Introduction
The Inquest of 1185 commissioned by Geoffrey Fitz Stephen was the first survey of property belonging to the Knights Templar in England and so is a natural starting place for a book which traces the fate of Templar estates in Lincolnshire over a period of almost four hundred years. The changing fortunes of Templar lands in Lincolnshire cannot be fully considered without establishing their place within the context of contemporary social trends and national and international events. Both the Military Orders with which we will be primarily concerned, the Templars and subsequently the Hospitallers, were multinational corporations; their Lincolnshire, and indeed their English, estates were only part of their property portfolios in western Christendom. Much has been written about the military exploits of the Military Orders in the Holy Land, and there are several general histories. However, it is only in recent years that scholarly effort has begun to concentrate upon the Templar estates in England. The aim of this book is to analyse the changing nature and organisation of the Templar estates in one English county, Lincolnshire, until the suppression of the Order in 1312, and then to pursue their fate until the early years of the reign of Elizabeth I. In twenty-first-century Lincolnshire, all that remains of the once extensive Templar estates is a single church tower at the isolated farm of Temple Bruer on the Lincolnshire Heath.
This book depends upon research conducted almost entirely among primary sources. While the overarching subject is the fate of the Templar lands in Lincolnshire, particular emphasis is placed on the estate accounts of 1308–13, which allow a detailed analysis of the organisation, agricultural practice and personnel on the estates in the early years of the fourteenth century. This opportunity is exploited to the full so that Templar estate management can be assessed in the context of what is known of medieval and indeed Templar agriculture.
The Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon: the Knights Templar
On 15 July 1099 the besieged city of Jerusalem fell to Christian forces. This concluded the First Crusade. The victor of Jerusalem, Godfrey de Bouillon, steadfastly refused to be crowned king, but after his death on 18 July 1100, his succession was in dispute. On Christmas Day 1100, in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Godfrey’s brother, Baldwin de Edessa, was crowned king of the Latins in Jerusalem, having outflanked the ambitious Daimbert, patriarch of Jerusalem, who also wished to rule. Nineteen years later, in 1119, a confraternity of nine Frankish nobles led by Hugh de Payens (from Champagne) and Godfrey de Saint Omer (from Picardy) took vows of chastity, obedience and poverty before the patriarch of Jerusalem, Warmund de Picquiny. The small band was given a base within the palace of King Baldwin II, which was believed to be on the site of the Temple of Solomon and is now occupied by the al-Aqsa mosque. This was the inauspicious beginning of the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, the Knights Templar, whose duty it was to ensure the safety of travellers on the pilgrim routes from the coast to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem to Jericho. Soon after, in January 1120, the knights received ecclesiastical recognition at the Council of Nablus.
1 M. C. Barber, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge, 1994), p. 9. Between 1127 and 1129, Hugh de Payens toured Western Europe seeking both recruits to the Order and financial support. The recruiting drive reached England in 1128 and ended, in January 1129, at the Council of Troyes, presided over by a papal legate, which confirmed the foundation of the Order and provided a Rule. In attendance was the hugely influential Bernard of Clairvaux, who later wrote
De laude novae militae (In praise of the new knighthood) in support of the emergent Order of military monks.
2 Ibid., pp. 14–15.Throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was continued military activity in the Holy Land, which required the presence of an expensively maintained armed host. To support the crusading movement in the Holy Land funds had to be raised in western Christendom. Medieval religious saw the quality of life after death – and the duration of the soul’s stay in purgatory – as determined by how time on earth had been spent. By donating money or land to religious orders, or, more grandly, founding a monastery, individuals could pay for intercessory prayers to be said on behalf of themselves, their antecedents and their descendants, so reducing their time in purgatory and facilitating their ascent to Heaven. As a result the twelfth century saw a burgeoning of monastic patronage in England, particularly of the Cistercian Order to which the Templars were closely related. The Templars added a different dimension to religious patronage as a Military Order of monastic knights in the vanguard of crusading in the Holy Land. The opportunity for military monastic patronage was seized with some enthusiasm, particularly in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, the two English counties where the Templars’ landholdings were most extensive.
The tide began to turn against the Christian forces in the Holy Land on 4 July 1187 with the crushing defeat at the Horns of Hattin, by the forces of Saladin, followed by the loss of Jerusalem on 2 October that year.
3 Ibid., pp. 64–5. Patronage of the Templars depended upon their military success, which to the medieval mind demonstrated God’s blessing. Defeat was the manifestation of God’s displeasure, and compromised the Templars’ perceived ability to intercede on behalf of a patron. While the Templars’ considerable financial acumen allowed them to increase their prestige and wealth during the thirteenth century, the extent of patronage fluctuated. The fall of Acre in May 1291, followed three months later by the Templars’ evacuation of Tortosa and Athlit, left the Order without a foothold in the Holy Land. The Templars established a base on the island of Ruad off the Syrian coast from which to continue operations; it was, however, merely a temporary halt to their retreat and the Templar garrison was massacred in 1302.
4 Ibid., pp. 176–8.The Templars had lost their reason for existence. The wealth of the Order and its exemption from taxes, which was acceptable when it was in the vanguard of Christian forces in the Holy Land, increasingly became the object of secular envy. The Templars in France were arrested by Philip IV on 13 October 1307, on a litany of fallacious charges, and those in England were arrested by Edward II on 10 January 1308. Although Edward bore the Order no ill will, he had bowed to pressure applied by both the pope and the French king (who was soon to be his father-in-law) to follow the French example and arrest the brethren. The impact of the arrests was cataclysmic in both France and England. From being a Military Order with extensive estates, enormous wealth and the prestige which went with being royal bankers, the Templars effectively ceased to exist.
Templar involvement in the Holy Land and the support of the Order by means of estates in England, particularly in Lincolnshire, are our prime concern. However, a consideration of the activities of the Templars would be incomplete without reference to two European theatres of action on the borders of Christendom: the Iberian Peninsula and Eastern Europe. In both Portugal and Aragon the first military involvement of the Templars came in the 1140s.
5 H. J. Nicholson, The Knights Templar: A New History (Stroud, 2001, 2004), pp. 91–4. The Order was donated land and castles in frontier areas adjacent to territory held by the Moors so as to encourage Christian settlement and push the Moors back towards the Mediterranean. It is significant that, as a result of strenuous opposition from James II of Aragon, the pope’s edict ordering the transfer of Templar property to the Hospitallers, following the suppression of the Order in 1312, did not apply to Iberia.
6 Ibid., p. 101. In Iberia, Templar property was used to found other Military Orders. In Eastern Europe the Templars were granted lands by rulers in recognition of their exploits in the Holy Land but also to encourage colonisation in sparsely populated wilderness areas. Donations continued through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
7 Ibid., p. 103. The role of the Templars was, however, less significant than that of the Teutonic Knights or the Hospitallers.
8 Ibid., pp. 102–3. The Order had less direct military involvement here than in Iberia, with the exception of the Battle of Liegnitz in 1241, in which the duke of Silesia and the king of Hungary, supported by the Templars, were defeated by the Mongols.
9 Ibid., p. 108. In both European theatres, as in the Holy Land, the purpose of the Templars was to advance the interests of Christendom.
The Order of Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem: the Knights Hospitaller
Because the fate of the Templar lands is so inextricably linked with that of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, the Hospitallers, it is appropriate to give a brief history of that Order until the Siege of Malta in 1565, which concludes the period of the present study.
Sometime during the mid-eleventh century, the Benedictine Abbey of St Mary of the Latins was founded, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, by merchants from Amalfi, an Italian mercantile city. By 1080, adjacent to the Abbey of St Mary, a house of refuge for poor pilgrims had been added, dedicated in the name of St John the Baptist.
