Dieulacres Abbey

The Earl of Chester’s grants left the monks of Dieulacres with a sizeable estate, but a large part of it was covered with forest, heath, moorland, and waste. A good deal of work was necessary before it could be put to profitable use. Beyond the Roaches, the abbey lands included Swythamley, where the northernmost grange was established, and the mysterious Back Forest which drops steeply down to the River Dane and Black Brook - the northern boundaries of the extended estate. The abbey itself was built just outside the town of Leek, below Hillswood, where the River Churnet wound its way through a wide fertile valley. At some time in the middle of the thirteenth century, the course of the river was straightened and pushed back to the side of the valley nearest the town. This operation left a wide, flat area of cultivable land between the abbey buildings and the Churnet; but as the river bed had been raised in places by as much as eight feet above the floor of the valley and held in check by an artificial embankment, precautions had to be taken against flooding. Medieval technology may have been primitive by present-day standards, but the Cistercian monks were renowned in their day for the techniques which they used in putting waste land to good use. In the Churnet valley, the monks of Dieulacres laid an intricate system of drains to take away any excess surface-water which might accumulate in the event of heavy rain, or the river overflowing its embankment. At the centre of this drainage system was a large stone-lined culvert, into which smaller drains were connected at regular intervals. The course of this culvert can still be traced as it runs from a point near to the abbey ruins towards Broad’s Bridge on the Abbey Green Road. From there it sweeps away in a north--westerly direction, entering the Churnet at Bridge End. It was probably this culvert which gave rise to the oft-repeated fable of a secret tunnel leading from the abbey to St. Edward’s Church, a mile or so away. Most ruins have doubtful stories of secret passages connected with' them: for technical reasons alone it would have been impossible to construct one from Dieulacres Abbey to Leek Church; nor if it had been possible could any logical reason have been suggested as to why Cistercian monks should have so wasted their time and money on such a pointless task.

The best agricultural land lay in, or near, the Churnet valley. It was here that the first granges were built at Westwood, Foker, Birchall and Meerbrook (New Grange). The grange system was used widely by the Cistercians to exploit those parts of their estates which lay some distance away from the abbeys. The granges were run mainly by CONVERSI, or lay-brethren, who were distinguished from the fully-professed choir monks by the fact that they could neither read nor write, and did not participate fully in the liturgical and devotional life of the monastery. They attended far fewer services than the choir monks, and these were held in the nave of the church. In the early days of Cistercian monasticism, the CONVERSI greatly outnumbered the choir monks, and thus we find that the nave of a Cistercian church was generally long in relation to the choir and presbytery. The main function of the CONVERSI was to perform the manual tasks of the community - tending the crops and looking after the livestock. By using granges and CONVERSI, the Cistercian monasteries were able, initially, to operate as self-contained units, employing a minimum of hired labour, and avoiding the use of a manorial economy with its system of leases aan-d rents. Granges were required to be no more than a day’s journey from the monastery, otherwise adequate supervision by the choir monks would have been impossible. Choir monks were not permitted to live on the granges, and the lay-brethren themselves were required to return to the abbey at set intervals in order to spend some time in the monastery before being moved on to another part of the estate. In the case of granges which lay close to the abbey site, it is unlikely that the CONVERSI would actually have lived there; and in the instance of Dieulacres, there would have been no difnculty in running places like Foker and, possibly, Westwood on a day-to-day basis. For the most distant granges such as Swythamley and Roach Grange, the monks must have relied entirely on resident lay-brethren.

Ideally, the use of granges and CONVERSI had enormous advantages over the manorial economy of the Black Monks. There were also certain disadvantages, and these were particularly apparent in the more remote areas where the lay-brethren often infused into the monasteries a good deal of the character of the locality. This character was not always a wholesome one. In principle, the idea of recruiting lay-brethren was excellent, for it enabled illiterate men who had a religious vocation to enjoy a form of monastic life which they could readily comprehend. In practice, the taking of the laybrother’s habit did not always guarantee that "complete conversion of manners” which was one of the three great principles upon which monasticism had been built. Thus we hear of drunken carouses on some of the Welsh granges, and excessive beerdrinking appears to have been a major problem amongst the CONVERSI. In the thirteenth century, when the number of granges multiplied rapidly, it became quite common to abandon the idea of direct supervision, and to allow the CQNVERSI to run them by themselves. Thus many of the granges ceased to be conventual, and became instead purely economic units without any religious significance.

