The dissolution of the monasteries : $b As illustrated by the suppression of the religious houses of StaffordshireHibbert, Francis Aidan
History
The dissolution of the monasteries : $b As illustrated by the suppression of the religious houses of Staffordshire
Hibbert, Francis Aidan
Great Britain -- History -- Henry VIII, 1509-1547; Monasteries -- England -- Staffordshire; Monasteries and state
It will be noticed that by far the largest individual additions
which are made in the second survey come from rents in Burton and
its suburbs. In the first survey no mention at all is made of the
special endowments of the Prior (£2), Almoner (£8), Cook (£8 6s.
8d.), Custodian of St. Mary’s Chapel (£4), and Martyrologist (£14).
The kitchen at Burton had long been well endowed. Abbot Nicholas
(_ob._ 1197) was the first to put it on a business-like footing.
Abbot Nicholas de Wallingford (1216–1222) and Abbot Richard de Insula
(1222–1223) had added to its endowments. No mention is made of the
Chantries of William Branstone (£4), or William Beyne (£8 13s. 4d.).
The former had been Abbot in the fifteenth century and had died in
1474. The latter had been Abbot from 1502 to 1533 and had endowed the
Grammar School. Considerable rents are omitted from “divers pastures
near the Trent,” where fed the sheep which had once made the Abbey wool
famous. In an old list of the English monasteries which supplied wool
to the Florentine markets in 1315 the wool from Burton is described as
_in Torcea_, probably the same as wool _de marisco_, which
was usually classed by itself. _Torcea_ appears to mean a dyke
or embankment, and the Burton sheep probably pastured in these low
fields near the Trent which were secured from inundation by means of
embankments.[77] Rents from Abbots Bromley (£16 10s. 11d.), one of the
oldest of the Abbey’s estates, and Derby are also omitted. Even in the
items which are given in both lists, the second shows a considerable
increase in nearly every instance. The rents from Allestree are raised
by £7 2s. 6d.; the valuation of the Manor of Mickleover is increased by
£8 14s. 8d.; the chief rents from Anslow actually leap from 13s. 4d.
to £13 5s. 4d. The increase in the valuations of the other manors is
also considerable.
“Seney Park,” the valuation of which is increased from £6 to £8, was
to the west of the town, near Shobnall Grange. The Abbey had a house
there, surrounded by a moat, and used as a place of retirement for many
generations. The monks used to go there in the fourteenth century to
recover from the periodical “blood-letting.” Its name is thus explained
by a seventeenth century writer: “The Abbot of Burton-upon-Trent ...
having a vast rough hillie ground about a mile distant from the Abbey,
called it Sinai, for the likeness it had to that rough wilderness of
Sinai where in a mount God appeared unto Moses; which ground to this
day retaineth the Name and is now called Sinai Park.”[78]
The only important items which are left unchanged are the valuations of
the demesnes at Shobnall Grange and at Burton (with the Court Fees),
and the lands on lease (_ad firma_) at Bromley Hurst and this may
suggest a possible explanation of the problem we are considering.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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