10 H. J. A Sire, The Knights of Malta (New Haven, CT, and London, 1994), p. 3. The hospice was administered by a lay fraternity who were ‘dependent upon the monastery but constituting a separate community’.
11 Ibid. The supervisor of the hospice was Brother Gerard.
By 1113 the organisation founded by Brother Gerard had expanded to the extent that it required formal ecclesiastical recognition. In that year, the bull
Pie postulatis voluntatis was issued by Pope Paschal II granting that ratification.
12 H. J. Nicholson, The Knights Hospitaller (Woodbridge, 2001, 2006), p. 4. The servants of the Abbey of St Mary of the Latins had become the Hospitallers of St John. The bull applied not only to the Hospital in Jerusalem but also to its daughter houses, with the Blessed Gerard, as he is known to history, as the founding master of the Order. The single guiding purpose of the Order was to care for the poor and sick; initially, it did not have a military intent.
The Blessed Gerard died in 1120 and was succeeded by Raymond du Puy. Raymond oversaw a vast expansion of the Order; as well as caring for the poor and sick, its members would henceforth be ‘armed brethren’. This second role of the Order became increasingly significant. In 1128, Raymond was campaigning with King Baldwin II at Ascalon.
13 Sire, Knights of Malta, p. 6. By the time of the Second Crusade in 1148 the Order was fully recognised as a military force operating in defence of the Holy Land. The Order’s change in direction is emphasised by the papal reminder during the 1170s that its first duty was towards the poor, not to engage in armed conflict. The dual function of the Hospitallers was formalised when in 1206 the knights of the Order were designated as a separate class from those caring for the poor, who became known as the brothers-at-service.
Although there were similarities between the two pre-eminent Military Orders, the Hospitallers and the Templars, they were by no means always in accord on either diplomatic or military policy in the Holy Land. The disastrous battle at the Springs of Cresson in 1187 was due in no small measure to the obduracy of the master of the Temple, Gerard de Ridefort, who prevailed against the opinions of both the Templar marshal, Jacques de Mailly, and the master of the Hospital, Roger de Moulins, neither of whom wished to engage the Saracens. In 1258 an agreement was reached to ensure a mechanism for settling disputes between the Hospitallers, Templars and the Teutonic Knights, and to guarantee mutual support against the Saracens.
14 Ibid., p. 14.With the fall of Acre in 1291, the Hospitallers retreated to Cyprus. The headquarters of the Order remained there until 1309, during which time they showed an adaptability which was lacking in the Templars, who had likewise withdrawn from the Holy Land. Whereas the Templars were arrested in France and England, in 1307 and 1308 respectively, the Hospitallers continued to care for the poor and sick, and the military wing of the Order shifted its primary arena of operations from land to sea, protecting European merchant shipping in the eastern Mediterranean.
A combined force of Hospitallers and Genoese invaded Rhodes in June 1306. The Hospitallers moved their headquarters from Cyprus to Rhodes in 1309, but it was not until 1310 that they controlled the entire island. As a result of the conquest of Rhodes and the subsequent cost of defending the island, the Order incurred enormous expenses. It was largely because of the heavy financial burden of the Rhodes campaign that, following the suppression of the Templars in 1312, Pope Clement V issued the bull Ad providam that transferred the property of the Templars to the Hospitallers. The tortuous nature of that transferral will be discussed in Chapter 7.
By the late fourteenth century the Byzantine Empire had crumbled as a result of civil wars and the unstoppable advance of the Ottoman Turks. The final collapse came with the fall of Constantinople to Mehmet II in 1453. On account of their continued occupation of Rhodes, their substantial naval force, and their policy of legalised piracy, the Hospitallers were a thorn in the side of the emergent Ottoman Empire. In May 1480, Mehmet II laid siege to Rhodes but was repulsed by the Hospitallers under Master Pierre d’Aubusson, who became grand master in 1489.
15 Ibid., p. 51. In mid-July 1522, under Suleiman I, the Magnificent, the Ottoman Turks besieged Rhodes for a second time, this time successfully.
16 Ibid., p. 57. On 1 January 1523, under their elderly grand master, Philippe de Villiers de l’Isle Adam, the surviving members of the Order sailed from the island having been granted the honours of war.
17 Ibid., p. 59.In 1511, King Henry VIII of England had assumed the title Protector of the Order (i.e., of the Hospitallers), a title first held by his father. Clearly Henry saw the Order as subject to, rather than protected by, the crown. Following the fall of Rhodes in 1523, Henry VIII wished the Hospitaller knights to garrison Calais as they no longer had their own base to defend. During the same year, 1523, the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, presented the Hospitallers with an alternative dominion, that of the Maltese archipelago and the Spanish stronghold of Tripoli.
18 Ibid., p. 63. However, because of the fractious nature of the relationship between Spain and France, it was not until 1530 that the French knights accepted that the only alternative to Malta was the continuation of their homelessness. In the autumn of 1530 the Order, still headed by Grand Master Philippe de Villiers de l’Isle Adam, sailed from Sicily to establish their base in Malta. During the seven years between the evacuation of Rhodes and the establishment of the Hospitallers in Malta, the Order had been based at Viterbo and Nice; it had been largely inactive, and recruitment had fallen.
19 Ibid., p. 60. Taking full advantage of the reduced condition of the Order, the kings of England, Portugal and Savoy began to appropriate Hospitaller income and property.
20 Ibid. The establishment of a base for operations on Malta came not a moment too soon.
The Dissolution of the Monasteries in England took place between 1536 and 1540, following the Act of Supremacy of 1534 which made Henry VIII the supreme head of the church in England. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Henry may have considered converting the Order of the Hospital into an organisation patronised by the king rather than the pope, but the Hospitallers refused to comply. So it was that in April 1540 an act of parliament dissolved the Order in England, and its properties were once more sequestered by the crown. Much ecclesiastical property, including that of the Hospitallers, was disposed of by sale or as a result of the king’s munificence. Henry died in 1547, and was succeeded by his son, Edward VI, who pursued an agenda which fully established the Protestant Church in England. On his early death in 1553, Edward was succeeded by his half-sister, Mary I, who was an ardent Catholic. She set about reversing the English Reformation and wished to restore the Catholic Church. In 1557, Mary re-established the Order of St John of Clerkenwell, formerly the Hospitallers, along with the bailiwick of Eagle and nine commanderies, with Sir Thomas Tresham as prior.
21 E. J. King and H. Luke, The Knights of St John in the British Realm (London, 1924, 3rd edn rev. and cont. 1967), appendix C: Letters patent of King Philip and Queen Mary I of England restoring the Order of St John in England. However, the re-establishment of the Hospitallers in England was short-lived. Mary died on 17 November 1558 and her reforms were reversed by her half-sister, Elizabeth I. The English priory was suppressed in March 1559.
22 Sire, Knights of Malta., p. 187.In the Mediterranean, the Order of St John of Malta, the Hospitallers, continued to prosecute naval warfare against the Ottomans, On 19 May 1565 the Ottomans laid siege to the island. After a siege of four months, the Hospitallers prevailed under the leadership of Grand Master Jean de la Valette; the Ottomans thereby suffered a significant defeat which raised the morale of both the Hospitallers and western Christendom at large.
23 Nicholson, Knights Hosptialler, p. 124. Six years later, in October 1571, the Hospitallers were involved in the Battle of Lepanto, the last great sea battle employing galleys, which drew a close to Ottoman expansionism in the western Mediterranean.
