deprive the Pope of his revenues from England, was passed, for diplomatic reasons, on March 19th. It was at once a threat and a bribe to the Papacy, and its object was to secure the annulling of Katherine’s marriage. A post was sent to Rome “to frighten the Pope about the Annates,”[45] but it failed in achieving its object. Clement VII stood firm; but early in 1533, as was afterwards alleged, the King went through a form of marriage with Anne Boleyn. Among those who were variously stated to have performed the ceremony was Roland Lee. The alienation from the Papacy became much more pronounced as the news of the marriage leaked out, and the passing of the Annates Bill into law became inevitable. The Royal Letters Patent, which made it effective, were issued on July 9th.

In the same Session the Act in Restraint of Appeals to Rome was passed, springing from the same unsavoury origin, and requiring more management in Parliament. Exceptional steps were taken to make sure that the King’s party should be well represented. William Boston had lately been in frequent consultation with Cromwell: he could be depended upon to speed the ecclesiastical legislation then in progress, and in his person the Abbot of Burton for the first time sat in Parliament. His admission is entered on the Rolls as being “by virtue of a writ of summons, dated the 30th of April, 24 Henry VIII.”[46] It may be recalled that meanwhile the house at Calwich was in the last throes of dissolution. It was on October 21st following that Strete reported: “the Office of Calwich is passed for the King.”

But Calwich was not the only Staffordshire house which was receiving Cromwell’s attention at this time. William Boston was speedily rewarded for his support of the royal policy in Parliament by being promoted to the high honour of the Abbacy of Westminster.[47] It was part of Cromwell’s policy to secure the election of complacent nominees to the headships of the religious houses as vacancies occurred. A writer of Elizabeth’s reign, who had been cognisant of the whole history of the period, averred that he deliberately promoted such men as would afterwards further his schemes of confiscation: “He placed abbottes and ffriers in divers great housses, divers lerned men, and perswaded against these superstitiens, which men were readie to make surrender of their houses at the kinges commaundement.”[48]

We have already seen that pressure had been probably brought to bear upon the community at Burton-on-Trent when Boston had been elected. The facts about the election of his successor admit of no dispute. The whole story appears in full in the State papers.

No sooner had William Boston been promoted than Cromwell set about securing the election of a successor of the same type. He sent to the Abbey three men like-minded with himself, Roland Lee, Richard Strete, and Pole. Roland Lee and he had already been companions in much work of an unsavoury nature, of which the business at Burton was comparatively innocent. Strete’s character has already been seen in the matter of the dissolution of Calwich. Pole was Vicar-General. The three were to secure the election of Cromwell’s nominee. But there was much opposition. The majority of the brethren desired to elect one whom ancient custom marked out for the promotion, and it was hoped that the King or the Queen would save them from interference. Cromwell’s nominee was strongly objected to. The plausible Lee, however, assured the monks that in these virtuous days the Court had abjured all undue interference with the freedom of elections, and easily convinced them they had nothing to hope in that quarter. That accomplished, he was confident of success. On June 25th, 1533, he wrote from Burton a report to Cromwell in these words:[49] “This day, with the assistance of Mr. Strete and Mr. Pole, I have travailed with the convent of Burton, but as yet I have no promise, as one part trusts to have from the King, the Queen, and you, a command contrary to that I have from you. I had never so much to do about such matters because the beryn (? bearing—i.e., demeanour, fashion) in the Court hath been that no man durst mell; and those matters were shortly sped. There is one here that by election should have had the Abbey before, and yet by the same shall have it according to the ancient order of the law. I beg you to wait for further knowledge from me. Your furtherance of justice shall not be undeserved. I beg your favour to Master Dutton, Sir Piers,[50] whose only trust is in you. It is better for a man to lose his right arm than sue, but only for your good help, and he will keep his promise to you.”

Two days afterwards he had succeeded in persuading the monks to leave the nomination of their Abbot to him and Strete. He wrote to Cromwell on June 27th: “I sped the election at Burton, and the compromission is in me and Mr. Strete to nominate one of the Convent before the 1st of August.”[51] He apparently had failed to secure the election of Cromwell’s original nominee, but it may be taken for granted that the man appointed by Lee and Strete would be sufficiently amenable for all practical purposes. The monks made a submission, and chose the third Prior, whose name was William Edie. Before August was out the royal assent had been given to his “election.” It was confirmed on 13th April, 1334.[52] He was subsequently summoned to Parliament, when the Act for the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries had to be passed, as will presently be related. Roland Lee was consecrated Bishop of Lichfield on April 19th.

When we find such men as Boston and Edie summoned to the Reformation Parliament, from a house which had not previously supplied mitred Abbots, it is evident that no pains were spared to pack the assembly throughout its existence. It is not surprising, therefore, that it proved compliant and obsequious.

In 1534 the Act of Succession was passed. The Oath of Succession appears to have been taken by all the members of both Houses of Parliament, but it caused the downfall of Sir Thomas More. Dr. Boston, now Abbot of Westminster, was one of the Commissioners appointed to administer the oath of supremacy to Sir Thomas More. On April 13th, 1534, Cranmer pressed the argument of loyalty, and, when More pleaded the claims of conscience, the Abbot of Westminster urged that his conscience should not be set above the opinion of the whole Parliament. More effectively retorted that a general council of Christendom was superior to a council of England, and repeated that he was perfectly willing to respect the succession as ordered by Parliament. As a loyal citizen and as a constitutional statesman he was ready to obey the Parliament in constitutional questions, but could not agree that it had unlimited authority in religion. He could “honour the King,” but at the same time he must “fear God.”

He was committed to the custody of Abbot Boston for four days, probably in the hope that so plausible and compliant an ecclesiastic would succeed in removing his scruples. But his constancy stood firm, and he soon found himself in the Tower, whence he went to the block on June 6th, 1535.

In 1534 further steps were taken to bring the religious houses under royal authority. The royal supremacy was formally established by Act of Parliament, and the King thus took over many of the powers which had been previously claimed by the Pope.

We must be on our guard against attaching too much significance to such legal enactments. It must be borne in mind that a good deal of this kind of lawmaking was not much more than giving statutory expression—often with brutal frankness—to what had long existed in fact. The royal authority had always been what the royal power had been able to make it, little under weak or indifferent kings, strong under masterful ones. The novelties after the period which is called “the Reformation” were in reality much slighter than is generally supposed. Henry VIII, when he exercised authority over the Church by virtue of the Act of Supremacy or in virtue of his title of “Supreme Head,” was not pressing much more hardly on the liberties of his subjects than he had done before the new title had been invented. The history of the Staffordshire monasteries in previous centuries shows abundantly that whenever the King desired he could exercise the most arbitrary control over the religious houses in all sorts of ways. The only effective check before the Reformation was, not “Papal authority,” or “ecclesiastical privileges,” or “religious immunities”—all these could be, and were, overridden and set aside,—but public opinion. Precisely the same check was influential afterwards and to much the same extent as formerly. The skill of Henry VIII and his ministers was shown in the way they won public opinion to their side or crushed it away out of sight. English history, and continental too, has shown again and again that the civil power can never be permanently restrained by “immunities” and “concordats.” The force of circumstances is always liable to be too strong for such artificial arrangements: the power of Parliament must, as a force majeure, be the final arbiter. It may, indeed, be argued that the statutes which seemed to place the English Church beneath the heel of the State, and which for three centuries have given the enemy occasion to blaspheme, gave her in reality a greater measure of freedom than many “unestablished” churches have enjoyed. It may almost be said that modern history has shown that the anxiety of Parliament to assert itself over a non-established church may be greater than over an established church, and that its powers may be exercised in the former case with greater tyranny and offensiveness than in the latter; it has also shown that the powers and titles claimed by King and Parliament in Tudor times were, after all, only “stage properties”: the same authority may be claimed, and the same deeds done, without them.

