KING HENRY the EIGHTH and PMORY ------Ivan Green------HENRY THE EIGHTH has been blamed for They had long since ceased to be the holy, the destruction of the mediaeval religious charitable and caring institutions they houses but what he really did was to once were and a number had already been hasten and put to an end the course of closed by powerful men for various their decline, which had started a century purposes. Cardinal Wolsey, to nam e but earlier. one, obtained papal permission to close a This period is well documented, number of religious houses, of which particularly in the British Museum, Tbnbridge was one, and to transfer their Lambeth Palace Library, the Bodelian money, rights and holdings to a new Library at Oxford, the Canterbury college he was planning to found at Cathedral Library and the county records Oxford. Another local one, Davington at Maidstone. By the beginning of the near Faversham, was deserted by its last sixteenth century the great age of faith rem aining n u n in 1535. It was a country­ had ebbed away and even the great wide situation. religious houses were increasingly run St. Martin of the New Work, better down and the numbers of their occupants known as Dover Priory, was reduced to a dwindling fast. Even the great Priory at dozen religious occupants, living the Canterbury was only about a third full and leisurely life of gentlemen and served by a at the famous St. Augustine's there number of servants and retainers. Their were only ten monks living in its vast behaviour fell far short of their professed range of buildings. standards and even their most important The friaries and smaller houses all service, their famous Passage Mass, often over the country were even harder hit. remained unsung. Dover Priory, however, had very old roots. In Saxon times the secular canons of St. Martin had their great church and admin­ istrative centre at the west side of the Market Square, where the museum, the White Cliffs Experience and the Roman Painted House now stand. The canons held much land and

The entrance gatehouse from the Folkestone Road The rights locally and this is well recorded in invaders, but in general little seems to the Domesday Book under the Dover have disturbed their settled way of life entries at the beginning of the Kent u n til the 12th century, an era when section and is headed 'Land of the canons religious bodies proliferated. Then began of St. M artin's of Dover'. There is no room an enormous campaign of acquiring here to detail all their considerable lands and rights of all kinds, including the holdings but their property and rights great tythes of hundreds of parishes and locally included those at Charlton, even the outright possession of whole Buckland, Guston, St. Margaret's, Deal, areas of the country. So much so that by Sibertswold (Shepherdswell), Farthingloe, the end of the 15th century church Hougham and those in Canterbury and dignitaries and religious institutions held other parts of Kent. as much as a half of all the wealth of The canons were secular, many of England, yet by that time controlled an them married with children, some of ever decreasing number of the religious. whom succeeded to their father's In 1123 the new archbishop, Corbeil, in positions. Many of the canons actually the very first year of his office, looked with lived with their families on their lands in envy at the canons of St. Martin's because the villages among the local population. they were directly under the protection of The papal requirement of priestly the king. Neither the archbishop nor the continence did not then apply. They were church had any authority over them. It very similar in many ways to present day was the same privileged situation as that Church of England priests living among which applied to the towns of the Cinque their people in their own separate Ports. Corbeil resented the canons' parishes. independence from the church hierarchy The canons lost some of their lands and coveted their property and rights. By and mills to the plundering Norman blackmailing King Henry the First with ^ ^ ------threats of eternal V damnation, he per­ suaded the king to pass authority over the old secular canons to him. Corbeil lost no time in seizing the canons' lands and rights, casting them adrift and assuming complete authority over their lands, their villag­ ers and the whole panoply of medi­ aeval memorial control descended upon them . As Richard Muir pointed out, the manorial system The gatehouse from the inside of the grounds when the site was a farm. At the bottom right is a part of one of the two ponds, thought to have been the monks' fishponds. This "was a dishearten­ is doubtful, since they bought large quantities offish from the town's fish market ing array of devices for removing the profits of peasant The affairs of the Priory are very well drudgery into the coffers of the local lord documented in the British Museum and and the church" - and here the church was other sources already mentioned, but both. those who prefer their information The desperately poor peasant, predigested can find much of what they huddling in his one-roomed, mud hovel, need in a book called "Dover Priory" by was tied to his native soil and had to pay a Charles Reginald Haines, published in fine on taking over a little plot of land 1930. The Priory had an undistinguished from his dead father and a "heriot" tax existence. For its first two centuries it was when he died. Before his daughter was in continual dispute with the monks of married permission had to be obtained the great priory in Canterbury and for its and a “merchat" tax paid, together with last two centuries it was in subjection to frequent fines and demands for labour on them. Considerable sums of money were the lord's land. Meanwhile the church spent on litigation and in continual took a yearly tythe, a tenth of what little appeals to higher authority and to the he produced, probably his fat beast or part . Its spiritual authority dwindled and of his seed corn. It was by these means the behaviour of its monks, as shown in that the mediaeval church authority could injunctions issued in official visitations, put in hand and arrange for the especially that of Archbishop Warham in completion of the great stone buildings of 1511, left much to be desired. But they the new Priory - some parts of which still lived well. Since Haines will be available survive - built upon the sweat and blood of to everyone, I will quote some of the the desperately poor and oppressed information he uses with regard to their villagers who until then had been accounts for the year 1530-31. neighbours of the displaced Saxon canons It is obvious that the Priory's larders in their villages. were constantly stocked with all kinds of meat, fish and continental wines. The religious who signed the Deed of monks were paid yearly wages and their Surrender of the Priory. staff, of no less than seventeen servants of Henry was at least more considerate to the Hospitium, included the “joculator the monks than Archbishop Corbeil had organorum" (the organist), Robert called been to the canons of St. Martin's he cast Round Robin and a washer woman of adrift. The religious, countrywide, were cloths and house linen. given three choices. They could be The cost of the Priory's own farm transferred to one of the larger surviving employees was £22-11-8d, very substantial monasteries, they could move to a post of money in those days. A considerable sum parish priest, or they could opt for a was also expended for legal expenses. pension. Thousands of religious, all over As previously mentioned, the religious the country, opted for a pension, the usual were all paid a salary and they included sum having been £4 or £5 a year, the the prior, sub prior, three novices and, it stipend for a parish priest, a very appears (although the document is not reasonable sum in those days. There were quite clear on this point) either three or moves to transfer two of the Priory's four monks. So a tiny number of religious novices to Christ Church, Canterbury, were served by a substantial number of though whether they actually went there servants, craftsmen and labourers and is not recorded as far as I could see. The were the possessors of many hundreds of Prior, however, as priors seem to have acres of land, mills and rights. done countrywide, had a much more It is clear that the old monkish generous settlement, which he seems to tradition of poverty, obedience, physical have enjoyed as a country gentleman for labour and the very frequent observance several years. of worship had long since been abandoned. The end of the religious houses came quite quickly and mostly without protest from the general population. King Henry acted against them in stages. First, in 1534, all the religious were ordered to sign the royal document called 'The Act of Supremacy' by which they recognised King Henry, and no longer the Pope, as the head of the church in England. The Dover Priory document was signed by the A drawing dated 28 May 1787 by S. Cooper, a very early artist who produced many fine Kent illustrations in the late 18th century prior and twelve religious, three of whom were novices. It must be mentioned that this brief, In 1536 the smaller institutions, that is condensed article is really only an those with a membership of not more that introduction to a complex subject which thirteen and a yearly income of less than would need several substantial books to do about £200 a year were suppressed. This it justice, but it will probably be sufficient included Dover Priory whose members groundwork for the general, non­ consisted only of the prior and eight specialist reader.