24 Ibid., p. 125.Historiography
Primary sources
The history of the Templar estates in England reflects not only the changing fortunes of the Order but also the way in which land was used as a political pawn on both the domestic and the international stages to pay debts and buy influence. There is no continuous historical record of the fate of the Templar estates, but there are five records of the lands of the Military Orders in England over a period of 372 years from the Inquest of 1185 to the letter patent of Mary Tudor dated 2 April 1557. Each gives an insight into the nature of the estates, their extent and their significance at different points in their history. The history of the Templar estates in Lincolnshire is here viewed through the prism of the changing domestic and international diplomatic priorities that had such a profound effect upon their fate. While the lifespan of the Order was only 192 years, the Templars’ former holdings were still identifiable as such in the Valor ecclesiasticus, a survey of taxable ecclesiastical property conducted in 1535, 223 years after the suppression of the Order in 1312.
The extent of Templar property in England was first recorded in the Inquest of 1185 conducted at the behest of Geoffrey Fitz Stephen, the master of the Knights Templar in England.
25 Inquest. This was at a time when financial support was desperately needed to maintain an armed host in the Holy Land because of the political instability in the region. Anatolia had been lost to the Seljuk Turks in the previous decade, and so the influence of the Byzantine Empire was diminished. Saladin’s star was in the ascendant, while the throne of Jerusalem was occupied by Baldwin IV, the ‘Leper King’, who died in March 1185.
The Inquest deals with the whereabouts, extent and nature of the Templar property and its value in terms of annual income. In addition it illuminates the relationship between the Templars and their benefactors. The 1935 transcription of the Inquest and accompanying commentary by Lees gives a detailed account of the extent and value of Templar holdings throughout England, from which Lincolnshire data can be extracted.
26 Ibid. In addition she identifies the benefactors of the Templars and the tenants of the Order. This remains the only published inquest of Templar holdings in England.
Following the arrest of the Templars in England on 10 January 1308, the properties of the Order were attainted by Edward II. The estates were placed in the hands of the king’s agents, the keepers of the Templar lands, who maintained detailed estate records. Three rolls of the King’s Survey, the accounts of the former Templar estates, survive in The National Archives, namely TNA E 358/18, TNA E 358/19 and TNA E 358/20, which cover the entirety of the Templars’ English province and in particular the Templars’ Lincolnshire estates from 10 January 1308 until 8 December 1313.
27 ‘Accounts for the lands of the Templars, confiscated by the Crown’, TNA E 358/18, E 358/19, E 358/20.The significance of the accounts is that they provide a detailed list of the income and expenses of the Templar manors and an inventory at the moment of sequestration. The inventories itemised all that was moveable and saleable. Livestock, standing crops and stored grain were listed. Of particular interest are the inventories of the individual buildings within the domestic range, such as the larder and kitchen. In addition, agricultural equipment was itemised, as were the contents of the smithy and carpenter’s workshop. Personnel were enrolled by task, and a few by name. The wealth of information gives a detailed picture of the nature of Templar agricultural practice and estate management in 1308. Further, as it was not until the papal bull Ad providam was issued on 2 May 1312 that the former Templar lands were granted to the Hospitallers, in the interim they were held by the king under attainder. The accounts of these years illustrate how Edward II approached the management of the Templar estates through the agency of his officers. They show how farming practice changed, and the extent to which the estates were farmed out through the exercise of royal patronage.
The estate accounts of 1308–13 remain the only body of records available that give an indication of agricultural practice and management on the Templar estates immediately after the arrest of the Order in 1308, and a partial picture thereafter until December 1313. Following the suppression of the Templars in 1312, the transfer of former Templar properties to the Hospitallers can be pursued through the calendars of Close Rolls, Patent Rolls and Charter Rolls, from which it is evident that the process was fraught with difficulty. The transfer of property, which the pope had intended to be conducted with all due haste, was in fact both tortuous and litigious. The change of ownership required the property to pass through the hands of the king, who, in the meantime, was able to draw the income and so was in no hurry for completion. What was true of Edward II, until his enforced abdication in 1327, was even more so of his son, Edward III, after his assumption of power in 1330.
With the onset of the Hundred Years War against France in 1337, the Hospitallers were still not in possession of all former Templar property. The prior of the Hospital in England, Philip de Thame, submitted a report to Grand Master Elyan de Villanova in 1338 in which was outlined the nature of Hospitaller holdings in England, their income and expenditure.
28 L&K. This report provides a third record of former Templar property. The Report, transcribed and edited by Larking and with a commentary by Kemble, was published in 1857. It is an inventory of the Hospitaller lands in England. Separately itemised in the Report are the former Templar properties which had been transferred to the Hospitallers and, just as tellingly, those which had not. It is the only primary source detailing Hospitaller property in England during the fourteenth century, and as such is crucial to any pursuit of the fate of the Templar estates, but surprisingly little use has been made of it.
The former Templar property is still traceable in a fourth record, the
Valor ecclesiasticus of 1535.
29 Valor ecclesiasticus temp. Henr. VIII. auctoritate regia institutus, ed. J. Caley and J. Hunter, vol. 4: Lincoln, Peterborough, Landaff, St David’s, Bangor, St Asaph (London, 1821). The
Valor incorporates a valuation of all spiritual benefices, including that from former Templar property, then owned by the Hospitallers. A tithe on net spiritual incomes was to be introduced on 1 January 1535 as pronounced in the Act of First Fruits and Tenths, and so a survey of taxable ecclesiastical property needed to be conducted with some haste. Taken on the eve of the Dissolution, unlike the previous inquests and accounts the
Valor does not deal with acreages but concentrates heavily on finance so as to identify taxable income. On 12 April 1540 the Order of St John of Jerusalem in England and Wales was suppressed and their properties were subject to sequestration. For the period after 1540, the Henrician letters provide evidence of lands and property passing back into secular hands as they were disposed of.
30 Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, vols 10–21: 1536–47, ed. J. Gairdner and R. H. Brodie (London, 1886–1910).Following the death of Henry VIII in 1547, a strongly anti-Catholic stance was adopted during the reign of his son, Edward VI. When Edward’s half-sister Mary ascended the throne in 1553, she attempted to return the realm to Catholicism and was particularly hostile to the Protestant cause. The fifth and final insight into the fate of the former Templar estates is afforded by a letter patent of 2 April 1557. The letter patent includes an instruction to Cardinal Pole to restore the Order of St John of Jerusalem, and states that the Order was to be endowed with the property it formerly held, which was listed in the letter.
31 King and Luke, Knights of St John, pp. 265–8. The death of Mary Tudor on 17 November 1558 meant that the re-establishment of the Order of St John was short-lived, and that the former Templar properties again became a subject of secular interest.
Secondary sources
The Templars in England and the fate of their Estates
In the closing decade of the twentieth century concern was expressed at the lack of research into the local and regional operations of the Templars within England. In 1991, Burton expressed the view that ‘with few exceptions little attention has been paid to the local interests and activities of the Military Orders in the twelfth century’, conceding one exception in the work of Parker.
32 J. E. Burton, ‘The Knights Templar in Yorkshire in the twelfth century: a reassessment’, Northern History: A Review of the History of the North of England and the Borders, 27 (1991), pp. 26–7. Parker’s research, published in 1963, deals exclusively with the Templars in England.
33 T. W. Parker, The Knights Templars in England (Tucson, AZ, 1963). His references to the work of Perkins demonstrate how little research had been devoted to the Templars in England in the intervening forty-three years.
34 C. Perkins, ‘The trial of the Templars in England’, EHR, 24 (1909), pp. 432–47; C. Perkins, ‘The wealth of the Knights Templars in England and the disposition of it after the Dissolution’, American Historical Review, 15 (1909–10), pp. 252–63; C. Perkins, ‘The Knights Templar in the British Isles’, EHR, 25 (1910), pp. 209–30. Parker stresses the variety of the Templar estates. He sees the Templars as ‘maintaining the speciality of the region’, adding that ‘economic activity depended upon the resources and customs of the area’.