Henry VIII, having formally taken over the Pope’s authority, was not slow to exercise it. A royal “Reformator and Inquisitor” of Croxden Abbey and many other Cistercian houses was appointed. This was Thomas Chard, alias Tybbes. He is a typical ecclesiastic of the period. He had been a member of St. Bernard’s, now St. John’s College, Oxford, and received the degree of D.D. in 1505, being styled vir doctrina et virtute clarus. He held a large number of preferments, vicarages, and rectories, as well as priorships. He became Prior of Montacute in 1515 (till 1525) and also Prior of Forde in 1521. The latter he held till the priory was dissolved. Meanwhile he was also a suffragan bishop, being styled Episcopus Solubriensis. He was consecrated in 1508, when he was presented to the vicarage of Torrington Parva.[53] The fresh exercise of power and influence to which we have referred is explained in the following commission:

“Henry the eyethe by the grace of gode kyng of Ingelande and of Fraunce defensor of the fayeth and lorde of Yrelande sende gretynge | For as moche as hytt ys Requysytte and thaweth to be most expedyent thordre and Relygyon of Cystercanes to be visyted and Reformyde by Auctorite hade of vs wyrth in thys or Realme of Ingelande and nott be Auctorite hade from beyende the seys for dyv’se cosyderacons hade in the same We tenderyng the good cotynewaunce and mayntaynyg of all man’ catholique Religyon Firmely pceyvyng the indyfferensy dexterite and goode vertuous qualityes and divine lernyng wyche manyfestely bathe and dothe appere in owre trusty and welbeloyde Fadre in gode Thomas Abbott of Forde wherefore we name institute and ordeyne the sayde Abbott of Forde from hense Forde to be visitor Reformator and inquysitor of that Religion duryng hys naturall lyffe of all thos monasterys whos namys Folowyth Any comyssyon or comyssyons here tofore graunted to the contrary nott wyethstandyng that ys to vnderstande, Forde, Buckefaste, Buckelande, Dunckewell, Newham, Clyve, Byndon, Tarraunte, Bewley, Quarre, Letteley, Wav’ley, Rewley, Stanley, Haylys, Bordeley, Kyngewoode, Flaxley, Stratteford, Boxley, Crokedene, Combremeare, Cockehall, Brewern, Garydon, Bedyllisden, Combe, Stoneley, Merevalle, and Thame | Farther we wyll and straytely comande that no other psone or psons of what Estade degre or dygnite so ev’ he or they be but only the sayde Abbott of Forde or his depute do visett Reforme Inquyre or intermelle in any man’ wyse in any of the sayde monsterys afore Rehersyd nor wt any Religyous psone or psons of the same And ferther we wyll [lined through in original] duryng the natrall lyffe of the sayde Abbott of Forde whon we ordayne and depute visotor Reformator Inquysytor as before rehersid More ov’ we give and graunte and by thes presente we auctorisatt the fore sayde Abbott of Forde to destitute and institute any Abbott or Abbotts fro tyme to tyme wtyn all and ev’y of the Foresayde monsterys as the lawys and Rewlys of the sayde ordre dothe and wyll pymtte | And for hys Farther assystence in all and syngler the p’miss and for executyng of the same we wyll and straytely comaunde by vertew of thes or comyssyon all shreffys Mayrys baylyffys Constablys Justyce and all other or offycers in all and ev’y shere and libertie as far as any of thos Abbeys before namyde doth extende and for the executyng of this or Auctoritye comyttyde and gevyn to the foresayde Abbott of Ford | they and ev’y of them to Assyste the fore sayde Abbott of Forde att all tymys and att any tyme that they or any of them shalbe requyred by the sayd abbott of Forde or his depute in and a boute any of the monstreys before Rehersyde in advoydyng or hyeth dyspleasure. And this or comyssion and graunte we wyll to cotynewe in vigour and strengyth.”[54]

Very few of the monks ventured to follow More’s example in regard to the Oath of Succession, but the friars generally refused.

As they did most of the preaching in the parish churches, for the wholesale appropriation of tithes by the monasteries had so impoverished livings that few educated men held them, it was necessary that they should be silenced. Commissioners were accordingly appointed, to whom Roland Lee was afterwards added, to visit all the friaries, take an inventory of their goods, and examine each inmate separately.[55] In this way most of the friars in the provinces were reduced to submission, though Lee harried to death some honourable exceptions in London.

It is no wonder the monks, as a rule, proved amenable, for already it was common rumour that a vast scheme of spoliation was being planned, and they dared not precipitate matters by a bold refusal. The rumour was justified, for Cromwell was privately proposing to hand over all monasteries with less than thirteen inmates “for the maintenance of the royal estate,” though at the same time he publicly assured the monks that there was no such intention.

But the visitatorial powers in regard to them were now transferred to the King, and the first fruits and tenths which had been recently taken from the Pope were also revived as a fresh source of royal revenue. The statute which enacted the latter was entitled “The Bill for the First Fruits,[56] with the yearly pension to the King.” It slightly lessens the offensiveness of the King’s new title, by styling him “the only Supreme Head on Earth, next, and immediately under God, of the Church of England,” and basing even this on the facts of history—“as he always, indeed, hath heretofore been.” Every person nominated to any ecclesiastical preferment, “religious” or “secular,” was to pay to the King “the first-fruits, revenues, and profits, for the year,” and also the tenth part annually. Commissioners were to be appointed to “examine and search for the just and true value of the said first-fruits and profits,” and first-fruits were allowed to no one but the King: it appears that in the Diocese of Norwich they had gone to the Bishop, and in the Archdeaconry of Richmond to the Archdeacon. Priors of dependent cells were exempted from the payment of first-fruits, but not of tenths. “And forasmuch as divers Abbots and Priors been charged to pay great pensions to sundry their Predecessors yet living, to the great Decay of their Hospitalities and Housekeeping; be it enacted by Authority aforesaid, That every such Predecessor of such Abbots or Priors, having any Pensions made sure unto them, or to any to their use, during their Lives, amounting above the yearly value of xlli. shall from henceforth be defalked and abated of the moiety and Halfdeal of every such Pension” (Art. 23). Article 24 expressly includes “the Lord Prior of Saint John’s of Jerusalem in England, and his Brethren” within the scope of the Act.[57] Article 28 “allows” the King to remit what remained as yet unpaid of the Præmunire Fine “in Consideration that the said yearly Pension and annual Rent shall be yearly from henceforth duly paid and satisfied.”

Immediate steps were taken to ensure the due and accurate payment of the new income. In January, 1535, Cromwell procured a Royal Commission appointing himself Vicar-General and Visitor-General of all churches and monasteries, with authority to delegate agents. He set to work in the exercise of his new power with characteristic promptness. On January 30th commissions were issued for each county, to make the necessary investigations for discovering the whole amount of ecclesiastical property for the purpose of levying the tenths. The Staffordshire Commissioners[58] had Bishop Roland Lee for chairman, but he was the only ecclesiastic among them.

The others were Sir John Talbot, Sir John Gifford, George Audeley, John Vernon, Walter Wrottesley, George Gresley, William Bassett, Edward Lyttleton, Thomas Gifford, Thomas Holte, Walter Blounte, John Grosvenor, and Thomas Moreton. They are the usual names which appear among the lists of officials. For example, John Gifford, Edward Lyttleton, and John Vernon had been the Commissioners appointed to investigate the matter of Wolsey’s dissolutions; and the Commissioners for Musters in 1539 included John Gifford, John Vernon, Walter Wrottesley, George Gresley, William Bassett, Edward Lyttleton, and Thomas Gifford.[59] John Vernon was Sheriff in the nineteenth, twenty-fourth, and thirtieth years of the reign; John Gifford in the twenty-second and the thirty-third; Walter Wrottesley in the thirty-eighth; George Gresley in the twenty-ninth; William Bassett in the thirty-fourth; Edward Lyttleton in the thirty-first; Thomas Gifford in the twenty-first. They were eminently “men of affairs,” well acquainted with public and official work.

Detailed instructions were given them.[60] Dividing themselves into sub-commissions, with three members as a quorum, they were to examine upon oath all persons concerned, and to inspect the necessary books and documents. Only certain specified deductions were to be allowed, and names and full details were in all cases to be given.

We know from the Returns of the Commissioners which of them investigated the Rural Deanery of Lapey and Trysull: Sir John Talbot, John Gifford, Walter Wrottesley, and John Grosvenor.[61] When the work had been completed in detail all the Commissioners for each diocese were to meet together and draw up a General Diocesan Return. The result of their work has been published by royal authority as Valor Ecclesiasticus.[62]

It is a document of very great interest and importance. If the readiness with which the clergy raised the enormous fine of £100,000 from the Province of Canterbury and £18,840 0s. lOd. from York, for having acquiesced in Wolsey’s legatine authority, first opened Henry VIII’s eyes to the financial possibilities of the clergy, as may well have been the case, it is probable that the data supplied by Valor Ecclesiasticus showed him how to proceed to further supplies from the same source. To confiscate the whole of the clerical wealth was out of the question, but the Returns, by giving it in detail, made it possible to proceed piecemeal. That the Returns did thus suggest the suppression of monasteries seems to be indicated by the seventh article of the Act for the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries, which points out that those which came within its scope could be ascertained from the Returns which had just been made.

