This is a good article. Click here for more information.

Dispute between Darnhall and Vale Royal Abbey

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Red pog.svg Chester – red.
Green pog.svg Vale Royal abbey –green
Orange pog.svg Villages under abbey's feudal lordship – orange.

In the early fourteenth century, villagers from Darnhall and Over, Cheshire, were in a major dispute with their feudal lord, the Abbot of Vale Royal Abbey, over their bond condition. The Cistercian abbey had been founded by Edward I in 1274 as a result of a vow made after a rough channel crossing. The abbey was unpopular with the locals from the start, as it was granted, as part of its endowment, exclusive forest- and other feudal rights which the local villages had come to see as their own. Moreover, the rigorous enforcement of these rights by successive abbots was felt to be excessively harsh. The villagers resented being treated as serfs and made repeated attempts to reject the abbey's feudal overlordship.

The villagers' efforts ranged from appeals to the abbot, the King's Chief Justice in Cheshire and even to the King and Queen (who may have been somewhat sympathetic). They were repeatedly unsuccessful, and were unable to secure release them from their villeinhood. The abbots, for their part, may have had significant financial pressures upon them (Vale Royal had lost much of its royal funding following Edward I's Welsh campaign diverted both his money and masons from them), and this may have accounted for their strict enforcement of their rights. Either way, their tenants' struggle turned increasingly violent from 1326.

The struggle was led by the villagers of Darnhall, who conspired with their neighbours, particularly those from the nearby village of Over. On a number of occasions, when their appeals failed, they were subsequently imprisoned and fined by their abbot. On one occasion, in order to appeal to their abbot, the villagers of Darnhall and Over followed the fifth abbot, Peter, across England on an occasion when Peter was meeting the King at the King's Cliffe Hunting Lodge in order to himself appeal for royal assistance against his recalcitrant tenantry. The villagers met Peter in Rutland on his return journey; an affray broke out, a clerk of the abbot's was killed, and the villagers captured the abbot and his entourage. The King soon intervened and released him; the abbot then promptly had the villagers imprisoned again. Abbot Peter did not confine himself to confronting his serfs: he seems to have acted in a similarly high-handed fashion to the local gentry, and this resulted in Peter's killing in 1339.

Background[]

The Cistercian Abbey of Vale Royal, in the Weaver Valley, was originally founded by the Lord Edward (later King Edward I) in 1274, in gratitude for his safe passage through a storm on the return from his crusade. Originally intended to be a grand structure with a complement of 100 monks, it soon fell victim to the financing of Edward I's Welsh wars.[1] The King's campaigns meant that both money and stonemasons were diverted from the construction of the abbey,[2] making not only its future expansion, but the current sustenance, precarious.[3][4]

The new institution was unpopular in its locale, as its existence and the grants of land required — locals claimed — impinged on villagers' customary liberties.[5] The abbey was, for example, granted the forestry rights and free warren of Darnhall.[6] Relations between the abbey and its tenantry had thus, since the arrival of the new monks, also been precarious. In 1275, only a year after the abbey's foundation, tenants of Darnhall attempted to withdraw from paying the abbot customs and services, a position from which they would not withdraw, but rather would push with increasing vigour for the next fifty years.[7] They complained directly to King Edward I, and brought with them their iron ploughshares.[note 1] The King refused to countenance their position, telling them that "villeins you have come, and as villeins you shall return."[3][note 2] They complained again in 1307, but again with no success;[7] an inquest into their situation held by the Justiciar of Chester merely confirmed their bondage for them.[16] In 1320, during the abbacy of , one of his monks was attacked (and a servant killed) while collecting tithes in Darnhall.[7]

Abbots were not just abbots; they were also feudal lords, and as such should not be assumed to be sympathetic landlords purely on account of their ecclesiastical position. After all, when their tenants appeared before the abbot's manorial court, they were not appearing before an abbot, but before a judge, and the usual strictures of common law would apply.[17] The dispute spread to the neighbouring village of Middlewich, with villagers demanding relief from the abbot of Darnhall's immunities, which were oppressive to them.[18]

