Dieulacres Abbey

When the monks of Poulton moved to Dieulacres, they retained all their possessions in Cheshire, and several deeds in the Dieulacres Cartulary bear witness to the fact that they continued to acquire land in Cheshire after 1214. The principal estate was centred on the old abbey site at Poulton, where there were 1,900 acres of arable land. Close by were the granges of Dodleston and Churton, while between this group of estates and the Staffordshire border lay the vill of Byley, given to the monks shortly before 1214. The abbey also owned salt-pits at Nantwich and Middlewich. [1]

It was completely contrary to the Statutes of the Cistercian Order for a monastery to own a vill, but by the beginning of the thirteenth century the practice was becoming fairly common. When they accepted gifts of developed land and settlements, the monks sometimes tried to fulfil the conditions of direct exploitation and remoteness from the world by moving the inhabitants out of the area and pulling down the houses and any buildings which they did not require, thus “reducing” a vill to the status of a grange. This practice often led to disturbances, and it provoked scathing attacks from the critics of the Religious Orders. The Cistercians were accused of destroying villages and even churches, and of converting large amounts of arable land into pasture for their sheep. The alternative to this was to accept the gifts of developed land as they came, without making any drastic alterations in the STATUS QUO. Such tenants, servants and villeins as happened to be on the land were left undisturbed, and the monks simply took over the existing manorial economy in its entirety.

There is evidence to suggest that when the monks of Poulton and Dieulacres acquired the vill of Byley, they made some attempt to obey their Statutes by moving out various tenants. Several quitclaims are recorded in the Cartulary,and some tenants gave up their holdings in return for pieces of land elsewhere. [2] The abbey’s possessions in the Byley area were completed in 1270, when the Lord Edward gave the monks certain rights in the waste of Rudheath. [3]

As well as temporal sources of income, the monks of Dieulacres also enjoyed revenues from spiritualíties in Cheshire. The tithes of Byley were conveyed to the monks by the Rector of Middlewich, and in addition to these, the abbey owned the advowson of Sandbach church, with its chapelries at Goostrey and Holme (Holmes Chapel). The monks had acquired the advowson of Sandbach through the gift of Ranulph de Blundeville in about 1230, [4] but in 1254 their right to it was challenged by Roger Sandbach, who claimed that it had belonged to his father, Richard. It was argued on behalf of the abbot that there was no case to answer, because after the institution of the previous vicar, the Earl of Chester had proved in court that the advowson belonged to him, and not to Richard Sandbach. Richard’s son was not satisfied with this, and he pressed on with his claim. The King ordered the justiciar of Chester to bring a copy of the Cheshire Domesday Book into the Court, and from this it was proved conclusively that the advowson had belonged to the Earls of Chester; and that therefore Ranulph de Blundeville’s action in giving it to the monks of Dieulacres had been quite legal.

The case was therefore dismissed, but not before it was discovered that the abbot had been guilty of abusing the advowson. Since the death of the last vicar, the abbot had seemingly made no attempt to institute a successor, but had himself been appropriating the revenues of the vacant church, a practice by no means uncommon. One of the abbot’s successors did exactly the same thing at Cheddleton, as we have already seen; but in the case of Sandbach, the abbot was ordered to find a suitable priest without delay, and the justiciar of Chester was directed to send letters to the bishop instructing him to carry out the induction as soon as possible [5]

Although the Cictercian monks were required to exploit their estates directly by using lay-brethren and a certain amount of hired labour, it was not unusual for an abbey to lease out some of its more distant properties to lay tenants. Leasing became gradually more common towards the end of the thirteenth century, so much so that the Cistercian General Chapter was obliged to amend its previous rulings on this matter, in the light of current practice. It is known that apart from the Manor of Leek, little or nothing of the Staffordshire estates of Dieulacres was on lease by 1291, though on the Cheshire estates the picture was rather different. It is hardly surprising to find that these more remote estates were the first to be disposed of.

From the TAXATIO of 1291 we learn that certain lands at Byley were being leased by the abbot for an annual rent of £2 10s. All the Dieulacres properties near Alderley were on lease at this time, and they were bringing in the sum of £2 PER ANNUM. [6] It is impossible to say precisely when this policy of leasing began, for no other contemporary records for Byley or Alderley have so far come to light. One lease dated 1266 is still extant,in which the abbot leased a messuage of land in Chester for five shillings a year [7] Perhaps all that can be said definitely is that the change from direct exploitation to a system of leases and rents began, as far as the Cheshire estates were concerned, at some date after 1260, and before 1290.