In various ways Valor Ecclesiasticus is the most satisfactory record we have of the economy of the religious houses at the time of their dissolution, in spite of very serious drawbacks which we shall mention. It is, as a rule, plain and definite, and it is the only document we have which professes to give a statement of the monastic economy with any approach to completeness. In both of these respects it is superior to other sources of information. The “Particulars for Grants” relate, of course, only to such portions of the monastic lands as were desired by the applicant who supplied them, and the Computi Ministrorum which are printed at the end of the information about many of the religious houses in Monasticon are also incomplete. They are the first accounts of the possessions of the several monasteries as rendered to the Augmentation Office immediately after the Dissolution by the King’s Ministers and Receivers; but they show that already some of the property had changed hands. They supplement the particulars of Valor Ecclesiasticus, and afford a certain amount of basis for comparison and criticism, but they are drawn up on a different plan and with a different object, and so a complete comparison by means of them is difficult. It is also difficult in some places to understand the method of reckoning which is adopted in them.

It is easy to point out the deficiencies of Valor Ecclesiasticus.

That the Commissioners did not always succeed in ascertaining the whole income of the monasteries was by no means the fault of the Government. They kept in touch with their agents throughout the work; indeed, constant supervision and stimulus was wise, for the work was difficult and had to be done in a short time. It was ordered to be accomplished by the octave of Trinity following the issue of the Commissions, and it was actually finished soon afterwards. The Staffordshire Commissioners, under the guidance of the obsequious Bishop Lee, who was well experienced in official work, were the first, with a single exception, to send in their returns. Lee wrote to Cromwell on September 22nd (1535): “Your comfortable letters have made me strong and whole, and able to return to the King’s service. We delivered by Thomas Moreton, one of my assistants in the Commission, the taxation of the churches in Staffordshire in the course of last term, when there was not one except Kent that so did. The Court of Exchequer was well satisfied.”[63]

To carry out so huge a task in so short a time was to ensure much superficial work. It is true that the business habits of Englishmen and the bureaucratic nature of the Tudor administration, and the large number of lay officials, bailiffs, stewards, collectors, etc., in the employ of the monasteries, made the investigation easier than might otherwise have been the case. But even so there must have been many difficulties. We find in the returns ample evidence that through haste but little was done in the way of checking entries and balancing accounts. In the returns from Rocester Abbey the expenditure is given in four groups, each with its correct total. But the addition of the four totals is £1 too little. In the case of Stone Priory the “spiritual” balance is given as £68, etc., whereas it should be £59, etc., a difference of £9. But the tithe paid is correct for £119 14s. 11¼d., which is exactly £9 more than the real sum of the temporal and spiritual balances as these are shown. The official probably intended to write the spiritual balance as £lviiii, but when he came to make his final addition he read it as £lxviii, a mistake not difficult to make. Other mistakes of a similar nature will be noticed. No doubt it was difficult to compare and check the returns from different dioceses, as they came in at different times; and the omissions, from the stated incomes of monasteries, of items which elsewhere are noted as being paid to them, are probably due rather to deliberate concealment on the part of the monks than to any grave slackness on the part of the Commissioners. For instance, £2 3s. is noted in the valuation of the churches of Berkswick, Bushbury and Weston, as being paid to Stone Priory, but no trace of it appears in the monastic return. But it is remarkable that in the valuation of Dudley Priory no mention is made of the 10s. from Dudley Vicarage, or in that of Trentham Priory of the 6s. 8d. from Hulton Abbey, a few miles away, and the valuation of which immediately precedes it. The £4 6s. 8d. given in the valuation of Rocester Abbey as being paid to a chantry at Lichfield does not appear in the Cathedral valuation. The remarkable omissions in the Burton investigation will be dealt with fully later on.

Again, many of the valuations could only be approximations: such were the returns made of offerings and payments in kind, and of the demesnes. It is, indeed, distinctly stated, as a rule, that the value of the demesne is given “according to the valuation of the Commissioners” or of one of them: Walter Wrottesley estimated the demesne at Dudley. Sometimes they called in assistance, possibly that of experts, or perhaps of local men, as happened at Rocester.

The Valor Ecclesiasticus, therefore, cannot be regarded as a complete statement of the monastic income. Its deficiencies as regards expenditure are still more grave. Only certain disbursements were allowed to be taken into account—regular pensions, rents, endowed doles, and fees to bailiffs, collectors of rents, etc., auditors, and stewards, episcopal visitation fees, synodals and proxies. The statute had allowed other fees also to be deducted, such as those to the Chancellor and Judges, but the instructions to the Commissioners omitted these, and they are usually disallowed. The object of the investigation being to show as large a net balance of income as possible, disbursements were reduced to a minimum. Only those which could not be avoided were shown, and because any particular item of expenditure is not shown in any particular return we cannot assert with confidence that it was actually not incurred. Only two corrodies are recorded in the whole of Staffordshire, and alms at Burton, Rocester and Tutbury only, yet we know that Dieulacres maintained eight poor bedeswomen.

The investigation was a contest between the two parties—the Commissioners, whose primary object was to make the income as large and the expenditure as small as possible, and the monks who naturally desired to reverse the proportion. The result was that there were serious omissions on both sides of the account, and the Valor Ecclesiasticus is, accordingly, a very incomplete statement of the accounts of the religious houses. The omissions as regards income are many, but the information as to expenditure can only be described as altogether inadequate and incomplete. The Commissioners were not allowed to show much expenditure, even if they wished to do so: it was easy for them to allow little if they so desired. Under the direction of Bishop Lee it may safely be assumed that in Staffordshire they allowed the barest minimum.

The fictitious character of the expenditure side of the account is well illustrated by the case of Burton-on-Trent. When, as will be described later,[64] the valuation sent in by the Commissioners was found to be hopelessly erroneous, and a revised statement was drawn up by the order of the Chancellor, Sir Thomas Audley, which increased the revenue from £356 16s. 3½d. to £501 7s. 0½d., the expenditure was, apparently, not re-investigated. In face of the enormous increase of income which had been shown the Chancellor could well afford to spare himself the trouble of enquiring whether the statement of expenses needed revising: he treated it with scornful indifference and passed it with the contemptuous remark at the foot of the more profitable survey: “Mem. to deducte owte of thys boke ye allowaunces accordinge to ye olde boke.”

Yet, in spite of these deficiencies, the Valor Ecclesiasticus may tell us much, if we bear in mind its limitations. The valuations made after the Dissolution were expressly ordered to be compared with the Valor Ecclesiasticus and, as has been mentioned, they afford useful data for comparison. It is not surprising that they are usually higher in amount. The Surveyors had gained experience, and they had the previous survey for a guide. No source of income previously recorded would be likely to be overlooked, while those which had been omitted would now be discovered. The Surveyors, of course, desired to make their valuation as high as possible in order to ingratiate themselves with the Government. But, while the income in Valor Ecclesiasticus may well be less than is correct, that of the Dissolution officials could not easily be excessive. If in any case it were so, the fact would soon be proved by the would-be purchasers.

The Staffordshire Returns in Valor Ecclesiasticus are arranged as follows:[65]

1. Rural Deanery of Lapley and Trysull. This includes Brewood Nunnery and Dudley Priory. The names of the Commissioners who did the work for the Rural Deanery are recorded, as we have mentioned, and Walter Wrottesley is expressly stated to have estimated the value of the demesne at Dudley. Disbursements are reduced to a vanishing point at Brewood and to little better at Dudley, only the fees of the steward, Edward Blount, gent., and the bailiff, John Coke, being allowed.

2. Rural Deanery of Newcastle and Stone. This includes Hulton Abbey, Trentham Priory, St. Thomas’s Priory at Stafford, Stone Priory and Ronton Priory. No records of alms or payments for education are shown, though a corrody is allowed at Trentham.

3. Stafford Archdeaconry.

4. Rural Deanery of Leek and Alton. In this are included Dieulacres, Rocester and Croxden Abbeys. Payments are shown to the Bishop and the Dean and Chapter, and at Croxden the unusual item of 13s. 4d. to “the General Reformator of the Cistercian Order.” But, as we have already shown, this official was of Royal, not of Papal appointment. The arrangement of the valuation is alike for all three abbeys, and alms are only recorded at Rocester.

5. Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, and the Cathedral at Lichfield.

6. Tutbury Priory and Burton Abbey. Alms are noticed in both cases, and the Commissioners appear to have been unusually lenient.