Although the villeins of Vale Royal's estate actually owed no labour service to their land, the villagers of Darnhall and those that joined them were still angered by the principle of their situation. Paul Booth writes: "they were the victims of the ownership of their manorial estates from the crown to a desperately under-endowed religious corporation."[19] They were probably not alone; theirs was not the only dispute of its kind. Villagers from nearby Middlewich also complained that the abbey owed them restitution for the loss of two salt pits which had been part of the abbey's endowment.[16] Similar disputes had broken out between other abbeys and their tenants too. To the south of London, there was one such feud between the tenants of Tooting and Bec Abbey (the French abbey had been given possessions in Tooting Bec). This had also gone from litigation to outright violence and law-breaking, and again had lasted many years.[20] Likewise, Bec Abbey's tenants in Ogbourne St George launched a "thoroughly organised peasant's revolt" in 1309, which also found some support amongst local gentry.[21] In the east, there was a similar tenant's revolt against the Abbot of Bury St Edmunds Abbey in 1327 which were similar to the later struggles of Darnhall and Over.[17] That abbey's chronicler, Jocelin of Brakelond, railed against all tenants who rose up against their lords, claiming that they "waxed fat" against the abbeys.[22] The revolt of Darnhall and Over was thus one of many small villein uprisings before the Peasants' Revolt of June 1381.[21]

The dispute[]

"The Darnhall custumal[note 3] reveals a harshness of exploitation unparalleled even on the old-established Benedictine houses of the south.[20]

— 

In 1327 the abbot drew up a custumal for the villages of Darnhall and Over, clearly with the intention of reinforcing claims upon those tenants' villeinage which had historically been belonged to his abbey, but which had not been enforced for some time.[24] The following year, a bitter struggle erupted in Darnhall. The village was a manor of the local Cistercian Abbey at Vale Royal,[note 4] and relations between the abbot and his tenants had broken down. Ever since King Edward II had granted the village to the abbey, the villagers (now the abbot's villeins) in historian 's words, "appear to have been fighting against a real social degradation".[20] It has been suggested that if the abbey was as poor as has been assumed, then this may account for the monks having to be extra harsh landlords.[3] Ultimately though, it is impossible to be certain as to whether the abbey was as locally tyrannous as the villagers claimed. It is possible that previous earls of Chester had been lax in their enforcement of serfdom, and that the two villages had got used to their relative freedoms. It is also possible that it was the monks who had been too lax in their enforcement, and that the villagers of Darnhall and surrounding areas saw an opportunity to take advantage of them.[18] There were at least four occasions of emancipatory manumission (without payment, unusually) taking place in the Vale Royal records between 1329 and 1340,[note 5] and one scholar has noted "an element of irony in the fact that the one corporate body which is known to have liberated any native is also the most distinguished for its rigid insistence on its legal rights over bondmen."[7] It would certainly appear the case that the monks approached the landlordly duties with zeal,[4] but also that the manumissions that did occur were insufficient to quell the villagers' ire.[16]

Either way, the two villages not only must have conspired together ("maliciously," states the abbey's own manorial roll),[note 6] but pooled mutual resources, for their campaign would not have been cheap.[28] Both travel and litigation cost money, from the writing of the petition by clerks to their advisement on it by lawyers. There was no such thing after all, says , "as cheap litigation."[29][note 7]

What strikes one about this account, is not the lawlessness of the abbey's tenants but their touching faith in the legal process.[31]

— Richard Firth Green

The tenants' resistance included refusing to grind flour at the abbot's mill, a rejection of their own bondage, continuing efforts to prevent restrictions from the abbot on the leasing of their land,[20] and the concomitant right to lease it out for up to ten years.[4] This resistance in 1328 led only to punishment in the form of fines, imprisonment, and eventual submission.[20] The abbey's ledger book records how in 1329 — as they saw it — the rebellious tenantry "plotted maliciously" against the abbey's "liberty."[32] The Darnhall villagers had approached (on the first of many occasions) the Cheshire Justiciar, claiming to have been granted their freedom by an "aforetime" royal charter. Although the legal response is now unknown, it was presumably unsuccessful, as, on their return to the village, they were thrown in gaol until they swore an oath to cease their complaints.[31] Presumably this oath was under duress, for they did so, and were released, only to send a delegation to the King (at this time in the north)[31][note 8] on the same matter. It is unknown whether the party ever reached the King, but it is known to have at some point ended up in a Nottingham prison, for some reason only narrowly avoiding being executed there as thieves. This was followed by a petition before the King in parliament at Westminster, which resulted in a new Justiciar being sent to Cheshire to hear their petition. Before he did, however, he read — and had been immediately persuaded by — the abbey's royal charters. As a result, the villagers were again returned to the abbey for punishment.[31]

