English monasteries

by J. Charles Cox

We have looked in vain through many a customary of secular manors to find a parallel to this; the only approach to it is in other manors in monastic hands. As a broad rule there was no food or drink given to the secular lord’s villeins for labour on the demesne, save at corn harvest, and then only on a somewhat meagre scale.

One other point of the generous treatment of the tenants on the lands of Titchfield Abbey may be named. Those who have studied riverside manorial customs on manors that bordered on the Thames, Trent, Severn, Ouse (Yorks.), and elsewhere, know that not only the free ferrying of the lord’s household and his goods by the tenants was usually expected, but also the water-transit of himself or his property to quays or places at a considerable distance. But the waterside tenants of Titchfield, who were boat owners—although they had to take the abbot, canons, or members of the household and their horses free across the estuary of the Hamble when necessary—if they had to convey them up the water to Southampton were always to be recompensed by a pastum, or by 4d. in money, whichever they preferred.

It may also be mentioned as still further showing the condition of the natives on these monastic lands that they were forbidden to sell their horses or oxen that had been bred on the manor without the lord’s leave. The very statement of this small restriction shows that they were at liberty to trade in cattle or horses outside those of manorial breed. Nor were they to fell any oak or ash growing on their holding without the lord’s leave, save in the case of wood required for the repair of their houses or the strengthening of their hedges. As a rule timber, for even these purposes, could not be taken without a permit. The licence fee for marriage with anyone within the manor was two shillings, with anyone outside, according to the lord’s discretion. The reeve elected by the homage was to be free of all service of every kind, and from payment of churchset, pannage-fee, etc., during his term of office.

The Surtees Society in 1889 printed a most interesting volume of extracts from the Halmote Court or Manor rolls of the prior and convent of Durham from 1296 to 1384. They supply a vivid picture of the life of the various classes of tenants on the thirty-five vills under the control of that monastery, of their comparative independence, and of the merciful dealing of the conventual lord. Mr. Booth, as editor, writes in warm praise:

“We see them (the tenants) in their tofts, surrounded by their crofts, with their gardens of pot-herbs. We see how they ordered the affairs of the village when summoned by the bailiff of the vill to consider matters which affected the common-weal of the community. We hear of their trespasses and wrong-doings, and how they were remedied or punished; of their strifes and contentions, and how they were repressed; of their attempts, not always ineffective, to grasp the principle of co-operation as shown by their bylaws; of their relations with the prior, who represented the convent and alone stood in relation of lord. He appears always to have dealt with his tenants, either in person or through his officers, with much consideration; and in the imposition of fines we find them invariably tempering justice with mercy.”

Another book that is very helpful in showing the relationships that existed between a great abbey and its various tenants is the Rentalia et Custumaria of Glastonbury, printed a few years ago by the Somerset Record Society. Some of these West-country tenants had to find part of their rent in labour, and part in kind or in payment. There are payments in kind of salmon, eels, and honey, whilst not a few who worked direct for the abbey had stated wages. Even in cases where the villein had to do as much as three days’ work a week from Michaelmas to Midsummer, and five days’ work a week during harvest-time, he held in recompense several acres of arable land that he cultivated for himself during the free days, and had a small share of every acre of corn that he reaped or grass that he cut for the lord. The smaller cottagers had a variety of curious customary services in lieu of rent, mostly of a trifling character. Thus a woman named Alice held her cottage and half-an-acre of land by the service of sharpening the reapers’ sickles and bringing them water at harvest-time. Whilst at work for the abbot the labourers were, as a rule, entertained at common meals, and they met at Christmas in the great hall for a special feast.

It may, in short, be taken as a fact, that the best farming and the greatest degree of fair dealing and generous treatment were to be found on the monastic lands. The more this subject is studied, the more thoroughly are such facts established. Nor are the reasons why this should be the case far to seek. However unworthy the superior or the leading officials of an abbey or priory may occasionally have been, the system at all events secured a succession of resident lords for the most part of high moral and religious character, or of diligently supervised granges where the estates were at some distance from the central house. There were no protracted wardships or minorities; the lords were not frequently absent at wars, or with the court; and the actual character of the administration could not possibly have fluctuated in a like way as on secular estates. The heads of religious houses, and the chief obedientiaries or officials, had almost invariably some experience of manual labour as well as of agricultural farming, and could sympathise with the toil of the one and the anxiety of the other. Not infrequently in the larger houses special lands were appropriated to the support of the burdens of a particular part of the monastic life, and where this was the case, the almoner, the sacrist, or the cellarer, as the case might be, gave his immediate attention to the cultivation and the produce of such small estates. Hence came about a continuous contact between the religious and the tenants of various classes.

Into all this work and superintendence the true monk brought the spirit, and often the actual direction, of his rule. Not only did the monk learn to do field and garden labour as part of his training, but to enter upon it as a conventual or common work under the direction of the prior or one deputed by him. The Cluniacs and the Cistercians gave a dignity to their work by certain defined usages. When the brethren were gathered for work, the abbot himself, in a Cluniac house, was expected to meet them at the cloister door, saying, Eamus ad opus manuum, “Let us go forth to the work of our hands.” Thence they went in procession, saying a psalm, to the assigned place, and when there, certain suitable collects with the “Our Father” and versicles were said ere the work was begun, the superior taking his share.

Wide and general as was the dispersion of England’s religious houses, it was as nothing compared with the number of their granges, and to every grange a chapel was attached. These chapels were divided by a screen; the choir was for the brethren, professed and lay, and the western part for the tenants and labourers. That so vast an amount of land came by benefaction into the hands of the monasteries throughout England in mediæval days may have had certain economic objections; but one result, at all events, was achieved through that fact, namely, the removal to a great extent of any idea of the degradation of manual toil, and the linking together of labour and worship. It was impossible in old days to go many miles in any direction without alighting upon a humble chapel specially built for those who tilled the soil. In a single midland county where there were only seven religious houses (apart from hospitals), traces, either in stone or records, have been found of upwards of twenty grange chapels. The mere worldling will doubtless view with some contempt this association of Divine service and the weary round of agricultural toil; but for such we are not writing. Those who have any faith in the reality of religious joy will realise the blessing of such opportunities, which were so largely multiplied by the monks of England, not only for their own spiritual advantage, but for those who worked under and with them.

The great opportunities that the native tenants or villeins had of securing their freedom, for Holy Orders or otherwise, on the monastic estates, and the general advantages of all such tenants in the matter of education, must be left for another chapter, as they both demand more extended treatment than can be given in a single paragraph or two. The only other point to be now briefly dealt with is the question of the tenants of nunneries. Though their numbers were not large, and many of the houses quite small, still the houses of religious women suppressed by Henry VIII. were nearly one hundred and fifty.