Chapter 9
The Valor ecclesiasticus of 1535, the dissolution of the Hospitallers and the subsequent fate of the former Templar estates in Lincolnshire
The present chapter develops four themes within the turbulent context of Tudor England. Firstly there are the circumstances which led to the Dissolution of the Monasteries during the reign of Henry VIII and the response of the Hospitallers to the changing circumstances in which they found themselves. Secondly there is an analysis of the Valor ecclesiasticus (Church Valuation), the 1535 survey of the income of the Church and of the Order of St John which was to be the basis for subsequent taxation. Thirdly there is the fate of the former Hospitaller properties following the dissolution of the Order in 1540 until the death of Edward VI in 1553. The final theme is the impact of the ardently Catholic Mary Tudor as she re-established the Order of St John of Clerkenwell and the effect of the accession of her half-sister, Elizabeth, following Mary’s death on 17 November 1558.
The fall of Rhodes in 1523, and the Hospitallers’ occupation of Malta, 1530
On 1 January 1523, Grand Master Philippe de Villiers de l’Isle Adam and brethren of the Order of the Hospital of St John left Rhodes after it had fallen to Suleiman I, the Magnificent. Among those who fought in the final defence of the island were English brethren: Thomas Sheffield; Thomas Newport, a Lincolnshire knight and bailiff of Eagle; the turcopolier John Bothe; and the future prior of the English province, William Weston.
1 S. Phillips, The Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 12, 86. Turcopoles were mounted archers and light cavalry recruited locally by both Templars and Hospitallers in the Holy Land. The Turcopolier was nominally in charge of these auxiliaries. In the Order of St John, turcopolier became a title which was associated with the conventual bailiff of the English province which was sixth in seniority among the conventual bailiffs. ‘In Rhodes and afterwards in Malta, the turcopolier was commandant of the coastguard and inspector of coastal defences’. E. J. King and H. Luke, The Knights of St John in the British Realm (London, 3rd edn rev. and cont. 1967), pp. 51–2. It is significant that despite repeated entreaties for the English prior, Thomas Docwra, to go to Rhodes during the years before the fall of island to the Turks, he failed to do so.
2 Phillips, Prior of the Knights Hospitaller, p. 87. However, as first lay baron of the realm, he continued to discharge his diplomatic duties for the king, Henry VIII. Docwra had become increasingly involved in English affairs since 1521 when he was defeated by Villiers de L’Isle Adam in the election to become grand master of the Order.
3 Ibid., p. 86. The reason for Henry VIII’s lack of response to the Hospitallers’ dire situation on Rhodes is unclear. Phillips suggests that it may have been due to a lack of sympathy for the Order or that ‘misinformation led to an underestimate of the danger that Rhodes faced’.
4 Ibid., p. 87.Following the fall of Rhodes, the Order spent seven inactive years, first at Viterbo, in temporary accommodation granted by Pope Clement VII, and then at Nice, in the dominions of the duke of Savoy.
5 H. J. A. Sire, The Knights of Malta (New Haven, CT, 1994), pp. 59–60. During this period the growing Turkish threat remained unchecked and recruitment to the Order diminished.
6 Ibid. In addition, ‘the rulers of England, Portugal and Savoy took advantage of the Order’s misfortune to lay hands on its revenues and threaten complete expropriation’.
7 Ibid. The Hospitallers eventually took up residence on the Maltese archipelago in June 1530, after it had been ceded by Emperor Charles V to Grand Master Villiers de L’Isle-Adam for a nominal rent of one Maltese falcon per year.
8 H. J. Nicholson, Knights Hospitaller (Woodbridge, 2001, rep. 2006), p. 67. The arrival of the Order in Malta represented the nadir of its history as the loss of Rhodes further distanced the Hospitallers from the Holy Land and again placed them in serious financial straits. The purpose of the Order remained the same: the defence of Christianity against the Turks.
The last English priors: Kendal, Docwra and Weston
In the English province, during the last three priorships before the dissolution of the Order in 1540, those of John Kendal, Thomas Docwra and William Weston, the emphasis had moved towards secularisation and royal service.
9 Phillips, Prior of the Knights Hospitaller, pp. 133–57. Both Kendal and Docwra leased farms to hereditary tenants and both exercised preferment towards family members. In 1509, Martin Docwra was granted the farm of Fletchampstead manor for life and by 1515 he had been appointed seneschal of Temple Balsall for life, farming the manor on a twenty-six-year lease by 1526.
10 Ibid., p. 140. During Docwra’s priorship in particular there was an increase in the number of Hospitaller properties which were leased to crown officials, the most notable being that of Hampton Court manor, which was leased to Thomas Wolsey, the recently appointed archbishop of York and chancellor of England, in 1515.
11 Ibid., p. 141. Following the fall of Wolsey in 1529, Henry VIII took formal possession of Hampton Court, in exchange for Stanesgate Priory in Essex, and it was lost to the Hospitallers in perpetuity.
12 Ibid., p. 142. When Thomas Docwra died in 1527, he was succeeded by William Weston. While Weston was not involved in the diplomatic and ambassadorial service of the king to anywhere near the same extent as Docwra, he did oversee a further increase in the issue of leases to crown servants.
13 Ibid., p. 146. Leases of Hospitaller property were issued to Richard Rich, who in 1537 was appointed as chancellor of the court of augmentations charged with the disposal and sale of monastic property.
14 Ibid., p. 143. As the power and influence of Thomas Cromwell blossomed, he too was issued with leases of Hospitaller property, not least the ‘magisterial
camera of Peckham’, in the hopes that the Order might benefit from his influence.
15 Ibid. See also information provided by Historic England at https/historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1007460. In addition, appointments were made and annuities granted, particularly during the latter years of the 1530s, in an attempt to gain favour with influential people during a period of great political uncertainty. Phillips suggests that in so doing, Weston was anticipating the Dissolution.
16 Phillips, Prior of the Knights Hospitaller, p. 150. This may well have been the case. Certainly by the 1530s the English prior and the senior hierarchy of the English province had become integral parts of the Tudor administrative machinery, both employed by the crown and in turn employing crown servants to conduct their business.
The lead-up to the English Reformation
The chain of events which eventually led to the English Reformation began during the second year of the sixteenth century. On 14 November 1501 Catherine of Aragon married Arthur Tudor, son of Henry VII and elder brother of Henry, later to become Henry VIII. The marriage was brief as Arthur died of sweating sickness on 2 April 1502. Henry VIII acceded to the throne on 21 April 1509 immediately following the death of his father, Henry VII. On 11 June that year Henry married his brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon, and on 24 June there was a joint coronation. There was only one child of the marriage who survived into adulthood, Mary, born on 18 February 1516 and destined to become Mary I, the first queen regnant. There was no surviving son.
The absence of a male heir became the subject of deep concern and the likelihood of a successful pregnancy reduced as the queen grew older. Henry eventually fell for Anne Boleyn, whose sister, Mary, was already his mistress. The king married Anne Boleyn in January 1533 following Archbishop Cranmer’s judgement that Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon had been invalid as a result of the queen having been previously married to Henry’s brother Arthur.
17 A. Fraser, ed., The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England (London, 1975), p. 183. The following year saw unprecedented constitutional change. Six crucial enactments culminated in the Act of Supremacy, which ‘defined the right of Henry VIII to be supreme head of the Church of England on earth thereby severing ecclesiastical links with Rome’.
18 www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/religion/collections/common-prayer/act-of-supremacy/ The wealthy monastic houses sat uneasily in the changing religious climate of the time. The emergent independence of the Anglican Church was emphasised by the Act for the Submission of the Clergy, who as a result became answerable to the crown, and the Heresy Act, which meant that denial of papal authority was no longer heretical.
19 C. Marsh, Popular Religion in Sixteenth-Century England (London, 1998), p. 19. The Act in Absolute Restraint of Annates, passed in the November–December 1534 session of parliament, abolished the taxes levied by the papacy on recently appointed clergy.
20 J. Cannon and R. Crawford, ‘Annates, Acts in Restraints of’, in A Dictionary of British History (Oxford, 2009, online version 2015). This followed the excommunication of Henry by the pope. The Act of First Fruits and Tenths imposed a tithe on the net incomes of all spiritual benefices effective from 1 January 1535, thereby diverting former papal income to the king.
21 Parliamentary Archives, HL/PO/PU/1/1535/27H8n59 (Public Act, 27 Henry VIII, c. 8, Records of the Office of First Fruits and Tenths).Before the tax could be levied, the value of the benefices had to be surveyed to assess the level of taxation. The chancellor, Sir Thomas Audley, established a commission which carried out an inquisition in each diocese.