In addition to consolidating their existing estates in Staffordshire, the monks of Dieulacres, during the course of the thirteenth century, continued to acquire still more property, both in the Leek area and outside it. This led inevitably to disputes between Dieulacres and other monasteries which held lands in the vicinity over such matters as pasturing rights, tithes and the proximity of granges, Three Cistercian houses were involved in these disputes: Croxden and Hulton, which were the immediate neighbours of Dieulacres; and the Cheshire abbey of Combermere, the motherhouse of both Dieulacres and Hulton. There was also a dispute with the Augustinian' Priory of Trentham, which owned estates at Wall Grange. These disputes mark an important stage in the early development of the Dieulacres estates. They reveal a certain amount of hostility on the part of the old-established abbeys towards the monks of Dieulacres, who were probably regarded as intruders in a county where the pattern of monastic settlement was virtually complete. They also help to illustrate how the new monastery later came to occupy a very powerful position amongst the religious houses of Staffordshire, for it is interesting to observe that most of the disputes were settled to the advantage of the monks of Dieulacres, and at the expense of other houses.

In 1241, the Cistercian General Chapter instructed the abbots of Buildwas, Croxden and Rufford to investigate a quarrel that had arisen between the abbots of Dieulacres and Combermere. The monks of Dieulacres had built a grange at Swythamley, less than a mile away from the grange which the monks of Comber- mere had established many years before at Wincle, on the opposite side of the River Dane. The Abbot of Combermere claimed that by so doing, the monks of Dieulacres had infringed a decree of the Cistercian General Chapter of 1134 which had defined the minimum permitted distance between the granges of neighbouring abbeys as six miles. In addition, the Abbot of Combermere claimed pasture rights in the Swythamley area, inside the boundaries of the new Dieulacres grange. An agreement was finally reached whereby the Abbot of Combermere renounced all claims to pasture within the boundaries of the Manor of Leek, which included the Swythamley estate, In addition, he promised not to raise any further objections over the proximity of any granges which the monks of Dieuiacres might establish within those boundaries. By so doing, he tacitly waived the decree of 1134, which had been the basis of his original complaint. Furthermore, the Abbot of Dieulacres was to be premitted to enclose his pastureland with a fence and a ditch, and a second agreement was drawn up regarding the recovery of animals which might accidentally stray from one estate to the other. [1]

Four years after acting as a mediator in this dispute, the Abbot of Croxden was himself at loggerheads with his brother abbot at Dieulacres. This dispute concerned the most distant of the Staffordshire estates of Dieulacres, which were situated at Field, in the parish of Leigh, near Uttoxeter. In about 1245, the monks of Dieulacres were given a considerable amount of ploughland, meadow and pasture at Field, together with some buildings and bond-servants, by various members of the Seymore family. [2] As a result of their acceptance of this gift, they were accused by the Abbot of Croxden of breaking an agreement which had been made at the time of the foundation of Dieulacres. This agreement had stated that the monks of Dieulacres were to be permitted to acquire any lands they wished within a mile of their own abbey, but that outside this radius they were not to acquire any lands in the direction of Croxden, excepting those which pertained either to the Manor of Leek or to the demesne lands of the Earl of Chester. The lands at Field were almost on the doorstep of Croxden. and they fell into neither of the excepted categories. The matter was brought before the Cistercian General Chapter of 1248, and the abbots of Buildwas and Rufford were appointed to investigate and settle the issue. The quarrel was resolved in 1251, when it was agreed in the presence of the adjudicators that the Abbot of Croxden should allow the monks of Dieulacres to keep all the lands which they already owned at Field, and to make further acquisitions there if they so desired, provided that they did not extend their estates still further in the direction of Croxden. The monks of Croxden in return were allowed to acquire lands in the neighbourhood of Field, but not inside the vill itself. [3] The decree of 1134 was once again waived, but this time quite explicitly, within the terms of the Written agreement. The fact that a body of adjudicators appointed by the highest authority of the Cistercian Order should openly agree to such blatant infringements of the Statutes is indicative of that loosening of discipline already beginning to weaken the Order as a vital force in the Church.

Cistercian architecture was applied based on rational principles.

