Tag Archives: Thomas Cromwell

The Dissolution of the Monasteries – a timeline

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1526-1529

Cardinal Wolsey suppressed 29 monasteries with the permission of the Pope to fund Ipswich College and Cardinal College in Oxford which became King Henry VIII college and then Christchurch College. It was founded in the grounds of one of the suppressed monasteries (St Frideswide’s). The monastic foundations Wolsey suppressed totaled an income of £1800 and were generally very small.

1529

October 9: Cardinal Wolsey falls from power due to his failure to secure a divorce for his master from Katherine of Aragon. He is arrested on a charge of praemunire.  Praemunire involves taking orders from foreign powers rather than the king.  Being a cardinal means that it was inevitable that Wolsey could face this charge.

1530

January: Wolsey falls ill and is attended by Henry’s doctor.  Wolsey does not give up hope of being reinstated to Henry’s favour.

November 4: Wolsey is arrested.  He cannot help dabbling in politics and has sent some injudicious letters to Rome.  Thomas Cromwell speaks on Wolsey’s behalf in Parliament.

November 29: Cardinal Wolsey dies in Leicester on his way back to London from York. Edward Hall hints at suicide in his account of Wolsey’s last days but it was most likely a bowel infection. He was certainly on his way back to the Tower and execution.

1532

January 15: Commons Supplication Against the Ordinaries also known as the Submission of the Clergy.

What this means is that the king and his ministers are now able to review all Church, or canon, law. They could prevent the enforcement of any canon law they wished and they could veto the passage of any new Church law if they were so disposed.   Sir Thomas More resigns from the Chancellorship as a consequence of the passage of this act.

 

Act Restraining Payments of Annates – An annate was a tax levied on newly appointed clergy and payable to the pope (usually half or a whole year’s income – annates are also known as first fruits).  Parliament withholds the payments of annates from Rome but gives Henry the option of allowing them to continue.  This is effectively a form of blackmail in an attempt to get Henry his divorce from Katherine of Aragon.  The act also states that the Pope cannot delay consecration of bishops or excommunicate Englishmen in retaliation for the withholding of the annates.

 

Augustinan Canons of Holy Trinity, Christchurch in London surrender to the king because they are overwhelmed by debt. An Act of Parliament recognises the Crown as Holy Trinity’s founder which means that no one else has any claim to the land or property that has been surrendered to the king.

1533

March: Act in Restraint of Appeals 1532. This act was somewhat confusingly passed in 1533.It means that the highest authority legally speaking in England is the King because Parliament doesn’t recognise any higher authority. “This realm of England is an Empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one Supreme Head and King having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial Crown of the same.” Katherine of Aragon can no longer make an appeal to Rome against an English court’s decision.

1534

This year is a busy year for Parliament.

  • The Act of Dispensations –  All payments to Rome are now stopped. Licenses and dispensations previously attainable through the Church are now being administered by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
  • An act is passed which Monks forbidden to travel outside the country on official business
  • Act for the Submission of the Clergy, 1534
  • Act in Absolute Restraint of Annates. Payment of all annates to Rome are now forbidden and Engishmen are forbidden to obtain papal bulls for the consecration of bishops. Instead, the King nominates and Archbishop consecrates bishops. In some respects England has always been an anomaly in this regard. The Crowns right to nominate archbishops was one of the reasons Henry II fell out with Thomas Becket.
  • The Act of First Fruits and Tenths. First fruits is another name for the first year’s income from a benefice.  Every year thereafter the tax was a tenth of the incumbent’s income.  This is still collected but now it makes its way into the King’s coffers rather than to Rome.
  • The First Succession Act – Succession is vested in heirs of Henry and Anne (Princess Elizabeth and hopefully a male heir).  This is the act which bastardises Princess Mary.
  • Act of Supremacy King Henry VIII is declared to be Supreme Head of the English Church.
  • Treason Act
  • Act Extinguishing the Authority of the Bishop of Rome – which deals with a loop hole that the other acts haven’t covered.

1535

January: Cromwell is made Viceregerant.  He orders a national visitation of all monastic houses.  This leads to the Comperta or ‘Black Book’ which lists all monastic transgressions.  Monastic transgressions are also enumerated in the letters that Cromwell’s visitors sent to him and in the various acts of parliament that followed.  The other text, the Valor Ecclesiasticus  identifies the worth of the monastic houses– 80% of monastic houses are registered in the Valor. Half the monasteries had less than £200 p.a. The net annual income of the Church is valued at £320,000. The king only receives £40,000.