7. Tamworth Collegiate Church.

8. Deanery of Tamworth and Tutbury.

A rough calculation of the net income of the Church in Staffordshire, as shown in the above returns, has been made as follows:

Rural Deaneries—Lapley and Trysull£536162½
Newcastle and Stone8874817/24
Leek and Alton594121½
Deanery—Tamworth and Tutbury354154
Bishop of Lichfield (Staffs. only)34573⅛
Lichfield Cathedral—Dean and Chapter58141
Prebends27234
Choristers161810½
Vicars Choral137176
Priests Vicars11496
Clerks5106½
Chantry Priests6174
Chantries106132
St. John’s Hospital, Lichfield8150
Tutbury Priory1991410
Burton Abbey41250
Tamworth Collegiate Church6610
Total£4,17059⅚

As far as possible the income from Staffordshire only is shown as regards the bishop, etc., but it was not always easy to separate the items. No visitation fees are shown, as they could not be apportioned between the counties: the total was £34 19s.

Of the total shown above, the net income of the religious houses is given as £1,608 5s. 2¾d., or rather less than two-fifths.

The following table gives the figures relating to the religious houses as they appear in Valor Ecclesiasticus: they must be read in conjunction with the notes which follow the table:

Part 1 of table

Temporalities.
Receipts Expenditure Balance
Brewood Nunnery 11 1 6 11 1 6
Burton-on-Trent 1st 271 11 3½ 33 8 8 238 2 7½
 „  „ 2nd 402 15 4½ ditto 369 6 8½
Croxden 94 10 3 9 10 10 84 19 5
Dieulacres 174 13 2 13 18 0 160 15 2
Dudley Priory (Cell) 15 5 4 2 6 8 12 18 8
Hulton 67 0 1½ 7 3 6 59 16 7½
Rocester 56 9 7 5 15 4 50 14 3
Ronton 64 17 9 4 3 60 5½ 14 3½
Stafford, St. Thomas 130 16 5½ 15 3 11 115 12 6½[66]
Stone 54 12 11 3 13 5 50 19 6
Trentham 83 19 0[67] 8 5 10 75 14 2[67]
Tutbury 170 18 4 20 14 0 150 4 4
Total (not including Burton 1st) 1326 19 9½ 124 3 7½ 1202 17 2

Part 2 of table

Spiritualities.
Receipts Expenditure Balance
Brewood Nunnery
Burton-on-Trent 1st 85 5 0 55 13 4½ =29 11 7½
 „  „  2nd 98 11 8 ditto 42 18 3½
Croxden 8 16 4 3 9 10 5 6 6
Dieulacres 68 10 4 2 0 6 66 9 10
Dudley Priory (Cell) 21 2 8 21 2 8
Hulton 20 10 0 3 11 9 16 18 3
Rocester 46 1 6 6 12 10½ 39 8 7½
Ronton 46 13 10 8 5 3 38 8 7
Stafford, St. Thomas 50 2 4 24 1 8⅔ 26 0 7⅓
Stone 75 10 0 15 14 6⅔ 68 15 5¼
Trentham 37 3 4 6 13 71/12 30 9 8½
Tutbury 73 18 4 24 7 10 49 10 6
Total (not including Burton 1st) 547 0 4 150 11 35/12 405 9 0½

Part 3 of table

Total.
Receipts Expenditure Balance
Brewood Nunnery 11 1 6 11 1 6
Burton-on-Trent 1st 356 16 3½ 89 2 0½ 267 14 3
 „  „ 2nd 501 7 0½ ditto 412 5 0
Croxden 103 6 7 13 0 8 90 5 11
Dieulacres 243 3 6 15 18 6 227 5 0
Dudley Priory (Cell) 36 8 0 2 6 8 34 1 4
Hulton 87 10 1½ 10 15 3 76 14 0
Rocester 102 11 1 12 8 2½ 90 2 10¾
Ronton 111 11 7 11 8 8½ 100 2 10½
Stafford, St. Thomas 180 18 9½ 39 5 7⅔ 141 13 2¼[66]
Stone 130 2 11 19 7 11⅔ 119 14 11¼
Trentham 121 2 4[67] 14 19 51/12 106 3 9[67]
Tutbury 244 16 8 45 1 10 199 14 10
Total (not including Burton 1st) 1874 0 1½ 273 14 1011/12 1608 5 2¾

Part 4 of table

Tithe Paid
Brewood Nunnery 1 2 2
Burton-on-Trent 1st 26 15 5
 „  „ 2nd 41 4 6
Croxden 9 0 7
Dieulacres 22 14 6
Dudley Priory (Cell) 3 8 1½
Hulton 7 13 6
Rocester 9 0 3½
Ronton 10 0 3½
Stafford, St. Thomas 14 3 3½
Stone 11 19 6
Trentham 10 12 4½
Tutbury 19 19 6
Total (not including Burton 1st) 160 18 7½

[66] and 1 lb. of pepper.

[67] and 4 barbed arrows.

In connection with the above table the following details may be noted here: other points will be considered when we come to examine the details.

Burton-on-Trent. In the first valuation the details of the Derbyshire temporalities amount to £73 11s. 2d., not £73 6s. 2d. In Roman numerals the shillings appear as vis. instead of xis..—a mistake easily made. The total of temporalities appears, therefore, as £271 11s. 3½d. instead of £271 16s. 3½d., and this affects the calculation throughout. The gross income should be £357 1s. 3½d. and the net income £267 19s. 3d.

In the second valuation the details of the temporalities amount to £414 14s. 4½d. instead of £402 15s. 4½d. as given: the spiritualities amount to £99 5s. instead of £98 11s. 8d. The total income (gross) should therefore be £513 19s. 4½d. instead of £501 7s. 0½d., leaving the net balance £424 17s. 4d. instead of £412 5s.

Croxden. See below, page 97.

Dieulacres. The gross total income is given as £243 2s. 6d., whereas the totals of the various sections amount to £243 3s. 6d. As the total of the disbursements to be deducted is given as £15 18s. 6d. and the net final balance as £227 5s. (i.e., £243 3s. 6d.—£15 18s. 6d.) the sum first named is probably a misprint in the printed edition. I have, therefore, given the correct figures of the gross total income in my table.

Hulton. The gross balance as given is 10½d. too little, but in working out the tenth this appears to have been remembered. A tenth of £76 14s. is £7 13s. 4¾d. and a fraction. This added to a tenth of the 10½d. gives £7 13s. 6d. nearly.

Rocester. The items of expenditure are arranged in four groups, and the four totals are correctly given. They make £12 8s. 8½d. in all, but this is noted below as £11 8s. 8½d., and this is the amount which is deducted from the gross total income to make the balance of £100 2s. 10½d. The balance ought to be £99 2s. 10½d.

Ronton. In stating the spiritual outgoings the amounts are given with great minuteness. For instance, the Bishop’s annual Visitation Fee is set forth as £1 2s. 2½d. + ⅓ of ½d. The result is that this small fraction appears throughout the succeeding calculation, until at last the gross balance becomes £lxxxx iis. xd. ob’ iias ptes ob’.

Stafford, St. Thomas. In the spiritual disbursements the total is given as £24 1s. 8½d. and ⅓ of ½d., and in the deduction of the total expenditure from the total income the last item is put as 2⅓d., whereas it apparently should be 1⅝d.

Stone. In the spiritualities the balance is printed in V.E. as £68 15s. 5¼d., whereas it should be £59 15s. 5⅓d. The final balance, therefore, should be £110 14s. 11⅓d. instead of as shown in the table.

As the tithe paid (£11 19s. 6d.) is correct for £119 14s. 11¼d. the mistake is probably due to the official: he wrote £lviiii when he put down the total spiritual income, but read it as £lxviii when he added the total.

Trentham. In temporalities the balance should be £75 13s. 2d. according to the figures given, and this error of 10d. affects the whole calculation. The final balance, according to the figures given in V.E., should be £106 2s. 10-11/12d. If the 10d. be added it becomes practically what V.E. makes it, viz., £106 3s. 8-11/12d.

From the table it is evident that the total income of the religious houses amounted to something like £1,608 5s. 2¾d., at least, so far as Staffordshire is concerned. Only a small fraction of this was returned to the Church when the property of the monasteries was confiscated, and practically nothing of the “moveable” wealth they contained. How great this latter was is shown by the proceeds of the sales which were conducted at the Suppression. We shall revert to the subject later.

The extent to which the monasteries had “robbed” the parish churches is shown by the following figures, taken from Valor Ecclesiasticus. The first column gives the tithes received by the monasteries, the second gives the amounts which came from parish churches in other ways, such as glebe, offerings, etc. The third gives the payments made by the monasteries to churches. In all cases the figures are from Valor Ecclesiasticus.