The abbey's recorder returned to logging similar complaints in 1337 when, again, the tenants of Darnhall and Over "conspired against their lords" and "endeavoured to gain their liberty." Recording how the people firstly complained to the Chester Justiciar, then petitioned parliament, and finally sent a deputation from among their own to present their case to the King at Windsor, the writer concluded they were behaving "like mad dogs."[32] This was because even though by now the abbey had asserted and reasserted its rights over them in court, and had always received favourable judgements, the villagers of Darnhall refused to accept their position, refused payment of their customary dues, and reignited the argument. Furthermore, when Abbot Peter attempted to collect the monies owed him by confiscating the villagers' goods, they merely decamped with them.[34]

In 1336, the abbot denied the villages of Over rights of admission of burgage in the newly chartered borough; this prompted the Over villagers to join with their neighbours from Darnhall against the abbey,[16] and the tenantry relaunched their campaign against the abbot. They attempted to utilise the law in their favour. As Hilton puts it: "They beset the Justiciar of Cheshire, the King himself, and even Queen Philippa in their search for redress of law."[32] Indeed, the latter may actually have supported them.[34] According to all accounts, the peasants plotted by night.[32] The extent to which the abbot was held personally responsible is indicated by the distances that the villagers were willing to travel to confront him.[7] They went to extreme lengths: on one occasion they travelled as far as Rutland to hunt the abbot down and ambush him.[28]

Attack on Abbot Peter[]

In the same year began [Abbot Peter's] severe struggle with the bondmen of Darnhall, which lasted a long time and compelled him to make many journeys, in one of which he was assaulted and carried off, ignominiously enough, by "the bestial men of Rutland" to Stamford.[35]

The abbot of the day, Peter, visited King Edward III at the latter's royal hunting lodge at King's Cliffe in June 1336, where he requested royal assistance in his struggle against his rebellious tenants. As he passed the village of Exton he was set upon by what the ledger author called a "great crowd of the country people" of Darnhall. He was not necessarily in immediate danger; indeed, the same author tells of how the abbot own cellarer rushed, mounted, from the rear of the party "like a champion sent from God" to defend the abbot. It seems though, that the men of Cheshire were then joined by some locals, and that this resulted in Abbot Peter being "ignominiously taken."[34] In the course of the struggle, the abbot groom was killed.[16] However, his release — and the arrest of his captors — was ordered by the King the following day. Peter was released, and his captors were imprisoned in chains in "the greatest of misery" in Stamford.[34][note 9] Curiously, although the villagers had killed a man in the melée, the King soon released them from their chains. Even more surprisingly, perhaps, is the fact that the King subsequently wrote to Abbot Peter requesting that he return to his tenants the property he had confiscated (an order the Abbot ignored).[3] The abbot did, however, reduce their subsequent £10 fine to £4.[16]

As they found, the abbot had sufficient political connections and influence in central government to stymie the villagers' suits. The early encouragement that Hilton says they had received from various "royal and official personages" had clearly amounted to little.[28] The abbot's legal victory did not assuage a serious undermining of his authority, however.[24] As with any lord in the Middle Ages, when his authority was questioned by those of a lower social strata, the law would almost inherently find for him, but (notes Hewitt) it would also "be idle to identify legality with justice."[17] It is certainly unlikely that the abbey attained its near-permanent favourable legal position without a fair amount of legal manipulation and chicanery.[3] The villages resorted to further violence, and in 1339 — probably in the course of raiding the abbey's crops or outhouses — they killed both Abbot Peter and his cellerer.[16]

Legacy[]

Despite its assertions of right, the abbey was never able to fully dominate its own estate, or to prove itself as the regional lord from which all other tenure relationships sprang.[4] Abbots of Vale Royal continued to face disruption from the populace almost up until the time of the abbey's dissolution by King Henry VIII in 1536. In 1351, they complained that they were "so wrongfully annoyed and harassed in many other ways."[36] The late fourteenth-century Edward the Black Prince wrote to the Justice of Chester that he believed the abbots to be "wrongfully annoyed and harassed in many...ways by the people of these parts...the Justice is therefore to restrain any persons who from malice are going about to molest or annoy them."[37] And as late as 1442, the abbot moaned that when he attempted to travel to Llanbadarn Fawr, Ceredigion, he was continually at risk of attack.[38]

See also[]

Notes[]