The 1240’s also saw the settlement of a dispute which had been going on for some time between the Abbots of Dieulacres and Hulton. This quarrel differed somewhat from the others, for this time it was the Abbot of Dieulacres who did the complaining. Hulton Abbey the last monastic settlement to be made in North Staffordshire had been founded in 1219, and amongst its possessions were estates at Bradnop and Morridge, within the boundaries of the parish of Leek. The Abbot of Dieulacres claimed the right to exact tithes from these lands, and also the right to graze his own livestock there. There seems in addition to have been disagreement over the proximity of granges. In 1249, the General Chapter ordered this dispute to be resolved, and appointed the Abbots of Buildwas and Rufford to act as mediators and to define the respective rights of Dieulacres and Hulton in this area. A settlement was soon reached. The Abbot of Dieulacres agreed to permit the monks ot Hulton to retain the lands which they had already enclosed at Mixon, to the north-west of Bradnop. They were also to be allowed to have a sheepfold and whatever else they wished to have at Mixon, so long as suitable access to common pasture-land was guaranteed for the benefit of both houses. Permission was given for the monks of Hulton to enclose 240 acres of land around their sheep-fold, but if at any time they wanted to convert this pasture into arable land they would be obliged to pay tithes of NOVALIA (a tithe on newly-sown lands) to the Abbot of Dieulacres. Furthermore, they would have to allow the monks of Dieulacres to graze their cattle on the stubble after the harvest. As far as the tithes of Bradnop were concerned, the Abbot of Hulton failed to obtain any concession. They rightfully belonged to St. Edward’s Church, Leek, and so they were to be paid to the Abbot of Dieulacres, to whom they were lawfully due. In addition, the Abbot of Hulton promised to make no further encroachments in the parish of Leek without first obtaining a licence to do so from the Abbot of Dieulacres. He made yet another concession to the effect that the monks of Dieulacres were to have common of pasture on Morridge for all their pigs, and for 200 cattle during the summer months. In return for this, the monks of Hulton were permitted to bring their cattle down to the River Churnet, but they were to stay clear of Birchall Grange. Any monk or lay-brother of Hulton who presumed to break this agreement was to be dealt with personally by the Abbot of Dieulacres, and VICEVERSA. A second agreement stated that the Abbot of Combemere, the father-abbot of both houses, was to see to it that these terms were strictly adhered to.[4]

It was the subject of tithes which occasioned a quarrel between the Abbot of Dieulacres and the Prior of Trentham, but the dispute also involved other matters. Shortly after the foundation of Dieulacres, the monks acquired some lands at Cheddleton, where they built a grange and a barn for storing various tithe-offerings. They were given suflicient pasture land adjoining the grange on which to graze the oxen which drew the wagons to the tithe-barn at harvest-time.[5] In the 1240’s they built a new bridge over the Churnet, and they also proposed to construct a new road leading from the bridge to Cheddleton Grange. As the road was scheduled to pass through lands belonging to the Prior of Trentham at Wall Grange, the prior naturally took exception to the scheme, but an agreement was eventually reached in 1244. The prior said he would allow the monks of Dieulacres to proceed with their scheme, and to travel with their wagons through his estates between the bridge and Cheddleton Grange, so long as they did not claim any rights to pasture on the prior’s land,although any animals which might accidentally stray from one property to the other would be returned to their rightful owner.[6]

Having obtained this very favourable concession, the abbot proceeded to sue the prior for various tithes pertaining to Wall Grange, which he claimed as the right of Leek Parish Church. The quarrel eventually reached the ears of Pope Innocent IV, who, in 1246, instructed the Premonstratensian Abbot of Lavendon and the Augustinian Prior of Wroxton to look into the matter and to arrange a settlement. In spite of papal intervention, the issue was not settled until 1257, when the Abbot of Dieulacres withdrew his suit and renounced his claims to the tithes of newly-sown lands and of newly-born animals. He did not, even so, come away empty~handed. He was allowed to keep the tithes of certain lands and meadows which the church of Leek had been accustomed to receive from time immemorial, together with tithes from the lands of all the prior’s tenants at Wall Grange. Moreover, the prior agreed to pay the sum of two shillings per year to Leek Parish Church for as long as he continued to hold the lands at Wall Grange. [7] Although the abbot did not get everything he thought he was entitled to, the settlement was by no means unfavourable to him.

By about 1270, the estates of Dieulacres Abbey in Staffordshire were virtually complete, and it appears that the monks were finally at peace with their neighbours after a difficult settling down period. In 1279, the Statute of Mortmain temporarily checked the steady flow of gifts of land to religious houses all over the country. For many years there had been complaints that lords were losing services and escheats because of the large amount of land which was being alienated into the “dead hand” of the Church. Most of the lands in question were given in frankal-moign, which meant that neither the donor nor the chief lords of the fee could exact rent or service from them. After 1279, a licence had to be obtained before any further bequests of this kind could be made. For a short while at any rate, Mortmain acted as a deterrent to would-be benefactors, but after a few years the granting of such licences became quite common. Several licences in respect of Dieulacres are recorded in the Patent Rolls between 1282 and 1332.

