Rise and fall: footnotes

9. These grants of cash were earmarked for specific purposes: Henry de Lacy granted the community one mark for the abbot’s vestry and 1 1/2 marks for a light to burn before the altar; Samson of Allerton gave 5s p.a. to the monks for a pittance on St Lawrence’s day; Robert of Stapleton gave 1/2 mark so as the monks might receive a pittance on St Botulph’s Day (17 June), his father’s birthday, The Coucher Book of the Cistercian Abbey of Kirkstall in the West Riding of the County of York, ed. W. T. Lancaster and W. P. Baildon, Thoresby Society VIII (Leeds, 1904), no. ccclxv (p. 264).

10. Barnes, Kirkstall Abbey, p. 21. Therefore, although we do not have a complete record of all Kirkstall’s holdings, the Coucher Book and surviving charters provide a record of a number of their lands.

11. Foundation of Kirkstall, p.183.

12. Foundation of Kirkstall, p. 186.

13. Barnes, Kirkstall Abbey, p. 79.

14. Foundation of Kirkstall, pp. 186-7.

15. For examples, see J. M. Canivez, Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis ab anno 1116 ad anno 1786 8 vols (Louvain, 1933-41), I, 1214: 24 (p. 422); 1214: 41 (p. 425); II, 1236: 48 (p. 163); 1236: 52 (p. 164); 1237: 72 (pp 183-4); 1247: 49 (p. 324).

16. Calendar of Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, 1272-81, p. 170.

17. Canivez, Statutes III, 1279: 6, p. 185.

18. Canivez, Statutes III, p. 203.

19. Canivez, Statutes III, p. 212.

20. The Foundation of Kirkstall states that this was at the time of Hugh of Grimstone’s succession, but see The Heads of Religious Houses in England and Wales 940-1215, ed. D. Knowles, C. N. L. Brooke and V. London (Cambridge, 2001), II, pp. 288-9, for the editor’s discussion of this error; William of Darlington and not Hugh of Grimstone succeeded Henry Carr.

21. Foundation of Kirkstall, p. 189.

22. Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire had 2255 sheep c. 1270, having lost c. 1460 to murrain, Talbot, Beaulieu Abbey Account Book, p. 97.

23. Fletcher, The Cistercians in Yorkshire (London, 1919), p. 120

24. Foundation of Kirkstall, pp. 189-203.

25. Foundation of Kirkstall, pp. 194-5.

26. Foundation of Kirkstall, p. 203.

27. Barnes, Kirkstall Abbey, p. 64.

28. Coucher Book, pp. 289-90.

29. A long drawn-out affair between the abbot of Kirkstall and the king’s mother, regarding land at Barnoldswick, was eventually decided in the abbot’s favour. In 1292 John of Kirkstall and Adam the Hunter, two of the abbot of Kirkstall’s men, faced charges, for John Sampson claimed that they had seized and retained his iron hammer on Eccup Moor; he thus demanded forty shillings recompense. John and Adam maintained that as the abbot’s bailiffs they had a right to do so, since Sampson should not have been working the soil there, which belonged to the abbot; Sampson argued that the abbot and convent had enfeoffed him of two carucates of land in Touhouses (Tofthouse), which gave him the right to take stones from the moor for building; see Fletcher, The Cistercians in Yorkshire, pp. 124-6.

30. It has been calculated that from 1260-1517 there were some forty legal cases regarding those who had damaged the abbot’s woods, crops or pastures, or seized their cattle, committed trespass on their property, or made waste of houses and gardens, Fletcher, The Cistercians in Yorkshire, p. 126; the upkeep of lands and properties could clearly be an expensive business. In 1507 William Midgely of Horsforth was accused of stealing twelve oxen and a cow form the abbey which he sold in the parish of Durham; see J. Wardell, An Historical Account of Kirkstall Abbey, rev. W. M. Nelson (Leeds, 1882), pp. 35-6.

31. Note that in 1274 the abbot leased lands in Bramhope to the master of St Leonard’s, but in 1294 brought a suit against another master for laying waste to the houses and garden here, that he had leased to a former master; see Barnes, Kirkstall Abbey, pp. 75-6.

32. Coucher Book, p. xxiv.

33. Coucher Book, pp. xxiii-iv; later there were difficulties when the merchants were unable to meet their contract.

34. There could be a conflict of interests - in 1376 Edward I forbade that money be taken out of the kingdom; the abbot of Waverley informed the abbot of Citeaux, who had levied a tax for crusading purposes, of this prohibition - he was incensed that his authority had been questioned in this way and decreed that the abbots of Ford and Benington should inform the king of his position ‘in the softest terms’ ; in the meantime the money was to be collected and deposited at Stafford, ready to be remitted as the Chapter directed; see Lancaster, Coucher Book, pp. xxvii-xxviii; see no LXI.

35. Barnes, Kirkstall Abbey, p. 75; for the Templar’s trial, see Register Greenfield IV, p. 364; for Kirkstall’s negligence at allowing the Templar to escape and the unpopularity of having such visitors to stay, see The Register of William Greenfield, Lord Archbishop of York 1306-1315, ed. W. Brown and A. H. Thompson, 5 vols (1931-40), V p. xxxix; ibid. no. 2354 (pp. 1-5).

36. Barnes, Kirkstall Abbey, p. 63.

37. Barnes, Kirkstall Abbey, p. 63.

38. In 1411 and 1496 members of the Clifford family did homage to the abbot of Kirkstall for their lands, Barnes, Kirkstall Abbey, p. 79.

39. Barnes, Kirkstall Abbey, p. 50.

40. Barnes, Kirkstall Abbey, p. 50. St Leonard’s Hospital, York, and John of Gaunt were amongst those who complained that members of the community had made attacks on their property.

41. Barnes, Kirkstall Abbey, p. 76.

42. Rotuli Hundredorum I, 112.

43. Canivez, Statutes, III, p. 200.

44. Barnes, Kirkstall Abbey, pp 49-50.

45. The Register of William Greenfield, II, p. 177

46. Foundation of Kirkstall, p. 182; Coucher Book, pp. xxiii.

47. Foundation of Kirkstall, pp. 184-5.

48. See R. Graham, ‘The Great Schism and the English Monasteries of the Cistercian Order’ , English Historical Review XLIV, pp. 373-87.

49. See W. Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museums I (1887), p. 839, no. 4434. The seal shows a church with tower and crossing, and on it, ‘a lozenge-shaped seal of arms with three indistinct charges; the field was filled with sprigs of foliage.

Kirkstall Abbey Bibliography