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The Quondam of Rievaulx1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
Extract
This is the story of Edward Kirkby's deposition from the office of abbot of Rievaulx in 1533. It has been briefly told before, but the author of that article was not aware of some important evidence and also burdened his account with misleading preconceptions. Perhaps it is not surprising that all monastic events in the decade 1530–40 should tend to be linked with greater events in Church and State: the Dissolution is commonly allowed to cast its distorting shadow both fore and aft. When a single London monastery is dissolved, historians suspect a carefully staged dress rehearsal of the larger destruction; similarly they ascribe the fate of abbot Edward Kirkby to his ‘opposing the king's new doctrines’. But this concentration on the outstanding event is most perilous. The monasteries of the day do not seem to have been aware of their coming doom; their history continued to be centred upon the narrower compass’ of their own interests. We shall see that Kirkby's story does indeed reflect some issues of more general importance, but it is not true that he was deposed because he quarrelled with the new state of things or because the king wanted him out. In fact, Henry VIII in person never enters upon the stage and is likely to have remained practically ignorant of Edward Kirkby. Like others of that time, the abbot has been permitted to wear an undeserved, if rather tiny, crown of lesser martyrdom—lesser because, surviving the 1530s, he lacked the full qualifications for a victim of Henry VIII. The facts must rob him of his touch of spurious glory, but his unmasking may help towards a better understanding of that troubled age.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1956
References
page 45 note 1 I owe thanks to Professor D. Knowles, for his great kindness in reading this paper and making several most helpful suggestions.
page 45 note 2 Brown, W., ‘Edward Kirkby, Abbot of Rievaulx,’ Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, XXI. (1911), 44 ff.Google Scholar
page 45 note 3 Davis, E. Jeffries, ‘The Beginnings of the Dissolution: Christ Church, Aldgate’, Trans. R. Hist. Soc. 1925, 127 ff.Google Scholar I do not wish to be taken as necessarily denying that the interpretation offered in this article is sound.
page 45 note 4 Knowles, D. and Hadcock, R. N., Medieval Religious Houses (1953), 114.Google Scholar The authors appear to have been misled by Victoria County History, Yorkshire, iii. 151 f. Baskerville, G., as one might expect, saw the matter in a light less favourable to the abbot, and for once he was quite right: English Monks and the Suppression of the Monasteries (1937), 92, 164 f.Google Scholar
page 45 note 5 Cf. The Register or Chronicle of Butley Priory, Suffolk (ed. A. G. Dickens, 1951).
page 45 note 6 He appears to have held two vicarages in succession till his death in 1557: Baskerville, op. cit., 165n.
page 46 note 1 [P.R.O.] State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. 76, fols. 14 and 27 (L[etters] & P[apers], vi.437 and 451).
page 46 note 2 State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. 76, fol. 130 (L. & P., vi. 546).
page 47 note 1 L. & P., vi. 160.
page 47 note 2 Ibid., 562 (ii), 601.
page 47 note 3 State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. 238, fol. 155.
page 47 note 4 Ibid.
page 47 note 5 L. & P., vii. 923 (xxi, xxxv).
page 47 note 6 Printed in Memorials of the Abbey of St. Mary of Fountains (Surtees Soc., 1863), i. 206 f.Google Scholar
page 48 note 1 Baskerville, op. cit., 91.
page 48 note 2 L. & P., v. 978 (6).
page 49 note 1 State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. 78, fol. 52 (L. & P., vi. 913).
page 50 note 1 Cooper, Athenae Cantabrigienses, i. 87 f.
page 50 note 2 Cf. Baskerville, op. cit., 126—but his extravagances require some sceptical reassessment.
page 50 note 3 State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. 78, fols. 132–3 (L. & P., vi. 985).
page 50 note 4 Ibid., vol. 79, fol. 1 (L. & P., vi. 1061).
page 50 note 5 Memorials of Fountains, i. 260–2.
page 52 note 1 The commission is recited in full at the head of the report made to the king by the abbot of Byland: [P.R.O.] Star Chamber Proceedings, Henry VIII, vol. 7, fol. 217. This is printed, with some errors, in Yorkshire Star Chamber Proceedings (Yorkshire Records Series, no. xli, 1909), 48 ff.
page 53 note 1 Brown (op. cit., 47) described this house as Benedictine, which would make the activities there of a Cistercian abbot rather odd; however, it was a Cistercian abbey all right.
page 53 note 2 The report of the abbot of Byland, St. Ch. Proc. Henry VIII, vol. 7, fol. 217.
page 54 note 1 State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. 238, fol. 155, report of Rutland's party.
page 54 note 2 The other thirteen were Stephen Burght, Robert Standrop, Robert Pykering, Thomas Yarom, Richard Alberton, Richard Rypon, Richard Gryllyng, Henry Thrysk, William Tenfield, James Guysburn, Christopher Helmysley, Oliver Broughton, and William Darneton.
page 54 note 3 William Yeresley, Richard Scarburgh, John Malton, Thomas Richmond, Roger Whytby, William Bedall, John Lyn. These, like the rest, are of course mostly place names—no doubt of the places whence these men came. Their proper surnames, abandoned on entering the order, are recorded in the pension list of 1539 (L. & P., xiv. I. 185).
page 55 note 1 State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. 238, fol. 155 (L. & P. Add., 872).
page 55 note 2 Merriman, R. B., Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell (1902), I. 366 (Letter no. 56).Google Scholar
page 56 note 1 State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. 80, fol. 198 (L. & P., vi. 1513).
page 56 note 2 Memorials of Fountains, i. 263 f.
page 57 note 1 L. & P. xiv. I. 185.
page 57 note 2 State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. 100, fol. 116.
page 57 note 3 Ibid., vol. 88, fol. 99 (L. & P., vii. 1654).
page 58 note 1 Memorials of Fountains, i. 264.
page 58 note 2 26 Henry VIII, c. 3.
page 58 note 3 State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. 100, fols. 115–16 (L. & P., ix. 1152).
page 59 note 1 State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. 125, fol. 118 (L. & P., xii. II. 822).
page 60 note 1 This is well worked out by Brown, op. cit., 50.
page 60 note 2 26 Henry VIII, c. 1. Cf. J. R. Tanner, Tudor Constitutional Documents, 47 f.
page 60 note 3 L. & P., xiv. I. 651 (43).