In 1288, Pope Nicholas IV permitted Edward I to levy a tenth on all ecclesiastical property for a period of six years. To enable this tenth to be calculated, a survey was made of the property and income of all religious establishments. This survey, completed in 1291 and known as the TAXATIO ECCLESSIASTICA or TAXATIO NICHOLAI, remained the basis upon which all clerical taxation was calculated until Henry VIII ordered the VALOR ECCLESIASTICUS to be drawn up in 1535. The TAXATIO is the most precious survey of Church property in the Middle Ages, and amongst other things, it enables us to form a reasonably accurate picture of the material state of the monasteries at the end of the thirteenth century.

The figures given in the TAXATIO tell us that in 1291, as far as real estate was concerned, Dieulacres was the wealthiest monastery in Staffordshire. The total assessment of the abbey’s temporal and spiritual possessions in Staffordshire, Cheshire and Lancashire amounted to ￡164 18s. 8d. PER ANNUM, yielding a tenth of ￡139 12s. 8d. [8] The total assessment for Croxden amounted to ￡139 12s. 8d., and for Hulton, a mere ￡26 17s. 6d. Even the great Benedictine Abbey of Burton -- the senior abbey of Staffordshire does not appear to have been as wealthy as Dieulacres at this time, for the TAXATIO gives its assessment as ￡115 11s. PER ANNUM. It is necessary to treat these figures with extreme caution, however. The tax was calculated only on the presumed revenue which the monastic properties MIGHT have brought in had they been on lease. At this time the monks were still farming the majority of their estates directly, and so it is doubtful whether the assessments for demesne lands in 1291 represented their true value. Profits from the wool trade were not included in the assessments, and these constituted a large proportion of the revenues of most Cistercian abbeys. For example, the TAXATIO assessed the temporalities of the monks of Fountains at ￡356 6s. 8d., but their average annual profit from the sale of wool was in the region of ￡1,000.

Taking the Staffordshire estates of Dieulacres in isolation, we find that these were assessed at ￡73 13s. 8d. PER ANNUM. They can be divided into two main categories temporalities, which comprised lands, rents and livestock; and spiritualities, which consisted of tithes and revenues from purely ecclesiastical sources. The Staffordshire temporalities of Dieulacres were assessed at ￡37 13s. 8d., and as well as giving us their value, the TAXATIO also tells us something about their size. The largest of the Staffordshire granges, it seems, was Poker, quite close to the abbey site. It consisted of three carucates of arable land, valued at fifteen shillings per carucate. Assuming that the standard carucate of 120 acres was the norm in Staffordshire, this would give a total of 360 acres. There was also some pasture land, but unfortunately its acreage cannot be calculated from the information supplied by the TAXATIO. At Westwood the monks owned two carucates, valued at ￡1 each; and at Fowlchurch two carucates assessed at fifteen shillings each. It is hardly surprising to find that the most valuable land was that which lay in or near the Churnet valley. In the less fertile regions near the Roaches and Gun Hill, a carucate was worth as little as nine or ten shillings. Livestock throughout the Staffordshire estates was assessed at ￡12 13s. The Staffordshire temporalities amounted in total to nineteen carucates, or 2,280 acres of arable land. If the pasture, forest and waste-land could be calculated, the total acreage would appear much larger. It is curious to find no mention in the TAXATIO of the granges at Cheddleton and Birchall, nor of the abbey’s lands at Field, for there is no evidence to suggest that any of these properties had been disposed of by this time. Birchall Grange, indeed, was used for the production of foodstuffs for the community right up to the Dissolution.

The spiritual possessions of Dieulacres in the County of Stafford included St. Edward’s Church, Leek, together with its chapelries at Cheddleton, Horton and Ipstones. These were valued together at ￡28 PER ANNUM, with the exception of Cheddleton, which was assessed separately at ￡8. This separate valuation seems, at first sight, strange; but the reason for it probably lies in the fact that although Cheddleton was in practice regarded as a chapelry dependent upon Leek, it had a separate advowson which had been in the possession of the lords of Cheddleton until about 1220, when Hugh Cheddleton had given it to the Abbot of Dieulacres. [9] At the time of the TAXATIO, this advowson was the subject of a long dispute between the abbot and the Cheddleton family, and this dispute indicates very clearly the kind of trouble which often ensued from the possession of advowsons, and why the early Cistercians had been so anxious to renounce them.