 

September 18: In Yorkshire in 1534 and 1535 Archbishop Lee of York, who signed the Act of Supremacy and who is keen on the Bible in English begins to make a visitation of the monasteries in his diocese. His visitation is eventually halted on this day on the orders of Cromwell. He visited 8 Yorkshire foundations of which 5 were nunneries.

1536

March: Act of Suppression of the Smaller Monasteries – All monastic houses with fewer than 12 monks or nuns or less than £200 p.a. are suppressed on the grounds that these establishments were centres of “manifest sin, vicious, carnal and abominable living.”

Many abbeys had already been coerced into surrendering during the visitation of 1535 but now the smaller abbeys of England were forced to close. Their number includes:

Abbey Dore- Hereford and Worcester;  Beeliegh, St Botolph (Colchester), Little Dunmow, Prittlewell and Tilty in Essex; Birkenhead, Jarrow and Monkwearmouth; Bisham and Hurley in Berkshire; Blyth and Rufford in Nottinghamshire; Bourne and Tupholme in Lincolnshire; Boxgrove, Easebourne, Michelham and Shulbred in Sussex; Brinkburn in Northumberland; Broomholm, Horsham, Ingham and Langley in Norfolk; Bungay and Sibton in Suffolk; Bushmead in Bedford, Canons Ashby in Northampton; Cartmel in modern Cumbria but I think Tudor Lancashire; Chirbury in Shropshire; Coverham and Nun Monkton in Yorkshire; Dorchester in Oxfordshire; St Radegund’s in Dover, Minster-in-Sheppey and Monks Horton in Kent; Upholland in Lancashire; Exeter St Nicholas and Frithelstock in Devon; St Oswald’s in Gloucester; Maxstoke, Pinley and Stoneleigh in Warwick; Mottisfont in Hampshire; Norton in Cheshire; Owston in Leicestershire; Quarr on the Isle of Wight; Waverley in Surrey.

In Wales the following abbeys were suppressed:  Cwmhir,Beddgelert, Caldy, Chepstow,Haverfordwest,Llantarnam,Margam,Penmon, Pill, Talley and Usk.

 

The Court of Augmentations is set up to take control of the confiscated property and monastic loot. This covers the sale of everything from the lead on the roof to the floor tiles as well as the collection of holy relics and sale of all the plate and any other valuables.

October 3: Pilgrimage of Grace begins in Lincolnshire. It is led by Robert Aske. The Pilgrims march under the banner of the five wounds of Christ.  They wish for a return of the monasteries and of Catholicism.  They’re not terribly impressed by the rent hikes made by some of the new landowners who have taken over the suppressed monasteries.  Cromwell and other ‘bad advisors’ are blamed for Henry’s policies.

October 9: The Pilgrimage spreads to the East Riding of Yorkshire and by the end of the week it has crossed the Pennines. Unrest sprouts in Westmorland and Cumberland.

October 12: Sawley Abbey  which was suppressed in the spring of 1536 is restored.

December: Duke of Norfolk partially accepted the demands of the rebels including the promise of a parliament in York – pardon given providing there was no more rebellion.

1537

January 16 Sir Francis Bigod leads new uprising which effectively nullifies the terms of Norfolk’s December agreement. In total about 200 men executed including Robert Aske who has taken no part in the 1537 uprising.

March: Abbot Paslew and two of his monks are executed at the gates of Wally Abbey for their part in the Pilgrimage of Grace following trial at Lancaster.  The remaining 13 monks are kicked out of their home with no pension as Walley is forcibly suppressed.

April 9: Furness Abbey surrenders.

Easby Abbey near Richmond is suppressed.  It had 18 monks including the abbot. Jervaulx is also suppressed.  Their abbot, having been involved in the Pilgrimage of Grace, is hauled off to London where he is executed at Tyburn.  In Cumberland, Lanercost Priory surrenders.

1538

Jan-Sept: 38 large monasteries voluntarily surrender.

Visitation of the friaries now begins but it is discovered that many friars have already taken themselves abroad.

November 21: Monk Bretton Priory  in South Yorkshire surrenders. Some of the monks band together, buy 148 books from the library and continue to live a communal life at Worsborough.  They were still a community in 1558.

November 30: Byland Abbey surrenders.

1539

An act of Parliament hands all the monastic land already surrendered or suppressed into the hands of the Crown.

November 22: Kirkstall Abbey near Leeds surrenders. There are 31 monks.