22 D. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, vol. 3: The Tudor Age (Cambridge, 1979), p. 241. The ecclesiastical members of the commission in Lincolnshire were John, Bishop of Lincoln, and George Hennage, dean of the cathedral church of Lincoln.
23 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), p. 1. The twenty-six secular commissioners included Robert Hussey, Robert Tyrwhitt and William Tyrwhitt, all of whom held positions of influence as seneschals of Lincolnshire monasteries and priories.
24 Ibid. Robert Tyrwhitt in particular derived income from six ecclesiastical houses: the priories of Kyme, Elsham, Gokewell and Newstead on Ancholme, and the abbeys of Thornton and Newbo.
25 Ibid., pp. 117, 72, 74, 140, 111. The composite list of ecclesiastical income, the
Valor ecclesiasticus, was in the hands of the exchequer by early 1536, shortly after the death of Catherine of Aragon on 7 January.
The nature of the Valor ecclesiasticus
The
Valor ecclesiasticus of 1535 differed in both scale and purpose from the 1338 Report of Philip de Thame. The Report was specifically to itemise all Hospitaller properties in England and the income they generated. Because of the protracted and incomplete nature of the transfer of former Templar property, as outlined in Chapter 7, it was crucial that the extent and location of the Hospitallers’ lands were recorded at the outset of the Hundred Years War with France. The
Valor ecclesiasticus, by contrast, dealt with all ecclesiastical property in England with an emphasis that was singularly financial, so as to provide a basis for taxation. Its purpose was not to provide an inventory of ecclesiastical land ownership, and secular properties were beyond its remit. As a result it is not possible to calculate a figure for Hospitaller landholding in 1535 which can be used as a basis for comparison with 1185, 1308 and 1338. There were few examples where land-use acreages were listed. At the preceptory of Willoughton 104 acres of arable land, 60 acres of meadow and 22 acres of enclosed pasture were recorded, and at its member, Gainsborough North, 20 acres of meadowland and 1 bovate of arable.
26 Ibid., p. 137. Further exceptions included the rentals of arable land by the priories of Nocton Park and Haverholme from Temple Bruer, but no acreages were listed.
27 Ibid., p. 118. The only land use recorded in relation to acreage and income with any degree of consistency was woodland, which indicated its importance in Tudor England. Twenty-four acres of woodland yielded 20s. at Willoughton, and 6 acres were valued at 2s. 6d. at Tealby.
28 Ibid., p. 137. Elsewhere, little reference was made to land use compared with the Report of 1338. The college of Holy Trinity, Tattershall, was recorded as having paid an annual rent of 4d. to the Priory of St John of Jerusalem in England for unspecified property in Lindsey, further emphasising the importance the
Valor placed upon the taxable income property generated, rather than extent of holdings.
29 Ibid., p. 43.A number of Hospitaller properties whose disposal was noted in the Henrician letters, and which were attributed to former preceptories, such as Scopwick of ‘Temple Bruer preceptory and St John’s of Jerusalem’, were not listed as such in the
Valor, having already found their way into secular hands.
30 Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII [henceforth Letters], vol. 20, part 1: January–July 1545, ed. J. Gairdner and R. H. Brodie (London, 1905) p. 420. In such a case, given the haste with which the
Valor was completed, the omission may have been in error, or because the properties’ transfer to secular hands put them beyond the remit of a survey of ecclesiastical property which produced taxable income.
The
Valor ecclesiasticus no longer used the term commandery but reverted to that of preceptory, as used by the Templars.
31 In the 1338 Report of Philip de Thame the Latin term bajulia, meaning commandery, refers both to the Hospitaller houses and to the former Templar preceptories held by the Hositallers. However, the Valor ecclesiasticus reverts to the Latin term preceptoria, as used by the Templars and meaning preceptory, to describe both Hospitaller commanderies and former Templar preceptories. The functions of a commandery (bajulia) and a preceptory (preceptoria) were the same, namely to administer property, normally a landed estate. Of former Templar preceptories, South Witham was a rectory, not attributed to a preceptory in the
Valor, and its accounts were listed separately.
32 Valor ecclesiasticus, ed. Caley and Hunter, p. 99. In a letter patent of 17 July 1563, South Witham was referred to as ‘late of Temple Bruer preceptory’.
33 CPR, 1560–63, p. 593. Similarly, Aslackby was a rectory, but it was under the auspices of Temple Bruer.
34 Valor ecclesiasticus, ed. Caley and Hunter, p. 104. The hospital of Mere was also reduced in status, and in 1548 was referred to as being ‘late of the preceptory of Le Egle’.
35 CPR, 1547–48, p. 333. In 1338, Mere had been under the jurisdiction of Willoughton. Neither of the original Hospitaller commanderies of Maltby and Skirbeck was accounted for in the
Valor of 1535; both had been granted to Robert Botill, prior of the English province, in 1440 and had been retained by subsequent priors.
36 G. O’Malley, The Knights Hospitaller of the English Langue, 1460–1565 (Oxford, 2005), p. 61. Elsewhere, there was a similar trend. Phillips describes Upleadon in Herefordshire as having been a separate commandery in 1338 but by the 1530s it was merely a manor of Dinmore preceptory and was farmed out.
37 Phillips, Prior of the Knights Hospitaller, p. 134.Three factors were in play. Firstly, as the Report of Philip de Thame clearly illustrated, by 1338 the transfer of Templar lands to the Hospitallers was incomplete, and the organisation of Hospitaller properties had not yet been amended to accommodate those Templar holdings that had been transferred. It was to be expected therefore that rationalisation during the subsequent two centuries would have resulted in a reduction in the number of preceptories. Neither Skirbeck nor Maltby, which had been Hospitaller commanderies since their foundation, were still operational preceptories by 1535. Secondly, as an Order, the Hospitallers had always preferred leasing property to the demesne farming that the Templars had practised. With the general retreat from demesne farming during the fourteenth century, there was a widespread expansion in leasing which merely served to reinforce the Order’s long-established preference.
38 Ibid. Finally, as has been outlined above, the leasing of property was a means of securing support for the Hospitallers from influential individuals, particularly during the first four decades of the sixteenth century, and provided an opportunity for senior members of the Order to favour their kin.
Hospitaller lands in Lincolnshire, 1535
In 1535 there were twenty-eight vills in which the Hospitallers held property in Lincolnshire (map 22). This was a reduction of 30 percent from the forty vills in which the Hospitallers held property in 1338. The reduction included the loss of the commanderies of Skirbeck and Maltby and property at Scamblesby, which had been the Hospitallers’ only possessions in the county before their acquisition of Templar holdings. Further, of the twenty-eight vills recorded in the
Valor in 1535, only fourteen were coincident with those recorded in the Report of 1338. Not only had the Hospitallers reduced the number of their holdings in Lincolnshire, but they had also been actively buying, selling or possibly exchanging holdings on the land market. However, map 22 does not show relative areas of land as the nature of the
Valor prohibits this, so no correlation between the number of settlements and the acreage held can be established. Further, the map is based upon the distribution of settlements where property or rent was specifically related to the Hospitallers, thus the rectories recorded under the bailiwick of Eagle in the
Valor are omitted as the bailiwick itself was recorded under the deanery of Graffoe.
39 Valor ecclesiasticus, ed. Caley and Hunter, p. 127. Similarly, Temple Bruer was recorded under both the deanery of Longoboby and the priory of Nocton Park, thereby rendering its relative status uncertain.
40 Ibid., p. 124. The
Valor lists twenty-eight settlements where the Hospitallers owned land, with that in Broughton and Hibaldstow being rented by the Cistercian nuns of the priory of Gokewell, that in Strathone (unmarked on map 22) being rented by the Gilbertine priory of Haverholme, and some in Willoughton by the priory of Thornholme.
41 Ibid., pp. 140, 118, 139. In other instances the entry was less specific, as in the case of the rent of arable land by the priory of Nocton Park for 16s., or the rental of 6s. paid by Torksey priory.
42 Ibid., pp. 123, 131. Hospitaller influence in Holland was restricted to ecclesiastical income from the chantry chapels of Fleet and Tydd.
43 Ibid., p. 92.The preceptories and their income
The overall primacy of Willoughton, which had been evident in 1338, was still apparent almost two centuries later (map 23). In 1535 Willoughton had a net income of £174 11s. 11d. The gross income was £198 15s. 0d. with deductions for rented land, payment to officials, alms and, finally, £73 3s. 10d. in pensions paid to the treasury of the Order of St John of Jerusalem in Clerkenwell.
