The Abbeys of Great Britain

by H. Claiborne Dixon

The Nemesis soon came in the shape of the Danish invasions which swept away practically all the monasteries in the land—Lindisfarne, Whitby, Wearmouth and Sheppey, in particular, suffering greatly from the marauders. St Edmund endured martyrdom at their hands; Peterborough, Ely, Winchester, London, Canterbury, Rochester, etc., all were pillaged, and the inhabitants massacred; while the whole country became a scene of desolation. Temporary peace was gained in the reign of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex—the Danes being permitted to settle in Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia, and the process of reviving religious life went hand in hand with the rebuilding of the monastic houses. Cardinal Newman gives a wonderful description of this restoration of monastic life—

“Silent men were observed about the country, or discovered in the forest, digging, cleaning and building; and other silent men, not seen, were sitting in the cold cloisters tiring their eyes and keeping their attention on the stretch, while they painfully deciphered, then copied and recopied the manuscripts which they had saved. There was no one that contended or cried out, or drew attention to what was going on; but by degrees the woody swamp became a hermitage, a religious house, a farm, an abbey, a village, a seminary, a school of learning and a city. Roads and villages connected it with the abbeys and cities which had similarly grown up. And then, when these patient, meditative men had in the course of many years gained their peaceful victories, perhaps invaders came, and with fire and sword undid their slow and persevering toil in an hour. Down in the dust lay the labour and civilisation of centuries—churches, colleges, cloisters and libraries—and nothing was left to them but to begin all over again; but this they did without grudging, so promptly, cheerfully and tranquilly as if it were by some law of nature that the restoration came; and they were like the flowers and shrubs and great trees, which they reared, and which, when ill-treated, do not take vengeance or remember evil, but give forth fresh branches, leaves and blossoms, perhaps in greater profusion or with richer quality, for the very same reason that the old were rudely broken off.”

Dunstan, the great Church reformer and statesman, built and restored as many as forty monasteries; established several schools, and is supposed to have exercised jurisdiction over at least 3000 parish churches. He and Archbishop Odo reinstated the rules of St Benedict in the monasteries which had previously become relaxed. Dunstan had many dealings with the Danes. He allowed them to settle in the north but did not compel them to accept English laws and customs. Had Ethelred the Unready treated these northern people as judiciously, there had perhaps been no such dreadful invasion as that which followed the massacre of the Danes in 1002, and which, under the leadership of Sweyn, ravaged the country for years. Sweyn, after being acknowledged King of England, died in 1014, and after his death many were the battles fought between those who upheld the right of Canute, Sweyn’s son, against that of Edmund Ironside, son of Ethelred. Eventually, as is known, Canute became first “sole King of the English” and in the course of time embraced the Christian faith. He founded Bury St Edmunds Abbey and promoted much missionary work in Norway and Denmark. At the close of the 10th and the early part of the 11th century many churches were built by the converted Danes. These pre-Norman structures had more massiveness, combined with greater elegance, than those of the earlier Saxon and Romanesque period—the latter buildings being chiefly built of wood—and were copies of continental churches with which the Danes were familiar through their intercourse with the Normans. At the English restoration, the cause of Christianity gained a great supporter in that saintly king, Edward the Confessor, who upheld and furthered all Christian works in the land, and was persuaded by the monks to build and endow, at enormous expense, the abbey of Westminster. Harold, his brother-in-law, advanced the cause of the secular clergy by building Waltham as a collegiate foundation, and was buried ultimately there after the battle of Senlac. The Norman Conquest was the means of yet another abbey being founded—that of Battle, built and endowed by William I.

The Conquest did much to promote church interests and introduced a higher standard of religious thought throughout the country. Cathedrals and abbey churches were rebuilt. Norman landowners founded and endowed new monasteries, and monasticism, as a whole, was extended and reformed. New orders sprung up at the latter end of the 11th century, including the military orders, formed in response to the Crusaders and known as the Knights Templar and Knights of St John; also regular orders representing reforms of the Benedictine order. In 1077 the Cluniacs came, but being entirely dependent on the Mother house at Clugny, were regarded as foreigners and did not meet with much encouragement. On the other hand, the Cistercians, or “white monks,” in spite of their rigid rules and extreme austerity, found favour with the people and set up their first English house at Waverly in Surrey in 1129. The rules of the Carthusian monks were not popular—absolute silence, among other severities, was observed by the brethren, and only nine houses of the order were erected in this country. The Black Canons Regular of St Augustine with their branches of the Præmonstratensian and Gilbertine orders established many monasteries which flourished throughout the land. This extension of monasticism, which reached its culminating point in the middle of the 12th century, is thus vividly pictured by Mr Wakeman:—