  1. ^ Ploughshares were not just the tools of their everyday trade: described in 1973 as an example of the "sophisticated symbolization of medieval agricultural equipment,",[8] they represented both the two qualities of productivity and penitence.[9] More importantly from the tenants point of view, they demonstrated their status as freemen.[3]
  2. ^ In the early-medieval period, villeins were serfs who were tied to the land they worked, and as bonded tenants, they could not leave or stop working that land without the agreement of the lord of the manor. By the late fourteenth century the role had ceased being as burdensome as it would have been a couple of hundred years earlier, with no heavy labouring service enforced. But it was still possible (and Vale Royal Abbey was party to this) for a lord to insist on receiving a third of a tenant's goods on the latter's death.[10] Also, not being freemen, villeins did not have recourse to trial by jury.[11][12][13] Even so: "despite the light labour services associated with villein tenure, there is no doubt that the personal and financial liabilities could weigh heavily."[14] One particular service the villages of both Darnhall and Over were contracted for was that when a daughter married, "redemption" had to be paid to the abbey.[15]
  3. ^ A custumal was an early-medieval form of survey but one which, rather than listing the contents of an estate, assessed the customs of one. It thus gave the lord of the manor access to all local customs, often based on "oral testimony and the precedents recorded in other manorial documents (especially court rolls)."[23]
  4. ^ Apart from Darnhall and Over, the abbey's large estate included the villages of Weaverham, , and parts of , Marton, and Twemlow.[25]
  5. ^ This was a relatively rare occurrence, mainly due to the sheer cost to the serf of remitting himself to the feudal lord for their freedom (£10=15 by the fifteenth century).[26]
  6. ^ "Be it remembered that in the year 1329, and in the third year of the reign of King Edward [the Third] after the Conquest, the bondmen of the manor of Dernehale plotted maliciously against their lords, the Abbot Peter and the convent of Vale Royal, and they all assembled together at night in a place called Cunbbestyl, and declared against (confringentes) the liberty of the aforesaid house, [saying] that they would not grind at the lord's mill of Dernehale, and that it was not lawful for the abbot to punish them for any offence, except by the assessment of their neighbours." — 'Pleas and evidences: Fos. 7-20', in The Ledger Book of Vale Royal Abbey.[27]
  7. ^ As K. B. McFarlane said of the period, "Like gambling, litigation was a rich man's pursuit."[30]
  8. ^ Edward III invaded Scotland in March 1333, crushing the Scots at the Battle of Homildon Hill that July.[33]
  9. ^ The Ledger and its author are naturally writing from the perspective of the abbot; unsurprisingly, "the villagers of Darnhall have not left us their side of the story".[34]

References[]

  1. ^ Denton 1992, pp. 124–25.
  2. ^ Platt 1994, p. 65.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Firth-Green 1999, p. 166.
  4. ^ a b c d Morgan 1987, p. 77.
  5. ^ Brownbill 1914, p. vi.
  6. ^ V. C. H. 1980, pp. 156–65.
  7. ^ a b c d e Hewitt 1929, p. 166.
  8. ^ Barney 1973, p. 261.
  9. ^ Bailey 2014, pp. 361–62.
  10. ^ Bennett 1983, p. 92.
  11. ^ Harding 1993, pp. 74–76.
  12. ^ Faith 1999, pp. 245–465.
  13. ^ Hatcher 1987, pp. 247–84.
  14. ^ Booth 1981, pp. 4–5.
  15. ^ C. C. C. 1967, p. 89.
  16. ^ a b c d e f g V. C. H. 1980.
  17. ^ a b c Hewitt 1929, p. 168.
  18. ^ a b Brownbill 1914, p. 186.
  19. ^ Booth 1981, p. 5.
  20. ^ a b c d e Hilton 1949, p. 128.
  21. ^ a b Faith 1987, p. 62.
  22. ^ de Brakelond 1989, p. 108.
  23. ^ Bailey 2002, p. 61.
  24. ^ a b Coulton 1925, p. 141.
  25. ^ Hewitt 1929, p. 28.
  26. ^ Rigby 2008, p. 77.
  27. ^ Brownbill 1914, p. 32.
  28. ^ a b c Hilton 1949, p. 129.
  29. ^ Ives 1983, pp. 318–20.
  30. ^ McFarlane 1997, p. 120.
  31. ^ a b c d Firth-Green 1999, p. 167.
  32. ^ a b c d Harding 1987, p. 191.
  33. ^ Brown 2004, pp. 235–38.
  34. ^ a b c d e Firth-Green 1999, p. 165.
  35. ^ Brownbill 1914, p. 20.
  36. ^ Chetham Society 1957, p. 80 n.2.
  37. ^ Chetham Society 1957, p. 40 n.7.
  38. ^ Williams 2001, p. 56.