35 Parker, Knights Templar in England, pp. 52, 21. Nonetheless, although Templar agriculture was attuned to, rather than imposed upon, a local area, innovative improvements were introduced in Lincolnshire and elsewhere.
The unpublished doctoral thesis of Walker is devoted entirely to the patronage of the Templars and the Order of St Lazarus in England.
36 E. J. Walker, ‘The Patronage of the Templars and the Order of St Lazarus in England in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of St Andrews, 1990). While national rather than regional in approach, Walker establishes links between family, social status, geography and patronage based upon primary sources. In so doing he draws upon regional examples which allow a comparison between patronage of the Templars in Lincolnshire and elsewhere. Thematically, this was a particularly innovative piece of research.
In the preface of
The New Knighthood, published in 1994, Barber states that scholarly understanding of the subject ‘is not comprehensive; in particular, there remains considerable scope for examination of the order in specific regions’ – work which is still outstanding.
37 Barber, New Knighthood, p. xvii. While Barber does not focus primarily on the Templar estates in England, he clearly points to the need for more specific regional studies. The following year, 1995, saw the publication of Gilchrist’s
Contemplation and Action: The Other Monasticism,
which gave the most comprehensive exposition of the archaeology of those types of monasticism which had been neglected in the literature.
38 R. Gilchrist, Contemplation and Action: The Other Monasticism (Leicester, 1995). Included in this authoritative volume is a chapter on the archaeology of the Military Orders in Britain. Based upon a wide range of archaeological evidence Gilchrist gives a description of the form and function of large and small preceptories. She defines the term
camera as referring to ‘holdings without a resident preceptor’, distinguished from the granges of other monastic Orders by the presence of a chapel. Finally, Gilchrist notes that a preceptory was similar to a secular manor house – ‘a hall with service apartments at one end and a parlour (with dormitory above) at the other’ – while still ‘sharing certain traits with other categories of monastic site, in particular the smaller colleges of canons and alien priories’.
39 Ibid., p. 103.The twenty-first century has seen a shift in the direction of Templar studies towards research into the activities of the Order in Britain and the nature of their holdings, a field in which Nicholson’s work is of primary importance. In Nicholson’s explanatory history of the Templars, her discussion of the commercial and economic activities of the Order is restricted to a general consideration in which English examples are quoted; however, she places the English territory
within the greater European context.
40 Nicholson, Knights Templar. In her account of the aftermath of the trial of the Order, Nicholson is unequivocal regarding the fate of the Templar estates. Edward II seized Templar property, as did families who had donated land to the Order; the king gave Templar land to his friends, used it to help finance his Scottish campaigns, and was most reluctant to relinquish control to the Hospitallers.
41 Ibid., p. 231. Nicholson adds considerable weight to the growing consensus of academic opinion that there was no wholesale transfer of Templar land to the Hospitallers.
42 Ibid.O’Malley raises further doubts regarding the extent of the transfer of Templar lands to the Hospitallers. Referring to the Report of 1338, he mentions ‘estates worth a supposed 1,145 marks per annum that were still in the hands of lay possessors. Most of these were never to be acquired and the extent of the Order’s landed estate underwent only minor variations thereafter.’
43 G. O’Malley, The Knights Hospitaller of the English Langue, 1460–1565 (Oxford, 2005), p. 60.The belated publication, in 2002, of the archaeological report on the excavations at South Witham in Lincolnshire provides the first detailed record of the buildings which constituted a Templar preceptory, and how it had developed.
44 P. Mayes, Excavations at a Templar Preceptory: South Witham, Lincolnshire, 1965–67 (Leeds, 2002). The earlier publication of the archaeological report of the excavations of Denny Abbey in Cambridgeshire was less informative in that, unlike South Witham, the site had experienced a sequence of occupancies and purposes.
45 P. M. Christie and J. G. Coad, ‘Excavations at Denny Abbey’, The Archaeological Journal, 137 (1980), pp. 138–279.Gooder’s analysis of documentary evidence relating to South Witham gives a much fuller image of the operation of the preceptory.
46 E. A. Gooder, ‘South Witham and the Templars: the documentary evidence’, in Mayes, Excavations at a Templar Preceptory, pp. 80–95. She argues that although South Witham was in existence in 1185, it did not become a preceptory until 1220, by which time it had a chapel and so the religious offices could be performed.
47 Ibid. Following the sequestration of the Templar estates in 1308, Gooder states that the accounts included only buildings whose contents were recorded or that needed money spent on repair.
48 Ibid., p. 84. Nonetheless, she is categorical that the buildings would have included a dairy, granary, and hay barn, and that there would almost certainly have been an ox house, sheep house, stable for cart horses, pigsties, windmill and a disused watermill too.
49 Ibid., p. 89. Gooder adds that the same would be expected of the larger preceptories of Temple Bruer and Willoughton.
50 Ibid.Gooder concludes that the accounts of 1308 illustrate the progressive agriculture of the Templars, first noted by Parker.
51 Ibid., p. 92. She notes the centralised administration of the sheep flocks, the emphasis on leguminous crops, the replacement of rye with wheat, and the mutual help between manors as evidence.
52 Ibid. These aspects of Templar agricultural practice, which were evident in Lincolnshire, are explored in detail in subsequent chapters. In addition, Gooder’s detailed study of Temple Balsall in Warwickshire provides an opportunity for a comparison between the Lincolnshire preceptories and a preceptory elsewhere, again based upon documentary evidence.
53 E. A. Gooder, Temple Balsall: The Warwickshire Preceptory of the Templars and their Fate (Chichester, 1995). Subsequent research has provided further, comparative examples of Templar sites to establish how preceptories operated and the contribution of the Order to the evolution of the rural landscape.
54 H. J. Nicholson, ‘The Templars in Britain: Garway and South Wales’, in L’économie templière en Occident: Patrimoines, commerce, finances, ed. A. Baudin, G. Brunel and N. Dohrmann (Langres, 2013) pp. 323–36; A. Tapper, Knights Templar and Hospitaller in Herefordshire (Little Logaston, 2005); J. S. Lee, ‘Landowners and landscapes: the Knights Templar and their successors at Temple Hirst, Yorkshire’, Local Historian, 41 (2011), 293–307; J. S. Lee, ‘Weedley not Whitley: repositioning a preceptory of the Knights Templar in Yorkshire’ Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 87 (2015), pp. 101–23; V. McLoughlin, ‘Medieval Rothley: manor, soke, and parish’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, 81 (2007), pp. 65–87.Lord’s
The Knights Templar in Britain, published in 2002, is the first work to adopt a regional approach to the properties and activities of the Templars. In doing so it creates a basis for inter-regional comparison.
55 E. Lord, The Knights Templar in Britain (Harlow, 2002, 2004). However, her major primary source is the Inquest of 1185, at which time the Order’s estate-management system based upon preceptories was yet to emerge. Further, while dealing with the Lincolnshire preceptory of Temple Bruer in some detail, Willoughton, which was at least as important, is given only a cursory mention.
Mills’s
The Knights Templar in Kesteven is notable as the only publication that describes the preceptories, and other aspects of the Order’s estates, in that part of Lincolnshire, omitting the preceptory of Willoughton in Lindsey.
56 D. Mills, The Knights Templar in Kesteven (Lincoln 1990, rev. and rep. 2009). However, it is not intended to be analytical, and does not pursue the fate of the Templar lands after their sequestration.
