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Fountains Abbey: History
Fountains Abbey: Buildings
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The end of monastic life: the Dissolution of Fountains (4/6)
In the February of 1535, Doctors Layton and Legh, the royal commissioners notorious for their rigorous visitation of the religious houses in the north of England, conducted an investigation at Fountains. They sought evidence of misconduct, and charged eight members of the community of immorality. Christopher Jenkynson and Thomas Browne were accused of self-abuse; Thomas was also accused of committing sodomy with a boy, and Gavin Byrtleson with five boys. Robert Dodgeson had allegedly conducted an illicit affair with a married woman; Lawrence Benne took this a step further and engaged in two such affairs. Whilst Christopher Lighton and Walter Newark each enjoyed ‘immoral relations’ with single women, John Melsonby had dalliances with two single women.(130) These charges cannot, however, be taken too seriously. Damning reports of a similar nature were almost an inevitability following a visitation by the royal commissioners, and provided the evidence required to justify their next act – the suppression of the monasteries.
On 26 November, 1539, Abbot Marmaduke Bradley gathered in the chapter-house at Fountains with his prior, Thomas Kydde, and the thirty remaining monks, to surrender their abbey and all its property to the royal commissioners. Unfortunately the surrender deed no longer survives, but this would have been similar to those signed at Roche, Rievaulx and Byland. In return for his compliance, each monk of Fountains received a pension, relative to his standing within the community.
An inventory
was taken and a valuation of the abbey and its lands made. Fountains
was valued at £1115
18s 2d, making it the wealthiest Cistercian abbey in the country,
although this was considerably less than the great Benedictine
houses such as the
abbeys of Westminster and Glastonbury, which had a net income of £3470
and £3311 respectively; St Mary’s, York, had a net income of £1650.(131) Still,
Fountains offered rich pickings for the Crown. There were fine
ecclesiastical vestments and vessels - copes, mitres encrusted
with silver gilt decoration,
silver-headed crosiers and chalices; plate, jewels and relics – including
a piece of the True Cross. Another highly prized material was the
abbey’s
lead, and this was stripped from the roof, pipes and elsewhere,
and melted down to form ingots, or ‘pigs’, which were easier
to transport. Each pig weighed nine hundredweights.(132) |