Bibliography[]

  • Bailey, M. (2002). The English Manor C.1200 To C.1500. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-5229-3.
  • Bailey, M. (2014). "The Ploughman". In S. H. Rigby (ed.). Historians on Chaucer: The 'general Prologue' to the Canterbury Tales. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 352–367. ISBN 978-0-19-968954-5.
  • Barney, S. A. (1973). "The Plowshare of the Tongue: The Progress of a Symbol from the Bible to Piers Plowman". Mediaeval Studies. 35: 261–93. doi:10.1484/J.MS.2.306140. OCLC 784307197.
  • Bennett, M. J. (1983). Community, Class and Careers. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-52182-6.
  • Booth, P. H. W. (1981). The Financial Administration of the Lordship and County of Chester, 1272-1377. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-1337-9.
  • Brown, M. (2004). The Wars of Scotland, 1214-1371. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-1238-3.
  • Brownbill, J., ed. (1914). The Ledger Book of Vale Royal Abbey. Manchester: Manchester Record Society. OCLC 847690141.
  • C. C. C. (1967). A History of Cheshire. V. Chester: Cheshire Community Council. OCLC 213806870.
  • Chetham Society (1957). The Church in Chester 1300-1540. Remains Historical and Literary connected with the Palatine Counties of Lancaster and Chester. III. Manchester: Manchester University Press. OCLC 5802902.
  • Coulton, G. G. (1925). The Medieval Village. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought (1st ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780486158600. OCLC 900158255.
  • de Brakelond, J. (1989). Greenway, D.E.; Sayers, J.E. (eds.). Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192838954.
  • Denton, J. (1992). "From the Foundation of Vale Royal Abbey to the Statute of Carlisle: Edward I and Ecclesiastical Patronage". In P. R. Coss (ed.). Thirteenth Century England IV: Proceedings of the Newcastle Upon Tyne Conference 1991. Thirteenth Century England. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer Ltd. pp. 124–38. ISBN 978-0-85115-325-4.
  • Faith, R. (1987). "The 'Great Rumour' of 1377 and Peasant Ideology". In Hilton, R. H.; Aston, T. H. (eds.). The English Rising of 1381. Past and Present Publications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 43–73. ISBN 978-0-521-35930-6.
  • Faith, R. (1999). The English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship. London: Leicester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7185-0204-1.
  • Firth-Green, R. (1999). A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-1809-4.
  • Harding, A. (1987). "The Revolt Against the Justices". In Hilton, R. H.; Aston, T. H. (eds.). The English Rising of 1381. Past and Present Publications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 165–93. ISBN 978-0-521-35930-6.
  • Harding, A. (1993). England in the Thirteenth Century. Oxford: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-31612-5.
  • Hatcher, J. (1987). "English Serfdom and Villeinage: Towards a Reassessment". In T. H. Aston (ed.). Landlords, Peasants and Politics in Medieval England. Cambridge University Press. pp. 247–84. ISBN 978-0-521-03127-1.
  • Hewitt, H. J. (1929). Mediaeval Cheshire: An Economic and Social History of Cheshire in the Reigns of the Three Edwards. Manchester: Manchester University Press. OCLC 867859420. GGKEY:RZPQ52YFGDW.
  • Hilton, R. H (1949). "Peasant Movements in England before 1381". The Economic History Review. New Series. 2 (2): 117. doi:10.2307/2590102. JSTOR 2590102. OCLC 47075644.
  • Ives, E. W. (1983). The Common Lawyers of Pre-Reformation England: Thomas Kebell: A Case Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-24011-6.
  • McFarlane, K.B. (1997). Harriss, G. L. (ed.). Letters to Friends, 1940-1966. Oxford: Magdalen College. ISBN 9780951374795.
  • Morgan, P. (1987). War and Society in Medieval Cheshire, 1277-1403. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-1342-3.
  • Platt, C. (1994). Medieval England: A Social History and Archaeology from the Conquest to 1600 AD. London: Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-12913-8.
  • Rigby, S. H. (2008). A Companion to Britain in the Later Middle Ages. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-99877-9.
  • V. C. H. (1980). Elrington, C. R.; Harris, B. E. (eds.). "Houses of Cistercian monks: The abbey of Vale Royal". Victoria County History. A History of the County of Chester, III. London. Archived from the original on 16 Apr 2015. Retrieved 5 March 2018.
  • Williams, D. H. (2001). The Welsh Cistercians. Leominster: Gracewing Publishing. ISBN 978-0-85244-354-5.
Retrieved from ""