44 Ibid., p. 103. Further, Willoughton had thirteen members, whereas neither the bailiwick of Eagle nor the preceptory of Temple Bruer had members listed. The analysis of rent compared with total income shows that the income of Willoughton and its members was derived largely from property which was rented: 88 percent of gross income was from rent, 69.9 percent of that from land rented to freeholders. In 1338 fixed rent on the Willoughton estate accounted for 30.3 percent of gross income or 46.6 percent of the joint income from fixed rent and the land (appendix 7). In other words, in 1338 a far higher proportion of land income came from direct demesne farming than was the case in 1535. The absence of labour services emphasised the Order’s lack of involvement in agricultural enterprise and much greater reliance on intermediaries. More generally, by the sixteenth century customary service was much diminished as society became more commercialised and waged labour predominated. Much of Willoughton’s remaining income was from the sale of wood.
In 1535 the preceptor of Willoughton was Sir John Sutton, who was also receiver of the treasury of the Order of St John and, as such, a very influential Hospitaller.
45 Ibid., p. 137. The bailiwick of Eagle with all rents, farms, land and pasture was rented for one year by Sir Robert Hussey by indenture with fees and rents of £7 8s. 4d. under the management of the same Sir John Sutton.
46 Ibid., p. 127. The gross income was £129 8s. 8d. The deductions were £45 16s. 8d. paid to the Hospitaller treasury and a further £5 6s. 8d. paid to the chaplain of the chapel of St Sithe, leaving a net income of £124 2s. 0d.
47 Ibid. The preceptory of Temple Bruer was likewise rented as a unit. It too was leased by Sir John Sutton, in this case to his father, Hamon Sutton, for £23 10s. 0d. The gross income was £184 6s. 8d., with deductions of £65 17s. 7d., paid to the treasury of the Hospitallers, leaving a net income of £118 9s. 0d.
48 Ibid., p. 124. At the preceptory of Willoughton, the members were rented out to freeholders and recorded separately, whereas at both Eagle and Temple Bruer the demesne estates were rented in their entirety by individual tenants. The net income of the rectory of Aslackby was £12 10s. 6d. in 1535, and that of South Witham a mere £3 12s. 10d.
49 Ibid., pp. 104, 99. All of the above is in accord with the tendency in the late Middle Ages for preceptors to be absent from their preceptory, or indeed to be in charge of more than one house. Further, there was the opportunity to use influence to favour family members. Once expenses had been met by the preceptory, including the deductions to the treasury in Clerkenwell, the residue was at the disposal of the preceptor. Sir John Sutton’s financial responsibilities as receiver of the Order would have required him to spend time in Clerkenwell, in addition to which he was also preceptor at Beverley in Yorkshire and hugely influential in Lincolnshire. Sutton was in a position to accumulate wealth and bestow favours such as in renting Temple Bruer to his father, illustrating the same nepotism that was displayed so noticeably by Thomas Docwra. There were only three settlements, Horkstow, Willoughton and Hareby, from which the Hospitallers had an income of over £20 in 1535; in fifteen cases the income was £1 or less. By 1535 the general Hospitaller policy was to lease property at low rents with a high entry fine, a policy with which the Lincolnshire pattern accorded.
Mills, spiritual income and rents
There were two Hospitaller mills in Lincolnshire in 1535: the windmill of Willoughton preceptory, at Upton, and a mill at Marston which was rented for 3s. by the priory of Haverholme (map 24).
50 Ibid., pp. 137, 118. Since 1338, two mills had been lost in Lindsey and a further four in Kesteven. The pattern of spiritual income was completely different in 1535 from anything hitherto. There were twenty rectories and pensions yielding a total income of £77 11s. 8d., ranging from £15 6s. 8d. at Gainsborough South to 19d. at Welton.
51 Ibid., pp. 137, 48. Among the sources of pensions, the chantry at Fleet in Holland yielded 30s.
52 Ibid., p. 92. Although the Hospitallers never owned land there, the Templars had 50 acres in Fleet in 1185 for the support of a priest. Fourteen ecclesiastical establishments rented land from the Hospitallers in 1535, giving a total income of £4 5s. 4d. The amount of rent ranged from the £1 6s. 8d. paid by Harlaxton chantry for arable land in Pickworth, Aslackby and Westby, to the 4d. paid by the college of Holy Trinity at Tattershall.
53 Ibid., pp. 115, 43. Excepting Harlaxton, only the priories of Haverholme and Nocton Park paid rent in excess of 10s., and five rents were below 1s.
54 Ibid., pp. 116 123. These were not large parcels of land, although as Knowles pointed out, rents had failed to keep pace with inflation which resulted in serious undervaluation in the
Valor.55 Knowles, Religious Orders, p. 245. The pattern of spiritual income further emphasised the growing separation between the Hospitallers and their estates. Both Eagle and Temple Bruer were rented estates in 1535, much of the income of the preceptory of Willoughton was derived from freeholders’ rents, and the land which remained to the Hospitallers elsewhere in Lincolnshire was rented to local ecclesiastical establishments. Pensions, income from rectories and the moiety of Willoughton church constituted the remainder. The organisation of the
Valor was very much a product of its purpose in itemising ecclesiastical income. It gave an exact gross income from which were deducted pensions, rents where the house was under obligation, and expenses to lay administrators. The net income was taxable at a tithe of 10 percent.
The Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries, 1536
The year 1536 proved to be momentous. The Act of Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries, passed in March 1536, began the process of monastic closure. It applied to those ecclesiastical houses ‘which have not lands, tenements, rents, tithes, portions and other hereditaments, above the clear yearly value of two hundred pounds’.
56 Act of Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries, Public Act, 27 Henry VIII, c. 28. For the text of the Act, see The Statutes at Large of England and Great Britain from Magna Carta to the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 3, ed. J. Raithby (London, 1811), pp. 256–9. The preamble to the act addresses the lesser monasteries in a most uncompromising manner, ‘forasmuch as manifest sin, vicious, carnal and abominable living is daily used and committed among the little and small abbeys, priories and other religious houses of monks, canons and nuns, where the congregation of such religious persons is under the number of twelve’.
57 Ibid., p. 256. The small monasteries were to be closed and their property sequestered by the king. In Lincolnshire alone, thirty-six ecclesiastical houses were included in the list of small monasteries with an income of less than £200.
58 Letters, ed. Gairdner and Brodie, vol. 10: January–June 1536, p. 516. Among them were the priories of St Catherine’s, Thornholme, Gokewell, Nocton Park and Haverholme, all of which had rented Hospitaller land in 1535.
59 Ibid. The combined taxable income of Lincolnshire’s ecclesiastical houses, subject to closure, was £3,062 8s. ½d.
60 Ibid. The court of augmentations, established in the same year, was to implement the suppression and administration, including the sale, of the monastic properties; however, the greater monasteries survived until the Act for the Dissolution of the Greater Monasteries in 1539.
The Lincolnshire Rising, 1536
On 1 October 1536 the first act of mass protest took place, in Louth, Lincolnshire, fired by rumour and fear of the changes to society and its traditional religious practices that were embodied in the religious reforms and the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
61 S. Bennett and N. Bennett, ed., An Historical Atlas of Lincolnshire (Hull, 1993), p. 30. The initial protest occurred after a sermon delivered by the vicar of Louth, Thomas Kendal, and was led by Nicholas Melton, ‘Captain Cobbler’.
62 K. M. Melton, Captain Cobbler: The Lincolnshire Uprising, 1536 (Bloomington, IN, 2013), p. xvi; M. E. James, ‘Obedience and Dissent in Henrician England: The Lincolnshire Rebellion, 1536’, Past and Present, 48 (1970), pp. 20–1. Having been initiated by the commons, within days the Lincolnshire Rising was being led by the gentry, though they later claimed they were coerced into their position of leadership. A week later, the insurrection had spread throughout the county, all of which, including the market towns of Caistor and Horncastle and the city of Lincoln, was in the hands of the rebels.
63 Bennett and Bennett, Historical Atlas, p. 30. Lincolnshire was not alone in resisting reform. Under the leadership of Robert Aske, a London lawyer, the rebellion spread to Yorkshire and became known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. The rebellion against change was brief and ultimately unsuccessful. A letter from Henry VIII to the Lincolnshire rebels left no doubt as to the king’s feelings: ‘How presumptuous therefore are ye, the rude commons of one shire, and one of the most brutal and beastly of the whole realm [….] to take upon you, contrary to God’s law, to rule your prince, whom ye are bound by all laws to obey and serve’.
