How Alien Were the Alien Priories of Yorkshire?

268 Dachowski

Chapter 10 How Alien were the Alien Priories of Yorkshire?

Elizabeth Dachowski

Historians of English monastic institutions often distinguish between alien and native houses. Alien priories were those dependent on non-English houses and thus potentially a foreign element in the medieval English ecclesiastical landscape. Native monasteries included those without administrative ties to non-English institutions. The administrative and legal differences implied by this dichotomy loom large in the historiography of medieval monasticism. This study considers whether these differences show up as well in the devotional attitudes within these religious houses and the interactions with the houses by the non-cloistered community surrounding these houses. A comparison of Selby (a native house) and Holy Trinity (an alien priory) with frequent refer- ence to other houses, including some Cistercian institutions, concludes that in medieval Yorkshire both alien and native houses served the devotional needs of the Yorkshire community: as destinations for those with a religious calling, as the recipients of pious donations, and as focal points for rituals marking the liturgical year. The two leading alien houses in Yorkshire between the Norman Conquest and the Tudor Dissolution of the Monasteries were Holy Trinity (York) and Pontefract; the remaining houses were largely smaller cells or dependents of these, though Pontefract’s own priory of Monk Bretton eventually became important in its own right. (The administrative relationship between Cistercian houses is so distinctive as to justify putting them in another category for the purposes of this analysis.) The most prominent native houses were Selby, Whitby, and St Mary’s (York). The establishment of Holy Trinity and other alien priories in England began with pious donations following the Norman Conquest and was cemented in law as a response to conflicts between England and France leading up to the Hundred Years War. The category of “alien priory” is a peculiarly English historical and historiographical construct with an emphasis on the administrative status. The establishment of alien priories in England was a natural outgrowth of patterns of monastic expansion by Continental houses, which readily crossed ethnic and national boundaries, though most monasteries and their patrons had a preference for landholdings and priories closer to

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004365834_013 How Alien were the Alien Priories of Yorkshire? 269 home.1 The origins of these priories lay, according to most historians, in the initiative of the Anglo-Norman nobility, who oversaw the establishment of new communities and the reform and/or re-foundation of old communities with pre-Conquest ties to Continental monastic houses. These monastic foundations put the stamp of the new nobility on the English countryside.2 Some of these priories eventually gained their administrative independence from their mother houses and thus ceased to be alien. Others, however, maintained administrative ties with their Continental parent houses, even if in a very tenu- ous form. Most legal historians trace the special treatment of these priories by the monarchy to the reign of King John, who seized and then re-granted their lands following the loss of his Norman possessions.3 By the beginning of the 14th century, suspicion of foreigners, often tied to English military engagement abroad, led to laws designed to curtail the rights of resident aliens as well as to legal processes by which foreigners (whether long-term residents or just pass- ing through) could petition for protection from the anti-foreign laws. The term “alien priory” first gained currency as a legal (never ecclesiastical) status in 1295 when Edward I, in the course of hostilities with the French, took control of their revenues and administration.4 The Crown generally delegated both fiscal and administrative control back to members of the monastic community and eventually relinquished control of these priories once the perceived threat was over. Edward’s actions, however, set the precedent for future royal take-overs of “foreign” houses.5 The Hundred Years War, in particular, led to restricted legal status for both foreign individuals and foreign houses (often with a healthy profit to the Crown), though some establishments were exempt

1 Barbara Rosenwein, Rhinoceros Bound: Cluny in the Tenth Century (Philadelphia, 1982), pp. xiv-xv, illustrates the range of monasteries reformed by Cluniac abbots in the 10th century. Although most of these did not become dependencies of Cluny, the international character of the monastery’s influence is clear. 2 Emilia Jamroziak, Rievaulx Abbey and Its Social Context, 1132-1300 (Turnhout, Belgium, 2005), p. 30, compared monastic foundations to castles due to their role in redefining the countryside as Anglo-Norman territory. See also Janet Burton, The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 1069-1215 (Cambridge, Eng., 1999), pp. 5-6. 3 Keechang Kim, Aliens in Medieval Law: The Origins of Modern Citizenship (Cambridge, Eng., 2000), pp. 91-92, questions the view put forth by Maitland that King John’s seizure of the monasteries is early evidence of their alien status under the law. Kim argues instead that King John’s actions were tied more to ideas of fealty than of alien status as understood in later laws. 4 A.K. McHardy, “The Alien Priories and the Expulsion of Aliens from England in 1378,” in Church Society and Politics, ed. Derek Baker, Studies in Church History 12 (Oxford, 1975), p. 133, n2. 5 Kim, Aliens in Medieval Law, chapter 4, “Foreign Religious Houses,” pp. 89-102, discusses the fiscal and administrative issues in the course of outlining the legal status of these priories.