Tithes Received Other Income from Churches Payments to Churches
£ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d.
Brewood Nunnery
Burton Abbey 46 6 8 52 13 4 4 6 8
1
Croxden Abbey 8 15 4 1 3 0
Dieulacres Abbey 57 19 8 10 10 8 18 6
Dudley Priory 18 16 8 2 6 0
Hulton Abbey 18 10 0 2 0 0 5 4
Rocester Priory 47 13 10 16 8
Ronton Priory 46 1 6 1 0
St. Thomas’s Priory 40 2 8 9 19 8 3 4
Stone Priory 53 10 0 22 0 0
Trentham Priory 14 10 4 21 13 4
Tutbury Priory 49 0 4 20 16 4 11 13 4
£401 7 0 £141 19 5 £19 7 10

In all, the Staffordshire monasteries took £543 6s. 5d. at least from parishes in tithes, glebe, oblations, Easter dues and the like, and gave to churches the utterly insignificant sum of £19 7s. 10d. As Cistercian houses, long ago exempted by the Lateran Council of 1215, Croxden, Dieulacres, and Hulton, paid no tithe on land in their own occupation, and many other houses had obtained a similar privilege by special Bulls. Probably also the Commissioners did not return the tithe when it was paid to the church belonging to the monastery. In such cases, the payment of tithe among the disbursements would simply have cancelled the receipt of the tithe among the receipts. The following details illustrate the way in which money came from the parish churches. It is not an exhaustive table:

Glebe Tithes Easter Dues Oblations
£ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d.
Hulton Abbey
Audley 1 0 0 10 0 0
Byddell 10 0 4 0 0
Cambryngham (Linc.) 10 0 4 10 0
Trentham Priory
Trentham 8 13 4 3 0 0 10 0
Barleston 5 17 0 13 4 3 0
St. Thomas’s Priory, Stafford
Stowe 1 10 8 7 0 0 2 0 0
Bushbury 6 8 6 6 8
Cariswall 3 6 8
Weston-on-Trent 1 17 0 2 7 6
Geyton 5 0 3 1 10
Berkswick 1 0 0 2 13 4 1 13 4
Meyre 2 0 0
Aldelem (Chesh.) 1 7 0 13 6 8
Stone Priory
Stone 19 0 0 8 0 0 3 0 0
Milwich 8 10 0
Tyso (Warw.) 8 0 0 16 0 0
Ronton Priory
Seyghtford 13 4 6
Grenburgh (Warw.) 32 17 0
Dieulacres Abbey
Leek 1 4 0 34 3 8 6 5 4 2 6 8
Sandbach (Chesh.) 14 8 23 16 0
Rocester, Waterfalland Bradley 15 7 2
Edensor (Derbysh.) 11 0 0
Kynston 7 0 0
Woodford (Northants.) 13 6 8
Croxden Abbey
Alton 2 5 4
Tokeby (Leics.) 4 0 0
Norton  „ 2 10 0
Tutbury Priory
Doveridge 6 6 8
Church Broughton 12 0 0
Marston 6 0 0
Tutbury 7 0 0
Matherfield 10 0 0
Wymondham and Thorpe (Lincs.) 13 4
Burton Abbey
Burton-on-Trent 23(£33)
St. Modwen’s Chapel 2 0 0
Abbots Bromley 13 6 8
Ilam 8 13 8
Blithfield[68] 1 0 0
Grindon[68] 13 4
Leigh[68] 3 6 8
Hamstall Ridware[68] 5 0
Cauldon Chapel[68] 2 6 8
Mickleover, etc.[68] 8 13 4
Stapenhill[68] 10 0
Allestree[68] (Warw.) 15 0 0

[68] In these cases it is not stated from what particular source the amounts are derived.

The figures in heavy type are from the second survey in Valor Ecclesiasticus.

Voluntary offerings amount to an absolutely insignificant sum, £7 19s. 8d. for the whole county. This is not surprising. It was difficult to obtain particulars if the monks were reticent on the matter, and, also, there is no doubt that recent religious events, and the whole trend of affairs, had seriously affected all forms of charity. It is probable, therefore, that although the voluntary offerings ought to be larger in amount than they appear in Valor Ecclesiasticus, they did not stand at a very high figure.

Chantries are only mentioned in connection with Burton-on-Trent and Rocester. At the former, £5 was paid annually to the Chaplain of the Chantry at Sallow, in Derbyshire, according to the ordinance of John Stafford, formerly Abbot, and 2s. annually was paid towards the maintenance of a lamp in the church of Allestree. At Rocester £4 6s. 8d. is stated as being paid for the maintenance of a chantry at Lichfield Cathedral, though no trace of it is to be found in the Cathedral returns.

Here again we cannot accept the evidence as complete, and cannot understand the motives which actuated the Commissioners and caused the instructions to be interpreted as they were. Why the incomes of chantries should be particularly apportioned at cathedrals and elsewhere, and not at the religious houses, is not evident. Certainly chantries existed in the religious houses. For instance, in 1517 Sir John Fitzherbert, of Norbury, had made bequests in his will to “the Chantries” at Rocester and Calwich.[69] The only payment for a lamp is the one already mentioned.

Fees in connection with Episcopal Visitations are found at Hulton (6s. 8d.), Trentham (£3 17s. 4d.), Stafford (£3 6s. 8d.), Stone (£3 6s. 8d.), Ronton (£3 6s. 8d.), and Burton (£3 6s. 7½d.). These amounts shown were paid triennially. The post-Dissolution valuation of Dudley Priory shows that 2s. a year was paid there also as Bishop’s Visitation Fees.

The Archdeacon also received annual Visitation Fees, and fees for procurations, etc. Fees for appropriations were paid in some cases to the Bishop and in others to the Dean and Chapter. The following shows the total annual payments, as given in Valor Ecclesiasticus, to the Bishop, the Dean and Chapter, and the Archdeacons.

Bishop Dean & Chapter Archdeacon
£ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d.
Brewood Nunnery
Burton Abbey 3 9 4½ 6 13 4 17 9
Croxden Abbey 1 0 6
Dieulacres Abbey 1 2 0
Dudley Priory [2]
Hulton Abbey 2 1 10⅔ 3 4 5 4
Rocester Priory 1 4 7
Ronton Priory 1 10 2⅔
St. Thomas’s Priory 3 6 9⅔ 18 10 0 1 10 6
Stone Priory 1 8 6⅔ 2 14 4 19 0
Trentham Priory 1 6 5⅔ 13 4
Tutbury Priory 13 4 6 13 4 2 7 10
Total £13 16 7⅚ £34 14 4 £10 0 10

It is interesting to notice that two of the three Cistercian Abbeys, although they had not adhered to the earlier rule of their Order to abstain from the appropriation of benefices, had nevertheless managed to avoid the payments to either Bishop or Dean and Chapter which such appropriations usually entailed; and also that they are the only houses for men which did not pay Visitation Fees to the Bishop. But Ronton alone could show no payments to the Archdeacon: his all-embracing activity was evidently not less in the sixteenth century than it had been in the days of John of Salisbury, who characteristically propounded the problem an possit archidiaconus salvus esse?

CHAPTER V
THE FINANCES OF BURTON ABBEY

Many causes had combined to undermine the stability of the religious houses. Their pecuniary usefulness to Pope and King tended to make them the shuttlecock of politics. Their extensive worldly possessions made them objects of jealousy to their neighbours, while the secular spirit with which they became infected when they were drawn into the “full stream of the world” weakened their spiritual influence and made them at once more susceptible to attacks and less capable of effective opposition. Events and tendencies beyond their power to control, like the Black Death, the Hundred Years’ War, the Wars of the Roses, and the Revival of Learning, in turn exercised a disastrous influence upon them.

Seriously affected in wealth, numbers, and efficiency by the Black Death and its consequences; sharing in the lawlessness and demoralisation which accompanied the French War in its later stages, and the Wars of the Roses; lacking the supervision and guidance which active bishops had at any rate attempted, and not always ineffectually, to exercise; in the sixteenth century the religious houses were very different in character from what they had originally been. Even in material things they had changed. They had once been leaders in agricultural development, but their methods were now old-fashioned, ineffective, and out of date. Their wide domains were no longer the sources of wealth they formerly had been. New methods and new outlets for trade had left them behind. Unwise leases only gave temporary relief, and crippled instead of improving resources. All landowners were indeed feeling the effects of the economic changes, and a result was increased claims upon the monasteries by kings and patrons; and the religious houses were not in a condition to make effective opposition. They were not worse than their neighbours: their weakness lay in the fact that they were so little different from them. Up to the present there had been no definite charges of moral delinquency brought by authority against the monastic system. Good or bad, they were looked upon as part of the settled order of things by all except a few theorists and extremists.