The total assessment of the Cheshire estates is given in the mxario as £29 15s. PER ANNUM. Of this, £14 15s. came from arable land, £9 from livestock, and £5 from miscellaneous rents. Although it is not possible to calculate the acreage of the pasture land, its value (£1 for the entire acreage) in proportion to that nt the arable land seems to indicate that it was not extensive, and that the Cheshire lands were used primarily for the growing of crops. The largest single estate was at Poulton, which comprised some sixteen carucates of arable land, valued at fifteen shillings per carucate. At Dodleston there were four carucates, and at Byley five. It is worth noting that the monks held a much larger acreage of arable in Cheshire than in Staffordshire -- about 3,000 acres and that the Cheshire granges appear to have been ìarger than those nearer to Dieulacres. There is no evidence at all to suggest that the monks enclosed large areas of arable land and converted it into pasture for their sheep -- a charge which was so often brought against the Cistercians.

The Lancashire estates were the most distant of all the lands owned by the monks of Dieulacres, and they lay mainly in and around the Manor of Rossall, on the Fylde Coast. In 1190 Rossall consisted mainly of pasture land from which the lords of the Honour of Lancaster received an annual payment of £5 from people who grazed their sheep and cattle there. In 1216, at the instance of Ranulph de Blundeville, King John granted the custody of Rossall to the monks of Dieulacres, by whom it was to be held in bail "during the King’s pleasure”. [8] King John died soon afterwards, but the monks continued in their custody of Rossall for the first ten years of Henry III’s reign. In 1226 Henry cancelled his father’s writ, only to return the pasture of Rossall to the monks a year later, again “during the King’s pleasure”.[9] In 1228 Henry granted two more charters. By the first, which was dated 21st April, he gave the monks leave to keep their sheep and other animals at Rossall until the 24th June, which suggests that he was intending to terminate the monks’ tenancy for a second time; but on the 12th June, he granted to them in perpetuity all the land of Rossall which they had formerly held in bail.” Another charter was issued in July 1247 stating that all the land of Rossall had been granted to the monks of Dieulacres in freealms forever, “for the salvation of the soul of King John and the souls of our predecessors and successors”. [11]

The occupation of Rossall by the monks of Dieulacres occasioned a number of quitclaims from the principal tenants in the area, and the monks also acquired additional land around the original holding. Some of these gifts included grazing rights, and rights of way to Bispham Mere for sheepdipping. [12] They give us a clue as to the main value of the Rossall estate at this time. Several deeds in the Cartulary record gifts of villeins. Between c.1230 and 1250 six villeins, together with their families, goods and chattels, were handed over to the monks. [13] These bequests indicate that from the beginning the monks of Dieulacres adopted a manorìal economy on the Lancashire estates instead of using granges and CONVERSI. The sheer distance which lay between Dieulacres and Rossall made this almost inevitable.

Dieulacres was not the only religious house which owned land in the Rossall area. On the banks of the River Wyre, the Dieulacres estates bordered on those of the Premonstaratensian Abbey of Cockersand, and the Abbey of St. Peter at Shrewsbury held lands at Norbreck and Bispham, together with the churches of Walton and Kirkham. At some date after 1228 the Abbot of Salop gave the vilis of Norbreck and Bispham to the monks of Dieulacres, along with the tithes of Layton. Excepted from this endowment were the two churches, which the Abbot of Salop reserved to himself, [14]

The references to Rossall in the TAXATIO of 1291 are very scanty. The assessment is given as £61 10s. PER ANNUM for the entire holding. The number of carucates is not given if indeed there was any arable land there and there is no mention of spiritualities. [15] Nevertheless, when one compares the assessment of Rossall with the valuations of the temporal possessions of Dieulaeres in Staffordshire and Cheshire, it appears that Rossall formed the most valuable single estate, probably the largest in area. It had also increased in value since the monks took it over, for we know from a Plea of QUO WARRANTO that it had been worth only £20 PER ANNUM in 1216.

The Rossall charters contain numerous references to sheep-dipping and grazing land, and it would seem that Rossall was one of the abbey’s chief sheep-rearing areas. Sheep-farming had always been a prominent feature of Cistercian life. In addition to providing wool for the monks’ habits, the sheep also supplied. tallow for candles and skins for parchment. Sheep could, moreover, be reared on land which was too barren for growing crops or grazing cattle, and the majority of Cistercian estates included a plentiful supply of such land. The regulations of the Order stated that the monks were to keep only as many sheep as were essential for their own needs, but after a time, when supply began to exceed demand, the temptation to sell the surplus Wool at a profit was too great to be resisted. It was ironìcal that by settling on some of the poorest agricultural land in the country, the Cistercians placed themselves in the way of one of the most lucrative businesses of the Middle Ages -- the wool trade. They arrived in England at a time when the wool trade was beginning to emerge as a powerful force in the country’s economy, and their agricultural methods, together with their use of granges and CONVERSI, were ideally suited to the production of large quantities of wool at a comparatively low cost. The Cistercians, at first, had insufficient money to build on a large scale, except where patrons and benefactors put up churches for them. Later, the money raised through sheep-farming enabled them, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, to make considerable improvements and additions to the fabric of their monasteries. The great abbeys of Fountains and Tintern were, in a sense, built on wool.