December 14: Whitby Abbey surrenders.

December 24: Guisborough Priory signs the deed of surrender. Hailes Abbey in Gloucestershire surrenders on the same day.

Fountains Abbey also surrenders in 1539.  It is pictured at the start of this post. Double click on it for an outline history of Fountains Abbey.

1540

January 5: Egglestone Abbey near Barnard Castle is dissolved.

January 6: Henry marries Anne of Cleves

January 9: Carlisle Priory surrenders.  The cathedral will be reconstituted in May 1541 along with Chester Cathedral.

January 29: Bolton Abbey surrenders.  In addition to the prior there are 14 canons.  The church becomes the parish church.

March 23: Waltham Abbey surrenders.  It is the last monastery in England.

April 3: Guisborough Priory is formally dissolved.

June 10: Thomas Cromwell arrested at a council meeting.

July 28: Cromwell executed.

 

Jane Seymour – Plain Jane

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jane seymour emblem.pngJane Seymour, perhaps the original Plain Jane if Chapuys comments are to be believed, became wife number three on 30th May 1536. She was another descendent of Edward III via Hotspur. She’d also been a lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon and also to Anne Boleyn. One story said that Anne was deeply distressed to encounter Jane sitting on Henry’s lap. Her chosen motto was “Bound to serve and obey” – a wise choice given Henry’s complaints about wife number two and presumably wife number one’s implacable logic and argument. Her emblem is the phoenix rising from a tower  surrounded by those burgeoning roses reflecting both a Plantagenet and Lancastrian inheritance. The pheonix is a symbol of love and renewal. Jane is the renewed Tudor hope for an heir.

 

Jane would also be the queen who oversaw Henry’s return to a more traditional set of beliefs.  She tried to reconcile him to Princess Mary and also interceded on behalf of the catholic pilgrims who’d revolted during the Pilgrimage of Grace.  Her clemency wasn’t welcome so far as Henry was concerned and she swiftly retreated from the political field.

 

It was February 1536 when word of Henry’s interest in Jane Seymour was first mentioned in ambassadorial dispatches and it wasn’t long before her brothers found themselves being rewarded with important posts and preferments.

 

In 1537 Jane fell pregnant, a fact recorded by Edward Hall. The rejoicing must have been a little bit cautious given all the previous disappointments but on the 12 October she produced a boy, Edward, and then promptly died from complications on 24th October. Cromwell would later blame her attendants for giving her rich food and sweets but in reality it was likely to have been childbed fever that carried Jane off.

 

Panther-close-blog.jpgJane was very different from her predecessor, although Anne’s leopard was very swiftly adapted into Jane’s other symbol – the panther. The panther, heraldically speaking, is a more gentle animal than a leopard and can also represent Christ.  He was also white and covered in multicoloured spots rather than being black.  Examples can be found at Hampton Court looking rather splendid but it should also be remembered that Henry VI used a panther as a symbol as did the Beauforts.  Double click on the image of the panther to find out more about the garden at Hampton Court.  Jane wasn’t particularly well educated and reverted to older fashion styles when she became queen. Perhaps she thought that the higher neck lines would stop Henry being too attracted to her own ladies-in-waiting, she had after all had plenty of opportunity to watch what went on at court. Historians can’t agree as to whether she was an active player in inveigling Henry away from Anne or whether she was a pawn in the hands of her family. She kept her own counsel and did not live long enough to prove a disappointment to Henry.

Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan

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In October 1537 Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, died from complications following childbirth. Henry, a man notorious for divorcing his first wife and beheading his second was in need of a new wife – or at least that was the view of his chief minister Thomas Cromwell.

Cromwell’s attention initially fell upon Marie de Guise a young widow with a son – so a proven track record for the production of heirs. She was also purported to be a tall woman, something that Henry liked the sound of when he Marie was described to him. Marie however declined the offer of marriage explaining that she only had a little neck. She went on to marry James V of Scotland.

Henry next suggested that all the eligible women in France on Cromwell’s list of suitable brides make like to meet in Calais – think of it as a Tudor hen night where the king could choose his next wife on the grounds that Henry didn’t trust his ambassadors and he was determined he didn’t want to marry an ugly princess. Unsurprisingly the prospective brides and their families were not terribly impressed with the idea – the French ambassador explained that diplomatic marriages were not horse markets . There was also the small matter of the fact that Henry had been excommunicated- which rather put off the Catholic brides.

