Nocton, Blankney, Branston, Metheringham, Canwick, Sheepwash, Billingham, Thimbleby (where the Abbot had gallows), Langton, Coningsby, South Langton, Scampton, Holton, Thornton, Stretton, Wispington, Strutby, Martin, Sudthorpe, Roughton, Haltham, Benniworth, Hedingley, Woodhall (with the advowson), Wildmore Fen (45,000 acres), etc., besides property in the parishes of St. Andrew, Holborn, St. Botolph, Aldersgate, and St. Nicholas, in the city of London; and the further advowsons of the benefices of Covenham and Thimbleby. The Abbots exercised the rights of hunting, fowling and fishing; an old Cartulary of the Abbey [240a] states that “Robert son of Simon de Driby . . . grants to the Abbot of Kirkstead to have their ‘mastiffs’ in his warren of Tumby all times of the year, with their shepherds, to take and retake their beasts in the said warren, without any contradiction of the said Robert or his heirs.” “Witness Robert, son of Walter de Tatessal.” The demesne in Wildmore was granted to the Abbey by Baron Robert Marmyon of Scrivelsby, and William de Romara, Earl of Lincoln, jointly, on condition that he should not allow any other parties to pasture on the lands, but only themselves and their tenants. [240b] This William de Romara also founded the Abbey of Revesby in the 8th year of Stephen, and both to that Abbey and to Kirkstead he granted a Hermitage in Wildmore; and to show the power of the Abbots of Kirkstead, it is recorded that when, in course of time, Ralph de Rhodes, “the Lord of Horncastle,” succeeded to the manorial rights in Wildmore, he, contrary to the grants of his predecessors, “did bring in the said Wildmore other men’s cattell”; thereupon a plea of covent was sued against him by the Abbot of Kirkstead, with the result that a “fyne” was acknowledged by the said “Ralfe de Rhodes.” Similarly, a Marmyon, successor of the one who made the grant, “contrary to the graunt of his ancestors, did bring into Wildmore other men’s cattell, whereupon a like plea of covent was sued against him.” And in both these cases these secular lords had to yield to the Abbot. “From which time,” the old Record states, “the said Abbots have bene Lords of Wildmore, and peaceably and quietly have enjoyed the same as true Lords thereof, without impedimte of any man.” [240c]
These successes, however, seem to have elated the spirit of the Abbots of this monastery, and to have led them, in the pride of power, not always to have due regard for the rights of others. As early as the reign of Edward I., it was complained, before Royal Commissioners, that the Abbot was guilty of sundry encroachments; that he obstructed passengers on the King’s highway; [241a] that he made ditches for his own convenience which flooded his neighbours’ lands; and that, from his power, inferior parties could get no redress; [241b] that he prevented the navigation of the Witham by any vessels but his own; [241c] that he trespassed on the King’s prerogative by seizing “waifs and strays” over the whole of Wildmore; [241d] that he had hanged various offenders at Thimbleby; had appropriated to himself, without licence, the assize of bread and beer. [241e] Further, he refused to pay, on certain lands, the impost called “Sheriff’s aid,” [241f] or to do suit and service for his land, either in the King’s Court or that of the Bishop of Carlisle at Horncastle. [241g] Against none of which charges does it appear that he returned any satisfactory answer. Yet, while thus acting with a high hand, he was not above worldly traffic on a considerable scale, as is shewn by certain Patent Rolls, [241h] where a note is given to the effect that, on May 1st, 1285, a licence was granted, at Westminster, for three years, “for the Abbot of Kirkstead to buy wool throughout the county of Lincoln, in order to satisfy certain merchants, to whom he is bound in certain sacks of wool, his own sheep having failed through murrain;” while it was further alleged that he carried on an extensive system of smuggling, whereby it was calculated that some £2,000 a year were lost to the corporation of Lincoln. Proceedings like these do not give us a very favourable impression as to the virtues of these spiritual lords, their charity, or their standard of morality. Yet, on the other hand, we have to make allowance for the times and circumstances in which they lived. I quote here a letter written by a Lincolnshire man who had viewed matters from the different standpoints of an Anglican and a Romanist. [241i]
“You say ‘the monks were not saints.’ I have no doubt but a small proportion were. Yet, taking them as a whole, the wonder is they were as respectable as they were. It is not enough considered what the monastic life was for several centuries. It was the refuge of hundreds and thousands who could find no other occupation. There was no Navy as a profession; the Army was not, in the sense we understand it, a profession. Law and medicine were very restricted. What were men to do with themselves? How to pass life? Where to go to live? There was next to no education, no books hardly to read. How can we wonder that the mass of monks were a very common kind of men, professedly very religious, of necessity formally so, but taking their duties as lightly as they could? The number of them who outraged their vows was wonderfully small. The Inquisitions of Henry VIII.’s time, atrociously partial, as they were, to find blame, found comparatively little. Compare the monks of those days with the Fellows of Colleges in the last (18th) century, and down almost to our own day. Were the former much lower in morals, if at all? Less religious, if at all? I think not.” Nor should we forget their unbounded hospitality, in an age when there were few inns for the traveller, and no Poor Law for the destitute; their skill in horticulture and agriculture, which were a national benefit; or their maintenance of roads and bridges; apart from their guardianship of the Scriptures, and their witness to Christianity. It has been said, “From turret and tower sounded the well-known chime, thrice a day, to remind the faithful of the Incarnation, and its daily thrice-repeated memorial” (F. G. Lee, “Pilgrimage of Grace”). The poor were never forgotten in these multiplied services. When mass was celebrated, it was a rule that the sacristan rang the “sanctus” bell (from its cherished sanctity often the only bell still preserved in our village churches), “so that the rustics who could not be present might everywhere, in field or home, be able to bow the knee to reverence” (Maskell’s “Ancient Liturgy,” p. 95. “Constit.,” J. Peckham, a.d. 1281). If the strict rules of their continuous services were occasionally relaxed by exhilarating sport, or even, as the monks of Kirkstead are said to have done, by frequenting fairs, as at Horncastle, their abbots presiding at the pastimes of the people, [242] the Maypole processions