At the end of the twelfth century, three factors combined to tempt the Cistercians to enter the wool trade and to depart from their simple. self-sufficient economy. The surplus of wool and the desire to build on a large scale have already been mentioned: in addition there was the presence in England of wool-buyers with plenty of money, prepared to purchase whatever was offered for sale. The monasteries often disposed of their surplus wool by entering into a contract with an export merchant who would send his agent round to inspect the fleeces at shearing time, or even to contract for it in advance. Transactions of this kind were facilitated by the circulation amongst the merchants of lists which gave details of the monasteries which produced the best fleeces. A list of Cistercian and other abbeys which supplied wool was prepared in about 1280 by a Florentine merchant, Francesco Pegolotti. [16] This list reveals that the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire houses formed the largest group of Cistercian exporters. They supplied 447 sacks of wool each year, out of a total of l,ll7 sacks for the whole of England. Each sack contained 26 stones of wool, and the average price per sack was £12 for the best grades, and £7 6s. 8d. for the middle grades. The short wools of the Welsh border were in high repute, and were realising the highest prices. Dore and Tintern were selling their best wools at £18 13s. 4d. per sack a price unparalleled by any other house in England and Wales.

The Midlands wool was generally of a good standard, and prices ranged between £9 6s. 8d, and £18 for the better grades. The average price per sack was about £12 13s. 4d. Amongst the Staffordshire abbeys, the monks of Croxden were selling most, and getting the best prices. They are recorded as having sold thirty sacks per year to foreign markets, and their better grades were worth £14 per sack. The wool produced by the Dieulacres flocks was not quite so good„ The best grades were selling at £10 13s. 4d. per sack, and the middle grades at £6 13s. 4d. rather less than the average for the Midlands. Quantity to some extent made up for quality, and the monks of Dieulacres regularly supplied twenty sacks per year to foreign buyers five sacks more than the Midland average. The poor relation amongst the Staffordshire monasteries was Hulton, whose sales are recorded as eight sacks per year at £9 ós. 8d. per sack.

It is not possible, unfortunately, to estimate precisely how much money was raised from the sale of wool in any one monastery in any one year. Pegolotti’s list was intended merely as a guide for prospective buyers, and therefore it only indicates the gross number of sacks normally supplied by an abbey each year, and the prices of the various grades. It would have been impossible to state exactly how many sacks of a particular grade were supplied, since the proportions must inevitably have varied from year to year. It is, therefore, possible to make only rough estimates of the amount of money raised through the sale of wool. In an exceptionally good year, when prices were high and the quality of the crop was first~rate, the monks of Dieulacres could have made something in the region of £200; but in a poor year this sum could easily have been halved.

From the selling of surplus wool to the Flemish and Florentine markets, it was but a short step to mortgaging a year’s crop in its entirety. When faced with the need to raise ready cash, either for a building, or to repay a debt incurred through some misfortune, an abbey would sometimes contract for one, two, or even as many as twenty years in advance to deliver a specified number of sacks to an exporter, in return for an advance payment. The dangers involved in this practice hardly need to be enlarged upon. If the crop failed, and the advance payment had been spent, an abbot could find himself in a very awkward position.

Long-term mortgages of this kind took no account of other unforeseen hazards which might prevent an abbey from fulfilling its commitment. Levies of money and wool were raised by the Crown on several occasions, and these inevitably put a strain on an abbey’s resources. The TAXATIO of 1291 was resented by the monasteries, but there was little they could do about it, especially in view of the papal sanction which it carried. In 1306 another tenth was exacted from the monasteries, and this time Dieulacres was asked for £6 14s. 10d. [17] In 1310 the abbeys were mulcted again. Edward II required livestock and cereals to take on his illfated expedition to Scotland, and the monks of Dieulacres were obliged to provide 40 quarters of wheat, 50 quarters of oats, 60 sheep and 20 oxen.[18] The result of the campaign, needless to say, brought little cheer to the hearts of those who gave of their livelihood in order to keep the armies well supplied. Edward III utilised the monastic wool-producers in 1338 when he took 600 sacks of wool from Staffordshire alone, and some of it was never paid for. The monks of Dieulacres were forced into giving the King 7.5 sacks --more than a third of the amount they normally put on the market -- but they were fortunate enough to recieve £5 10s. per sack for it. [19] In view of these comtingencies, the practice of mortgaging the entire wool crop to merchants for several years in advance was, to say the least, most unwise, and it is not suprising to find that contracts were sometimes broken and debts incurred. There is no evidence to suggest that the monks of Dieulacres entered into long term contracts, nor that acted in any way differently from their brethren in other parts of the country.

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