1. W. H. St John Hope and J.
Bilson, Architectural Description of Kirkstall Abbey (Leeds,
1907), p. 60.
2. S. Moorhouse and S. Wrathmell,
Kirkstall Abbey Vol I: the 1950-64 excavations; a reassessment (Bradfield,
1987), p. 108.
3. S. Wrathmell, et alia, Kirkstall
Abbey: the guesthouse (2nd edn., Wakefield, 1987) p. 12.
4. Wrathmell, et alia, Kirkstall
Abbey: the guesthouse, p. 21.
5. Wrathmell, et alia, Kirkstall
Abbey: the guesthouse, p. 8.
6. Wrathmell, et alia, Kirkstall
Abbey: the guesthouse, p. 17.
7. Whilst the Cistercian houses
were exempt from diocesan visitation, the archbishop of York was
entitled to claim hospitality on his first visitation of the diocese,
but he was expected to give adequate warning: on 31 May 1301 Thomas
Corbridge notified Kirkstall that he would be visiting on 20 June;
William Greenfield gave notice of his visit on 3 June on 15 May;
in 1408 Henry Bowet spent Ascension Day at Kirkstall, John Kempe
visited the community in March 1441, Reg Corbridge, p. 51;
Reg. Greenfield II, p. xxii, Reg. Bowet and Kempe,
pp. 138, 249. The monks might, however, welcome their diocesan
on other
occasions Archbishop Greenfield was at Kirkstall in November
1310 and October 1313, Reg. Greenfield IV, p. 85; V, p.
29.
8. It was probably at Kirkstall
that, at Edward IIIs command, Lord John stayed with his
men while the king waited in Yorkshire to attack the Scots; he
may,
however, have stayed at Byland,
F. Mullin, A History of the Work of the Cistercians in Yorkshire1131-1300 (Washington,
1932), p. 89.
9. Wrathmell et alia, Kirkstall
Abbey: the guesthouse, p. 26.
10. Wrathmell et al., Kirkstall
Abbey: the guesthouse, p. 24.
11. J. M.
Canivez, Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis ab anno 1116
ad anno 1786 8 vols (Louvain, 1933-41), I, 1134:
7; 1154: 24. The late thirteenth-century Beaulieu Account Book
states that relatives of the community and other women who could
not be refused without scandal should receive bread from the furno,
beer from the cellarer and pittances from the sub-cellarer (although
the guestmaster accounted for this in his audit), see The Account
Book of Beaulieu Abbey, ed S. F. Hockey (Camden Soc., 4th
ser. 16; 1975). This suggests that these women were provided
for outside
the precinct or perhaps even in the outer court. Provisions
were not to be given to prostitutes or local women save in exceptional
times, Ecclesiastica Officia, 120: 18, 19 (p. 334).
12. Statutes I, 1157:
10, 58.
13. Memorials of the Abbey
of St Mary of Fountains I, ed. J. R. Walbran (Durham, 1863),no.
xliii, pp. 205-6.
14. Annales Monasticii
II, p. 337. Further examples of the General Chapters hostility
include their reaction to Queen Ingelburga of Frances two-day
sojourn at Pontigny in 1205, and reports that women had stayed
at
Quarr Abbey on the Isle
of Wight for six days in 1205, Canivez,
Statutes I, 1205: 10, 59.
15. It is not clear whether
this was Henry Is queen, Adelaide, or Stephens queen,
Matilda.
16. Gesta Abbatum Monasterii
Sancti Albani, ed. H. T. Riley, 3 vols. (London, 1867-9),
I, p. 79;
this was adjacent to the guesthall erected at this time for the
honourable
reception of noble guests, which was probably situated to the west
of the cloister, at right angles to the abbots chambers.
Note that in 1264 Nicholas de Cauntlows wife gave birth
at the Cluniac Priory of Lenton, see J. R. Moorman, Church
Life in England in the Thirteenth-Century (Cambridge, 1945), p.
355.
17. C. Harper-Bill, ‘Cistercian
visitation in the late Middle Ages: the case of Hailes Abbey’ Bulletin
of the Institute of Historical Research 53 (1980), pp. 103-114,
at p. 111.