The dissolution of the monasteries

by Francis Aidan Hibbert

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.