While there are other publications on the trial of the Templars, notably the seminal work of Barber, cited above, Nicholson’s
The Knights Templar on Trial is the only publication concentrating exclusively on this subject in Britain.
57 H. J. Nicholson, The Knights Templar on Trial: The Trial of the Templars in the British Isles, 1308–1311 (Stroud, 2009). In it, she explores the how Edward II used the former Templar estates, emphasising his exploitation of the Order’s possessions as she had previously highlighted in
The Knights Templar.58 Nicholson, Knights Templar, p. 231. Not least, she identifies the significance of the Templar wool clip in paying off inherited debts to Italian merchant houses. Nicholson itemises the agricultural workers (
famuli) enrolled in the accounts for Faxfleet, the Templar preceptory on the north bank of the Humber. She does not, however, engage with the nature of Templar agriculture.
The relationship between Edward II and the Templars is further explored by Hamilton, who concentrates on the political machinations surrounding the arrest of the Templars and the trial of the Order.
59 J. S. Hamilton, ‘King Edward II of England and the Templars’, in The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307–1314), ed. J. Burgtorf, P. F. Crawford and H. J. Nicholson (Farnham, 2010), pp. 215–24. Hamilton argues that the trial and suppression of the Templars were ‘far from cataclysmic’, citing the repeated delays of Edward II as having a mitigating effect.
60 Ibid., p. 224. However, it is difficult to see how the overnight collapse of one of the great military and financial institutions of the medieval period can have been anything other than a major upheaval. Phillips gives a much fuller consideration of the transfer of former Templar estates to the Hospitallers by reference to an example where this was successful – New Temple in London – and examples in Yorkshire where it manifestly failed: Faxfleet, Temple Newsam and Temple Hirst.
61 S. Phillips, ‘The Hospitallers’ acquisition of the Templar lands in England’, in Debate on the Trial, ed. Burgtorf, Crawford and Nicholson, pp. 237–46. He concludes that ‘it appears that the Hospitallers eventually gained most of the [Templars’] lands, including some of those still out of their possession in 1338’.
62 Ibid., p. 245. Phillips concedes that ‘successful acquisition of the Templars’ goods required the assistance of crown officials’, implying that favourable leasing to crown officials, or indeed bribery, may have lubricated the wheels of property transfer – as Leys had unequivocally stated.
63 Ibid., p. 246.The publication of
The Temple Church in London in 2010 provides an authoritative source on the history, architecture and art of the Temple church in Holborn.
64 R. Griffith-Jones and D. Park, eds, The Temple Church in London: History, Architecture, Art (Woodbridge, 2010, pbk edn 2017). In the opening chapter, Nicholson provides a succinct history of the Templars and of the New Temple precinct of which the Temple Church was part.
65 H. J. Nicholson, ‘At the heart of medieval London: the New Temple in the Middle Ages’, in The Temple Church in London, ed. Griffith-Jones and Park, pp. 1–18. On accommodation, she notes that in the sheriff’s accounts of 1308, after the arrest of the Order, there were three references to a ‘dormitory’, in each case referring to a room occupied by one of the brethren.
66 Ibid., p. 13. However, there was no reference to a guesthouse, despite the fact that the New Temple most certainly accommodated guests, and she suggests that that the brethren may have had to relinquish their rooms as and when required.
67 Ibid., p. 14. The enigma of accommodation is discussed in Chapter 2 in relation to Lincolnshire preceptories.
During the second decade of the twenty-first century academic interest in the Templar estates in England has continued to grow. Nicholson’s paper of 2013 concentrates entirely on the Templar estates at Garway in Herefordshire and Llanmadoc in South Wales.
68 Nicholson, ‘The Templars in Britain’, pp. 323–36. She discusses the nature of estate income and expenditure during the first year of sequestration, when the royal custodians ‘operated the estates in the same way that they had been operated by the Templars’.
69 Ibid., p. 328. She astutely observes that ‘lack of investment in repairs kept profits artificially high in the short-term but would have hit income in the long-term’.
70 Ibid., p. 332. The Lincolnshire estates experienced the same approach to management in the hands of the king’s agents.
71 J. M. Jefferson, ‘Edward II and the Templar lands in Lincolnshire’, in L’économie templière en Occident, ed. Baudin, Brunel and Dohrmann, pp. 295–321. A further trend identified at Garway was the commutation of labour services for cash, in line with the nationwide movement towards a cash economy in the early fourteenth century. This trend had also been identified by McLaughlin at Rothley in Leicestershire, and was manifest on the former Templar estates in Lincolnshire.
72 McLaughlin, ‘Medieval Rothley’, pp. 72–5.Slavin’s 2013 paper gives an overview of the Templar estates and their management in early fourteenth-century England and Wales, and in doing so cites local and regional examples.
73 P. Slavin, ‘Landed estates of the Knights Templar in England and Wales and their management in the early fourteenth century’, Journal of Historical Geography, 42 (2013), pp. 36–49. It is based upon nationwide statistics derived from the accounts of the former Templar estates covering the period 1308–13. Slavin begins by stating that the Templars’ financial and banking dealings are relatively well understood, but that ‘much less is known about the Order’s involvement in agriculture’.
74 Ibid., p. 36. He discusses the national pattern of both arable production and livestock husbandry on the Templar estates in considerable detail. This has proved of immense value in providing a yardstick against which the Lincolnshire estates can be measured. The results of the Templars’ agricultural practice on their Lincolnshire estates were by no means always in accordance with the national average.
While discussing the new strategies and changes implemented by the king’s agents between 1308 and 1313, Slavin concentrates on the reduction of livestock numbers and the augmentation of the arable acreage. He concedes that the Templars practised agriculture that ensured long-term stability, and that the king’s agents were interested in short-term profitability. However, at no point does he explore the initial asset stripping or the leasing of both livestock and manors which became prevalent during the period. These aspects of the fate of the Templar lands in Lincolnshire during their sequestration by King Edward II are considered in later chapters.
A subsequent paper by Slavin is equally valuable, as he explores the fate of the former Templar property from the arrest of the Order in 1308 until the Report of 1338.
75 P. Slavin, ‘The fate of the former Templar estates in England’, Crusades, 14 (2015), pp. 209–35. The latter recorded both the property which had initially been donated to the Hospitallers and that which had formerly belonged to the Templars. Having first given a résumé of the distribution of Templar lands, Slavin identifies the roles of the sheriffs and keepers as the estates were administered by the king’s agents following their sequestration in 1308.
76 Ibid., pp. 215–20. He points out that the revenues of the former Templar estates were paid directly to the king’s chamber, and were therefore at the king’s personal disposal, until 1322, when they were diverted to the exchequer.
77 Ibid., p. 220.Slavin states that between 1314 and 1324 little of the former Templar property was transferred to the Hospitallers.
78 Ibid., p. 224. Further, he argues that the delivery of the Templar lands to the Hospitallers was impossible during that period due to a series of political, social and economic pressures, among them harvest failure, sheep murrain and cattle pestilence. This difficult economic situation was compounded by civil war with Thomas of Lancaster and the contrariants.
79 Ibid., p. 225.Following Lancaster’s defeat at Boroughbridge in 1322 and the subsequent fall of the contrariants, the vast majority of Templar demesnes were in the hands of Edward II.
80 Ibid., p. 228. A statute of 1324 facilitated the transfer of former Templar property to the Hospitallers, though not in their entirety. At this juncture, Slavin argues against the widely accepted view that Thomas Larcher, Prior of England, used bribery to facilitate the transfer of Templar lands to the Hospitallers; this is a moot point which will be discussed later.
