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
In the disbursements there are many interesting items. A corrody, worth
£3 6s. 8d., one of the very small number recorded in Staffordshire,
is held by a royal nominee, John Seggewik. £2 is paid annually to
a poor scholar, John Belfeld, appointed also by the King: it was a
permanent arrangement. £10 is paid to Gloucester College, Oxford.
This was the great Benedictine college, and it was suppressed with
the larger monasteries. Its modern representative, Worcester College,
knows nothing of the £10 from Burton Abbey. On the other hand, _Valor
Ecclesiasticus_ recorded that Worcester Monastery still received £4
from the King’s College at Oxford _ratione suppressionis prioratus
de Sandwall_.[85] The annual payment to Gloucester College had
been instituted by John Sudbury, one of the most famous of the Abbots
of Burton. He held office from 1400 to 1423. His life had not been
an ideal one, by any means, and he was a typical specimen of his
time. When Convocation in 1404–5 voted the King a large grant he was
appointed one of the collectors, and the grant, being exceptionally
large and being levied with exceptional strictness, was bitterly
resented. Sudbury, finding himself opposed even by his own tenants
of Stapenhill, on the Derbyshire side of the Trent, instigated his
Staffordshire men to retaliate on them, when they crossed the river and
came into Burton to trade, by robbery and violence. The Burton monks
were very disorderly at this time, for just previous to this there had
been a charge against them of robbing a woman of 100 shillings. They
waylaid John Newton, Canon and Chaplain of their hostile neighbour,
Sir Thomas de Gresley, as well as the parson of Rolleston and others.
They stole fish and cows. They assaulted one of the King’s Escheators.
They set at naught not only the Statute of Labourers by paying Thomas
Shepherd and many others 4d. a day, “to the sum of 100 shillings,” but
also morality, for when Abbot Sudbury, in 1407, was driven to obtain
a royal pardon for his manifold offences, we find among them that “of
having, on Wednesday, Christmas, 6 Henry IV, in his chamber at Burton,
ravished Marjory, the wife of Nicholas Taverner.”[86] So powerful was
Abbot Sudbury that he was able to defy his Bishop’s summons to answer
for the many irregularities with which he was charged.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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