Ultimately Cromwell sent Hans Holbein on a fact-finding trip with his paintbrush and easel. One of the most striking portraits that Holbein painted at this time was that of sixteen-year-old Christina of Denmark. Christina was the younger daughter of Christian II of Denmark and Isabella of Austria (sister of Charles V). Christian was an early follower of Luther – even if Charles V was very Catholic.  Christian was a bit of an unfortunate king – his wife died, his children were effectively confiscated by their Hapsburg uncle and then he managed to get himself toppled and imprisoned – so Christina of Denmark was actually more Christina of the Netherlands. In some ways she was already part of the English royal family because her great-aunt was none other than Katherine of Aragon.

In addition to being a Hapsburg she was also, as this picture shows, a very pretty girl. She’d been married by proxy at the age of eleven to the Duke of Milan who was a mere twenty-six years older that her. He died two years later – hence the deep black of mourning- Christina returning to her uncle in Brussels so that he could arrange the next advantageous diplomatic marriage. Like Marie she was a tad concerned about the English King’s way with the ladies. She is supposed to have said that if she had two heads one of them would be at the disposal of Henry. Charles V who was looking for allies against the French seems little bothered about the way in which his aunt had been treated and was quite prepared to send his niece across the Channel…unless a better offer came along.

As a consequence of the initial negotiations Holbein visited Brussels in 1538. Christina sat for a portrait but only for three hours.  Holbein did his preliminary drawings, came home and whipped up the portrait.  And what a portrait! This is the only full-length female portrait that Holbein made (I think if memory serves me correctly). The colours and the simplicity of the picture concentrate the viewer on Christina’s hands and face as does the beautifully executed fur collar.  There is a hint of a smile on Christina’s face – perhaps she knew she wouldn’t have to marry Henry!  Henry liked the portrait so much that he announced that he was in love.

For some reason the negotiations did not continue. Christina married François, Duc de Bar in 1541, who succeeded his father as Duc de Lorraine in 1544 and died in 1545, leaving Christina Regent of Lorraine with three children. She died in 1590. As for the portrait – well Henry liked it so much he kept it.

The image for this post was accessed from http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/hans-holbein-the-younger-christina-of-denmark-duchess-of-milan 08/11/2015 @ 23:26

Richard Cromwell

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640px-Cromwell,Thomas(1EEssex)01Richard Williams was the son of Morgan Williams who came from Putney and Catherine Cromwell, the sister of Thomas (pictured here). Morgan was a brewer, possibly originally from somewhere near Cardiff.

Richard entered Thomas Cromwell’s household in 1530 having previously done a stint as a servant with Thomas Grey the second Marquis of Dorset. In 1529 Thomas made a will, in the aftermath of the sweating sickness which killed his wife and two daughters.  Richard can be found here listed along with ‘poor relations.’ Thomas remedied that particular problem when he arranged his nephew’s marriage with financial advantage in mind. The lady in question was called Frances Murfyn, the daughter of Sir Thomas who had been Lord Mayor of London. She came with several properties.

Richard remained in Thomas’s household and conducted business on his uncle’s behalf ultimately taking on the surname Cromwell – incidentally he was also the great grandfather of Oliver.

In addition to the change of name Richard demonstrated many of the hardheaded attitudes towards wealth that his uncle exemplified. Richard was noticeably enriched by the suppression of the monasteries both at the time and in the years afterwards when the crown first rented the confiscated lands out and then sold them. His reputation was such that the Pilgrims of the Pilgrimage of Grace singled him out as someone who was responsible for the despoiling of centuries of monastic tradition. Richard, apparently not unduly concerned, was part of the posse headed up by the Duke of Suffolk which put down the Pilgrimage in the eastern counties.

In 1537 Richard began to buy up properties in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. He was also knighted by Henry VIII at this time. By 1542 he was the first knight of the latter shire. In 1543 he was made a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and found himself in charge of infantry when war broke out with France. In 1544 he was made Constable of Berkely Castle – which wasn’t at all bad for a man who’d made no secret of his sorrow when Uncle Thomas had been executed.  He was also a very wealthy man by this time and an MP as well.  No doubt his uncle would have been very proud of him.

Gregory Cromwell – Thomas Cromwell’s son

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640px-Cromwell,Thomas(1EEssex)01Gregory, born about 1520, was the only son of Thomas and Elizabeth Cromwell. Gregory’s two legitimate sisters died along with his mother of sweating sickness when Gregory was nine.