64 Bennett and Bennett, Historical Atlas, p. 30. In the aftermath of the Lincolnshire Rising, the governing establishment and landed gentry were absolved of all responsibility for their part in the insurrection on the basis that they had been forced to flee or had been coerced into unwilling involvement. The most notable exception to this exemption was Lord John Hussey of Sleaford, who was tried for treason as a result of his failure to resist the Lincolnshire rebels.
65 Letters, ed. Gairdner and Brodie, vol. 12, part 1: January–May 1537, p. 554; C. S. L. Davies, ‘The Pilgrimage of Grace Reconsidered’, Past and Present, 41 (1968), p. 74. Sir Robert Tyrwhitt was one of the twenty-four members of the grand jury which tried Hussey.
66 Ibid. Hussey protested his loyalty to the crown and argued that the hostility of his tenants and his lack of men had prevented him acting against the rebels. He was executed at Lincoln on 8 July 1537.
67 A. D. K. Hawkyard, ‘Hussey, Sir John (1463/65–1537)’, The History of Parliament (www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509–1558/member/hussey-sir-john-146365–1537) Thomas Moigne, the recorder of Lincoln and Grantham, was executed at Lincoln on 7 March.
68 ‘Moigne, Thomas (by 1510–37)’, The History of Parliament (www.historyofparliamentonline/volume/1509-1558/member/moigne-thomas-1510-37) Of the fifty-seven who suffered reprisals, the overwhelming majority were commons and clerics, among them the abbots of both Barlings and Kirkstead.
69 ‘The Lincolnshire Rising’, The Lincolnshire Martyrs [blog] (https://lincolnshiremartyrs.blogspot.com/p/the-lincolnshire-rising-righteous-stand.html); A. Ward, The Lincolnshire Rising, 1536 (Louth, 1996), pp. 36–7. Thomas Kendal, the vicar of Louth who had delivered the fateful sermon at the church of St James, was executed at Tyburn on 25 March 1537.
70 J. P. Guffogg, ‘St James Church, Louth’, Geograph (www.geograph.org.uk/snippet/5871).The effect upon the Hospitallers and the suppression of the Order, 1536–40
In a different arena, events were proving difficult for the Hospitallers. On 17 May 1536, King Henry received a letter from Didier de Sente Jahle, who had been unanimously elected as master of the Hospital of Jerusalem in November of the previous year.
71 Letters, ed. Gairdner and Brodie, vol. 10: January–June 1536, p. 373. In the letter Sente Jahle explained that he ‘intended to go to England to kiss the king’s hand, but the Turkish ships are infesting the Peloponnese and the Grecian Sea, and his brethren have summoned him to Malta, where he must go with all haste’.
72 Ibid. While this may have been factually correct, it could well have been a ploy to avoid paying obeisance to Henry VIII. Sir Ambrose Cave was sent as representative in his place.
73 Letters, ed. Gairdner and Brodie, vol. 12, part 1, January–May 1537, p. 106. A similar situation occurred the following year, when a letter to Henry from Sante Jahle’s successor, John Homedes, dated 10 February, stated that ‘he would like to come and kiss the king’s hand […] but the business of the Order will not allow it’. On that occasion Brother Emericus de Ruyaulx deputised.
74 Ibid. A subtle diplomatic point emerges. While avoiding causing offence to Henry VIII, by sending representatives to do obeisance, both masters had also avoided paying homage to him and thereby retained the integrity of the Order’s primary obligation, which was to the pope – not the king who had formally rejected Catholicism.
As the Pilgrimage of Grace amply illustrates, the fundamental changes to church and society were by no means universally welcomed. It is interesting that Sir William Fairfax, who had been pardoned for his participation in the Pilgrimage of Grace, wrote to Thomas Cromwell, the king’s chief minister and first earl of Essex, in January 1537.
75 Ibid., p. 81. In the letter he stated that ‘the houses of religion not suppressed make friends and “way” the poor to stick in this opinion [not supporting reformation …] none are more busy to stir the people than the chief tenants of commandery lands of Saint John of Jerusalem’.
76 Ibid. If the Order were to be suppressed and their lands attainted by the crown then clearly their chief tenants had everything to lose. If Fairfax had been trying to rebuild a tarnished reputation, as a result of his involvement in the Pilgrimage of Grace, then he must have been successful as he returned to office as high sheriff of the county of Yorkshire in 1540, the same year as the suppression of the Hospitallers and the execution of Cromwell.
77 W. M. Ormrod, The Lord Lieutenants and High Sheriffs of Yorkshire, 1066–2000 (Barnsley, 2000), p. 108.In July 1537, Henry VIII confirmed to Prior William Weston, among other privileges, the right to enlist brethren.
78 Phillips, Prior of the Knights Hospitaller, p. 156. As late as April 1539, a year before the suppression of the Order, the prior was still issuing leases and making appointments at what proved to be the last provisional chapter.
79 Ibid. This may have been business as usual or a final attempt to garner further support for the Order in the face of the ongoing Reformation. Further, a commission issued by the council of the Order of St John in Malta, dated 18 August 1539, instructed five English preceptors, including the preceptor of Beverley and the bailiff of Eagle, ‘to view and report upon improvements said to have been made by [Giles Russell] lieutenant turcopolier, at the preceptory of Temple Bruer’.
80 Letters, ed. Gairdner and Brodie, vol. 14, part 2: August–December 1539, p. 18. Although the letter did not carry an air of complete certainty as to what had been achieved at Temple Bruer, neither did it hint that the end was nigh for the English province. The survival of the Hospitallers until 1540 may have been due to the Order being regarded as a single corporation with extensive properties, rather than consisting of individual preceptories each with incomes of less than £200. However, the axe fell on 12 April 1540 when the Act for the Suppression of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in England and Wales was passed.
81 King and Luke, Knights of St John, p. 105. Following the suppression of the Order their properties were disposed of not through the offices of the court of augmentations as were monastic properties, but separately, which could imply a far greater degree of royal involvement in their fate.
82 O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, p. 223. It may be remembered that Edward II took personal possession of the Templar estates following the arrest of that Order on 10 January 1308, and that they were administered under the auspices of the royal wardrobe rather than the exchequer.
A letter from Marillac, the French ambassador to the English crown, to Montmerency, marshal and constable of France, dated 21 May 1540, alluded to the ‘conversion to the king of the revenues of the Knights of St John, who are compelled also to resign the White Cross they carried as a badge of their Order, and other conversions to the Crown amounting to […] £3,000,000’.
83 Letters, ed. Gairdner and Brodie, vol. 15: 1540, p. 325. One must assume that the conversions included ecclesiastical property additional to that of the Hospitallers to generate such an enormous sum. A further letter from Marillac to Montmerency, dated 6 August 1540, expresses the French diplomat’s view of Henry in no uncertain terms:
He is so covetous that all the riches in the world would not satisfy him. Hence the ruin of the abbeys, spoil of all churches that had anything to take, suppression of the knights of St John of Rhodes, from whom has been taken not only their ancient revenue, but the moveables which they had acquired which they have not been able to leave by will.
84 Ibid., p. 484.Phillips argues that the English priory should have been ‘reformed rather than suppressed’ in the same way as the secular clergy who were under diocesan control.
85 Phillips, Prior of the Knights Hospitaller, p. 157. However, despite the secularisation of the English province, the integration of the Order into Tudor administration, and the issue of leases, annuities and advowsons in order to gain influence and support, the Hospitallers had not done enough. They constituted an international organisation whose headquarters were answerable to the pope, who was now regarded by the English crown as an enemy. King asserts that ‘it was a sheer impossibility for the king to permit the existence in England of an Order so powerful and so highly organised unless it was prepared to renounce its loyalty to his most determined enemy [the pope]’.
86 King and Luke, Knights of St John, p. 104. Further, as with the suppression of the Templars, there was a financial consideration. The fall of Rhodes was deemed by the king to deny the Hospitallers of their primary purpose, that of protecting Christendom against the Turk, and as a consequence, the crown considered that their revenues could be more effectively used for the defence of the realm.
The disposal of Hospitaller property under Henry VIII, 1540–7
Having acquired the property of the Hospitallers, the king set about its disposal. In June 1541, Edward Fiennes, Lord Clinton and Saye, and his wife Ursula were granted the manor of Aslackby and the advowson of the vicarage in addition to extensive Lincolnshire lands which had belonged to the priory of Sempringham.
87 Letters, ed. Gairdner and Brodie, vol. 16: 1540–1, p. 459. Clinton was born in Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire, of a noble family, and pursued a long and illustrious military career during which he was granted extensive estates.