“The monasteries sprang up all over England with a life of their own, concentrated and exclusive, but rich and vigorous, bringing into the stagnant waters of rural society a profusion of high thoughts and noble aspirations previously inconceivable. Art, worship, devotion, learning often in the highest form at that time attainable, were brought to man’s very doors. If he had in him anything which would correspond to their magnetic touch, and would submit himself to the chastening of discipline, the open portals of the nearest monastery set him upon the lowest rung of the ladder which would lead, did he choose it, to heaven.... There was hardly a district in England where monastic influence was unknown and its power unfelt.... For a century and a half after the Conquest all the best men in the English Church came from the monasteries.”

Deterioration in monastic life, however, set in at the opening of the 13th century.

“From the end of the 12th century until the Reformation the monasteries remained magnificent hostelries; their churches were splendid chapels for noble patrons; their inhabitants were bachelor country gentlemen, more polished and charitable, but little more learned or pure in life than their lay neighbours, their estates were well managed.... But with a few noble exceptions there was nothing in the system that did spiritual service. Books were multiplied, but learning declined; prayers were offered unceasingly but the efficacious energy of real devotion was not found in the homes that it had reared.”—Bishop Stubbs.

But the coming of the Dominicans and of the Franciscans later in the 13th century brought new light into the Church. These orders differed from the earlier orders in that they had at first no settled homes of their own. The Dominicans inspired the desire of learning, and becoming teachers at the Universities, trained up many of the future clergy of the Church. The Franciscans, though at first professing to despise learning and devoting themselves more to evangelistic work among the poorer classes, soon followed the example set them by the Dominicans and eventually became the most learned body of men in England, greatly extending their influence over political matters. But unfortunately, as time went on, the Friars succumbed to temptation in its various forms, and degeneration set in amongst them as it had in the older orders. The reforms of Wycliffe and his party, known as the Lollards, in the 15th century, are too familiar to need description. In 1416 the alien Priories—houses dependent on foreign monasteries, having sprung up as a result of the Norman Conquest—were suppressed, and as it was deemed politic in the following reign to use the property and money thus gained for religious purposes, Henry VI. founded Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge. University life grew and prospered in the 15th century, and the introduction of printing into England greatly furthered the advance of knowledge.

Public opinion being against monastic life in the 16th century Wolsey’s proposals for the suppression of some of the smaller monasteries were supported by the people. The Cardinal appealed to Henry VIII. saying that there were many “exile and small monasteries wherein neither God is served nor religion kept,” with the result that he was permitted to suppress forty monasteries in various counties, and particularly those of the Benedictine and early orders. The Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536-1540, on the cause and effect of which so much controversy has arisen, and about which difficult subject it is consequently wise not to expatiate, took place in two divisions. In 1536, 375 small houses were dissolved, provision being made for the monks, either by pensioning them or by removing them to other monasteries “where good religion is observed as shall be limited by the King” (27 Henry VIII., c. 28). Unlike Wolsey, who at least used the money gained by the first suppression for the furtherance of Church work in other forms, it is not evident that Henry did anything of the kind. The Pilgrimage of Grace, a movement in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire in 1536-37 against Henry’s new laws, led to the final suppression of the monasteries, and by the end of 1538 few religious houses flourished. Many abbots surrendered their houses to the commissioners, and those who did not do so were accused of many offences—the truth of which charges was not critically examined at the time. Of the greater monasteries suppressed, 370 followed the Benedictine, Cluniac and Augustinian rules, whilst 276 belonged to the Cistercian, Carthusian and minor orders. It is said that the annual income of the greater monasteries amounted to £131,607 in the money value of that time, and the capital value of the buildings, etc., was over £400,000—which sums should be multiplied by twelve to find the modern value. Whatever the sins and faults of monastic establishments, there is no doubt their loss was greatly felt by the people generally. The distribution of the monastic estates took various forms. Henry VIII. squandered much of the ready money on personal matters, and the bulk of the real estate passed into the hands of temporal peers, among whom were Lord Russell (the founder of the Earldom of Bedford), the Duke of Norfolk, and Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk. Sir John Byron, among men of lesser note, received Newstead Abbey, and wealthy merchants, in becoming possessed of monastic estates, formed a new landed gentry, many of whose families have since been credited with misfortunes of every kind.

“They tell us that the Lord of Hosts will not avenge His own,
They tell us that He careth not for temples overthrown;
Go! look through England’s thousand vales and show me, he that may,
The Abbey lands that have not wrought their owner’s swift decay.”
Neale.