In 1290, Nicholas Audley, the guardian of the lands and heir of the late Richard Cheddleton, sued the abbot for the advowson of Cheddleton on the grounds that the last priest to be instituted in the church had been appointed by a member of the Cheddleton family. Nicholas claimed that at some time during the reign of King John, Robert Cheddleton had nominated his clerk, Peter, to the benefice; and that since Peter’s death in 1280, no successor had been instituted. A writ was sent to the Bishop, asking him to certify whether the church was vacant or not, and if it was not, at what time and at whose nomination the benefice had been filled. After sending an unsatisfactory reply, the bishop was again petitioned, and eventually he wrote back saying that, according to the abbot, the church was being served by the monks of Dieulacres, and that the abbot was prepared to prove his right to the advowson. The abbot appeared before the Court and stated that Hugh Cheddleton, the ancestor of the present heir to the Cheddleton lordship, had granted the advowson to Dieulacres Abbey. He produced the original charter as evidence, but to no avail. Because the last priest had been appointed by a member of the Cheddleton family, and because the abbot had failed to exercise his alleged right to the advowson during the ten-year vacancy, the jury decided that Nicholas Audley should recover the advowson on behalf of his young ward, William Cheddleton. [10]

The decision of the jury in 1290 did not result in a permanent settlement. Quite obviously, the abbot was not satisfied with the verdict, and it was probably his attempts to recover the advowson that aroused the animosity of the Cheddleton family towards the abbey in the 1320’s. The young William Cheddleton, it seems, grew up into a very unsavoury character, for in 1324 he was described as “a notorious disturber of the peace and a maintainer of false quarrels”. He had a band of armed retainers who continually terrorised the people of the countryside, and it was alleged that in 1320 he had gone to Dieulacres and so insulted and abused the abbot that he did not dare to leave the doors of his abbey for fear of his life. It was also stated that in 1323 this same William Cheddleton, together with six other men, had beaten up William Maunche, one of the abbot’s servants. This resurgence of the dispute between the abbot and the Cheddletons provides an interesting local illustration of the general breakdown of law and order in the closing turbulent years of Edward II’s reign, and it has many parallels in other parts of the country. Later on, William Cheddleton mended his ways, and it appears that he even became reconciled with the Abbot of Dieulacres. In 1345 he quitclaimed to the abbot all his rights to Cheddleton church and its lands. [11]

Out of the ￡36 which he received annually from his Staffordshire spiritualities, the Abbot of Dieulacres had to pay a suitable stipend to the vicar whom he appointed to serve the parishioners of Leek. When the Earl of Chester arranged for St. Edward’s to be given to the abbey in about 1220, the bishop had stated that the vicar was to receive a stipend of ￡13 6d. 8d. PER ANNUM, [12] an insufficient sum, it would seem, to meet his commitments in the 1280s. It was his responsibility to pay the stipends of the curates who served the chapelries, and he had to find this money himself, without any further assistance from the abbot. In 1288 an agreement was made between the abbot and Robert de Tutbury, then Vicar of Leek, to the effect that the vicar’s stipend was to be raised to ￡24 6s. 8d. Of this, ￡6 was to be paid directly by the abbot, and the rest was to be made up out of various tithes, offerings and surplice-fees. The vicar was still to be responsible for paying his curates’ stipends, i.e. ￡5 6s. 8d. to the curate at Cheddleton, ￡4 13s. 4d. to the curate at Horton, and ￡5 to the curate at Ipstones. This left him with a net annual income of ￡9 6s. 8d. - no great fortune, but a considerable improvement on his former stipend. The 1ion’s share of the revenues still went into the abbot’s coffers, for even after paying the increased stipend, he was left with a profit of ￡11 13s. 4d .[13]

The impact of Dieulacres on North Staffordshire in the thirteenth century was quite remarkable. Because of its late foundation, it had initially been regarded with disdain by its neighbours, and the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield had been moved to compassion because of its poverty. In the space of eighty years it rose from the status of a small refugee community to that of a great abbey possessing resources unparalleled by any other religious house' in the county: a success owed partly _to the generosity of its patrons and benefactors, and also to the profitable use made of these gifts by the monks. It must at the same time be remembered that Dieulacres was not only a Staffordshire monastery: it also held large estates in Cheshire and Lancashire, and it is appropriate at this stage to take a look at the Dieulacres estates in these two counties. This leads naturally to an examination of one of the main sources of the abbey’s wealth wool and the wool trade. It was after all a Cistercian abbey.

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