88 Anne Duffin, ‘Clinton, Edward Fiennes de, first earl of Lincoln’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (Oxford, 2004); see also www.geni.com/people/Edward_Fiennes_de_Clinton. In the following month, in exchange for the manor of Chingford, Essex, Thomas, Earl of Rutland, and Robert Tyrwhitt were granted, among other properties, ‘the late preceptory of Eagle, Linc., and lands, woods and c., in New Eagle’ and the priory of Belvoir and demesne lands.
89 Letters, ed. Gairdner and Brodie, vol. 16: 1540–1, p. 505. This was the same Robert Tyrwhitt who was a
Valor commissioner in 1535 and was now able to capitalise on his position. Thomas, Earl of Rutland, had helped to suppress the Pilgrimage of Grace and, like Tyrwhitt, had been seneschal of a number of ecclesiastical houses, to some of which he had claims by right of ancestral foundation.
90 M. M. Norris, ‘Manners, Thomas, first earl of Rutland’, ODNB. Following the Dissolution he received numerous grants of monastic properties. In February 1542, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, was given a huge grant in fee ‘in consideration of certain jewels of the value of £4,000 and in recompense for £500 due by the king to the said duke’.
91 Letters, ed. Gairdner and Brodie, vol. 17: 1542, pp. 58–9. The grant included the manors of Maltby and Skirbeck, once Hospitaller preceptories, the ‘site and chief messuage of the late preceptory of Temple Bruer’, and the lordship and manor of Keadby on the Isle of Axholme.
92 Ibid. Suffolk’s star had been in the ascendant ever since Cardinal Wolsey fell from grace for having failed to negotiate an annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. (Wolsey died not long after, in November 1530.) By August 1542, Robert Tyrwhitt was able to pay £1044 19s. 7d. for a swathe of monastic property included in which was land which had belonged to Temple Bruer and a tenement called ‘the Bayly of the Egles howse,’ and other properties in Clerkenwell, which had belonged to the Lincolnshire preceptory of Eagle.
93 Ibid., pp. 397–8. As the examples illustrate, the king was granting powerful, influential men considerable areas of monastic land following the Dissolution. However, the existing dynastic lines of wealth and land ownership were not alone in benefitting from former monastic property. In addition, a new landed class became established as a wider range of society, including merchants and yeomen, acquired land formerly owned by the monastic orders.
In 1540, as a result of the suppression of the Order, Sir John Sutton, late preceptor of Willoughton, was awarded an annual pension of £200.
94 O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, p. 223. A licence was issued in October 1545 for the alienation to Sir John Sutton of the ‘site and chief messuage of the late preceptory of Willoughton Linc., with its demesne lands’.
95 Letters, ed. Gairdner and Brodie, vol. 20, part 2: August–December 1545, p. 330. In a grant of December 1546 reference was made to a ‘windmill called Willoughton Wyndmyll in the tenure of John Sutton’, and two messuages in the tenure of Nicholas Sutton in Willoughton.
96 Letters, ed. Gairdner and Brodie, vol. 21, part 2: September 1546–January 1547, p. 332. This must be the same John Sutton, then preceptor of Beverley (Yorkshire), who recommended that the same Nicholas Sutton, gentleman, ‘gained presentation’ to Beeford church (York diocese) in 1537.
97 Phillips, Prior of Knights Hospitaller, p. 151. It is equally probable that they were brothers, two of the ten children born to Hamon Sutton and his wife Margaret,
née Sheffield, of Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
98 See www.tudorplace.com.ar/SUTTON.htm Whereas Robert Tyrwhitt was a major beneficiary of monastic dissolution in Lincolnshire, Sir John Sutton’s family gains were restricted to the not inconsiderable Hospitaller properties over which he had previously had control.
The granting of land was certainly not based upon any consideration of geographical cohesion, but appears to have been piecemeal. In March 1545, John Bellow and Edward Bales were granted lands for £1,386, all of which were tenanted and derived from the former estates of Temple Bruer, Eagle and Willoughton and were widely spread throughout Lincolnshire.
99 Letters, ed. Gairdner and Brodie, vol. 20, part 1: January–July 1545, p. 211. Bellow was one of the two king’s commissioners, the other being a man known only as Millisent, who were ‘busy at their work [dismantling Legbourne Priory] when they were dragged out of it by an excited mob’ during the Lincolnshire Rising.
100 W. Page, ed., A History of the County of Lincoln, vol. 2, Victoria County History (London, 1906), p. 153. Bellow survived to prosper and become a member of the emergent landed class benefitting from the availability of monastic lands. The names of John Bellow and John Broxholme occur repeatedly in the Henrician letters, as they acquired substantial amounts of former Hospitaller property in Lincolnshire. Having spent £2,307 19s. ½d. in July 1545 acquiring monastic property, much of it formerly of Eagle and Willoughton, they invested a further £3,338 13s. 3d. in December of the same year in expanding their property portfolio.
101 Letters, ed. Gairdner and Brodie, vol. 20, part 2: August–December 1545, pp. 655, 535. The same gentlemen, ‘John Bellowe of Grymesbye, Linc., and John Broxholme of London’, made a further substantial acquisition which included the manor of Mere in November 1546, for £1,301 4s. 6¼d. By 11 February 1548 they were licensing a change in tenure from James Plumptre to Thomas Halle.
102 Letters, ed. Gairdner and Brodie, vol. 21, part 2: September 1546–January 1547, p. 241.The further disposal of Hospitaller property under Edward VI, 1547–53
Following the death of Henry VIII, on 28 January 1547, the disposal of Hospitaller property continued during the reign of his son, Edward VI. On 6 January 1548, Edward Fiennes, Lord Clinton and Saye, was granted the manor of Braunceton in Lincolnshire, a small addition to his extensive estates.
103 CPR, 1547–48, p. 218 As admiral of the fleet he had ‘played the part of a good soldier and leader, to the great hurt of the Scots’; no doubt this was part of his reward. On 17 August 1548 the manor of Horkstow in Lincolnshire and all possessions ‘late of the preceptory of Willoughton and priory of St John of Jerusalem’ were granted to Sir Thomas Hennage and William, Lord Willoughby.
104 CPR, 1548–49, p. 121. Six months later Hennage and Willoughby bought a licence to grant Horkstow to Robert Goche along with sundry properties in Derbyshire.
105 Ibid., p. 239. Hennage, like Tyrwhitt, had been a member of the commission which had carried out the Lincolnshire survey for the
Valor ecclesiasticus. A letter patent of 15 May 1551 recorded the grant of the manor of Great Limber, formerly a Hospitaller property, to Thomas Tresham, knight, and George Tresham, gentleman.
106 CPR, 1550–53, p. 200. Six years later, during the reign of Mary Tudor, Sir Thomas Tresham was to be ordained prior of the restored Order of St John of Clerkenwell, formerly the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem.
107 King and Luke, Knights of St John, p. 111.During 1553 the Lincolnshire estates of lord Clinton and Saye underwent fundamental change. A letter patent of 12 March recorded that the former Hospitaller manor of Aslackby – along with those of Eastloughton, Westloughton and others – were sold to the king for an undisclosed sum. Later in the year Clinton was granted the manor of Epworth on the Isle of Axholme, as well as lands at Millthorpe, Graby and Kirkby la Thorpe, the lordship of Skinnand, the manor of Tealby, and the manor and rectory of Rowston, all of which had belonged to the Hospitallers. By 1553, Sir Edmund Peckham had become receiver-general of the exchequer. The pattern of land acquisition was changing. Hospitaller lands in Lincolnshire were being acquired not only by Lincolnshire gentry and nobility but also by those from elsewhere who had money to invest in relatively cheap land. Considerable sums were involved. On 4 February 1553, Thomas Wren and Andrew Slegge, gentlemen, paid Peckham £1,539 15s. ½d. for property which included a house and adjacent garden in Middle Rasen, late of the Hospitaller preceptory at Willoughton, and a messuage and land at Dunston, late of the Hospitaller preceptory of Temple Bruer.
108 CPR, 1553, pp. 218–20. On the same date, John Wright and Thomas Holmes of London, gentlemen, paid Peckham £1,928 4s. 3½d. for a considerable purchase of property which included two cottages and a garden at Kirkby Green, late of the Hospitaller preceptory of Temple Bruer.
109 Ibid., p. 244. On 23 March the same two gentlemen bought a further extensive parcel of property for £1,718 10s. ¾d. which included a croft of land at Maltby, late of the Hospitaller preceptory of Willoughton.
110 Ibid., p. 66. Wright and Holmes made a further property purchase on 14 May 1553, for £1,989 6s. 8d., which was mainly of land in Yorkshire.
111 Ibid., p. 262. All the property they purchased in their extensive portfolio was already tenanted and may well have been bought without inspection.