Thomas Cromwell sought to ensure his son’s well-being and education in the aftermath of his bereavement by sending him to nuns to be cared for. Cromwell knew many abbesses having gained a reputation as a man of business, legal advisor and arbitrator: an irony probably not lost upon the nuns when they were unceremoniously booted out of their homes. After Gregory outgrew the nuns Cromwell sent his son, aged about fifteen, to be educated in Cambridge where he worked hard according to the letters that his tutors sent Cromwell but without the gifts that Cromwell himself demonstrated for language and learning. It must have been frustrating for Cromwell, a self-made and apparently self-taught man, to see his son provided with the best education that money could buy but apparently lacked the skills to make most use of the education which his father provided.

One of the letters that Gregory’s tutor sent to Cromwell reveals a narrowly averted tragedy.  Gregory’s room-mate accidentally set fire to his bedding and caused much damage but, fortunately, no loss of life.  Cromwell was called upon to compensate the tutor for the loss of his possessions.  Other letters cover more mundane affairs such as the need to feed a clothe the growing boy.

In a bizzare twist of fate Cromwell arranged for Gregory to marry Elizabeth Seymour in 1537– sister of Jane Seymour so was the brother-in-law of the man who had his father executed in 1540– Henry VIII.   So technically Henry VIII was the uncle of Gregory’s children.  Gregory did not suffer from his father’s fall from favour instead he went on to become a baron owning extensive lands in Leicestershire and in Rutland. He was created a baron less than five months after his father’s execution and would eventually regain some of the lands that the king had confiscated when Cromwell was found guilty of treason.

Gregory died in 1551 of sweating sickness. His letters demonstrate the depth of his affection for his wife and his children.  There is no picture of him that is known.  It is odd given the number of pictures of Cromwell painted by Holbein that none was commissioned of Cromwell Junior.  There is however a possible picture of Elizabeth Seymour who went on to marry for a third time after Gregory’s death.

Cleeve Abbey

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Cleeve Abbey TileCleeve Abbey was a Cistercian foundation.  Cistercians were initially an order of Benedictine monks who felt that the rule of St Benedict had slackened over time. A group of these reformers founded the abbey at Citeaux in 1098. They placed emphasis upon prayer, manual labour, austerity and poverty.

 

The Cistercians or White Monks, named after their undyed rough woolen habits came to England in 1132. They arrived from Clairvaux in order to establish a ‘daughter house’ to the abbey in Clairvaux.  The abbot and his twelve companions (the usual number for a new daughter house) journeyed north until they arrived at the River Rye.

Rievaulx Abbey would become one of the greatest abbeys in the country founding daughter houses of its own in England and Scotland.  Patrons of Rievaulx included kings of England and Scotland. Little wonder that they began with twelve choir monks but exceeded one hundred and fifty less than a century later. Much of this expansion was due to the influence one of Rievaulx’s abbots – a monk called Aelred who later became a saint.

 

Rievaulx’s own daughter houses can be found north and south of the border between England and Scotland. Melrose Abbey in Scotland was a daughter house, as were Warden Abbey in Bedfordshire, Revesby in Lincolnshire and Rufford Abbey in Nottinghamshire. A second abbey was founded in Scotland – Dundrennan.

 

Each of these abbeys in their own turn founded daughter houses; grand-daughter houses to Rievaulx. For example Melrose Abbey is the mother house of Hulm Cultram Abbey in Cumbria. In England, Revesby Abbey created a daughter house in Somerset – Cleeve Abbey to be precise – so you can take a blogger out of Yorkshire but you can’t take Yorkshire out of the blog for very long as I discovered this morning.

 

Having listened to the aftermath of Hurricane Bertha pass overhead in the night in the form of a heavy downpour and a thunderstorm we ventured coastwards to Cleeve Abbey in Washford with our fingers firmly crossed that we would avoid any rain.

 

The information that follows comes from the very informative display at the beginning of the tour and the ever helpful Victoria County History.

 

The 3rd Earl of Lincoln, William de Roumare,  was the founder of the monastery in the late twelfth century when abbey building was at its peak. His own grandfather had been one of the patrons who founded Revesby.

The abbey was known as Vallis Florida meaning ‘flowering valley’ – it still does have plenty of flowers.

 

The first abbot was called Ralph. He and twelve monks arrived from Revesby to found the only Cistercian abbey in Somerset. It was never wealthy but by 1300 there were twenty-eight monks. In the years that followed monks from this picturesque community toiled on the land, studied (rather than the usual cupboard of books, the brothers at Cleeve had an entire room of them) and a couple were even raised to the rank of papal chaplain.

