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Thursday, 7th May, 1914
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 May 2010
Abstract
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References
page 189 note 1 In addition to these, visitations of the cells of Frieston, Oxney, and St. Ives are included in those of their respective mother houses, Croyland, Peterborough, and Ramsey.
page 189 note 2 There is also a cancelled notice of a visitation of St. John's Hospital, Northampton.
page 190 note 1 Only two houses, Ankerwyke Priory and Nutley Abbey, appear.
page 190 note 2 Visitations of the Diocese of Norwich, A.D. 1492–1532, ed. A. Jessopp, D.D., F.S.A. (Camden Soc). There is a very full and elaborate account of the proceedings at a visitation of Lincoln Cathedral in 1432 in Lincoln Epis. Reg. Gray, ff 121 sqq.
page 190 note 3 The distinction between the detecta and comperta is sometimes overlooked. It is clearly shown, however, in the elaborate injunctions to Ramsey Abbey (ff. 48 sqq. of the MS.), e. g. ‘quia per inquisicionem diligentem et sollertem per nos in huiusmodi visitacione factam comperimus nonnulla puritati religionis inimica et contraria indies committi’, etc. ; ‘item quia comperimus nobis simili modo detectum’, etc. ; ‘quia detectum simili modo inuenimus et delatum’, etc. Reperire, invenire are used as synonyms for comperire; deferre as equivalent to detegere.
page 191 note 1 The detecta printed in Bradshaw and Wordsworth, Lincoln Cathedral Statutes, ii, 366 sqq., illustrate this method.
page 191 note 2 e. g. the schedule presented by a prior at Peterborough in 1437, and the gravamina laid against the abbot by a canon of Dorchester in 1445.
page 191 note 3 The nunnery has some celebrity owing to the literary charm with which Cardinal Gasquet has drawn a picture of its internal life founded upon domestic accounts kept some twenty-five years before Alnwick's visitation (English Monastic Life, 1904, pp. 158–76). Some of the evidence in 1440–1 throws a light upon the financial state of the convent at that very period, which proves that account-books provide an unsafe basis for general inferences as to monastic life.
page 192 note 1 For printed series, see especially Registrum Epistolarum fratris Johannis Peckham Archiepiscopi Cantuariensis (Rolls ser., no. 77), ed. C. T. Martin, F.S.A., 1882–5 ; Registrum Radulphi Baldock, etc., Episcoporum Londoniensium (Cant. and York Soc.), ed. R. C. Fowler, F.S.A., 1911 ; and the York Registers (Giffard, Wickwane, and John le Romeyn), ed. W. Brown, F.S.A. (Surtees Soc.). Some English injunctions from Longland's register at Lincoln were contributed to Archaeologia, vol. xlvii, by E. Peacock, F.S.A., and a volume of injunctions from the registers of Bishops Flemyng and Gray at Lincoln is now in the press for the Lincoln Record Soc.
page 192 note 2 The need of such an opportunity is shown by the note of a writer in V. C. H. Lincoln, ii, 173: ‘It is impossible, without the actual visitation report, to say how far injunctions are merely formal or meet actual difficulties.’ A certain number of injunctions occur in Dr. Jessopp's volume of Norwich visitations ; but these are for the most part brief notes, like those already mentioned in Alnwick's visitations of Ramsey and Gracedieu, or the verbal injunctions issued by Bishops Goldwell and Nykke.
page 193 note 1 See e.g. Reg. Romeyn, ed. Brown (Surtees Soc.), i, 317, ‘Decretum super visitacione de Novo Loco in Schirewode’; Reg. Thoresby, fo. 241 and d, ‘Decretum de Fellay’, etc.
page 193 note 2 This was the course adopted by Bishop Gray in his visitations of Lincoln Cathedral and Ramsey Abbey in 1432 (Linc. Epis. Reg. Gray, ff. 124 and d, 196 d), and Alnwick did not spare the feelings of the monks of Ramsey so readily.
page 193 note 3 It may be noted that, out of thirty-one sets of injunctions in the Alnwick MS., only one, addressed to Bourne Abbey, is a mere endorsement of previous injunctions the text of which may be found in Linc.
Epis. Reg. Flemyng, fo. 234 d. To this endorsement, however, is added a special injunction requiring the recall of an apostate canon, who had assumed a secular habit. He had obtained the office of secundarius a decano in St. Mary's, Warwick, and had been recognized there by some Bourne people who were going on pilgrimage to Hayles Abbey in Gloucestershire.
page 194 note 1 This is the case, e.g., with the injunctions for the abbey and the ‘new college’ at Leicester.
page 194 note 2 This is a striking characteristic of Peckham's injunctions, in which, although there is naturally much similarity of phrase, it is obvious that each set was specially composed for the house to which it was sent. Mr. Fowler, in his introduction to Reg. Had. Baldock, etc., p. iii, notes of the injunctions contained in the volume : ‘The differentiation of the orders to various houses shows clearly that they were in no sense mere formalities, but aimed at definite evils.’ See also the learned article by Mr. G. G. Coulton upon The Interpretation of Visitation Documents (Eng. Hist. Review, Jan. 1914).