A different situation pertained in the case of William Phillipot, merchant, and Thomas Willoughby, yeoman, both of Newark, Nottinghamshire.
112 Ibid., p. 140. They purchased property to the value of £589 6s. 0d. in Lincolnshire and Newark, on 21 May 1553, which included 2 tofts and three ‘lez buttes’ of land late of the Hospitaller preceptory of Temple Bruer.
113 Ibid. The acquisition would have been familiar to them and, unlike Wright and Holmes, they would probably have managed the property personally. It is noticeable that as time progressed there was increasing fragmentation of what remained of Hospitaller property as it came onto the land market. Further, although invariably identified as having belonged to the Order of St John, parcels of Hospitaller property were bought along with other, often more extensive, acreages, as the examples above show. Once in secular hands, the rules of commercial tenure began to apply and the pattern of land ownership underwent radical change.
Mary Tudor and the re-establishment of the Hospitallers
With the death of Edward VI on 5 July 1553 and the subsequent accession of his half-sister, Mary Tudor, there followed a determined attempt to restore Catholicism as the state religion and to undo the Protestant reforms Edward had introduced. This reversal of previous policy included the reintroduction of papal supremacy and the re-establishment of some religious houses. The letter patent of 2 April 1557 is striking (appendices 13, 14).
114 CPR, 1557–58, p. 313. It referred to the ‘Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in England, which was dissolved by Henry VIII and whose possessions are now in their [Mary Tudor’s and Philip of Spain’s] hands by hereditary right’.
115 Ibid. Cardinal Pole had been asked to restore the hospital ‘to its ancient state, which he has done and erected it under the title of St John of Clerkynwell’.
116 Ibid. Thomas Tresham was ordained to be prior, Peter Felizes de la Nuca was chosen as bailiff of the bailiwick of Eagle, and Edward Browne and Thomas Thornwell were appointed commanders of the preceptories of Temple Bruer and Willoughton respectively.
117 Ibid. In addition, Oswald Massingberd, of Bratoft Hall, Gunby, Lincolnshire, was confirmed as prior of Ireland.
118 King and Luke, Knights of St John, p. 110. The prior and brethren were ‘to be able to hold, receive and purchase lands and other possessions and to grant, alienate and lease the same as other corporations within the realm’.
119 CPR, 1557–58, p. 313. What followed was an apparent catalogue of all settlements where former Hospitaller properties, then in the hands of the crown, were to be returned to the re-established Order (appendices 13, 14). Map 25 shows the distribution of those places in Lincolnshire itemised in the letter patent of 1557.
Of the 155 settlements listed in the letter patent of 2 April 1557, the former Willoughton estate accounted for seventy-two of them, Temple Bruer for seventy-eight, and the smaller estate of Eagle, five (appendix 14). Of the 155 settlements listed in 1557, only twenty-five were recorded in the
Valor ecclesiasticus of
1535. Mary Tudor’s approach to the reintroduction of Catholicism was zealous, ‘desiring in very deed to be defenders of the faith and remembering that the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem […] devoted a great part of its reserves to the defence of Christians and fighting against Turks and infidels’.
120 Ibid. She would have wished to return to the Hospitallers all of their former properties, not only those listed in the
Valor. There is a huge discrepancy between the distribution of the Hospitaller holdings in 1535 (map 22) and those declared as ‘in their hands by hereditary right’ in the letter patent of 1557 (map 25). Indeed, the difference is extraordinary. Even the haste with which the
Valor was completed and the resultant inaccuracies and omissions provide only a partial explanation. Certainly it is possible that the secularisation during the priorships of Docwra and Weston removed from the Order’s control a substantial acreage of land, as illustrated by the munificence of Sir John Sutton to family members, some of which may have eluded the attention of
Valor commissioners.
A further striking inconsistency is the fifty-seven settlements to be returned to the Hospitallers in 1557 which do not appear in the records of 1185, 1308, 1338 or 1535. This would suggest that these were new grants rather than the restoration of former Hospitaller property (appendix 14). As twenty-eight of the fifty-six settlements recorded in the estate accounts of 1308 were not restored to the Hospitallers, including Blyborough, Goulceby, Thorpe in the Fallows, Ashby de la Launde, Whisby and Woodhouse, then perhaps new grants were made in 1557 to compensate for the loss of others. However, no such acknowledgment was made in the letter patent of 2 April 1557. Equally extraordinary was the grant of property in sixty-two vills where the Templars were in evidence in 1185, but which were not recorded in subsequent property surveys and had presumably not been transferred to the Hospitallers in 1312 or thereafter.
Above all, Mary Tudor was intent upon re-establishing Catholicism as the state religion. The refoundation of the Order of St John was completely consistent with the queen’s staunch Catholicism.
121 King and Luke, Knights of St John, p. 111. But although senior officers were appointed, the reclamation of the Hospitallers’ estates may have proved a different issue. It may be recalled that even the supposedly straightforward transfer of Templar lands to the Hospitallers, ordered by the papal bull
Ad providam in 1312, was still incomplete by 1338. It is most improbable that former Hospitaller lands, now fragmented by changes in occupancy, would be speedily restored to the Order in 1557, with the possible exception of those under the direct control of the crown. However, the crown was clearly aware that the Hospitaller property in Lincolnshire extended far beyond that which was listed in the
Valor,
presumably because the property had never been surrendered to the Hospitallers in the first place. The grant of 1557 offered an approximation of what the Military Orders had once held in Lincolnshire, diminished on the one hand by secularisation and compensated on the other by additional grants.
Elizabeth I and the fate of the Hospitallers and their lands
The death of Mary Tudor on 17 November 1558 and subsequent accession of Elizabeth I, who was crowned on 15 January 1559, meant that the effective re-establishment of the Order of St John was short-lived. In all probability the transfer of land listed in the letter patent of 1557 remained a statement of intent rather than fact. However, King states that ‘the Order of St John in England, was not […] again suppressed as it had been by Henry VIII, but the final confiscation of its Commanderies had results not very dissimilar’.
122 Ibid., p. 113. Thomas Tresham, Prior of England, died on 3 March 1559, like Weston before him, ‘at the very moment of the suppression of the Priory’.
123 Sire, Knights of Malta, p. 187. Oswald Massingberd, prior of Ireland, surrendered the priory to the earl of Sussex in June 1559.
124 King and Luke, Knights of St John, p. 113.The letter patent dated 18 November 1559 granted ‘for life to William Barlow, clerk, late a brother of the restored order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, an annuity of £10, payable at the exchequer, from Lady Day last. In consideration of the dissolution of the order by stat.’
125 CPR, 1558–60, p. 249. The final clause of this statement appears to be contradictory to King’s assertion that the Order was not dissolved a second time. On the same date annuities of £20 were granted to Thomas Thornell and Henry Garrard, both ‘late brothers of the restored order’.
126 Ibid., pp. 324–5.As early as 18 November 1558, the day after the death of Mary Tudor, John and Silvester Bellewe (Bellow) were given licence, for 40s., to alienate the manor of Goulceby, a ‘parcel of Willoughton preceptory, late of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem the rectory of Goulceby […] the advowson of the vicarage of Goulceby and all lands in Goulceby and Asterby’.
127 Ibid., p. 143. The only relevant reference to Goulceby in the
Valor was the 20s. to be paid to John Sont, bailiff of Goulceby, from the income of Willoughton; it had however been an important Hospitaller holding in 1338.
128 Valor ecclesiasticus, ed. Caley and Hunter, p. 137. By the 1560s the pattern of leasing former Hospitaller property was well established. On 13 April 1562 a licence for 37s. 4d. was issued for Thomas Stanhope to ‘alienate the manor of Southwytham […] to Francis Flowre’.
129 CPR, 1560–63, p. 385. As a further example, on 3 November 1562, a licence was issued for £3 11s. 8d. ‘for Thomas Yorke to alienate the manor of Bottesford, late of Willoughton commandery to Edward Castlyne of London, mercer and Ralph Bower’.
130 Ibid., p. 393.Besides the alienation which took place within the normal avenues of commerce, there were those which had dynastic overtones. On 2 May 1566, Ambrose Sutton was granted permission to alienate a capital messuage of Willoughton called ‘le Comaundry’ and all his other lands, late of Willoughton preceptory, in Willoughton, Blyborough, Waddingham, Corringham and Marshchapel, in addition to property in Yorkshire, to Nicholas Sutton of Willoughton.
131 CPR, 1563–66, p. 416. Further, Edward, Lord Clinton and Saye, queen’s councillor and high admiral, was still pursuing the acquisition of land and property rights. On 24 February 1562 he paid £881 14s. 5¾d. for five parcels of land including land at
Staineflete, late of Temple Bruer, among other property.
