the county, there is no doubt that there were several of exceptional
interest, and whose history could be gleaned from unprinted or
little-known records with so much amplitude that there would be
abundant justification for the issue of monographs of no mean
dimensions. Such is emphatically the case with the Cluniac house of
Lenton, with which the town of Nottingham was so intimately connected,
and with the important Premonstratensian house of White Canons of
Welbeck. A third instance is undoubtedly to be found in the Black
Canons of Newstead. Newstead was by no means one of the largest or
wealthiest of the English houses of Austin Canons, but its history
can be so fully exemplified, its situation in a beautifully timbered
glade, surrounded on all sides by Sherwood Forest, is so exceptionally
picturesque, the extent of the remnants of its conventual buildings so
extensive, and its post-dissolution story, especially in connection
with Lord Byron, so romantic, that a complete and carefully compiled
work is much to be desired. It is proposed, then, to devote the
remainder of this sketch to a record of some of the facts relative to
Newstead Priory. In the later Byron period its title was changed to
Newstead Abbey, a piece of mendacious pride of which several other lay
owners of monastic sites have been guilty.
From certain statements in the foundation charter of Henry II., it has
been assumed by some that Newstead was a re-establishment of Austin
Canons from some other part of Sherwood Forest, where they had been
originally placed at an earlier date by Henry I.; but this is after
all only a matter of somewhat vague conjecture. The very name of this
religious house renders, however, some support to this idea. The prefix
“New” has the same force as in Newark, Newcastle, Newminster, and the
host of Newtons; and it was possibly here used in contradistinction
to the Oldstead of a former foundation. There are two other English
monastic establishments of this name--namely, the Gilbertine house
of Newstead in Lindsey, and another Austin house of Newstead near
Stamford; in both these cases a refoundation has been suggested.
Newstead Priory--officially termed Prioratus Sancte Marie de Novo Loco
in foresta nostra de Scirwurda--was founded in Sherwood as a house
of Austin Canons by Henry II., about the year 1770. The foundation
charter, executed at the royal residence of Clarendon, Wilts, conferred
on the canons a site near the centre of the forest, Papplewick, with
its church and mill and other appurtenances; the meadow of Bestwood
by the side of the water; and 100 shillings of rent in Shapwick and
Walkeringham. The canons were also granted a great extent of the forest
waste around the monastery, the bounds of which are set forth in detail
at the beginning of the chartulary. King John, in 1206, confirmed the
founder’s grant, together with the church of Hucknall, of his own
gift when Earl of Mortain, and £7, 8s. 6d. of lands in Walkeringham,
Misterton, Shapwick, and “Walkerith” in Lincolnshire.
In 1238, on 8th May, the mandate of Henry III. was sent to the prior
of Newstead to allow Thomas de Dunholmia, citizen of London, to have
all the goods late of Joan, Queen of Scots, which had been deposited
with the canons after her death by John de Sancto Egidio and Henry
Balliol, to do therewith what the King had enjoined on them.
[Illustration: NEWSTEAD PRIORY. BUCK’S WEST VIEW,
1726.]
The convent obtained the royal licence, in April 1241, to elect a new
prior, when their choice fell on William the cellarer. The licence was
delivered at Westminster to Henry Walkelin and Thomas de Donham, two of
the canons, who took the news of the death of Prior Robert to the King.
The endowments slowly increased by various small benefactions. Thus
Henry III., in 1251, granted the priory 10 acres of land out of the
royal hay of Linby, to be held quit of all interference by the forest
ministers, with licence to enclose the land with hedge and dyke.
Nevertheless the convent was so seriously in debt in 1274, that the
King appointed a receiver to administer their estates during pleasure.
In 1279 the prior and canons obtained licence to fell and sell the
timber of a wood of 40 acres which had been given them in 1245. Such a
step as this would certainly bring considerable financial relief; but
the regular income was after all very small for a house where wayfarers
would so often claim hospitality. The income, according to the Taxation
Roll of 1291, was only £83, 13s. 6d. The house was again pressed by
its creditors in 1295, when, at their own request, Hugh de Vienne was
appointed by the Crown to take charge of the revenue, applying the
income, saving a reasonable sustenance for the prior, canons, and their
men, to the relief of their debts; no sheriff, bailiff, or such-like
minister were to lodge in the priory or its granges during such
custody. On 25th July 1300, another like custodian, Peter de Leicester,
a King’s clerk, was appointed after a similar fashion.