81 Ibid., p. 231.The most authoritative exposition on the Templars in England in one volume is Nicholson’s
The Everyday Life of the Templars, based upon the estate accounts of 1308–13.
82 H. J. Nicholson, The Everyday Life of the Templars: The Knights Templar at Home (Fonthill, 2017), p. 5. Importantly, Nicholson concentrates on the Templars’ lives, not on how the king’s custodians administered the Order’s former estates. To do so, she draws only on the first year of the records after the sequestration of the estates, when the hand of the Templars was still evident.
83 Ibid., p. 23. Following a consideration of the Rule of St Benedict, by which the Templars lived, Nicholson discusses the nature of Templar houses, their occupants, and the daily nature of their communal lives.
84 Ibid., pp. 42–63. She places the British examples within the European context, so giving a holistic picture of preceptory life. Of particular relevance to this book is the chapter dealing with money-making, as it includes a thorough discussion of the mixed farming found on the Templar estates, citing regional examples, including some from Lincolnshire.
85 Ibid., pp. 80–9. Further, Nicholson analyses the payment made to the estate workers, the
famuli, and concludes that the nature of payment varied not only between regions but even between estates.
86 Ibid., p. 89. She adds that the life of the majority of Templars was not one of war and politics, adding that ‘it was the ordinary that underpinned their [the Templars’] extraordinary achievements’.
87 Ibid., p. 119.The Hospitallers in England
The Hospitallers survived as an active military force long after the suppression of the Templars. Further, whereas in 1312 the papal edict ordered the wholesale suppression of the Templars, except in the Iberian Peninsula, no such edict was ever applied to the Hospitallers. The dissolution of the Order in England in 1540 was an integral part of the English Reformation, as the Order of St John, the Hospitallers, was a Catholic Order. No such suppression occurred elsewhere in Europe. The Hospitallers effectively ruled the Maltese archipelago as a sovereign state from their arrival in 1530 until they were ejected by the French on 17 June 1798, during which time they were active in international affairs. Perhaps as a result of their being players on the international stage for such a long period, it is this aspect of the Order’s activities in which scholars have shown most interest. Two of the most notable Hospitaller scholars, Riley-Smith and Luttrell, have concentrated their researches entirely on the role of the Order in the Holy Land and the Mediterranean. With the exception of Gervers’s work, little has been written about the Hospitallers with their English estates as the primary focus of study.
88 M. Gervers, ‘Pro defensione Terre Sancte: the development and exploitation of the Hospitallers’ landed estate in Essex’, in The Military Orders: Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick, ed. M. C. Barber (Aldershot, 1994), pp. 3–20; The Cartulary of The Knights of St John of Jerusalem, ed. M. Gervers, part 2: Prima camera: Essex (Oxford, 1994) pp. lxiv–cx.Unlike other histories of the Hospitallers, King and Luke’s
The Knights of St John in the British Realm is written from the viewpoint of Clerkenwell, the home of the English priory.
89 King and Luke, Knights of St John. As such, the Order in England is pivotal and its involvement in historical events both within the realm and internationally is central to the book. While this gives a context to the Hospitaller estates in England, the text does not deal specifically with Hospitaller properties except in the case of the transfer of the Templar lands to the Order. Here, Luke holds Prior Thomas Larcher responsible for the financial ills of the Order during a particularly fraught period of their history, a view with which I am at odds.
90 Ibid., 43. However, the conclusion that ‘during that long period of strife and litigation [1312–38] much [Templar] property had been irretrievably lost’ fits well with the Lincolnshire evidence.
91 Ibid., 45.Seward gives an overview of the Military Orders and draws attention to the difficulties experienced by the Hospitallers in their attempts to claim the lands of the Templars after the suppression of that Order in 1312.
92 D. Seward, The Monks of War (London, 1972, rev. and rep. 2000). The problem was not restricted to the English realm, Seward notes: ‘In Europe one half of the Poor Knights [Templars’] possessions was lost to the laity.’
93 Ibid., 165. Nicholson is in complete agreement, stating unequivocally that ‘the Hospitallers never received all the Templar lands to which they were entitled. In England and Germany in particular, many were taken back by the descendants of the original donors […] while others were sequestered by rulers and granted out to their favourites’.
94 Nicholson, Knights Hospitaller.A much more localised approach is adopted by Gervers with regard to the Hospitallers’ estate in Essex.
95 Gervers, ‘Pro defensione Terre Sancte’. His reference to the Hospitallers’ lack of royal patronage in twelfth-century England goes some way to explain the difference in size between the Hospitaller and the Templar estates in Essex and, by implication, elsewhere. Gervers deals in some detail with the problems associated with the management of territorial acquisitions which were small and widespread, and suggests that ‘the Hospitallers, unlike the Templars, do not appear to have had enough capital to lease or purchase extensive nucleated manors’.
96 Ibid., p. 11. Where the estate was large enough, it would appear that the Hospitallers did actively farm the land; however, they were ‘predominantly farmers of rents and tithes’.
97 Ibid., p. 19. Postan states the importance of rental income on the estates of the Military Orders.
98 M. M. Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society: An Economic History of Britain in the Middle Ages (London, 1972) pp. 92–3. Gervers’s paper was a milestone not only because it dealt with the Hospitallers’ estates within one county but also because it drew a distinction between the active involvement of Templar estate management and the more distant rental approach of the Hospitallers. This distinction became evident in Lincolnshire as former Templar lands were transferred to the Hospitallers. Gervers pursued these themes more fully in the introduction to
The Cartulary of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem in England, published in 1994.
99 Cartulary: Essex, ed. Gervers.In what is ostensibly a general history of the Hospitallers,
The Knights of Malta, Sire includes a section that deals specifically with each province and includes a chapter on ‘The Tongue of England’.
100 Sire, Knights of Malta, pp. 175–89. Based upon the 1338 Report of Philip de Thame, a brief résumé of the commanderies is presented, but not of their estates.
101 L&K. This is followed by a succinct account of the relationship between the priory and the crown until the early years of the reign of Elizabeth I, but there is no discussion of the landholdings.
Phillips’s
The Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in Late Medieval England is of particular relevance in contextualising the research which this book represents.
102 S. Phillips, The Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2009). Phillips focuses on the English priory, not the central convent, be it Rhodes or Malta. In this his book differs from most of the substantive Hospitaller literature. He traces the changing relationship between the prior and the crown and ‘views the Prior as an Englishman first [Leonard de Tibertis being the exception] with his first loyalty to the crown and a Hospitaller second’.
103 Ibid., p. 18. This is contrary to the widely held view that the prior’s primary obligation was to the pope and the Order. Phillips further argues that fulfilling the prior’s Hospitaller duties ‘was only possible when the crown did not require the Prior’s services’.
104 Ibid. In relation to the transfer of Templar properties to the Hospitallers, Phillips states that the king ‘appears’ to have surrendered those which were in his hands by 1320 and that the transfer was due principally to Leonard de Tibertis.
105 Ibid., p. 5. These are moot points which are fully discussed in Chapter 7.
Of particular interest is Phillips’s discussion of the secularisation of Hospitaller property from the late fifteenth century to the dissolution of the Order in 1540.
106 Ibid., pp. 133–61. He cites examples of nepotism, particularly in the case of Prior Thomas Docwra, who leased properties to family members. Further, Phillips argues that the leasing of property to influential crown officials may well have been to buy favour in the face of the approaching dissolution.
The Templar estates, agricultural practice and estate management
There is a considerable body of published work on aspects of medieval agriculture, both monastic and secular. However, there is a dearth of publications on Templar agriculture. This leaves the study of medieval agriculture incomplete, for the Templars were substantial landholders in England during the twelfth, thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. The following historiography of medieval agriculture illustrates what is known and, more tellingly from the Templar viewpoint, what is not.
