and one woman who received board, and possibly lodging also, at the expense of the priory.[1] The priors too at this time were foreigners, sent direct from Marmoutier, and by no means always men of high character. William de Menevere in 1329 was accused of taking the goods of John Kimble of Filgrave.[2] The vicar of Newport Pagnel complained in 1340 that Fulk de Champaigne, then prior, with two others, had lately besieged his house at Tickford, had broken the doors and win- dows, when he tried to escape had insulted, beaten and wounded him, and threatened to burn the house over his head if he returned.[3] This prior, or his successor, died in the year of the Great Pestilence, which probably lowered still further the numbers and resources of the priory.
The lands and revenues of aliens were again in the king's hand during the reign of Ed- ward III., and Tickford was farmed out for twenty-three years [4] : it was in the same con- dition in the time of Richard II. It must have been extremely difficult to maintain the ordinary discipline of the house while its revenues were administered by secular offi- cials, whose only interest was to secure some margin of profit for themselves, after paying the rent due to the king. It was indeed some- times hard to know who was the real head of the house. In 1386 the farmer and chaplain appointed at Tickford by letters patent suc- ceeded in disseising John Dvien, recently elected prior, on the ground of an ordinance of Parliament dated I Richard II., expelling all aliens except priors who had a title for life. On the occasion of the king's journey to Scot- land, when he lodged in the monastery, John Dvien however managed to lay his complaint before Richard himself, and was restored to office and allowed to hold the priory instead of the other farmers, at a rent of 40 marks a year. [5] It is not surprising, under such con- ditions as this, to find notice of ' waste, de- struction and other defects ' in this house.[6] Nor was John Dvien, it must be owned, a man who was likely to help his brethren to regain a higher standard of life. He was charged in 1398 with trying to obtain tithes from the Rector of North Crawley on false pretences ; the case was proved against him, and he was condemned to pay the costs ; but he refused to accept the sentence and appealed finally to Rome, only to be condemned again. In 1400 he and his convent were threatened with ex- communication if they still refused to give up the tithes and pay the costs, and James, bishop of Ploek, was to invoke the secular arm against them if necessary.[7]
From the reign of Henry IV. onwards the priory ceased to be immediately subject to Tours ; and the priors were thenceforward nominated by the prior of Holy Trinity, York, as proctor-general of the Abbot of Marmou- tier. [8] Once indeed in 1499,[9] at the death of William Pemberton, the abbot wrote and appointed a monk of St. Peter's, Westminster, in his place ; but no notice was taken of his letter. The delegates who visited all the Cluniac monasteries in England in 1450 men- tion Tickford by name, but it is doubtful if they really came to this priory : they reported that it was immediately subject to the priory of Lewes, which was not the case, and also that it contained sixteen monks, which seems improbable at this time.[10]
Thomas Broke, who was elected in 1503, had been previously Prior of Snelshall. The last prior surrendered the house to Wolsey
- ↑ The account of these corrodies is interesting, as tending to show that the monks of mediaeval England fared on the whole neither more nor less luxuriously than ordinary citizens of the middle classthat is to say, of the class from which most of them came, during the thirteenth and until the sixteenth century. If the fare provided in the refectory of the convent had been much poorer than was customary in this class of life, the secular chaplains and vicars who served their appropriate churches would scarcely have been expected to take their meals ordinarily with the monks, and to regard this board as part of their stipend : if the food had been better and more costly than that eaten by ordinary citizens, the monks themselves would not have been so ready to grant corrodies for life to their lesser benefactors. Bread and beer are constantly mentioned as the staple diet of the monks. See the account of Dunstable Priory in the V.C.H. Beds, i. 375. Nearly all these pen- sioners at Tickford received a loaf of bread and a gallon of conventual beer daily : one had in addi- tion four dishes of meat every week, another a robe every year : in one case it is expressly stated that a monk's corrody was granted in satisfaction of a debt of 25s.
- ↑ Pat. 2 Edw. III. pt. i., m. 34d.
- ↑ Pat. 14 Edw. III. pt. i., m. 2od. These last are merely accusations, and may not of course have been actually proved.
- ↑ Bull, History of Newport Pagnel.
- ↑ Pat. 10 Richard II. pt. i., m. 36.
- ↑ Ibid. 9 Richard II. m. 40d.
- ↑ Cal. of Pap. Letters, v. 93-4, and 271-2.
- ↑ Line. Epis. Reg.
- ↑ Bull, History of Newport Pagnel, 80 ; from Bodleian Library, Bucks Charters, 59.
- ↑ Sir G. F. Duckett, Visitations of English Cluniac Foundations, 43. In the same author's Charters and Records of the Abbey of Cluni the words are debent esse sexdecim, which is probably the correct form of the statement made by the visitors.