and dances; or getting up mystery-plays, or other exhibitions, perpetuated still at Nuremberg, where our most cultivated Christians go to witness them; surely these were comparatively harmless recreations. It must, however, be recognised that, in time, prosperity had its usual corrupting effects. The Aukenleck MS. (temp. Ed. II.) says, “these Abbots and Priors do again their rights. They ride with hawk and hounds, and counterfeit knights.” As the Bishop of Ely attended divine service, leaving his hawk on its perch in the cloister, where it was stolen, and he solemnly excommunicated the thief; or as the Bishop of Salisbury was reprimanded for hunting the King’s deer; or as Bishop Juxon was so keen a sportsman that he was said to have the finest pack of hounds in the kingdom; [243a] so the Abbott of Bardney had his hunting box, and the Abbots of Kirkstead excluded others from sporting on their demesnes, that they might reserve the enjoyment for themselves. It is stated by Hallam (“History of the Middle Ages”) that, in 1321, “the Archbishop of York carried a train of 200 persons, maintained at the expense of the monasteries, on his road, and that he hunted with a pack of hounds, from parish to parish”; and such an example would naturally be contagious. But it was only when long-continued indulgence and immunity had pampered them to excess, that laxity of morals became flagrant or general. And even when of this very Kirkstead it is recorded that, at the time of the Dissolution, the Abbot, Richard Haryson (1535) was fain to confess, in the deed of surrender, that the monks had, “under the shadow of their rule, vainly detestably, and ungodlily devoured their yearly revenues in continual ingurgitations of their carrion bodies, and in support of their over voluptuous and carnal appetites.” [243b] We cannot but suspect that such language was that of their enemies, put into their mouths, when resistance was no longer possible. They had,
however, through long ages, acquired a powerful hold on the respect and affection of the people, and there were hundreds and thousands who were ready to say, what one once said of his country,
England! with all thy faults, I love thee still. [244a]
That the many virtues and the value of the monasteries came to be recognised by many after they were abolished is shewn by the “Pilgrimage of Grace,” and similar indications of smouldering discontent among the people whom they had long benefited. Yet there was always the danger arising from the perfunctory observance of multiplied services, that the “opus operatum” might oust the living faith; and there can be little doubt that such a result had largely come about. Though greed and plunder were the main motive of the Royal Executioner and his agents, the parties who suffered had certainly become only fitting subjects for drastic measures. But we pass from this digressive disquisition to the one interesting relic of Kirkstead Abbey which is still spared to us, in the little chapel standing in the fields, with reference to which I will here quote the words of a writer to whom I have referred before. [244b] He says, “A mile away from Woodhall is one of the loveliest little gems of architecture in the country, a pure, little, Early English church, now dreadfully dilapidated, which belonged, in some unexplained way,—probably as a chantry chapel,—to the Cistercian Abbey of Kirkstead.” As this little gem is now locked away from public view, I will here give extracts from the description of it given by the late Bishop Suffragan, Dr. Edwd. Trollope, one of our greatest authorities, on the occasion of the Architectural Society’s visit to it a few years ago; and which was handed to me by him at the time. They are worthy of careful examination.
“The situation of this lovely little chapel, on the south side of the Abbey of Kirkstead, and without its precincts, is most remarkable. It has been surmised that it may have served as the Abbot’s private chapel, or for the use of the Abbey tenants; but I can scarcely think that either of these suggestions is likely to be true, as such a chapel, so far from the monastic building, and without its protecting girdle, would not have been convenient for the Abbot’s use, and such an elaborately-ornamented structure
would scarcely have been erected simply for the monastic churls. Had it been nearer the other buildings, and especially the great Abbey church, we might have thought it had served as the Chapter-House, on which much pains was always bestowed by the Cistercians, so that, in richness of design, this usually ranked second only to the church itself. I am inclined, however, to suggest that it was a chantry chapel, put under the protection of the Abbey and served by its inmates according to the Will of one of the former wealthy lords of Tattershall and Kirkstead, whose burial place it eventually became.
“This beautiful little structure consists of an unbroken oblong, supported by plain buttresses, insufficient to shore up its side walls and bear the weight of its vaulted roof. A plain plinth constitutes the footing of the structures, above which is a bold boutel string, below the window sills, and it is surmounted by quarter round corbels which originally supported a corbel table and a higher pitched roof than the present one, not long ago (in the forties), covered with thatch. The side windows consist of very narrow little lancets. At the east end is a triplet, and at the west end structural ornaments of a most beautiful kind have been most lavishly supplied. Owing to the loss of the gables of this chapel, and its present hipped roof, its appearance at a distance does not promise much, but, when approached, the remarkable beauty of its design, and especially of its western elevation, will most assuredly command admiration.