132 CPR, 1560–63, p. 311. In the following month he was granted, in fee simple, free warren on his manors of Sempringham, Folkingham, Aslackby and Stow Green in Lincolnshire, and ‘fisheries in all his waters there’. He too had benefitted from the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Order of St John, not least in his home county.
133 Ibid., p. 518.Conclusion
The Valor ecclesiasticus of 1535 was a survey of ecclesiastical property, including that of the Hospitallers, for the purposes of taxation. The survey must have been prepared in haste in response to the needs of the Act of First Fruits and Tenths which would explain its inconsistencies and omissions. However, it does give the only indication of the extent of Hospitaller property during the Tudor period and it clearly illustrates that the Order’s preference for leasing land had been fully developed by 1535.
The years preceding the Dissolution of the Monasteries were particularly difficult for the Order of St John. The fall of Rhodes in 1523 and the seven years of temporary accommodation which followed, before their settlement in Malta, had led to a reduction of military activity, prestige and financial resources. During the decade before the dissolution of the Order in 1540, the priors, particularly Thomas Docwra, became increasingly involved in crown affairs. In addition, the priors were using the gift of Hospitallers property as a means of gaining favour to protect the interests of the Order. Overall, the extent of recorded property in the Valor appears to have been substantially less than in the Report of 1338.
Following the dissolution of the Hospitallers in 1540, by an act separate from that of the Act of the Dissolution of the Greater Monasteries, the properties of the Order were attainted by the crown. Former Hospitaller properties were sold by Henry VIII and after the king’s death on 28 January 1547 the disposal of property continued during the reign of his son, Edward VI. Land was disposed of but often by twenty-one year leases rather than sale. Much remained in the hands of the crown, in addition to which, in common with the disposal of extensive monastic property, it provided the basis for the rise of a landed class and for the further enrichment of the established gentry. In the cases of Edward, lord Clinton and Saye and Sir Robert Tyrwhitt, they used their position of influence in the country and the county to extend their estates and the Suttons certainly gained from their prominent Hospitaller links. In addition, shrewd individuals such as Edward Castlyne and John Broxholme, both from London made profitable investments in land outside the capital which had been made available as a result of the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Order of St John. In the absence of estates and recruits the number of English knights of the Order of St John gradually diminished.
When Mary I acceded the throne on 19 July 1553 following the death of her half-brother, her purpose was to restore the realm to Catholicism. The re-establishment of the Hospitallers as the Order of St John of Clerkenwell was both remarkable and short-lived. Not only were priors and preceptors appointed but also the letter patent of 2 April 1557 listed all the former Hospitaller properties in the hands of the crown which were to be returned to the Order. Far more property was listed in the letter patent than was recorded in the
Valor ecclesiasticus, the Report of 1338 or the estate accounts of 1308. This presents an enigma – how was Mary Tudor able to return so much more property to the Hospitallers than was ever previously recorded as having belonged to them?
The queen could only return property which was in her possession and for it to be returned implies that it was known to have belonged to the Order before 1540. However, unless the
Valor was woefully inaccurate then the said properties were not in Hospitaller hands in 1535 but were in the hands of the crown. What remains puzzling is how and when they were acquired. There is no survey of Hospitaller property between 1338 and 1535 to show the extent to which the Order had continued to acquire land. If they had not done so then those properties not previously recorded may have been Templar lands which had never been transferred to the Hospitallers. This possibility could further suggest that by no means all the deeds and muniments of former Templar properties had been transferred from the crown to the Hospitallers in 1324 as is generally believed but had in fact been retained by the crown. The deeds and muniments are precisely the proof of ownership which Mary would have needed to re-establish the Hospitallers as a landed Military Order. However, Mary Tudor died on 17 November 1558 leaving her work incomplete. With the accession of her half-sister, Elizabeth I, to the throne, Hospitaller property including that which had once belonged to the Templars was lost to the secular market and effectively the restored Order of St John of Clerkenwell ceased to exist. The last reference to any involvement of a member of the English province in the international affairs of the Order of St John, was that of Sir Oliver Starkey, lieutenant turcopolier and Latin secretary to Grand Master Jean de la Valette Parisot, who was the sole representative of the English province at the siege of Malta of 1565.
134 Sire, Knights of Malta, p. 187.Conclusion
Over the 193 years of their existence the Templars played a leading role in the struggle to claim and to hold the Holy Land for Christendom. The cause was ultimately lost with the fall of Acre in 1291. The Templars were not merely a product of their time, they also had a profound formative effect upon it. Within the ranks of the Templars were leading diplomats, financiers and royal advisors who were influential in the international politics of the period. This much is widely known. Far less thoroughly researched is how the Templars farmed their estates in the English shires, such as Lincolnshire, and the fate of their lands after the dissolution of the Order in 1312.
The distribution of the Templar lands in 1185 was indeed topographically influenced, but no more so than the general settlement pattern of the period.
135 Inquest. Within those parameters, the overriding influence was that of the benefactors, both in the nature and size of their benefactions. Initially, most donations were of small parcels of land. Gradually, through the expedient of purchase and exchange, estates were consolidated. In the twelfth century monastic patronage was at its height, but benefactions were subject to fashion and, indeed, competition. Gifts to the Templars depended upon the popularity and success of their cause. In Lincolnshire, the Hospitallers were not able to attract the same degree of patronage as the Templars due to their lesser emphasis on military action.
On each estate a preceptory emerged both as the chief manor and the administrative centre. The preceptories were Willoughton, in Lindsey, and Temple Bruer, Eagle, Aslackby and South Witham in Kesteven. Each preceptory in its developed form included a range of both agricultural and domestic buildings, a church or chapel, a mill and fishponds. The farm buildings included a full range of byres, stables, pigsties, sheepcotes and barns. In addition there was a smithy and a carpenter’s workshop. The domestic range included a hall, kitchen, larder, dairy, bakehouse and brewhouse.
136 P. Mayes, Excavations at a Templar Preceptory: South Witham, Lincolnshire, 1965–7 (Leeds, 2002). A smaller preceptory may not have had an individual building for each function. Notably there is neither archaeological nor documentary evidence to suggest the existence of dormitories to accommodate the
famuli.Immediately following the arrest of the Templars on 10 January 1308, their property was sequestered by the crown.
137 TNA E 358: Exchequer: Pipe Office: Miscellaneous Enrolled Accounts: Accounts for the Lands of the Templars, Confiscated by the Crown. As a consequence, the estate accounts beginning on the same date give a detailed picture of estate farming and management practised by the Order at the very moment of their arrest. In 1308 each former Templar estate practised mixed farming. The arable farming was organised on a manorial basis while the sheep farming was centrally organised from the preceptory. Wheat, barley and dredge were grown as commercial crops while rye, oats and legumes were grown for consumption on the estates. There was extensive use of manuring, weeding, and leguminous crops; multiple ploughing was practised, and the sowing rate manipulated. These techniques were used to suppress weeds and maintain soil fertility. They testify to the Templars’ use of the best agricultural practice available at the beginning of the fourteenth century.
The Templars were fully involved in technological development. Horse-haulage had been embraced, offering greater speed and flexibility than the traditional ox-haulage. The variety in both the size and composition of the plough teams illustrates that the transition to horse plough teams was well under way. Further, it points towards the individuality of manorial decision-making and the adaption of plough teams to suit relief and soil type.
The sheep were centrally accounted at the preceptory. The animal which would have been familiar to the Templars was small and horned. The wool was fine and of high quality and the average fleece weighed 1½ pounds. The Templars’ Lincolnshire flock was sizeable and inter-manorial movement of stock shows a high degree of cooperation. The Eagle estate concentrated on sheep breeding to ensure the continued size and health of the Lincolnshire flock.
The level of sheep fertility was variable but within the acceptable range for the time. Murrain, or sheep scab, was endemic and liver fluke a further risk to the health of the flock. Sheep culling and expenditure on medication was usual, again pointing to progressive agricultural practice. The coordinated response of the Kesteven estates to the outbreak of murrain at Eagle during 1311–12 illustrates the high degree of cooperation which still existed four years after the arrest of the Order. There is no evidence of mass slaughter in autumn, indicating that both feed and housing were sufficient to ensure livestock’s survival through the winter. While ewes’ milk was used for the production of cheese, wool was the primary commercial product. Expenditure on shearing the sheep and washing the fleeces at the preceptory ensured that the wool was in the best condition for sale. The accounts also reveal that the Templars sold wool in advance of its production; they dealt in ‘wool futures’.