The King, in 1304, made an important augmentation of the possessions of
Newstead by granting the house 180 acres of the waste in the forest hay
of Linby at a rent of £4, due to the sheriff, with licence to enclose
them and bring them into cultivation.
Both Edward I. and Edward II. seem to have been attached to this
house in the centre of the forest, notwithstanding the important
royal hunting lodge at Clipston. Edward I. sojourned at Newstead in
August 1280 and in September 1290, and Edward II. in September 1307
and October 1315, as is shown by the Patent and Close Rolls. The royal
licence was obtained from the latter King, in 1315, to permit the
appropriation of the church of Egmanton.
News of the resignation of Prior Richard de Grange was brought to
the King at Nottingham by the canons Robert de Sutton and Robert de
Wylleby on 13th December 1324, and they took back with them leave to
elect. On 10th December the King signified the Archbishop of York that
he had assented to the election of William de Thurgarton, canon of
Newstead, as prior. Owing to informality the archbishop quashed the
election and claimed that the right of preferment had devolved upon
him. Recognising, however, the worth of William de Thurgarton, the
archbishop proceeded to collate him as superior; the King, when at
Ravensdale, the forest lodge of Duffield, Derbyshire, on 10th January
1323, issued his mandate for the deliverance of the temporalities to
the new prior.
The financial troubles do not appear to have much abated when Edward
III. was on the throne. In 1330 the priory had remitted to them the
rent of £4 due to the sheriff for the 180 acres within the hay of
Linby. Licence was granted in 1334 for the alienation to the priory
by William de Cossall of 12 messuages, a mill, and various lands in
Cossall and Nottingham, to find three chaplains, two to serve in
the church of St. Katherine Cossall, and one in the priory church,
celebrating mass daily for himself, his ancestors, and successors.
Considerable additional grants of land were made in 1341, conditional
on the maintenance of two chaplains to say daily mass in the church of
St. Mary Edwinstowe.
Richard II., in 1392, granted to the prior and convent of Newstead a
tun of wine yearly in the port of Kingston-upon-Hull, in aid of the
maintenance of divine service.
Henry VI., in 1437, licensed Prior Robert and convent to enclose 8
acres within Sherwood Forest, just in front of the entry to the priory,
and to dyke, quickset, and hedge it, for which they were to render at
the Exchequer one rose at midsummer.
Edward IV., in 1461, licensed John Durham, the prior, and his convent
to enclose 48 acres of forest granted them by Henry II., adjoining the
priory on the north, east, and south, with a ditch and low hedge, and
to cut down and dispose of the wood growing thereon.
The Valor of 1534 gave the clear annual value of this priory as
£167, 16s. 11½d. The spiritualities, amounting to £58, included the
appropriated Nottinghamshire rectories of Papplewick, Hucknall Torkard,
Stapleford, Tuxford, and Egmanton, and the Derbyshire rectory of Ault
Hucknall. The considerable deductions included 20s. given to the poor
on Maundy Thursday in commemoration of Henry II. as founder; and a
portion of food and drink, similar to that of a canon, given to some
poor person every day, valued at 60s. a year.
The episcopal registers at York contain various records as to diocesan
visitations of Newstead. Archbishop Grey visited the priory in person
in 1252, when he found, after individual examination, that the prior
and canons were fervid in religion and lovers of peace and concord. He
laid down a number of minor injunctions for their still better rule,
which were to be read twice a year before the convent.
Archbishop Geoffrey de Ludham personally visited Newstead on 4th July
1259, and approved of the statutes made by Archbishop Grey, adding
certain injunctions of his own. The prior, considering the evil days
in which they were living, was to do his best to obtain grace and
favour with patrons; he was personally to receive guests with a smiling
countenance (_vultu prout decet hilari et jocundo_), and to merit
the love of his convent, doing nothing without the counsel of the
older canons. Medicines were to be reserved for the sick; any brother
noticing the infringement of a rule was to speak; there was to be no
drinking after compline, nor wanderings outside the cloister; and a
canon was to be specially deputed to look after the sick.
The record of a visitation by Archbishop Wickwaine in 1280 brought to
light certain irregularities. In addition to general injunctions, such
as the unlocking of the carrels twice a year, and oftener if necessary,
in order to eradicate the vice of private property, it was ordered that
two of the canons were to be confined to cloister for the improvement
of their manners, that another canon was to be restored to the general
convent through penitence, but that the cellarer and cook were to be
deprived of their respective offices.