page 194 note 3 There is no trace of these fair copies in Alnwick's register, which, as noted above, was unsatisfactorily kept. The only set of injunctions in the register is addressed to Bardney Abbey (fo. 37, 1 April, 1440), and of these no rough copy remains. The preservation of the visitation MS. is possibly due to the delay in copying.
page 195 note 1 Instances are very numerous. Two may be mentioned from York Archiepis. Reg. Zouche, ff. 71 d, 145, viz. the appropriations of Great Ouseburn Church to the Abbot and Convent of Eggleston (23 May, 1348) and of Cotham Church, Notts., to the Prior and Convent of Thurgarton (1 Dec., 1350). The preambles to these decrees are full of interesting matter.
page 195 note 2 See Dr. Kitchin's remarks on Compotus Rolls of the Obedientiaries of St. Swithun's Priory, Winchester (Hants Rec. Soc.), pp. 23–5.
page 196 note 1 The reference to the present numbering of the leaves of the MS. is ff. 113 d, 114. The visitation took place on Jan. 16 ; the injunctions were dispatched two days later from Newnham Priory.
page 196 note 2 Sets of injunctions in which this method is freely used are those for Croyland Abbey (June 1440), Newarke College, Leicester (Dec. 1440), Newnham Priory (Jan. 1442–3), Nutley Abbey (Aug. 1447), Ramsey Abbey (June 1439), Thornton Abbey (July 1440).
page 196 note 3 This portion of the injunction is now illegible.
page 197 note 1 Ff. 22, 23. Tbe visitation was on April 7, 1440 : the injunctions are not dated.
page 197 note 2 Linc. Epis. Reg. Gray, fo. 199. The preamble to Gray's injunctions was that which he used for Huntingdon Priory, and could have been sent only to a house in a state of utter decay : ‘Heu prothdolor religio periit caritas exulat obseruancie regulares … quasi obliuiscuntur … Non est hic aliud nisi ebrietas et crapula sompnolencia non dicimus incontinencia sed torpor et omne aliud quod in malum declinat et hominem trahit ad gehennam.’
page 198 note 1 Ff. 88 d–90. The injunctions bear date from Daventry Priory, July 17.
page 198 note 2 Ff. 111–113. The visitation was on March 27, 1441 ; the injunctions bear no date.
page 198 note 3 This is noted in the injunctions delivered by Flemyng in 1422–3 (Linc. Epis. Reg. Flemyng, fo. 234). In the heading of Alnwick's visitation the monastery is said to be ordinis Turonensis (sic).
page 199 note 1 Ff. 69, 70, 74 d. The visitation was on 6 July, 1440 : the injunctions were dispatched from Wellow Abbey on 8 July.
page 199 note 2 John Whytley deposed ‘quod abbas in correctione non est modestus sed rigorosus et crudelis et si quis canonicus sibi displiceat inhumaniter reprehendit eos eciam opprobriose ac contumeliose in eorum scandalum’.
page 200 note 1 Ff. 104–106. The visitation took place on 3 December, 1440 : the injunctions were dispatched later in the month from Liddington, Rutland.
page 200 note 2 This passage is illegible, but the change of case in the rest of the paragraph appears to be a mere piece of carelessness.
page 201 note 1 Ff. 86 d–88. The date of the visitation was 12 April, 1440: tbe injunctions were not issued until 4 August following, from Sleaford Castle.
page 201 note 2 Ff. 71, 77 d. The visitation was held on 7 July : tbe injunctions bear no date.
page 201 note 3 e. g. an injunction against potaciones post completorium occurs in 15 out of the 31 sets of injunctions, and is borne out in every case by the detecta.
page 201 note 4 The injunctions to Dorchester Abbey in 1440 are a case in point. Two injunctions, forbidding the keeping of hounds in the monastery and ordering a careful survey of buildings, were cancelled : one, forbidding the access of women to the cloister, was added as an afterthought.
page 202 note 1 This happened, e. g., at Gracedieu Priory, where the prioress favoured some of the young nuns, calling them her discipule and encouraging them to spy upon their sisters.
page 202 note 2 Architectural references are neither numerous nor definite ; but a visitation of Nun Cotham, a priory of Cistercian nuns, supplies evidence for the division of Cistercian fraters into upper and lower stories, the lower being used as the misericord. Dame Ellen Frost, the sub-prioress, besought ‘ quod refectorium seruetur omni die cum sit vnum refectorium superius in quo vescuntur piscibus et lacticiniis et aliud inferius in quo ex gracia vescuntur carnibus’, etc. This arrangement clearly existed during the fifteenth century in several Cistercian abbeys, e. g. Jervaulx, Kirkstall, and Ford ; but hitherto documentary evidence for it appears to have been wanting.