And so things might have continued but Henry VIII was a man in need of a son. In Autumn 1535 Thomas Cromwell’s commissioners came knocking on the gatehouse door. The man of the moment was Dr John Tregonwell. He liked what he saw –even if it was only worth in the region of £155 a year- in fact he liked it so much that he wrote a politely worded note to Cromwell asking if he could rent it as he had a wife and children to support. Given that the monastery hadn’t even been dissolved his request seems to be ‘a bit previous’ as my step-son would say.

 

The plot thickened as there’s also a letter in existence dated 1537 written by Sir Thomas Arundell, the king’s receiver who was writing to ask what Cromwell intended with Cleeve as it was still operational and rumour said that King Henry VIII had ‘pardoned it.” He went on to ask for clarification and to comment that Cleeve contained “seventeen priests of honest life.”

It was to no avail. The abbey was required to submit. The abbot received a pension of 40 marks a year (about £9000 these days apparently). One of the monks – John Hooper- went on to become Bishop of Gloucester. He managed to irritate Queen Mary in 1555 and was burned as a heretic.

 

Tregonwell was not successful in his suit. Still, there were plenty of other abbeys for him to lay hands upon. He acquired Milton Abbas in 1540 and numerous other Dorset properties. According to his parliamentary biography there appears to have been some irregularity about the number of leases he handed over for the nunnery of St Giles at Flamstead which must have been resolved and not to his credit. He went on to become Chancellor of Wells Cathedral and later,  during the reign of Queen Mary, the MP for Scarborough.

As for Cleeve Abbey itself, it was granted in January 1538 to Robert Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex by way of a thank you present.

Radcliffe was a loyal servant to the Tudors. He was the privy councilor who suggested that Henry Fitzroy, Henry VIII’s illegitimate son with Bessie Blount, should be named heir to the crown ahead of the legitimate but female Mary. He was an active agent in promoting Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon and later after the suppression of the minor monasteries he helped to put down the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536) in Lancashire.

 

The church of Cleeve Abbey was swiftly demolished but the cloister remains as do many lovely, if cracked thirteenth century floor tiles, which lay hidden beneath the soil for many centuries. The display in the abbey buildings includes tiles showing Richard the Lionheart and Saladin on horseback. The display also explains how the tiles were made.  Other tiles are heraldic and reflect the names of the abbey’s patrons including Richard of Cornwall who was the brother of  Henry III.  His tiles are the ones with the lion rampant on them.

Henry III was also a patron.  He gave the monks of Cleeve Abbey the right to any wrecks that arrived on Cleeve’s stretch of shoreline.

 

Muchelney Abbey

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Tiles from Muchelney AbbeyMuchelney Abbey on the Somerset Levels was founded by the Saxon Kings of Wessex.  Unfortunately it is impossible to be precise about which one, as some of the charters granting land to Muchelney are medieval forgeries.  Evidence does suggest that King Ine of Wessex founded the abbey and then King Athelstan refounded it when he gave gifts to the abbey – in thanks for his victory over the Vikings at Brunanburgh or possibly as an ‘oops I’ve been a bit of a naughty boy’ offering in relation to his involvement in the murder of the Atheling Edwin in 933. The confusion about the abbey’s foundation may be because the area suffered under the Vikings.  After all, Muchelney is in the vicinity of the hovel where Alfred the Great burnt the cakes. Wedmore, where there was once a royal palace and where Alfred made a treaty with Guthrum is just up the road.

 

The ruins that remain today date from the twelfth century and reflect the Norman desire to found or support existing monastic houses.  There is also a very smart sixteenth century staircase in the abbot’s residence that must have looked a bit out of place when it became a farm house after the dissolution as well as some wonderful recumbent lions over the fireplace which date from a century earlier.

 

Muchelney is mentioned in the Domesday Book.  It turns up again some five hundred years later in Thomas Cromwell’s Valor Ecclesiasticus as being worth £447 with eight monks in addition to the abbot and prior. It had never been a large monastery – Glastonbury was too close for that to happen.

 

There were earlier visitations. The Victoria County History for Somerset mentions a visit in 1335 when the Bishop of Shrewsbury found the Benedictine monks sleeping in richly covered beds and going off for their meals on horseback rather than eating in the monastery itself. In addition the cloisters were being polluted with the presence of the laity – and not just men either. The Bishop also noted that the church was in a bad state of repair. The monastery was swiftly reformed by a new abbot but it didn’t spare the monks from a visit by the Black Death.