Consequent on a visitation of Newstead by Archbishop Romanus, in 1293,
injunctions were issued for the correction of the house, which followed
the usual formal lines, save that he prohibited the resort to any games
with dice, and that the sick were to be more delicately fed, and not
with the usual gross food of the convent. The archbishop at the same
time laid down that John, their late prior, was to be honoured and
his counsel followed, because of his great services to the house and
his generosity about his pension in freely and voluntarily giving up
much to which he was entitled. As a new ordinance for his pension, the
archbishop ordered that Brother John was to have his chamber and garden
as previously arranged, with a canon’s livery for himself and another
for the canon who was to dwell with him and say the divine offices, and
another for his boy; and 30s. a year for his own necessities and for
the boy’s wages; any guest who came to visit him was to have his meals
in the frater or in the hall.
It is often forgotten that all the chief religious Orders had their
own scheme of visitation independent of the diocesan. An interesting
reminder of this occurs in an entry of a Newstead visitation which
took place on 16th July 1261; it was subsequently entered in Giffard’s
register. The visitors on this occasion were the priors of the two
Austin houses of Nostell and Guisborough, who were at that time the
duly appointed provincial visitors of the order. They enjoined that a
good servant, with a boy, was to be placed in the infirmary, and that
one of the canons was to say the canonical hours for them, as well as
celebrate mass, according to the rule of the Blessed Augustine.[38]
A chamberlain was to be appointed to provide clothes and shoes for
the convent; he was to have a horse to attend fairs and a servant
assigned him to buy necessaries. The canons’ dishes were to have more
eggs and relishes, but within moderation; never more than three eggs.
No one was to drink but in the refectory after collation, and then to
attend compline. Accounts were to be rendered twice a year. Canons
were to make open amends in chapter on Sundays for transgressions. A
lay brother (_conversus_) was to look after the tannery, with a
canon to superintend and to see to the buying and selling. Another
lay brother was to have charge of the garden, under the sub-cellarer.
Finally, the prior was ordered to bring Canon Richard de Walkeringham
with him to the next general chapter; he was to testify whether these
injunctions had been obeyed.
The clear annual income of Newstead having fallen considerably below
the amount of £200 fixed as the limit for the suppression of the
smaller houses in 1536, its fate seemed certain. But this was one of
the cases in which a semi-fraudulent arrangement was encouraged by
officials, who well knew that the doom of all monasteries was fixed,
whereby Newstead obtained exemption on payment of the heavy fine of
£233, 6s. 8d. A patent to this effect was signed on 16th December
1537; but it only held good for about eighteen months, for on 21st
July 1539 the surrender of the house was extorted. This document was
signed by Robert Blake, prior, Richard Kitchen, sub-prior, John Bredon,
cellarer, and nine other canons, Robert Sisson, John Derfelde, William
Dotton, William Bathley, Christopher Matheram, Geoffrey Acryth, Richard
Hardwyke, Henry Tingker, and Leonard Alynson.
Dr. John London, the commissioner who took the surrender of Newstead,
was one of the most objectionable and hateful of these suppression
officials. He held no small amount of preferments in the Church, being
a considerable pluralist. He was dean of Osney, dean of Wallingford,
and canon of Windsor, and from 1526 to 1542, warden of New College,
Oxford. He was one of the most thorough-paced spoilers of monasteries,
so far as the work of devastation was concerned. His letters to
Cromwell show that he delighted in the disfiguring of all that was
fair and beautiful in the monastic churches and chapels, personally
superintending the defacements. In connection with the friaries, he
avowed that his orders for immediate destruction of roofs and windows
were for the purpose of preventing the friars again taking possession
of their property. He showed marvellous ingenuity in hunting out
valuables of all kinds, but occasionally fell a victim to his credulity
in listening to slanders. Being assured by a tale-bearer that the abbot
of Combe had hidden £500 in a feather bed in his brother’s house, he
forthwith proceeded to that residence and ripped open the beds in
search for the money. Eventually he examined the abbot himself, who
readily acknowledged that he held some money belonging to his former
house, but it proved to be only £25. London’s shameful treatment of the
abbess of Godstow is well known, and in that instance even Cromwell had
to remonstrate with his conduct. Bishop Burnet, the historian, states
that he has “seen complaints of Dr. London soliciting nuns.” That he
was a man of odiously dissolute life is beyond all contradiction.
