THE RELIGIOUS HOUSES OF YORKSHIRE
INTRODUCTION
The county of York was remarkable for the number and importance of
its religious foundations. Of the Benedictine Order there were only four
houses for men, but of these St. Mary's, York, Selby and Whitby, were all of
the first rank, and Monk Bretton is interesting as having been originally a
Cluniac house. Of the ten Benedictine nunneries none were of importance.
The striking feature of Yorkshire religious life, however, was the predominance of the Cistercian Order; Byland, Fountains, Jervaulx, Kirkstall,
Meaux, Rievaulx, Roche and Sawley, forming a group of Cistercian
monasteries that cannot be paralleled elsewhere in England, and there were
twelve houses for women of the same order, though most of these were quite
small. It is noteworthy that in the case of the nunneries of Swine and
Wykeham the early records speak of certain canons being attached to the
convents. (fn. 1) The Cluniac Order, after the secession of Monk Bretton in 1279,
was represented by the monastery of St. John's, Pontefract, and the nunnery
of Arthington. The two Carthusian houses of Hull and Mount Grace were
comparatively late foundations, and there was at Grosmont a small priory of
the Grandimontine Order.
Ten houses of Austin Canons were founded before the middle of the
12th century, and of these Bolton, Bridlington, Guisborough, Newburgh and
Nostell, were of considerable importance. Another house of this order, that
of Haltemprice, was founded as late as 1320. The only convent of Austin
Nuns, that established at Moxby about 1165, originally formed part of the
priory of Marton, founded about 1135, as a double house for nuns and canons.
The Gilbertine Order, in which the double community was the rule, had
three houses in the county, and the Premonstratensian Canons also had three
abbeys. But the most remarkable house of Canons Regular was the priory of
North Ferriby of Austin Canons of the Order of the Temple; they are sometimes erroneously said to have been affiliated to the Knights Templars, but
were in reality a cell of the abbey of the Temple of the Lord at Jerusalem
and in no way connected with the Knights of the Temple of Solomon; at a
later date these canons seem to have been considered as ordinary Austin
Canons.
Both military orders, of the Temple and of the Hospital, had extensive
possessions in Yorkshire and each appointed a chief preceptor or master for
the county. The Knights Templars had eight preceptories, but after the
dissolution of the order in 1310, although most of these estates passed to the
Hospitallers, Ribston was the only house which maintained a separate existence as a commandery.
The different orders of friars were well represented in the county. In
York itself there were houses of Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites, Austins,
and of the short-lived Order of the Sack. In 1257 Walter de Kirkham, Bishop
of Durham, granted 4 acres of land at Osmotherley for the establishment of
a priory of Crutched Friars, (fn. 2) and in 1347 Thomas Lord Wake of Liddell
had royal licence to grant a toft and 10 acres in Blakehowe Moor in
Farndale for the foundation of a house of the same order, (fn. 3) but in neither case
does the design seem to have been carried out. In the same way Master
William de Alverton's proposed foundation of Austin Friars at Northallerton
in 1340, (fn. 4) and the house of Minoresses which Sir William de la Pole began to
found at Hull in 1365, (fn. 5) came to nothing. At Knaresborough there was an
important establishment of Trinitarian Friars.
The list of hospitals which follows is lengthy, but it is probably not
complete; so many small hospitals are known to us only from single references that it is almost certain that others must have escaped notice altogether.
At the head of the list is St. Peter's, or St. Leonard's, of York, the largest and
wealthiest of all the early English hospitals. The identification of the
smaller, and for the most part unendowed, hospitals in the city is no simple
matter, many of them being known by more than one name.
Of collegiate churches the most important were the Minster at York
(associated with which were the Bedern, St. Mary and the Holy Angels and
St. William's College), Ripon and Beverley, all three being of pre-Conquest
origin. Sir Richard le Scrope in 1393 had licence to found a chantry of six
chaplains, one of whom was to be warden, in his castle of Bolton, and at the
same time to give to the abbey of Easby lands for the support of six canons
and twenty-two poor men. (fn. 6) In 1399 he obtained a fresh licence to transfer
the proposed endowment from Easby to the church of Holy Trinity, Wensley,
making this church collegiate and attaching a hospital to it, (fn. 7) but although
this licence was confirmed by Henry IV (fn. 8) it does not appear that either of the
proposed colleges at Bolton or Wensley was actually constituted. Another
abortive college was begun by Richard III, who proposed to found a college
of a hundred priests in connexion with York Minster. (fn. 9) Several altars were
actually erected (fn. 10) and the collegiate house begun, if not completed, (fn. 11) before
Richard's defeat and death put an end to the scheme. A quasi-collegiate
chantry of twelve priests was established in Kirkleatham church in 1353, (fn. 12)
but was dissolved when the rectory was appropriated to the college of Staindrop
(county Durham) in 1408. (fn. 13) A similar chantry of six priests was formed at
Harewood in 1353, (fn. 14) and a semi-collegiate chapel was founded at Wilton-inCleveland by Sir William Bulmer in 1528, (fn. 15) but neither these nor Osmotherley,
which church was held by three portionaries, sometimes called canons or
prebendaries, were true colleges. The alien priories were few and, with
the exception of Holy Trinity, York, unimportant.
Selby Abbey is said to have owed its existence to the settlement of a
hermit at that place, and instances of hermits occur in Yorkshire records with
some frequency. In 1315 King Edward II sent Lambert le Flemyng of
Ypres with four other hermits to reside at Knaresborough, (fn. 16) and three years
later he gave 76s. 6d. to the six hermits of ' Haywra' in Knaresborough Forest,
of whom Brother Lambert was the proctor. (fn. 17) This hermitage was probably
of early date, as in 1267 John Floterdasse killed ' a certain hermit dwelling
in le Wra.' (fn. 18) At Knaresborough also was the hermitage of St. Robert,
which continued to be occupied until at least the middle of the 14th century. (fn. 19) Mention may also be made of Matthew Danthorpe, hermit, who
in 1399 tactfully built a chapel at Ravenspur to commemorate the landing
of Henry IV. (fn. 20) Instances of the more strictly secluded class of anchorites
are to be met with in the archiepiscopal registers and elsewhere. (fn. 21)