There is no call, therefore, to consider as yet the question of their moral condition. In these earlier years of the “Reformation” the subject of interest to the government of the day was their financial value. With their finances only, therefore, we are as yet concerned.

With Valor Ecclesiasticus to guide us as to the main outlines, it is possible to form a fairly correct estimate of the material condition of the Staffordshire houses at the time when the idea of the Dissolution of the Monasteries was being gradually evolved. We are able to draw up a balance sheet for each of the houses, and to obtain an insight into its revenues, possessions, and expenditure.

The largest and most important house in Staffordshire was the Benedictine Abbey of Burton-on-Trent. It had been of some renown in the past. Its Chronicle[70] incorporated many historical documents of first-rate importance. It had done much for the town. It had frequently given hospitality to kings, prelates, and lords: one of its rooms was actually still called “the King’s Chamber.” Recently its Abbot, Dr. William Boston, had made himself acceptable to Cromwell, had been summoned to Parliament, had been placed in various positions where he could make himself useful to the Government, and had been promoted to the headship of the great Abbey of Westminster. His successor at Burton had been elected directly through the influence of Cromwell’s representatives and he retained Cromwell’s favour accordingly. It might have been expected that when the Commissioners visited Burton-on-Trent they would be received with cordiality and would be able to count on every assistance.

It is surprising, therefore, to find that Burton Abbey is the only one in England where we know that an entirely false return was supplied. Indeed the Return from Burton Abbey which the Commissioners for Tenths sent in was so entirely erroneous that a second survey had to be made. There are two valuations of some other monasteries, but in such cases one is really an abbreviation of the other. The second survey of Burton is, however, a substitute for the first.

The original Summary in Valor Ecclesiasticus appears in its place[71] but is superseded by another which is written on a separate paper attached to the parchment.[72] The second is made authoritative by a note appended at the foot of the first survey under the following circumstances. The gross income having been stated to be £356 16s. 3½d. and the expenses £89 2s. O½d. (leaving a balance of £267 14s. 3d.), the tithe would, therefore, be under ordinary circumstances £26 15s. 5d. But the amount is stated to be £41 4s. 6d., with the explanatory note: “Plus oneratur pro xiiiili. ixs. id. per billam domini cancellarii.” On referring to the second survey we find it is signed by the Chancellor, Thomas Audley, and gives the gross income as £501 7s. 0½d. It allows the correctness of the expenditure as stated in the other survey, and when this is deducted from the revised total the net income becomes £412 5s., the tithe from which is that previously noted, namely £14 9s. 1d. more than was due according to the first survey.

The problem raised by the existence of the two surveys is interesting, and may be compared with a similar one which arises in the early history of the same Abbey. There is no mention in Domesday Book of the bulk of the territory of the Manor and Parish of Burton-on-Trent, some 6,000 acres, which the Abbey possessed and in the midst of which it stood. Although the land lay in two counties and should have been surveyed by two distinct sets of Domesday officials, no trace of any report of either has been found, and the final summary is silent. Whether the Abbot in the eleventh century procured the suppression by tampering with both sets of commissioners, or whether he evaded the survey of both by playing off one against the other, or whether he was specially exempted by the Crown, cannot be known.

In the case of Henry VIII’s survey there is much the same uncertainty. External history tells us nothing, and little can be gleaned from the summaries themselves. The following table is an attempt to exhibit a comparative analysis of the two surveys. The income, temporal and spiritual, is arranged according to its sources and character. It must be borne in mind that here we have to deal with the items as they are detailed and not with the official totals as those are given, sometimes wrongly, in Valor Ecclesiasticus. The totals shown in the table do not, therefore, always agree with the figures which appeared in the table on page 64. (See Notes following that table.)

This was not the first occasion on which Burton had pretended to be poorer than it actually was. The royal claim to nominate men, disbanded soldiers or others for whom it was desired to provide at other people’s expense, to corrodies at the religious houses, was at times a grave abuse. The Patent Rolls show vast numbers of such nominations. In the course of a few years we find, as regards Burton only,[73] two men sent there in 1316 and another sent in 1317; in 1318 John le Treour was sent on account of his good service to the King and to Queen Isabella in the place of one who had died; Treour lived till 1323, and on his death John le Nakerer was immediately substituted. The presence of such outsiders in what professed to be religious communities must have been exceedingly embarrassing to any who were trying to live in the spirit of the rules, and most prejudicial to spirituality and discipline. It was, however, difficult to oppose the royal commands. Burton tried to do so in 1310 and failed ignominiously.[74] Thomas de Bannebury, who had long served Edward II and his father, was sent to the Abbot and Convent to receive the necessaries of life in food and drink, clothing, etc., according to his estate. They replied to the royal missive with a profession of their willingness to acquiesce if they had the power to do so, but they pleaded that their house was the poorest and smallest of their Order in England, and was more heavily charged than any in proportion to its means. They, therefore, asserted their inability to receive the royal pensioner. For answer, they were told that there was trustworthy evidence that their assertions were false, and on their continued efforts to avoid compliance they were summarily ordered to admit Bannebury, and were told that their excuses were frivolous, untruthful, and unacceptable.

BURTON-ON-TRENT: INCOME (“TEMPORALITIES”)

Part 1 of table

Demesne Meadows
1 2 1 2
Staffordshire:
Shobnal Grange—
Arable £1 13s. 4d.║
Pasture 3 0 0 ║ 6 13 4 6 13 4
Meadow 2 0 0 ║
Bromley Hurst   ║ 7 6 8 11 13 4=
Bentley Park (meadow)║ 4 0 0
Seney Park 6 0 0 8 0 0=
Burton-on-Trent 24 0 0[76] 24 0 0 3 0 0
Branstone
Hornington and Whitmere
Stretton
Anslow
Abbots Bromley
Leigh
Field (Thomas Bagot, Kt)
Pillatonhall
Darlastone
Okeover (Humph. Okeover, Kt.)
Weston
Divers pastures near the Trent 4 10 0
Collingwood
Near Whitmere
Derbyshire:
Stapenhill║ 13 4 13 4
Winshill ║
Derby
Cauldwell
Mickleover Manor
Littleover  „
Findern  „
Ticknall
Willington and Pothlac
Huncedon
Allestree (Warwicks)
Appleby (Leices.)
London
Total 48 13 4 51 0 0 3 0 0 4 10 0

Part 2 of table

Lands and tenements Chief Rents
1 2 1 2
Staffordshire:
Shobnal Grange—
Arable £1 13s. 4d.
Pasture 3 0 0
Meadow 2 0 0
Bromley Hurst 40 6 8[75] 40 6 8[75]
Bentley Park (meadow)
Seney Park
Burton-on-Trent 21 7 0 63 15 4[76] 13 0 0 13 0 0
Branstone 9 4 0 12 14 5
Hornington and Whitmere 11 13 0 15 5 8 3 0
Stretton 13 2 3 19 3 9
Anslow 13 4 13 5 4
Abbots Bromley 16 10 11 4 7 2½ 7 7 2½
Leigh 4 0 0 5 0 0
Field (Thomas Bagot, Kt) 1 0 0
Pillatonhall 16 0 16 0
Darlastone 2 11 0 2 11 0
Okeover (Humph. Okeover, Kt.) 1 6 8 1 6 8
Weston 10 0 10 0
Divers pastures near the Trent
Collingwood 1 6 8
Near Whitmere 8 13 4
Derbyshire:
Stapenhill 7 4 6 11 4 6 3 0
Winshill 8 7 1 13 13 2
Derby 3 6 8[76] 3 6 8[76] 1 14 0
Cauldwell 7 2 1 9 17 6
Mickleover Manor 4 0
Littleover  „
Findern  „
Ticknall 10 0 10 0
Willington and Pothlac 2 1 8 1 16 4
Huncedon 6 0 0 6 0 0
Allestree (Warwicks) 10 10 0 17 12 6
Appleby (Leices.) 7 3 0 10 5 0 5 4
London 2 0 0 2 0 0
Total 147 6 3 251 16 1 31 11 2½ 47 16 6½

Part 3 of table

Court Manor
1 2
Staffordshire:
Shobnal Grange—
Arable £1 13s. 4d.
Pasture 3 0 0
Meadow 2 0 0
Bromley Hurst
Bentley Park (meadow)
Seney Park
Burton-on-Trent 3 6 8 3 6 8
Branstone
Hornington and Whitmere
Stretton
Anslow
Abbots Bromley
Leigh
Field (Thomas Bagot, Kt)
Pillatonhall
Darlastone
Okeover (Humph. Okeover, Kt.)
Weston
Divers pastures near the Trent
Collingwood
Near Whitmere
Derbyshire:
Stapenhill
Winshill
Derby
Cauldwell
Mickleover Manor 16 2 2 24 16 10
Littleover „ 13 4 4 17 15 11
Findern „ 8 12 4 13 12 4=
Ticknall
Willington and Pothlac
Huncedon
Allestree (Warwicks)
Appleby (Leices.)
London
Total 3 6 8 3 6 8 37 18 10 56 5 1

1st Total £271 16s. 3½d.
[given in _V.E._ as £cclxxi xi. iii ob.]