The second volume of
The Agrarian History of England and Wales ranges widely over aspects of medieval agriculture, much of the content contributed by H. E. Hallam, the book’s editor.
107 H. E. Hallam, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 2: 1042–1350 (Cambridge, 1988). Hallam proposes that in the early fourteenth century Lincolnshire was divided into two agricultural regions: the highlands and the lowlands.
108 H. E. Hallam, ‘Farming techniques: eastern England’, in Agrarian History, ed. Hallam, p. 307. Highland Lincolnshire, which encompasses the Wolds, specialised in wheat, barley and sheep.
109 Ibid. The western fen edge grew wheat and barley except where it was wet or silty, where oats were favoured.
110 Ibid. The siltlands of Holland grew oats, maslin (a mixture of rye and wheat) and legumes, the latter particularly in the wapentake of Skirbeck.
111 Ibid. These are broad generalisations, as the 1308–13 accounts of the estates of the former Templars amply illustrate. However, they do give some notion of the changes in agricultural emphasis determined by topography.
Hurst discusses the nature of agricultural granges and, uniquely, places the preceptory of South Witham within the context of monastic granges elsewhere.
112 J. G. Hurst, ‘Rural building in England and Wales’, in Agrarian History, ed. Hallam, pp. 888–97. He concludes that ‘no standardised grange can be devised as this would have depended on the date, monastic order, and the use of any particular property’.
113 Ibid., 889. Platt arrives at the same conclusion, asserting that Cistercian granges ‘can have yielded very little to standardisation’.
114 C. Platt, The Monastic Grange in Medieval England (London, 1969), p. 71.No consideration of the literature on medieval agriculture is complete without substantial reference being made to the singular contribution of Campbell. The synthesis of his research is presented in
English Seigniorial Agriculture.115 B. M. S. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250–1450 (Cambridge, 2000). In particular the chapters on pastoral and arable production are essential to any understanding of medieval agriculture, and they are cited frequently in the present book.
116 Ibid., pp. 102–247.Research into arable farming has been thematic. In his consideration of Winchester yields, Titow discusses the extent and productivity of the demesne.
117 J. Z. Titow, Winchester Yields: A Study in Medieval Agricultural Productivity (Cambridge, 1972). He suggests that manuring, marling, the introduction of new crops (particularly legumes), and the adoption of new systems of rotation would have contributed to enhanced productivity.
118 Ibid., pp. 30–1. As the availability of manure was directly proportional to the number of livestock, then the density of application could be increased only by increasing the number of livestock, or reducing the area to which manure was applied. Harwood Long suggests that weediness of the soil could have been one of the major determinants of poor arable productivity.
119 W. Harwood Long, ‘The low yields of corn in medieval England’, EHR, 2nd series, 32, 4 (1979), pp. 467–9. Postles emphasises the importance of both weeding and summer ploughing as means of controlling weeds and so enhancing crop yields.
120 D. Postles, ‘Cleaning the medieval arable’, AHR, 36 (1988), pp. 130–43. Campbell further concludes that grain productivity could be aided by intensive sowing, which would have helped to smother the weeds.
121 B. M. S. Campbell, ‘Agricultural productivity in medieval England: some evidence from Norfolk’, EHR, 43, 2 (1983), pp. 379–404. Stone stresses that these stratagems to maintain soil fertility were implemented as a result of policy decisions rather than happenstance.
122 D. Stone, Decision-Making in Medieval Agriculture (Oxford, 2005), pp. 63–70. Pretty argues that productivity was not the primary aim of medieval manorial agriculture, often being sacrificed in the interest of stability and sustainability.
123 J. N. Pretty, ‘Sustainable agriculture in the Middle Ages: the English manor’, AHR, 38, 1 (1990), pp. 1–19. However, Pretty concedes that by the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century direct farming was declining.
124 Ibid., p. 19. The evidence from the Templar estates in Lincolnshire points to the striking of a balance between profitability and sustainability. The balance was destroyed by the exploitation of the estates by the king’s officers after the arrest of the Order in 1308.
Underlying cereal-based arable farming was the ability to mill the grain for flour. Medieval mill technology has been fully discussed elsewhere; however, there are some points specific to Lincolnshire.
125 R. Holt, The Mills of Medieval England (Oxford, 1988); J. Langdon, Mills in the Medieval Economy: England, 1300–1540 (Oxford, 2004). Holt refers to the clustering of Domesday watermills in the county where there was a stream which could provide sufficient power. The same was still true a century later in the chalk Wolds. The introduction of windmills in the middle to late twelfth century, as cited by both Holt and Langdon, represented a technical advance.
126 Ibid. This was particularly beneficial in those areas that either lacked streams to drive watermills, such as the Wolds, or had an insufficient head of water, such as the Fens. The first recorded mention of a windmill was in 1185 at Weedley, near South Cave in East Yorkshire, where there was the preceptory of a Templar estate – almost within sight of Templar lands on the Lincolnshire side of the Humber.
127 Inquest, p. 131. The Templars were not slow to adopt new technology.
Trow-Smith’s general history of livestock husbandry to 1700 places medieval farming practice within the chronology of agricultural development.
128 R. Trow-Smith, A History of British Livestock Husbandry to 1700 (London, 1957). In particular, he concentrates on the mechanics of medieval farming with an emphasis on sheep-rearing. He accords to medieval stock managers a far greater understanding of their tasks than they would have had if agriculture were in a state of stasis.
Farmer provides an introduction to the significance of stock on the medieval manor through his consideration of livestock prices in the thirteenth century.
129 D. L. Farmer, ‘Some livestock price movements in thirteenth-century England’, EHR, new series, 22, 1 (1969), pp. 1–16. He asserts that, almost invariably, oxen were bought in a condition fit to work in a plough team. However, oxen were sold when they were either surplus to requirements or exhausted and fit only for slaughter. The price reflected the condition of the beast.
130 Ibid., p. 6. Similarly, carthorses were of better quality than plough horses and commanded a higher price.
131 Ibid. While relative prices of livestock are considered in this book, of more interest is the relative significance of oxen and horses to medieval farming technology.
Langdon establishes beyond doubt that by the end of the thirteenth century horse hauling had replaced ox hauling as the primary means of vehicular transport.
132 J. Langdon, ‘Horse hauling: a revolution in vehicle transportation in twelfth- and thirteenth-century England?’, Past and Present, 103 (May, 1984), pp. 37–66. He cites the ‘radical improvements in horse traction’ that enabled the greater speed of the horse to be (literally) harnessed, giving access to a wider range of markets and the possibility of higher prices.
133 Ibid., p. 40. He states that for oxen, haulage was a secondary activity to ploughing, where replacement by horses was a much more gradual process.
134 Ibid., p. 48. However, Langdon argues that the eventual introduction of horses into plough teams increased the speed of ploughing and allowed for more frequent ploughing to suppress weeds.
135 Ibid. This ‘technological revolution in medieval agriculture’ was embraced by the Templars on their Lincolnshire estates.
136 Ibid., p. 64.The pig was ubiquitous on medieval manors, but Farmer states that there are ‘almost no records of the purchase of pigs’, which implies that pigs were reared for consumption on the manor and that a sufficiency was produced.
137 Farmer, ‘Some livestock price movements’, p. 9. Pig-rearing was not practised on a large scale on the former Templar estates in Lincolnshire. However, it did produce bacon for the larder and income from sales, though the latter was insignificant compared to that from wool.
Wool was of paramount importance to the economy of early fourteenth-century England. As a result, much research has concentrated on the wool trade, the staple and tax revenues, though there has been rather less work on the characteristics of medieval sheep and the mechanics of sheep farming.
