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Abingdon Abbey Administration1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Extract

For the first three hundred years or so of its existence after its refoundation in the mid-tenth century, the abbey of Abingdon was one of the most important Benedictine monasteries in England, comparable with Glastonbury, Bury St. Edmund's, St. Alban's and others of like standing. In the later middle ages its influence was much diminished, and its abbots were not on the whole distinguished for such virtues as reforming zeal, or for the cultivation of the arts and learning. Nevertheless, the written records show that this house, judged by the purely material standards of its net financial assets and of the extent and grandeur of its buildings, was still one of the great abbeys of the kingdom; in 1538, when it was dissolved, it was the sixth most wealthy monastery in England.

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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1966

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References

page 159 note 2 Jope, E. M., ‘Abingdon Abbey Craftsmen and Building Stone Supplies’, Berkshire Archaeological Journal, li (1953), 5364.Google Scholar

page 160 note 1 See Stenton, F. M., The Early History of Abingdon Abbey, Oxford 1913, 44.Google Scholar

page 160 note 2 Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon, ed. Joseph Stevenson, Rolls Series 1858. Hereafter cited as C.M.A.

page 161 note 1 Chatsworth MS. 71 E, fol. 165v. See appendix for the full text of this memorandum.

page 161 note 2 Parts of the large composite manors of Barton and Cumnor were held by Norman tenants in 1086 and these parts had probably already become knights' fees by the date of the Domesday survey.

page 161 note 3 Knowles, M. D., The Monastic Order in England, 2nd ed.Cambridge 1963, 432–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 162 note 1 Lennard, R. V., Rural England 1086 to 1135, Oxford 1959, 158Google Scholar; Raftis, J. A., The Estates of Ramsey Abbey, Toronto 1957, 1112Google Scholar; Domesday Book, Record Commission 1783, i. fol. 59.

page 162 note 2 The only other English house at present known to have adopted the Cluny system is Lewes Priory: see Prof.Galbraith's, V. H. article, ‘Osbert, Dean of Lewes’ in English Historical Review, lxix (1954), 289–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Lewes was a Cluniac house founded in 1077, and decani were to be found administering its Norfolk estates at late as the 1160s and 1170s. But this priory lay right outside the Abingdon sphere of influence and provides no analogy for tenth- and eleventh-century practice in England.

page 162 note 3 C.M.A., ii. 280.

page 163 note 1 C.M.A., ii. 296–334; Bodleian MS. Lyell 15; Chatsworth MS. 71 E; The Accounts of the Obedientiars of Abingdon Abbey, ed. R. E. G. Kirk, Camden Society New Series 1892, hereafter cited as O.A.

page 164 note 1 John, E., ‘The Division of the Mensa in Early English Monasteries’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, vi (1955), 151–3.Google Scholar

page 164 note 2 Domesday Book, i. fol. 59.

page 165 note 1 The rich priest Blacheman of Andresey Island by Abingdon is said to have held Sandford, Chilton and Leverton at farm from the monks T.R.E.: C.M.A., ii. 283. The abbey chronicler suggests that leases for two or three lives were quite common just before the Conquest, on payment of a lump sum down: ibid., i. 481. At Sparsholt a monk of Abingdon farmed the manor from his father T.R.E. and inherited it on his father's death; the abbey thereupon claimed that it had passed to the monastic community to which the monk belonged, and he may have been allowed to continue farming the estate in the abbey's interest: Domesday Book, i. fol. 59.

page 166 note 1 C.M.A., ii. 287.

page 167 note 1 C.M.A., ii. 286.

page 167 note 2 Ibid., ii. 291.

page 167 note 3 Chatsworth MS 71 E, fol. gv.

page 167 note 4 Abingdon was a royal foundation, but as it was never an exempt abbey it was subject to archiepiscopal and episcopal visitation.

page 167 note 5 C.M.A., ii. 60.

page 167 note 6 Ibid., ii. 238, 351; Bodleian MS. Lyell 15, fol. 59v.

page 167 note 7 The work of these two officials is described in detail in the ‘De obedientiariis abbatiae Abbendonensis’ section of the Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon, ii., appendix 351–2. This is part of Cottonian MS. Claudius B vi. The MS. was actually written in the late thirteenth century, and since its editor, Joseph Stevenson, found no indication in it of the period to which its description of the duties of the abbot, priors and obedientiaries referred, he assumed that it was contemporary with that of the scribe who wrote the MS. But the tone and language of this section seem to indicate a considerably earlier date, and certain details suggest that it describes the duties of the abbey officials about the end of the twelfth centur—almost certainly earlier than the evidence covering part of the same ground which is to be found in Bodleian MS. Lyell 15 in two episcopal deeds, one dated 1219 and the other having been issued between 1198 and 1217 (fols. 57–59v and fols. 56v–57 respectively). One reason for suggesting a twelfth century rather than a thirteenth century date for ‘De obedientiariis’ is its use of the word dapifer for the steward; in 1219 this officer is called senescallus when his work is described, and he is so called in all thirteenth- and fourteenth-century references to him in Latin deeds thereafter, as well as in the very few dating from the first years of the thirteenth century where he receives mention.

page 168 note 1 Chatsworth MS. 71 E, fol. 7v.

page 168 note 2 Bodleian MS. Lyell 15, fols. 44v–45v. See also Calendar of Fine Rolls, iv. 327.

page 168 note 3 C.M.A., ii. 64, 104, 147, 148, 152, 154.

page 169 note 1 C.M.A., ii. 150, 169, 214, 286.

page 169 note 2 Ibid., ii. 314–16, 329, 367, 411.

page 169 note 3 Ibid., ii. 354–5.