 

Cromwell’s commissioners also sent many letters about Muchelney.  The commissioner who arrived in January 1538 was Thomas Leigh (he made himself deeply unpopular during the first phase of the dissolution in Yorkshire.)   By 1538 Leigh had a handy assortment of damning phrases with which to write to his master. He described the abbot as being of “doubtful character” and the monks “unlernyd.” Unlearned or not the brethren at Muchelney could see which way the wind was blowing and swiftly surrendered the abbey into Leigh’s hands.

Henry VIII granted the abbey to his brother-in-law the Earl of Hertford.  The Earl, Edward Seymour whose sister Jane Seymour married the king two years earlier, went on to become Protector of England during his nephew Edward VI’s minority.

Seymour kept the abbot’s lodging turning it into a farm house which he let out to tenants. He used the rest of the monastery as a quarry.

When Seymour was executed for treason Muchelney returned to the Crown where it remained until 1614 when it was sold off by James I.

The church of Muchelney which stood next door to the abbey was not part of the abbey itself – so Seymour couldn’t strip the lead from the roof or take away its dressed stone!  However, the abbey had the living for the church. This meant that they could appoint the priest. An informative display also mentions the fact that the abbey was responsible for providing the vicar with bread and ale every day, meat twice a week, and eggs and fish on the other five days.

 

Victorian excavation of Mucheleny Abbey revealed medieval floor tiles belonging to the Lady Chapel. These were placed inside the church where they remain today as a reminder of how beautiful English abbeys must have once been.

 

 

 

The last abbot

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Glastonbury AbbeyGlastonbury Abbey was the richest abbey in Somerset. Pilgrims came to see the graves of King Arthur and Guinevere and to hear the story of the Holy Grail, Joseph of Arimathea and the Glastonbury thorn. So, the Abbot of Glastonbury, Richard Whiting, didn’t initially have anything to fear when Cromwell started the process of dissolving the minor monasteries. Gradually the reformation gathered pace and the elderly abbot must have prayed for guidance.  In 1537 monks, implicated in the Pilgrimage of Grace, were executed – amongst their number the Abbots of Sawley, Jervaulx and of Fountains.

Two years later on 15 November 1539 the last abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, an old man in his seventies, followed his brothers when he lost his life on Tor Hill following two trials and having spent some time in the Tower of London.

 

Richard Whiting had been a young man when the Tudors came to power.  He’d been a student in Cambridge at the time of the Battle of Bosworth and was ordained at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Wolsey nominated him when the position of abbot fell vacant noting his upright character. John Leland, Whiting’s friend, described him as “truly upright”.

His life might have passed peacefully had it not been for Henry VIII’s desire for a son and his determination to divorce Catherine of Aragon. Unlike Sir Thomas More, Whiting signed the 1534 Act of Supremacy along with the monks of Glastonbury. The following year Cromwell sent his commissioners around every monastic house in the country. The Valor Ecclesiasticus was an inventory of monastic wealth as well as a monastic fault-finding tour. At Glastonbury the monks were kept upon the straight and narrow by their abbot – the commissioner Richard Layton found nothing to fault (he apologised to Cromwell for his error in a later letter.)

 

In 1539 the act was passed suppressing all the remaining monasteries in the country by then Glastonbury was the last remaining abbey in Somerset.  The National Archives houses a positive flurry of letters sent from the abbot and his supporters to Cromwell.  Ink, paper, fair words – none of them mattered a jot.  Cromwell had plans for Glastonbury.   The commissioners returned. They found a copy of the life of Thomas Becket and a book in support of Catherine of Aragon in the abbot’s quarters. It was enough to send him to the Tower.

 

While the elderly abbot languished in a dungeon, Cromwell’s men got to work. They uncovered financial irregularities and further evidence of Whiting’s treasonable opinions – which have conveniently been lost in the following centuries. Letters to Cromwell quoted in the Victoria County History of Somerset reported that three hundred pounds of cash was uncovered along with a gold chalice and parcels of plate which the “we think he ought to make his hand by this untruth to his King’s Majesty.” Their discovery would see the abbey’s treasurer share his abbot’s fate.

Whiting was tried in London, on evidence that was never made public, and found guilty. Then he was shipped back to Wells where he was tried for a second time in the Palace of the Bishop of Bath and Wells. His judges included men who had, in former times, written on his behalf to Cromwell. It was a show trial with a catalogue of people coming forward to testify against him. The abbot was not permitted to defend himself or question his accusers.