2nd Total £414 14s. 4½d.
[given in _V.E._ as £ccccii xv iiii ob.]

[75] with 1 water-mill.

[76] with 2 water-mills.

BURTON-ON-TRENT: INCOME (“SPIRITUALITIES”)

Part 1 of table

Tithes Oblations
1 2 1 2
Burton-on-Trent £23 0 0 £33 0 0
St. Modwen’s Chapel at Andrasia £2 0 0 £2 0 0
Abbots Bromley 13 6 8 13 6 8
Ilam
Blithfield
Grindon
Leigh
Hampstall Ridware
Cauldon Chapel
Mickleover, Littleover and Findern (Derbyshire)
Stapenhill  „
Allestree (Warw.)
Total 36 6 8 46 6 8 2 0 0 2 0 0

Part 2 of table

Church and Glebe Church
1 2 1 2
Burton-on-Trent
St. Modwen’s Chapel at Andrasia
Abbots Bromley
Ilam £8 0 0 £8 13 4
Blithfield
Grindon
Leigh
Hampstall Ridware
Cauldon Chapel 2 6 8
Mickleover, Littleover and Findern (Derbyshire) 8 13 4 8 13 4
Stapenhill  „ 10 0 0 10 0 0
Allestree (Warw.) 15 0 0 16 0 0=
Total 8 0 0 11 0 0 33 13 4 34 13 4

Part 3 of table

Pensions
1 2
Burton-on-Trent
St. Modwen’s Chapel at Andrasia
Abbots Bromley
Ilam
Blithfield £1 0 0 £1 0 0
Grindon 13 4 13 4
Leigh 3 6 8 3 6 8
Hampstall Ridware 5 0 5 0
Cauldon Chapel
Mickleover, Littleover and Findern (Derbyshire)
Stapenhill  „
Allestree (Warw.)
Total 5 5 0 5 5 0

1st Total £85 5s.
2nd „ £99 5s.
Given in _V.E._ as £lxxxxviii xi viii

Whether the official opinion in this case was just we need not enquire. We must, however, examine with some care the attempt which, as it appears, was made to mislead the Commissioners for First Fruits and Tenths in the reign of Henry VIII.

It will be noticed that by far the largest individual additions which are made in the second survey come from rents in Burton and its suburbs. In the first survey no mention at all is made of the special endowments of the Prior (£2), Almoner (£8), Cook (£8 6s. 8d.), Custodian of St. Mary’s Chapel (£4), and Martyrologist (£14). The kitchen at Burton had long been well endowed. Abbot Nicholas (ob. 1197) was the first to put it on a business-like footing. Abbot Nicholas de Wallingford (1216–1222) and Abbot Richard de Insula (1222–1223) had added to its endowments. No mention is made of the Chantries of William Branstone (£4), or William Beyne (£8 13s. 4d.). The former had been Abbot in the fifteenth century and had died in 1474. The latter had been Abbot from 1502 to 1533 and had endowed the Grammar School. Considerable rents are omitted from “divers pastures near the Trent,” where fed the sheep which had once made the Abbey wool famous. In an old list of the English monasteries which supplied wool to the Florentine markets in 1315 the wool from Burton is described as in Torcea, probably the same as wool de marisco, which was usually classed by itself. Torcea appears to mean a dyke or embankment, and the Burton sheep probably pastured in these low fields near the Trent which were secured from inundation by means of embankments.[77] Rents from Abbots Bromley (£16 10s. 11d.), one of the oldest of the Abbey’s estates, and Derby are also omitted. Even in the items which are given in both lists, the second shows a considerable increase in nearly every instance. The rents from Allestree are raised by £7 2s. 6d.; the valuation of the Manor of Mickleover is increased by £8 14s. 8d.; the chief rents from Anslow actually leap from 13s. 4d. to £13 5s. 4d. The increase in the valuations of the other manors is also considerable.

“Seney Park,” the valuation of which is increased from £6 to £8, was to the west of the town, near Shobnall Grange. The Abbey had a house there, surrounded by a moat, and used as a place of retirement for many generations. The monks used to go there in the fourteenth century to recover from the periodical “blood-letting.” Its name is thus explained by a seventeenth century writer: “The Abbot of Burton-upon-Trent ... having a vast rough hillie ground about a mile distant from the Abbey, called it Sinai, for the likeness it had to that rough wilderness of Sinai where in a mount God appeared unto Moses; which ground to this day retaineth the Name and is now called Sinai Park.”[78]

The only important items which are left unchanged are the valuations of the demesnes at Shobnall Grange and at Burton (with the Court Fees), and the lands on lease (ad firma) at Bromley Hurst and this may suggest a possible explanation of the problem we are considering.

It is quite impossible to understand how it was that William Edie, the Abbot elected through Cromwell’s influence,[79] allowed the Commissioners to be misled. We might have expected that his sense of obligation to his patron would have led him to make a full disclosure, though we shall hardly blame him for not doing so. But for him to expect that he could successfully conceal the true state of things from such an administration as that of Cromwell argues more simplicity than we should expect to find in one of Cromwell’s nominees. Through some means, however, the first set of officials was hoodwinked. But the success of the monks was short-lived. The Chancellor received information from some source unknown to us, which led him to order a second investigation. A tradition survived at the Office of First-Fruits and Tenths that the Liber Regis, into which were copied many of the Returns of the Commissioners, was transcribed by a monk of Westminster.[80] Dr. Boston was Abbot of Westminster at the time, and if the tradition represents the truth he may well have seen the survey of his old Abbey of Burton while it was being written out. He would at once recognise its incompleteness and we may be sure would lose no time in giving information to the authorities. Or Dan Richard Gorton, one of the monks of Burton for whom Cranmer wrote to Cromwell on August 15th, 1535, begging the Priory of Worcester, may have given a hint.[81] At any rate, Chancellor Audley ordered a second valuation to be made. The new officials he sent would, obviously, endeavour to raise all the figures they possibly could: that was the object of their mission. That they were not able to do so in the cases we have mentioned, while they succeeded in doing so in the great majority of cases, taken in conjunction with the fact that they added a considerable number of new items, seems to indicate that the monastic accounts were well kept and the estates well managed; and that probably the way the second commissioners obtained their higher figures was by discovering, by help given to them, that many more lands, tenements, etc., belonged to the Abbey than the first commissioners had been informed of. The impression is one not of falsified, but of incomplete, returns.

The difference between the two surveys is not so great as regards spiritualities, but again the chief increase arises in connection with Burton-on-Trent, the tithes of which are raised from £23 to £33. The tithes of Abbots Bromley are correctly given in the first survey, but the second commissioners discovered £2 6s. 8d. from Cauldon Chapel. They failed, however, to note that the 13s. 4d. from Grindon should be 14s.,[82] and the 16s. from Repton Priory[83] is overlooked altogether. The amount left for the Vicar of Abbots Bromley was £5 1s. 8d.[84]

On the demesne at Shobnall Grange the pasture is worth more than twice the arable land. There are two water-mills worth £12 each at Burton-on-Trent. The total value of the demesnes is £48 13s. 4d. in the first survey and £51 10s. in the second. A water-mill stood at Bromley Hurst and another in the town of Derby. A district of Burton called “Vico Nativorum” is mentioned, though Nativi are seldom mentioned in the Burton Chartularies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The record that Abbot Thomas de Packington (1281–1305) gave to the Abbey of Polesworth “Henry our native” with all his belongings, is exceptional. The tenement in London, from which £2 rent was received, was probably the “Town House” of the Abbey. The ten villani of Cauldwell in the twelfth century had to provide between them a horse to London for their lord the Abbot. The Court perquisites amount to £3 6s. 8d.—over half the total amount for the county.