Each estate had a preceptor who was a Templar. Much of the estate management was carried out by a sergeant with daily tasks organised by a reeve. The work of the estate was carried out by a permanent labour force, the famuli. In addition, itinerant craftsmen and seasonal workers such as harvesters were hired as the need arose. The famuli were paid in cash and pottage with the diet attuned to the rigour of the labour. Wages were determined by both skill and responsibility.
Each preceptory had at least one ordained cleric who performed the religious offices and chantry Masses for the souls of deceased benefactors. Benefactions could also be made in exchange for corrodies or pensions. The corrodians or pensioners were of two types. There were those whose donation was sufficient for them to be entirely supported by the resultant corrody, and those who worked for bed, board and clothing as long as their health would allow.
Within a year of the arrest of the Templars and the sequestration of their property, a sequence of changes had taken place. Edward II had inherited a considerable debt from his father which had to be addressed. Initially, the entire wool clip of the Templars’ Lincolnshire flock was used in part payment of an outstanding debt to the Ballardi of Lucca. Stock and grain were sold as was the content of preceptorial larders. No account was taken of longer term implications. This was realisation of assets for short-term profit – asset stripping. What followed was a retreat from demesne farming. On the Willoughton estate the standing crop of grain was sold on Lammas Day, 1 August 1309. This provided an assured income while the purchaser assumed the risk of the harvest being successful. Sheep were leased and some of them removed from the former Templar estates. Subsequently, land was leased and by the end of 1309 the Lincolnshire estates in their entirety had been farmed out on short-term leases. The income from the former Templar estates was paid into the king’s wardrobe to be spent as he pleased. The estates were to be disposed of likewise, as the king wished.
The impact of the sequestration upon the denizens of the Templar estates depended upon their status and changed with time. For the famuli, the cycle of seasonal labour remained unchanged. For the Lincolnshire Templars there was incarceration, following their arrest, and eventually, for the majority, penance to be served in religious houses outside the diocese of Lincoln. For the corrodians, life continued but their corrodies became increasingly difficult to claim as time progressed, as did the 4d. per day allocated to the Templars.
The importance of the accounts of 1308–13 cannot be overstated. The accounts itemise the Templar properties and the nature of their agricultural practice at the very moment of their arrest. This not only illuminates the extent and nature of Templar holdings but also sheds light on medieval agriculture during the first decade of the fourteenth century from a hitherto little used source.
The papal bull Ad providam was issued on 12 May 1312. It contained the demand that Edward II transfer all former Templar estates to the Hospitallers. What ensued was a complicated game of political manoeuvring. The king was reluctant to relinquish the former Templar estates, as their income could be used to help finance Scottish campaigns, exercise patronage and buy influence. The Hospitallers needed money to prosecute their naval campaign against the Turk in the eastern Mediterranean. The conquest of Rhodes had all but bankrupted the Order. The pope felt that the transfer of the former Templar lands to the Hospitallers was a prerogative of the Holy See and that they should not be attainted by the English king.
Edward II appeared to accede to the pope’s edict and issued orders for the transfer of the former Templar lands to the Hospitallers while stripping them of moveable goods and chattels. The Hospitallers’ difficulties were epitomised by the priorate of Thomas Larcher. Larcher is often regarded as a profligate who issued corrodies and rent-free land grants beyond reasonable measure. A more enlightened view is that he raised instant cash to repay pressing creditors and used rent-free land grants as bribes. Bribes to the powerful were crucial to enable the Order to occupy those lands which were accessible to them. Larcher was playing a long game and was not the inept individual he has, too often, been portrayed as.
Larcher’s successor, Leonard de Tibertis, is credited with saving the finances of the Hospitallers. However, in 1330 he swore fealty to Edward III, albeit with great reluctance. The genuflection had far-reaching effects upon the relationship between the Hospitallers and the English crown. By 1338 the transfer of former Templar property to the Hospitallers was still incomplete. Prior Philip de Thame commissioned a report to establish the extent of the Hospitaller lands in England. The report included the Templar lands which had been transferred to the Hospitallers and, as far as they were aware, those which had not.
In Lincolnshire, the former Templar churches and mills were virtually transferred
in toto. The question of land transfer remains enigmatic. A comparison can be made between the accounts of 1308–13 and the Report of 1338.
138 L&K. There is of course no reason to suppose that Philip de Thame had access to the accounts of 1308–13 or that he was privy to all the deeds and muniments of the former Templar properties. In the report Carlton le Moorland is cited as the only former Templar manor in Lincolnshire which was not transferred to the Hospitallers. A comparison of the accounts and the Report identifies a further fifteen manors which were not transferred (appendix 8). Further, neither the accounts of 1308–13 nor the Report of 1338 allows calculation of the acreage which was farmed out at a fixed rent. Equally, in neither case is the acreage of pastureland enrolled. Given the envious eyes of secular lords and the descendants of Templar benefactors, there is certainly sufficient unrecorded land for further alienation to have occurred. At the very least, a substantial amount of former Templar property in Lincolnshire was not transferred to the Hospitallers, but neither is it recorded in the Report of 1338 as having been lost to them.
The
Valor ecclesiasticus of 1535 was not a survey of landholding but was quite specifically aimed at discovering taxable ecclesiastical income.
139 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). Knowles was of the opinion that there was ‘consistent undervaluation of monastic demesne’ and that the ‘
Valor figures were largely conjectural’.
140 D. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, vol. 3: The Tudor Age (Cambridge, 1979), p. 245. If this were the case then perhaps it would help to explain the absence of members for both the preceptory of Temple Bruer and the bailiwick of Eagle. The disposal of Hospitaller property after the suppression of the Order in 1540, as recorded in the Henrician letters, gives some indication of the lands which had been administered by Temple Bruer and Eagle, but it is not definitive.
141 Letters, ed. Gairdner and Brodie, vol. 15: 1540, p. 212. It is clear, however, that after the suppression Henry VIII held not only the Hospitaller properties which came to the crown as a direct result, but in addition the Templar properties which had not been transferred from the crown to Hospitaller ownership between 1312 and 1338 or thereafter.
The disposal of Hospitaller property after 1540 as recorded in the Henrician letters benefitted not only aristocratic magnates but also others who had sufficient means to build substantial property portfolios. After the death of Henry VIII in 1547, disposal of former Hospitaller property continued throughout the reign of Edward VI but not at the frenetic pace evident between 1541 and 1544.
Mary Tudor acceded to the throne on 19 July 1553 following the death of her half-brother Edward IV. She immediately embarked upon a programme to re-establish Catholicism within the realm. A letter patent of 2 April 1557 not only stipulates the re-establishment of the Hospitallers as the Order of St John of Clerkenwell but in addition gives a fulsome inventory of the properties to be restored to the Order.
142 CPR, 1557–58, p. 313. The list of properties to be returned to the Hospitallers in Lincolnshire is much more extensive than that cited in the
Valor ecclesiasticus of 1535 or the Report of Philip de Thame of 1338. If the Report and the
Valor are to be believed then a great deal of what were called ‘former Hospitaller lands’ in the letter patent of 2 April 1557 never had found their way into the hands of the Hospitallers.
143 Ibid. It is equally remarkable that only one Templar property in Lincolnshire, Carlton le Moorland, was recorded in the Report of Philip de Thame as not having been transferred to the Hospitallers by 1338. Carlton le Moorland was noted as having been illegally held by Hugh le Despenser the Younger, a favourite of Edward II.
In referring to the suppression of the Templars, Nicholson states that ‘Despite papal support and enormous expense, met by heavy borrowing from the Italian banking houses, the Hospitallers never received all the Templar lands to which they were entitled’.
144 H. J. Nicholson, The Knights Hospitaller (Woodbrodge, 2001, rep. 2006), p. 48. She further points out that this was especially so in England and Germany. Lincolnshire certainly fits the model. With the exception of a brief period between the re-establishment of the Hospitallers on 2 April 1557 and the death of Mary Tudor in November of the following year, there had never been any intent to restore to the Order all the former Templar possessions which, by right, they were due. The letter patent of 2 April 1557 was not just a statement of intent but also an effective inventory of all former Templar properties which had been retained by the crown.
Following the death of Mary and the accession of her half-sister Elizabeth to the throne of England a landowning class burgeoned on the basis of the secularisation of former ecclesiastical lands. Not least among those lands were the estates of the Hospitallers, in Lincolnshire, which had initially belonged to their brother Order, the Templars. At Temple Bruer, now an isolated farm on Lincoln Heath, a single tower is the only surviving relic of the Templars in Lincolnshire; ‘nothing beside remains’, adding an Ozymandian ending to a tale which took 380 years in the telling.
145 P. B. Shelley, Ozymandias (London, 1818).