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How Useful are Episcopal Ordination Lists as a Source for Medieval English Monastic History?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2018

DAVID E. THORNTON
DAVID E. THORNTON*
Affiliation:
History Department, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey; e-mail: tdavid@bilkent.edu.tr
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Abstract

This article evaluates ordination lists preserved in bishops’ registers from late medieval England as evidence for the monastic orders, with special reference to religious houses in the diocese of Worcester, from 1300 to 1540. By comparing almost 7,000 ordination records collected from registers from Worcester and neighbouring dioceses with 178 ‘conventual’ lists, it is concluded that over 25 per cent of monks and canons are not named in the extant ordination lists. Over half of these omissions are arguably due to structural gaps in the surviving ordination lists, but other, non-structural factors may also have contributed.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 69 , Issue 3 , July 2018 , pp. 493 - 530
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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24 For example, LP vii. 1367.

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26 Here percentages for all the conventual lists from the same decade have been divided by the number of lists. For example, for the first decade of the fourteenth century there is only one list, associated with an abbatial election at Cirencester Abbey (1307), so the total of 17% for that single conventual list is also the total for that decade (‘1300s’).

27 The sum of all percentages divided by the number of lists with percentages.

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50 Hampshire Record Office, Winchester, mss A1/13, fo. Xv (Bordesley); A1/14, fo. 173r (Evesham); A1/16, fo. 29v (2x Worcester priory), 32(=34)v (Bristol Austin friars). See also The episcopal registers of the diocese of St. David's 1397 to 1518, ed. and trans. Isaacson, R. F., London 1917Google Scholar, ii.704–6, 710.

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56 For the election and selection of superiors see Heale, The abbots and priors, 15–56.

57 Idem, ‘“Not a thing for a stranger to enter upon”: the selection of monastic superiors in late medieval and early Tudor England’, in Janet Burton and Karen Stöber (eds), Monasteries and society in the British Isles in the later Middle Ages, Woodbridge 2008, 51–68. See also Heale, The abbots and priors, 28, 34–5, 43–4.

58 Logan, Runaway religious, 43, 45; Greatrex, English Benedictine cathedral priories, 85; Clark, James, ‘Why men became monks in late medieval England’, in Cullum, P. H. and Lewis, Katherine J. (eds), Religious men and masculine identity in the Middle Ages, Woodbridge 2013, 160–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar at p. 180; Supplications, i. 5, 15.

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65 For example, Richard Cleeve, monk of Worcester, transferred to the Cluniac priory at Dudley in April 1524, but seems to have returned to Worcester within a decade, if not sooner: WCL, reg. A.6(ii), fo. 143v; TNA, E25/122/3; DKR vii, appendix ii, p. 305; Greatrex, Biographical register, 788.

66 Logan, Runaway religious, 149–51; Knowles, Religious orders in England, i. 93; ii. 214.

67 Thomson, Early Tudor Church and society, 189; Clark, ‘Why men became monks’, 180–1; Greatrex, English Benedictine cathedral priories, 51.

68 Cullum, ‘Man/boy’, 60.

69 Registrum sede vacante, 290; TNA, E179/58/11.

70 Greatrex, ’Prosopography’, 9, and Biographical register, 812–13; Registrum Thome de Charlton, 116, 119.

71 TNA, E179/58/5; E179/58/54.

72 Richard Hill (ord. 1438–42; vic. Hales 1475, 1491–4); John Combar (ord. 1440–2+; vic. Walsall 1475); John Hay (ord. 1453–8; vic. Clent 1475, 1491–7); John Saunders (ord. 1463–7; vic. Hales, 1497); and John Seede (ord. 1476–9; vic. Clent 1488, vic. Walsall 1491–7).

73 Heale, Dependent priories, 117.

74 GCL, reg. C (Newton), fos 2r–33r; reg. Malvern I (D), fos 2v–[46].

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79 Knowles, Religious orders in England, ii. 22.

80 The majority were collected in BRUO, and A. B. Emden, A biographical register of the University of Oxford, A.D.1501–1540, Oxford 1974. See also Cunich, P., ‘Benedictine monks at the University of Oxford and the dissolution of the monasteries’, in Wansbrough, Henry and Marett-Crosby, Anthony (eds), Benedictines in Oxford, London 1997, 155–82Google Scholar.

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82 BRUO, 489–90; Register of congregations 1505–1517, ii. 147, 324; Registrum Ricardi Mayew, episcopi Herefordensis. A.D. MDIV–MDXVI, ed. Bannister, Arthur Thomas (Canterbury and York Society, 1921)Google Scholar, 246; GCL, reg. Newton (C), fos 2r–36r; reg. Malvern I (D), fos 2v–46.

83 BRUO, i. 28, 112; Greatrex, Biographical register, 769, 774; Lincolnshire Archives, Lincoln, episcopal register XXIV (Smith), fos 6v, 12r. Alston was ordained subdeacon on 23 December 1497 by the bishop of Winchester: Greatrex, Biographical register, 769.

84 Register of John Morton, ii. 131.

85 TNA, E25/31.

86 TNA, E315/245, fo. 45; LP xiv/2, 260; MA vi/1, 178; TNA, E315/494/1, fo. 59; Baskerville, G., ‘The dispossessed religious after the suppression of the monasteries’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society xlix (1927), 63–122Google Scholar at pp. 93–4.

87 Knowles, Religious orders in England, iii. 304–11; Geoffrey Baskerville, English monks and the suppression of the monasteries, New Haven 1936, 144–55. Only superiors were pensioned off at this stage.

88 Knowles, Religious orders in England, iii. 311.

89 FOR, 88, 89; Jack, Sybil M., ‘Dissolution dates for the monasteries dissolved under the act of 1536’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research xliii (1970), 161–81Google Scholar at pp. 171, 178; Gasquet, F. A., ‘Overlooked testimonies to the character of the English monasteries on the eve of their suppression’, Dublin Review cxiv (1894), 245–77Google Scholar at p. 276.

90 Baskerville, English monks, 148.

91 Ibid. 149.

92 At one extreme, ordinations from the diocese of Norwich only survive for 1413–86, 1502, and from 1532 to the dissolution: Williams, J. F., ‘Ordinations in the Norwich diocese in the fifteenth century’, Norfolk Archaeology xxxi (1956), 347–58Google Scholar; Smith, Guide, 150, 162. Even the relatively full lists for the archdiocese of York have some gaps in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.