Profession and Death at Christ Church Priory, Canterbury, 1207-1534
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Archaeologia Cantiana - Vol. 131 2011 PROFESSION AND DEATH AT CHRIST CHURCH PRIORY, CANTERBURY, 1207-1534 JOE CONNOR The Cathedral Archive at Canterbury contains a manuscript, referred to as Literary Manuscript D12 (Lit. MS D12), comprising forty folios in a well-bound leather case. The first twelve folios record the names of more than one thousand men who were professed and entered the monastic community at Christ Church Priory in the period 1207-1534. The principal compiler of the work was Thomas Cawston, who entered the community in 1454. The manuscript was begun in 1486. Lit. MS D12 also contains a further fifteen folios (15-29) that record the obits of five hundred members of the priory community who died in the period 1286- 1504.1 The deaths of King Edward I and three archbishops of Canterbury (Winchelsea, Courtenay and Dene) are also reported. Thomas Cawston died in 1504 (folio 35r). The fact that the list of professions continues until 1534, and the list of deaths continues until 1507 may suggest that the lists were kept separately until some time after 1534, when they were brought together before the final dissolution of the monastery in 1540. The script of folios 26-29, covering the period September 1486 to June 1504, is difficult to read in places and appears to be the work of several hands. Perhaps as a consequence of the poor legibility, the forty-eight obits in folios 26-29 are repeated in a more legible script by a single hand in folios 31-34. Folio 35 commences with the death of Thomas Cawston and continues with the obits of nine monks who died in the years 1504-1507. Altogether the deaths of five hundred and thirteen men are recorded. The other folios in the manuscript include a list of the names of the mayors of Canterbury from 1449 to 1610 (folios 36-38). Folio 39 is a critical comment on the text of an address by Prior William Selling; three folios (13, 14, 40) are blank. The Parker Library, at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, contains a manuscript (MS 298) of 258 folios, of which sixteen (129r-145v) contain almost the same material as is found in folios 1-12 of Lit. MS D12 just mentioned. MS 298 stops at the profession of Thomas Farley in 1528. The script of MS 298 is generally much clearer 277 JOE CONNOR than that of MS D12. There are minor discrepancies between the two manuscripts. The obits of MS D12 do not appear in MS 298. The existence of so much documentation for the history of Christ Church priory at Canterbury that has been brought together by Dr Greatrex with other related information,2 might suggest that there was nothing remaining for inquiry. However, no attempt has been made hitherto either to identify the geographic origins of the men who entered the Christ Church community, or to comment on the causes of their deaths. Dr Greatrex has investigated the origins of the monks of Rochester3 and of Worcester.4 Professor Hatcher has written about the age and cause of death of monks in the fifteenth century.5 Other documents contemporary with Cawston, but more limited in their scope, are the Chronicles of John Stone6 and of William Glastonbury.7 During the period of three hundred and twenty-seven years encompassed by Cawston’s list of monks who were professed at Christ Church Priory in Canterbury, their names almost always comprise a given name and a surname which is either a toponym (the place from which they came) or, more rarely, a patronym (their family name). Sixteen people out of one thousand and ten listed have one name only. Twenty-five people have surnames that are not obvious toponyms; of these, six have Clement for their surname and two each are called Anselm, Bryan, Dunstan and Everard. Six men have surnames that refer to places abroad: four in France (St Bertin, Calais, St Ouen and St Valery), one in Ireland (Hibernia) and one in Italy (Lombardus). Following Greatrex,8 it is reasonable to assume that the individual monk’s toponym is more likely to reflect his immediate origins. In the early years most names are written as A de (of or from) B, in which A is the given name and B is the toponym. The use of the preposition slowly disappears until, after 1364, it is no longer used. In identifying the toponym it is necessary to take account of the fact that Cawston is not always consistent in spelling place names either in Kent (e.g. Maidstone) or outside (e.g. Winchelsea). Certain place names may occur more than once in the same county, so in Kent there are two places with the names Ash, Buckland, Chart, Goodnestone, Milton, Minster, Newington, Preston and