 

It was a show execution as well. The elderly man, nearly eighty by some reckoning, was forced to walk barefoot from Wells to Glastonbury – a distance of some seven miles. He was then tied to a hurdle and dragged through the town, by the gateway of his abbey and up onto the tor where a gibbet awaited him and two other of his brothers. They each faced a traitor’s death. Whiting’s head ended on a spike looking out over his own gateway.

 

Sir Ralph Eure, a murder and a castle.

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DSCN6689What more could anyone want – a knight, a murky sort of murder and a Yorkshire castle – Scarborough Castle to be precise.

Sir Ralph Eure or Evers came from an old Yorkshire family that had originally arrived with William the Conqueror.  His ancestors had been Sheriffs of Yorkshire as well as wardens of the marches. One of them died at the Battle of Towton.  Our Sir Ralph’s moment of history came during the reign of Henry VIII.  He had temporary charge of Scarborough Castle at the time of the Pilgrimage of Grace. As a result of his loyalty to the king he was made constable of the castle for life.  When the castle was besieged in 1536 he kept the gates firmly shut despite the fact that the king had failed to send him supplies for fear that they should fall into rebel hands.   Though this appointment was not without a whiff of scandal as Sir Ralph was accused very early in his tenancy of taking the lead off the towers and turrets for his own profit: some of the lead was exchanged for French wine. Despite his inability to read and write Sir Ralph overcame the accusations that he faced and was able to  pursue a claim to Sir Francis Bigod’s lands.

 

Sir Francis had been involved in the second part of the Pilgrimage of Grace which occurred against Robert Aske’s advice in January 1537 and which gave Henry the excuse he needed to execute all the leaders of the pilgrimage including Robert Aske.  Sir Francis paid with his life and Sir Ralph benefitted in April 1538 when was he appointed chief steward of Sir Francis Bigod’s lands in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.  All straight forward so far.  Sir Ralph was on the winning side while Sir Francis gambled and lost.

 

Except, of course, there was more than the Pilgrimage of Grace between Sir Francis and Sir Ralph.  The year before the uprising a man named Davy Seignory was murdered by a group of 10 men from Settrington took place in Malton. Seignory was Eure’s servant.  The murderers rode to Scotland where they were safe but returned to England sometime later.  However, they remained outside the reach of the law because they stayed in the Bishopric of Durham – at this time the whole county was effectively a sanctuary.  Cromwell, apparently, tried to persuade Bigod that although the king could do nothing about this unfortunate situation that Bigod could and indeed should take matters into his own hands.  Bigod said that sanctuary was more important than the murder and that was that…well apart from the fact that one of the murderers was related to Thomas Cromwell and also the fact that Bigod was in debt at a time  and was in effect Cromwell’s man.  Let’s just say that the paperwork necessary to bring the murderers before the court in York was incorrectly completed.

Strangest of all, Sir Francis Bigod had written a treatise recommending the reform of the monastic system – he was a Protestant, a reformer and Cromwell’s man.  Yet somehow he ended up taking the side of the Pilgrims.  A  fact which enabled Sir Ralph to exact revenge, it would appear, for Sir Francis’s part the shadowy events surrounding his servant’s death.  A national event but also a question of neighbours vying for power and perhaps – and this is entirely supposition- a matter of personal dislike.  Sir Francis’s version of events and his letters can still be read in the National Archives while Sir Ralph did not have the skills to save his thoughts for posterity.

Sir Ralph’s lack of literacy didn’t stop him from becoming  in 1542,  on the Duke of Suffolk’s appointment, keeper of Redesdale and Tynedale.  He took part in many raids and was part of the Earl of Hertford’s ‘Rough Wooing’ in 1544.   His actions during this campaign won him the hatred of the Scots.  In addition to the usual pillaging of the border he managed to distinguish himself by burning Brumehous Tower- not unusual – but on this occasion the lady and her children were still inside.

Eure, a commander of the army, died at the battle of Ancrum Moor on 27 Feb. 1545, where the Earl of Angus ‘revenged the defacing of the limbs of his ancestors at Melrose upon Ralph Evers.’  The Earl of Arran is said to have wept when shown the body and said, according to Henry VIII’s state papers:

“God have mercy on him, for he was a fell cruel man and over cruel, which many a man and fatherless bairn might rue, and wellaway that ever such slaughter and bloodshedding should be amongst Christian men.”