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Disputes with other Cistercian houses
(9/15)
Kirkstall was also involved in disputes with other
Cistercian houses, either as sparring partners or, as was often
the case, as arbiters. In 1219 three heads of local houses were
sent on the pope’s commission, to settle a dispute between
Kirkstall and the rector of Thorner over tithes of lands that the
monks held in his parish. It was agreed that the community should
thenceforth pay thirteen pennies each year, except at Bardsey and
Collingham where the sum of twenty shillings and four wax candles
was to be given instead.(12)
Although Kirkstall acquired most of its possessions during the
first thirty or forty years of its foundation, the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries did not spell the end of expansion. In 1395,
for example, Kirkstall’s patron, John of Gaunt, helped negotiate
the community’s purchase of the cell of Birstell from the
Benedictine abbey of Aumale in Normandy (NE Rouen), along with
many of its possessions. Aumale had established the alien cell
at Birstell to oversee the abbey’s English possessions, but
their need for money to repair their abbey, following a fire, led
them to sell Birstell to Kirkstall for £10 000. All traces
of Birstell, which stood near the Humber, have been swept away
by coastal erosion.(13) <back><next>
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