The outgoings may be seen from the table on the next page. They were computed at £33 8s. 8d. temporalities, and £55 13s. 4½d. spiritualities. When the total of £89 2s. 0½d. is contrasted with the Chancellor’s enhanced total income of £501 7s. 0½d. (or £513 19s. 4½d. as it appears it ought to have been) we see that he could well afford to spare himself the trouble of investigating it and to pass it with the contemptuous remark at the foot of his more profitable survey, “Mem. to deducte owte of thys boke ye allowaunces accordinge to ye olde boke.” That the outgoings apparently were not investigated, or the “corrected” survey substituted for the one found erroneous, but merely attached to it, taken in conjunction with the mistakes made in the reckoning of the totals (both the spiritualities and temporalities appear to be wrong), suggests that the new valuation was hurriedly made while the work of summarising and digesting was in progress by the Exchequer officials.

BURTON-ON-TRENT DISBURSEMENTS

Part 1 of table

Spiritual.
King
(Sheriff’s
Aids)		 Corrody Officials
£ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d.
Church of Burton
Manor of Burton 1 0 0 15 13 4
Town of Burton 3 6 8
Mickleover, etc. 6 8 2 6 8
Allestree 6 8 13 4
Anslow 2 0
Bromley Hurst 6 8 2 0 0
Stapenhill 13 4
Sallow, Chantry Chapel
Abbots Bromley
Ilam
Abbey of Burton 3 6 8
Branstone, etc 2 0 0
Withington and Pothlac 6 8
£2 2 0 £3 6 8 £28 0 0

Part 2 of table

Temporal
Bishop’s fees Dean and Chapter Archdeacon’s fees
£ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d.
Church of Burton 3 4
Manor of Burton
Town of Burton
Mickleover, etc. 5 4
Allestree 1 3 6 6 8
Anslow
Bromley Hurst
Stapenhill 5 0
Sallow, Chantry Chapel
Abbots Bromley 6 8 6 13 4 11 1
Ilam 3 4
Abbey of Burton 1 2 2½
Branstone, etc
Withington and Pothlac
£3 9 4½ £6 13 4 17 9

Part 3 of table

Temporal
Churches Lamp and Chantry Alms Education
£ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d.
Church of Burton
Manor of Burton
Town of Burton
Mickleover, etc.
Allestree 1 0 0 2 0 3 4
Anslow
Bromley Hurst
Stapenhill 3 6 8
Sallow, Chantry Chapel 5 0 0
Abbots Bromley
Ilam
Abbey of Burton 23 0 11 12 0 0
Branstone, etc
Withington and Pothlac
£4 6 8 £5 2 0 £23 4 3 £12 0 0
Total temporal expenditure£3388
 „ spiritual  „£55134½
Total expenditure£8920½

In the disbursements there are many interesting items. A corrody, worth £3 6s. 8d., one of the very small number recorded in Staffordshire, is held by a royal nominee, John Seggewik. £2 is paid annually to a poor scholar, John Belfeld, appointed also by the King: it was a permanent arrangement. £10 is paid to Gloucester College, Oxford. This was the great Benedictine college, and it was suppressed with the larger monasteries. Its modern representative, Worcester College, knows nothing of the £10 from Burton Abbey. On the other hand, Valor Ecclesiasticus recorded that Worcester Monastery still received £4 from the King’s College at Oxford ratione suppressionis prioratus de Sandwall.[85] The annual payment to Gloucester College had been instituted by John Sudbury, one of the most famous of the Abbots of Burton. He held office from 1400 to 1423. His life had not been an ideal one, by any means, and he was a typical specimen of his time. When Convocation in 1404–5 voted the King a large grant he was appointed one of the collectors, and the grant, being exceptionally large and being levied with exceptional strictness, was bitterly resented. Sudbury, finding himself opposed even by his own tenants of Stapenhill, on the Derbyshire side of the Trent, instigated his Staffordshire men to retaliate on them, when they crossed the river and came into Burton to trade, by robbery and violence. The Burton monks were very disorderly at this time, for just previous to this there had been a charge against them of robbing a woman of 100 shillings. They waylaid John Newton, Canon and Chaplain of their hostile neighbour, Sir Thomas de Gresley, as well as the parson of Rolleston and others. They stole fish and cows. They assaulted one of the King’s Escheators. They set at naught not only the Statute of Labourers by paying Thomas Shepherd and many others 4d. a day, “to the sum of 100 shillings,” but also morality, for when Abbot Sudbury, in 1407, was driven to obtain a royal pardon for his manifold offences, we find among them that “of having, on Wednesday, Christmas, 6 Henry IV, in his chamber at Burton, ravished Marjory, the wife of Nicholas Taverner.”[86] So powerful was Abbot Sudbury that he was able to defy his Bishop’s summons to answer for the many irregularities with which he was charged.

During the rule of Sudbury’s predecessor, the Abbey being in difficulties, an attempt had been made to obtain the good offices of “Monsieur John Bagot,” the Sheriff of Staffordshire, by an annual payment of thirty shillings. It is a typical example of “maintenance.” Such a policy was double-edged, and the powerful “friend” was often encouraged to attempt to extort a higher price for his services. This happened in the present instance. A petition was sent by Sudbury, to the Bishop of Winchester, the Chancellor, setting forth that: “The said John, not being content with the xxxs., in order to force a larger sum from the Abbot, had destroyed his park at Bromley and had taken 20 bucks and 12 does, to the great damage of the said Abbot and to the prejudice and contempt of the King.” Moreover, although John Bagot held in chief of the Abbot the vill of Field by homage, fealty, and escuage, and by the service of twenty shillings annually, he had refused to perform his homage; his power in the district was so great that remedy was difficult.[87] Altogether, the situation was one which illustrates very well the general weakening of public security at the time through the growing power of great men and the increasing decline of authority. Just as John de Sudbury set at naught the Bishop and oppressed his weaker neighbours, so John Bagot, the Sheriff, abused his position and office to enforce an annual bribe from the Abbey to abstain from robbery and violence, which he, nevertheless, continued.

But Sudbury was none the less a man of business and not without his good qualities. When the Rectory of Allestree was appropriated during his tenure of office he arranged, as Valor Ecclesiasticus records, for a distribution there of 3s. 4d. annually at Michaelmas, and for £1 to be paid to the deacon who took the place of the absentee rector. He also provided for the maintenance of a lamp there at an annual cost of 2s. Other former Abbots who had endowed Poor Doles were Nicholas Abingdon (1187–1197), John Stafford (1260–1280), Thomas Field (1474–1494), and William Beyne (1502–1533), the amount to be distributed in each case being £14 7s. John Stafford arranged also for the payment of £5 yearly to the Chantry Chapel at Sallow. There are further doles, said to have been endowed by the founder of the monastery, as follows: £1 18s. on the anniversary of his death (Oct. 22nd) for his soul and the souls of King Etheldred and his royal successors and of Anselm and Archbishop Alfrike, the founder’s brothers; £1 18s. at Corpus Christi; £4 in twenty-four cloaks on the anniversary of his death; and 8d. given to the poor each day in the year in bread, ale and meat (reckoned at £12). The total spent in doles is £23 4s. 3d. per annum.

The officials (with fees) are as follows: George, Earl of Huntingdon, chief steward, £6 13s. 4d.; Hugh Barley, steward of Abbots Bromley, £1, and auditor, £5; Thomas Boylston, general receiver, £4; bailiffs Richard Morley (Findern and Stapenhill, 13s. 4d.), Ralf Manwaryng, gent. (Mickleover, £1), Nicholas Teyte (Littleover and Caldwell, £1 6s. 8d.), John Lambert (Allestree and Appleby, 13s. 4d.), John Smith (Branstone, etc., £2), Edward Edensore (Bromley Hurst, £2), Henry Meynell, gent. (Willington and Pothlac, 6s. 8d.), Walter Charnels (“bailiff of the town of Burton, who now receives the whole sum of the perquisites of the Court there by the King’s commandment” £3 6s. 8d.).

The remark about Walter Charnels reminds us that the King had a considerable interest in the affairs of Burton Abbey. Besides the bailiff of the town, he nominated a corrodian and a poor scholar, and he took fees (“Sheriffs’ Aids”) to the extent of £2 2s. a year.

If we are correct in our surmise that the statement of outgoings was not very strictly scrutinised in the case of Burton, we have, perhaps, an explanation of the large proportion allotted to alms there in contrast to the very small amount allowed elsewhere in the whole of the county. It may be that in other places the amount spent in alms was not allowed to be deducted, as it was at Burton.

No valuation subsequent to the Dissolution appears in Monasticon, so that we are deprived of the material which might have been afforded for checking the Chancellor’s (second) valuation. It may, however, be safely assumed to be fairly correct, and to give us a tolerably complete account of the revenues of the Abbey during the last years of its existence.

CHAPTER VI
MONASTIC BALANCE SHEETS

We shall take the remaining houses in alphabetical order, and it will be our endeavour to ascertain the details of their income and expenditure.