138 E. Power, The Wool Trade in English Medieval History (Oxford, 1941); T. H. Lloyd, The English Wool Trade in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1977); A. R. Bell, C. Brooks and P. R. Dryburgh, The English Wool Market, c. 1230–1327 (Cambridge, 2007). However, Ryder’s research concentrates on the attributes of medieval sheep and the quality of their wool, which elsewhere has been so easily, and not always correctly, assumed.
139 M. L. Ryder, ‘The animal remains found at Kirkstall Abbey’, AHR, 7 (1959), pp. 1–5; M. L. Ryder, ‘Livestock remains from four medieval sites in Yorkshire’, AHR, 9 (1961), pp. 105–10; M. L. Ryder, ‘The history of sheep breeds in Britain’, AHR, 12 (1964), pp. 1–12; M. L. Ryder, ‘Medieval sheep and wool types’, AHR, 32 (1984), pp. 14–28. Bischoff’s consideration of medieval fleece weights and sheep breeds concludes that sheep were small, as were the fleeces.
140 J. P. Bischoff, ‘“I cannot do’t without counters’: fleece weights and sheep breeds in late thirteenth and early fourteenth century England”, Agricultural History, 57, 2 (1983), pp. 143–60. Dyer argues convincingly that enlightened husbandry led to sheep being overwintered in sheepcotes.
141 C. Dyer, ‘Sheepcotes: evidence for medieval sheep farming’, Medieval Archaeology, 39 (1995), pp. 136–64. Chapter 5 both defines Templar sheep and analyses the nature of sheep farming on the Lincolnshire estates of the Order immediately following the arrest in 1308.
Agricultural management is not a modern concept. Both secular and monastic estates of the medieval period could be significant commercial enterprises requiring managerial decisions in both policy and practice. At least three contemporary sources of advice were available to the medieval practitioner, namely the
Seneschaucy,
Walter of Henley and the
Husbandry.142 D. Oschinsky, Walter of Henley and Other Treatises on Estate Management and Accounting (Oxford, 1971). The
Seneschaucy was written
c. 1276 and
Walter possibly as late as 1285
.143 Ibid., p. 75. The
Seneschaucy outlined the responsibilities of the various offices within the estate administration.
144 Ibid., p. 76. The
Husbandry (of 1300) provided instruction for estate auditing procedures.
Walter,
however, restricted his comments to the management and farming of a manorial unit based upon arable farming and stock-rearing.
145 Ibid. Significantly, each thesis is centred on accounting.
146 Ibid., p. 77. The accounts provided a tool whereby the efficiency of the workforce could be scrutinised, as could the profitability of land management.
147 Ibid., p. 156. The advice which
Walter proffered, in pursuit of profitability, was progressive and not necessarily commonly accepted practice.
148 Ibid., p. 183. However, his influence is manifest in the farming practice of the Templars on their Lincolnshire estates.
Accounts provided data that informed decision-making and, in turn, recorded the outcome of decisions. Stone researches the nature and importance of decision-making in medieval agriculture, repeatedly returning to the assertion that medieval agriculture was not a random affair.
149 Stone, Decision-Making. He indicates the strategic difference between the winter-sown cash crops and the spring-sown fodder crops.
150 Ibid., p. 47. Stone points out that crop sales were staggered according to market prices, wheat being sold just before harvest, when it was in shortest supply and would thus fetch the highest price.
151 Ibid., p. 49. The acreage devoted to winter-sown cash crops depended upon the ability of the reeve to anticipate the market price at the time the crop would be sold.
152 Ibid., p. 53. Stone illustrates how the same attention to detail was applied to stock farming. He writes that at Wisbech, while sheep farming for wool was the major element of the pastoral enterprise, income was also generated by the leasing of ewes for milking.
153 Ibid., p. 50. Overall, Stone proposes convincingly that farm managers responded to market trends when making their decisions and were not afraid to experiment with new techniques. The initial accounts of the former Templar estates in Lincolnshire reflect the active management which Stone describes.
There is no Templar equivalent to Page’s study of the estate of the Benedictine abbey at Crowland.
154 F. M. Page, The Estates of Crowland Abbey: A Study in Manorial Organisation (Cambridge, 1934). The hierarchical system of manorial organisation which Page defines on the Crowland estates is immediately recognisable as that which prevailed on the Templar estates in Lincolnshire. The steward had overall responsibility and spent much time travelling between manors so as to supervise operations.
155 Ibid., p. 30. The reeve was responsible for the day-to-day running of a manor.
156 Ibid., p. 73. The main burden of agricultural work fell upon the permanent staff, the
famuli.157 Ibid., p. 104.Page’s definition of the
famuli is of particular relevance. She suggests that theirs was a full-time occupation: they did not have holdings of any size and, significantly, they were the only members of the manorial population who depended upon their profession rather than land tenure.
158 Ibid., p. 105. These specialist labourers included the likes of ploughmen, carters, shepherds, cowherds and swineherds.
159 Ibid. She further asserts that the heavier agricultural work was not performed by the villeins other than during the autumn harvest, when all hands were needed.
160 Ibid. Postan is in complete accord with Page regarding the nature of the
famuli.161 M. M. Postan, ‘The famulus: the estate labourer in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, EHR, supplement 2 (Cambridge, 1954). The
famuli are discussed in some detail in Chapter 6.
The relationship between ecclesiastical property, vacancies and the crown is explored by Biddick with regard to Winchester. She states that the See of Winchester ‘endured a vacancy in every generation’ during the thirteenth century.
162 K. Biddick (with C. J. H. Bijleveld), ‘Agrarian productivity on the estates of the Bishopric of Winchester in the early thirteenth century: a managerial perspective’, in Land, Labour and Livestock: Historical Studies in European Agricultural Productivity, ed. B. M. S. Campbell and M. Overton (Manchester, 1991), pp. 95–123. During the vacancy, the period between the death of a bishop and the appointment of his successor, the estates of the bishopric were in the king’s hands. The king engaged in the bulk sale of livestock and grain, including seed grain, which resulted in ‘serious reductions of the factors of production and consumption’.
163 Ibid., p. 103. She adds that for the newly elected bishop or abbot to re-establish ‘simple pre-vacancy production levels required both cash and time’.
164 Ibid. The exploitation of estates which fell into the hands of the king was commonplace, and was by no means restricted to the former properties of the Templars in Lincolnshire.
Conclusion
Until the final decade of the twentieth century little had been published about the Templar estates in England. The Templar scholars had tended to concentrate on the military aspects of the Order rather than the extent and organisation of their estates within this realm. Conversely, students of medieval agriculture had concentrated on the records of secular and ecclesiastical estates other than those of the Templars. The Templar estates had fallen between two stools. The work of Nicholson, in particular, has made considerable progress in this field, most notably through her research into the trial of the Templars and latterly the former Templar estate accounts of 1308–13.
165 Nicholson, Knights Templar on Trial; Burgtorf, Crawford and Nicholson, eds, Debate on the Trial; H. J. Nicholson, trans., Proceedings against the Templars in the British Isles, vol. 2: The Translation (Ashgate, 2011); Nicholson, ‘The Templars in Britain’; Nicholson, Everday Life. Yet there remains a lacuna of considerable size. To date, no Templar study concentrates on the fate of the Order’s estates, in a single county, from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. Further, no published work gives an analysis of farming practice, and indeed life, on the Templar estates immediately following the arrest of the Order on 10 January 1308. This book is intended to illuminate those neglected aspects of historical study against the backdrop of tumultuous domestic and international events and within the context of the county of Lincolnshire.