page 169 note 4 See, for instance, Bodleian MS. Lyell 15, fol. 56v.

page 169 note 5 Chatsworth MS. 71 E, fol. 104v.

page 170 note 1 C.M.A., ii. 237–43; Bodleian MS. Lyell 15, fols. 57–9v.

page 170 note 2 C.M.A., ii. 237–43.

page 170 note 3 I am indebted to Prof. Dorothy Whitelock for information regarding the word scyp, which occurs in the West Saxon Gospel—see Englische Studien, xliii (1911), 316.Google Scholar

page 170 note 4 Loyn, H. R., Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest, London 1962, 192Google Scholar; Bodleian MS. Lyell 15, fol. 175; Stenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England, Oxford 1946, 468–70.Google Scholar

page 171 note 1 Bodleian MS. Lyell 15, fols. 57–9.v

page 171 note 2 Chatsworth MS. 71 E, fol. 9.

page 172 note 1 The Accounts of the Obedientiars of Abingdon Abbey are the largest single source we have for the financial administration of Abingdon Abbey in the late middle ages; but they are unsatisfactory for the historian because they are spread over odd accounting years, they do not cover all the obediences, and they include a comparatively large amount for the less important offices and little or nothing for some of the most important. There is no continuity of evidence here, nor is it anything like comprehensive for any one year, let alone a period of years. Moreover, these defects are all the more frustrating when one realises how complicated must have been the administrative and financial arrangements at Abingdon during the last two and a half centuries of its existence. The Accounts of the Obedientiars may thus suggest a false picture unless it is appreciated that their evidence is more superficial and partial than might appear at first sight.

page 172 note 2 Bodleian MS. Lyell 15, fol. 56v.

page 172 note 3 Chatsworth MS. 71 E, fol. 8v.

page 172 note 4 Ibid., fol. 63v.

page 173 note 1 Chatsworth MS. 71 E, fols. 7v–9v.

page 173 note 2 Ibid., fol. 165v—see appendix.

page 173 note 3 C.M.A., ii. 307, 323.

page 173 note 4 Ibid., 298.

page 174 note 1 Calendar of Close Rolls 1231–4, 518.

page 175 note 1 C.M.A., ii. 351–2. Cf. Bodleian MS. Lyell 15, fols. 59–59v.

page 175 note 2 The arrangements in Faritius's time (1100–17) were evidently much more orthodox, for the cellarers' office then covered both external and internal affairs of the abbey. William the Cellarer, acting for the abbey, was put in seisin of a fishery at Nuneham Courtenay, c. 1105, and about the same time Ralf the Cellarer, as a witness, took an oath in place of the abbot; in 1110–11 this same Ralf acted for his house in the dispute with Oxford shippers regarding herring dues payable to the abbey, and either he or his colleague, another cellarer, was then in receipt of the dues, which later on were payable to the kitchener; towards the end of his life Faritius instructed the cellarers (in the plural) to make an annual gift to the brethren from the proceeds of an endowment he had acquired (cf. the comparable function of the treasurers in the fourteenth century, described below, 176); C.M.A., ii. 53, 119–20.

page 175 note 3 Bodleian MS. Lyell 15, fol. 78; O.A., passim.

page 175 note 4 Bodleian MS. Lyell 15, fol. 56v.

page 176 note 1 Bodleian MS. Lyell 15, fol. 78.

page 176 note 2 Smith, R. A. L., ‘The Regimen de Scaccario in English Monasteries’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th series xxiv (1942), 78.Google Scholar

page 176 note 3 Rotuli Parliamentorum, Record Commission 1783, i. 365b.

page 176 note 4 O.A., 22–33, 41–51) 116–21.

page 177 note 1 MS. Keeper of Works Account, 1391/2: Berks Record Office MS. D/EP 7/140. It should be noted that over a century earlier, on the other hand, the keeper of the works was made responsible for administering certain endowments for ‘new works’ under the terms of abbot John Blosmeville's obit (c. 1255). But this was in the days before any treasurer was appointed at Abingdon: see Bodleian MS. Lyell 15, fol. 74.

page 178 note 1 O.A., 89, 90.

page 178 note 2 Ibid., 116.

page 179 note 1 MS. Salisbury Register Mitford, fol. 149.

page 179 note 2 Preston, A. E., St. Nicholas Abingdon and Other Papers, Oxford Historical Society xcix (1935), 195Google Scholar; MS. Salisbury Register Neville, fol. 30v, second numeration.

page 179 note 3 The Register of Henry Chichele, ed. Jacob, E. F., Canterbury & York Society 1945, iii. 512.Google Scholar

page 180 note 1 Jacob, op. cit., 520.

page 180 note 2 Baker, A. C., Historic Abingdon, privately published 1963, 62–3.Google Scholar

page 180 note 3 Smith, R. A. L., Canterbury Cathedral Priory, Cambridge 1943, 28Google Scholar; Snape, R. H., English Monastic Finances in the Later Middle Ages, Cambridge 1926, 36–7Google Scholar, 49; cf. Cheney, C. R., ‘Norwich Cathedral Priory in the Fourteenth Century’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, xx (1936), 97–8.Google Scholar

page 180 note 4 MS. Chamberlain's Account, 1361/2; Berks Record Office MS. D/E Ah Z 1; Hall, G. D. G., ‘The Abbot of Abingdon and the Tenants of Winkfield’, Medium Aevum, xxviii (1959), 94.Google Scholar

page 181 note 1 R. A. L. Smith, Canterbury Cathedral Priory, 23.

page 181 note 2 Savine, A., English Monasteries on the Eve of the Dissolution, Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History, i (1909), 270–88.Google Scholar