Archdeacon South has left the following record of this dissolute bully,
and his subsequent public exposure:--
“But to what open shame Doctor London was afterwards put, with open
penance, with two smocks on his shoulders, for Mrs. Thykked and Mrs.
Jennynges, the mother and daughter, and how he was taken with one of
them by Henry Plankney in his gallery, being his sister’s son, as it
was then known to a number in Oxford and elsewhere, so I think that
some yet living hath it in remembrance, as well as the penner of this
history.”[39]
Archbishop Cranmer summed up his judgment of this suppressor of
Newstead by styling him, in a still extant manuscript, in his own hand,
“a stout and filthy prebendary of Windsor.” He died in utter misery in
the Fleet Prison in 1543, after having been found guilty of perjury,
and condemned to ride through Windsor, Reading, and Newbury, with his
face to the horse’s tail, and to stand in the pillory in each of these
market towns with a paper on his head announcing his offence.
A pension scheme was drawn up on 24th July, and forwarded to Sir
Richard Rich for ratification. To the prior was assigned the not
unhandsome sum of £26, 13s. 4d., to the sub-prior £6, to the cellarer
£5, 6s. 8d., and to the remaining canons annuities ranging from £4,
13s. 4d. to £3, 6s. 8d.
Thus, in July 1539, came to an end the continuous services to God
and man, for upwards of three and a half centuries, of those devoted
religious the canons of St. Augustine of Sherwood Forest. That which
one royal Henry had founded of his beneficence, another royal Henry
blotted out through consummate greed. As Lord Byron says:--
“Years roll on years; to ages, ages yield;
Abbots to abbots, in a line, succeed;
Religion’s charter their protecting shield,
Till royal sacrilege their doom decreed.
One holy Henry rear’d the Gothic walls,
And bade the pious inmates rest in peace;
Another Henry the kind gift recalls,
And bids devotion’s hallow’d echoes cease.”
The following is a list of the successive priors (not abbots) of this
house so far as at present ascertained:--
Eustace, 1216.
Richard, 1216.
Aldred, 1230.
Robert, 1234.
William, 1241.
William de Mottisfont, 1267.
John de Lexinton, resigned, 1288.
Richard de Hallam, 1288.
Richard de Grange, 1293.
William de Thurgarton, 1324.
Hugh de Collingham, 1349.
William de Collingham, resigned, 1356.
John de Wylesthorp, resigned, 1366.
William de Allerton, 1366.
John de Hucknall, 1406.
William Bakewell, 1417.
Thomas Carleton, 1422.
Robert Cutwolfe, 1423.
William Misterton, 1455.
John Durham, 1461.
Thomas Gunthorp, 1467.
William Sandale, 1504.
John Blake, 1526.
Immediately on the surrender being accomplished the custody of the
house was handed over to Sir John Byron of Colwick. In May 1540, Sir
John Byron was put into legal possession of the house, site, church,
steeple, churchyard, and of all the lands, mills, advowsons, rectories,
and of the late priory in return for the then large sum of about £800
handed over to the Crown.
This Sir John Byron was by no means the mushroom man, like so many of
Cromwell and Henry VIII.’s _novi homines_ who were bribed with
monastic estates to support the policy of reckless confiscation, not
a few of whom found further reward in the creation of peerages. This
“Little Sir John with the Big Beard” was descended from the Byrons who
had fought at Crecy, was grand-nephew of the Byron of Bosworth Field,
and he himself had helped to turn Henry Tudor into Henry VII.
No sooner had the canons been turned adrift than the great conventual
church, 257 feet in length, the nave of which had always been reserved
for quasi-parochial use by the tenants on the prior’s estates,
was deliberately unroofed and dismantled. The great block of the
conventual buildings, surrounding the cloisters, on the immediate south
of the church, were preserved by Sir John, the south transept with its
stone Maundy seat, escaped destruction, as it completed the square of
the buildings now occupied as a domestic residence. He is said to have
moved the fountain, or water-conduit, which occupied the centre of the
cloister garth, to the west front of his reconstructed house. Among
the more striking survivals of the work of the first lay-owner of the
priory are two brilliantly coloured overmantels, carved with busts in
relief of Henry VIII. and other contemporary personages.
The successive owners of Newstead Priory were:--
Sir John Byron, who died in 1576.
Sir John Byron (2), who died in 1609. He was the founder of the
Hucknall Broomhill charity. In June 1603 he entertained at the priory
Queen Anne of Denmark and her son Prince Henry, when on their way from
Scotland to join James I. in London.