Stone.9 Properties in towns or villages can sometimes be identified. For example, Gabriel was the name of a manor in Edenbridge, and Bush was a farm in Cuxton; there are several similar examples in Kent. The geographical distribution of professed monks associated with place names shows that, as might be expected, professions at Christ Church, Canterbury, come more from the east of the county than from the west (Table 1), where a Benedictine priory at Rochester may have offered a competitive attraction,10 together with St Augustine’s Abbey at Canterbury. In recent times a distinction is made between villages on a geographic basis: thus, East and West Farleigh, Langdon, Malling, 278 PROFESSION & DEATH AT CHRIST CHURCH PRIORY, CANTERBURY, 1207-1534 TABLE 1. KENTISH PLACES OF ORIGIN OF CHRIST CHURCH PROFESSED MONKS – DISTANCE FROM CANTERBURY Within no. of miles of No. of professed monks Canterbury 5 89 6-10 156 11-15 148 16-20 35 21-25 77 26-30 56 31-35 24 36-40 23 41-45 7 45+ 19 Total from Kent 634 Peckham and Wickham. The two communities are usually quite close. Cawston makes no such distinction. He makes no distinction between the villages such as Great, Little, High, Lower, Upper, New, Old in the cases of Chart, Mongeham, Halstow, Hardres, and Romney; nor between Hythe and West Hythe, Cliffe and West Cliffe. There is no way of distinguishing the four villages named Boughton (Aluph, under Blean, Malherbe and Monchelsea) nor the three Suttons (simple, East, at Hone). One hundred and seventy-two parishes in Kent can be identified (out of over four hundred) and six hundred and thirty-two men can be related to these parishes (see Appendix 1). This information can be related to the distance between the place and Canterbury; as might be expected, fewer people come from further away. The correct assignment of toponyms to places outside Kent is more difficult and uncertain. Thomas Cawston’s own name can represent the problem. There are two places named Cawston, one in Norfolk in the vicinity of Norwich and the other in Warwickshire in the vicinity of Coventry. Both Norwich and Coventry had cathedral priories in the province of Canterbury. More than two hundred men came from recognisable places outside Kent (see Appendix 2) in particular from Essex (26), London (12) and Sussex (31). Inevitably there are uncertainties to be accepted in the assignments and these are well known from the various studies of Dr Greatrex. However there remain more than eighty surnames for ninety-four men that have not been assigned as toponyms; these are collected in Appendix 3. They include Newton, Walton, Weston and Well of which there are several examples of each distributed through 279 JOE CONNOR the English counties and there are several others that may be patronyms such as Ansell, Courteney, and Griffin (examples chosen at random). Little attention seems usually to be paid to the personal/Christian/given names of the monks. In the period 1207-1534 recorded by Cawston altogether seventy-four Christian names are given to the monks. Of these, three names, John (262), William (155) and Thomas (115) account for more than half of the total (1007). How complete is the record of professions at Christ Church priory given by Cawston? Comparison with the lists given by Greatrex shows that perhaps as many as fifty-two names are missing from Cawston.11 In almost all of these cases it is clear that not much is known about the men concerned. In some cases the information refers to their ordination as acolyte, deacon or priest. In others, the information refers to their office as cellarer, granator, sacrist or treasurer in the community. Perhaps the most surprising omission from Cawston is the name of John Chatham, who was briefly prior (1236-1238) before being involved in the scandal of the torn charter of St Thomas.12 He left the priory to join the Carthusians.13 Obituaries and other departures This list of names commences in 1286 and includes five hundred and thirteen members of Christ Church Priory; the last record is of the death of Simon Islep in October 1507. Perhaps the year 1286 was chosen as the start because it was two hundred years before Cawston started his work. The record is incomplete because on folio 17, in the summer of 1361, there is a note to say that the text is missing until January 1395. Twenty-two members of the Christ Church Priory died in July (10) and August (12) 1361. This unusually high incidence is not the subject of any comment by Cawston, but it would seem likely that plague might be the cause. The dates are usually recorded in the order in which the men died. Although the year is not always mentioned, it is usually possible to infer by deduction.