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A. Hamilton Thompson
Published by Good Press, 2019
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§ 7. With the Norman conquest came a great revival of monastic life. The conquerors founded and heaped benefactions on new monasteries, or enlarged the possessions of Norman abbeys by granting them new estates in England. Many manors and more churches thus became the property of religious houses; and, where the property of a benefactor was widely scattered, a monastery might acquire a number of churches in many different counties. Thus the church of Kirkby in Malhamdale, in west Yorkshire, became the property of the abbey of West Dereham, in Norfolk; while a moiety of the tithes of Gisburn, in the same neighbourhood, belonged to the nuns of Stainfield, near Lincoln. These gifts, in the first instance, depended entirely on the free will of pious benefactors. The monasteries were naturally expected to present suitable priests to the churches; but this was left to their discretion. The logical result of these unconditional benefactions was that, as time went on, many churches were totally appropriated by monasteries: the income from the tithes, which should have served for the support of parish priests, was absorbed by the religious proprietors. Bishops recognised the evil; and towards the beginning of the thirteenth century steps were taken to check the control of monasteries over their subject churches. Archbishop Geoffrey Plantagenet in 1205 allowed the abbey of West Dereham to appropriate the fruits of the church of Kirkby in Malhamdale, but required them to reserve a stipend of ten marks yearly for a vicar. Such ordinations of vicarages became common within the next few years; and the great feature of the episcopate of Hugh of Wells, bishop of Lincoln 1209–35, was the provision of vicars, not monks, but secular priests with sufficient stipends, in the appropriated churches of his huge diocese. The monastery was usually allowed to take the greater tithes, i.e. the tithes of corn, for itself, the smaller tithes, or a sum in commutation of them, being reserved to the vicar. The study of episcopal registers shews that these provisions were sometimes evaded; and anyone who has made out lists of vicars of appropriated churches knows that frequently long gaps occur, in which it is probable that the monastery allowed the presentation to lapse unchecked; but the ordination of vicarages was in great measure a cure for the evil. However, during the thirteenth century, laymen still continued to present religious bodies with large gifts of property. The inroads which these benefactions began to make upon estates held in chief of the king were a menace to royal power. In order to provide a regular restraint upon the growth of ecclesiastical property, the statute of mortmain was passed in 1279. As a consequence of this measure, any man who wished to alienate land or churches to a religious corporation, was required to apply for royal letters patent. If it were found by inquisition that the property could be alienated without prejudice to the king or the lord from whom the fee was immediately held, the licence was granted; and, if a church formed part of the property, the religious corporation was allowed to appropriate it by the grant of a further licence, the ordination of a vicarage being left to the decree of the bishop. It need hardly be said that a very large number of churches remained all through the middle ages in the hands of private patrons, and that by no means all churches granted to monasteries were appropriated by them. Of the arrangements for these unappropriated rectories more will be said later. The connexion of the parish churches with the monasteries is of great importance, however, for our present purpose.
§ 8. As so many churches belonged to monasteries, it is constantly assumed that the monasteries, especially during Norman times, provided parish churches at their own expense. Thus the splendid series of churches in south Lincolnshire, on the road from Sutton Bridge to Spalding, is said, without historical foundation, to have been produced by rivalry in church-building between Croyland abbey and other monasteries. It is true that, as at Spalding in 1284, the religious house would probably contribute a certain amount to the building or rebuilding of an appropriated church, but that amount would be limited, and the parishioners would be left to provide the rest according to their means. When vicarages were ordained, the repair of the chancel, the rector’s peculiar property, was usually left to the monastery as rector; but we often find that a special stipulation was made by which part of the repairs even of this portion of the church devolved upon the vicar, and that sometimes his stipend was so arranged as to free the monastery of this obligation altogether. A monastery naturally regarded the fruits of a church as an addition to its own income. The most that could be expected of it would be that it would employ a reasonable part of the profits in keeping the fabric in order. If the monastery owned the manor as well as the advowson, it probably, and here and there unmistakably, did more for the fabric of the parish church. But these fabrics were in most cases existing when the monasteries took seisin of the advowsons of the churches in question. When appropriation followed, the enrichment of the monastery, not the enlargement of the building, was the end in view; and the plea made by the monastery in dealing with the bishop over appropriations, was invariably one of poverty. When a church, then, was rebuilt or enlarged, the money came for the most part from parishioners, the monastery supplying its proportion, not without a view to strict economy.
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