Sir John Byron (3), who died in 1625.
Sir John Byron (4), M.P. for Nottingham, a faithful adherent of Charles
II.; he was created Lord Byron, with remainder to his brother, in 1643;
he died in Paris in 1652.
Richard Lord Byron, the defender of Newark, succeeded his brother, and
died in 1679; he entertained Charles II. at Newstead.
His son William, the third baron, died in 1695; his wife, Lady
Elizabeth, gave the large silver-gilt chalice and paten to the church
of Hucknall Torkard.
William, the fourth baron, son of the third, died in 1736.
His son William, the fifth baron, known as “Devil Byron,” who killed
William Chaworth in a duel, died, without surviving issue, in 1798.
George Gordon, the sixth Lord Byron, the poet, was great-nephew of the
fifth baron. His two predecessors had seriously embarrassed the estate;
it was so heavily mortgaged that in 1814 he finally left Newstead,
to his intense grief, and after prolonged negotiations, the property
passed, in 1817, into the hands of his friend and schoolfellow Colonel
Wildman.
Colonel Wildman, at great cost and with considerable taste, considering
the general lack of taste of those days, proceeded to rescue the priory
from its deplorable condition. He replaced the water-conduit in the
centre of the cloisters; removed a disfiguring stone stairway; and
generally altered the interior in an endeavour to restore as much as
possible the original features. At a later period he erected the Sussex
tower, in commemoration of the visit of the Duke of Sussex. He left
the beautiful pile of buildings in much the same condition as it is at
present.
After the Colonel’s death, the priory and estate were bought in 1860
by the late Mr. W. F. Webb. Under Mr. Webb’s guidance “the work of
restoration and beautifying was piously and intelligently continued;
he made it one of the chief aims of his life to increase both the
historical and Byronic interests of the place.” Since his death the
greatest care and good taste have continued to be expended on the
house, and more particularly on the gardens and grounds, by his
daughters, Lady Chermside and Miss Webb.
Space entirely prohibits any attempt at a full or technical description
of the ancient conventual church, and the buildings round the cloister
garth which still retain, notwithstanding the frequent alterations,
so many distinctive features of their original erection, at different
periods for monastic purposes. The writer has had the advantage of
making a fairly thorough survey of the priory in both the “seventies”
and “eighties” of last century, and again during the twentieth century
under the intelligent guidance of his late valued friend, the Rev. R.
H. Whitworth, chaplain of Newstead, and for upwards of forty years
vicar of the adjacent parish of Blidworth. To describe Newstead
adequately would require at least the whole of this volume.
[Illustration: PLAN OF NEWSTEAD PRIORY, BY REV. R. H.
WHITWORTH.]
Mr. Whitworth loved every stone of Newstead and every detail of its
story. Not long before his death he gave to the writer the accompanying
plan (together with many memoranda) the work of his own pen, and
though not entirely accurate in dimensions or lettering, it is of real
interest, and it is a pleasure to reproduce it in facsimile.
All that can here be put on record are a few cursory remarks on certain
remaining details, chiefly taken from Mr. Whitworth’s memoranda. The
exceeding beauty of the west front of the church, with its delicacy
of execution, of the best period of the reign of Edward I., is well
known to all lovers of England’s ecclesiastical architecture. Sir John
Byron, leaving the stately front as an ornament in line with the front
of his reconstructed house, made so clean a sweep of the once stately
church right up to the eastern end, that the smooth turf shows not a
trace of even the foundations of the piers. It is characteristic of the
semi-pagan character of the poet Byron that though he could vigorously
upbraid the sacrilegious conduct of Henry VIII. and his myrmidons in
ejecting the canons and in silencing all strains of worship “within
these hallowed walls,” he did not apparently realise the unhappy
inconsistency and gross irreverence of burying his favourite dog
“Boatswain” on the holiest spot of this consecrated site and placing a
monument over its body!
Grievous as was the uprooting of this once stately church, it is
impossible not to feel grateful to Sir John Byron for the preservation
of the exquisite chapter house of the priory with its beautiful groined
roof supported by two pillars of clustered banded shafts. It is
situated, according to the invariable monastic custom, on the eastern
side of the cloisters, separated from the south transept of the church
by a slype or passage; it is of similar date to the west front of the
church. Tradition has it that the first Sir John Byron had this chapter
house set apart for use as a domestic chapel, and for that purpose it
is still used.