7. GOATHLAND, QUASI-CELL OF WHITBY
The ecclesiastical establishment at Goathland
was at first a hermitage. Henry I, (fn. 1) by a charter
addressed to Archbishop Thomas (1109-14),
Nigel de Albini and Osbert, Sheriff of Yorkshire,
granted to Osmund the priest and the brothers
of ' Godelane' that place for entertaining the
poor, and the brothers were to hold it free of all
interference from the king's foresters and others,
in perpetual alms, and Nigel de Albini and the
sheriff were to give them seisin.
By a later charter, (fn. 2) addressed to the same
persons, the king granted that Osmund the
priest and the brothers of Goathland might
transfer themselves and their hermitage with
all its appurtenances to the Abbot and convent of
Whitby, in perpetuity, to be received to the
habit of religion in the chapter of the monks.
The king enjoined the abbot and monks to
receive the brethren to the rule of St. Benedict,
and confirmed the hermitage with all its appurtenances to the abbey of Whitby.
King John (fn. 3) confirmed the grants made by
Henry I, which included also the gift of a carucate of land, and from a certain William Boie
the brothers had also received a toft in Lockington,
both of which were transferred to Whitby.
There is really no evidence that the hermitage
of Goathland, after it passed into the possession
of Whitby, became a cell of the abbey. Apparently the hermitage had at one time or other
been turned into a house for the abbot. On
22 December 1538 (fn. 4) Henry Davell, Abbot of
Whitby, leased to Robert Cokerell of ' Godland'
for eighty-one years at a yearly rent of 20s. 'one
fermehold in Godland called the Abbot House.'
Nothing is known of Goathland after it passed
to Whitby.
Footnotes
| 1 |
Whitby Chartul. 161. Dr. Atkinson gives good
reasons for expanding the ' T Archiepiscopo ' of the
charter into Thomae rather than, as Burton and the
Monasticon, into Turstino. |
| 2 |
Ibid. |
| 3 |
Dugdale, Mon. Angl. iv, 545. |
| 4 |
Conventual Leases (P.R.O)., Yorks. no. 929. |