THE RELIGIOUS HOUSES OF 

 NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



INTRODUCTION 



Northamptonshire was honourably distinguished for the number and 

 variety of its monastic and other rehgious foundations. The Carthusian order 

 was the only one of any considerable repute which was not represented, but 

 English houses of that order were few. 



The magnificent abbey of Peterborough was the one foundation that 

 went back to pre-conquest days. It was a splendid representative of the great 

 order of Black Monks of St. Benedict ; to it pertained a neighbouring cell at 

 Oxney, served by the parent house. A small Benedictine priory was founded 

 temp. Henry I at Luffield in Whittlebury Forest. The buildings were in 

 Buckinghamshire, but the church stood in Northamptonshire. It was sup- 

 pressed by Henry VII, and the trifling revenues annexed to his foundation at 

 Westminster. There were also other small Benedictine settlements in the 

 county, off-shoots of the great abbeys of Normandy, but they were all sup- 

 pressed before the days of Henry VIII. Such were the cells or small alien 

 priories of Everdon, pertaining to the abbey of Bernay, of Weedon Pinkney 

 to the abbey of St. Lucian, and of Weedon Beck to the abbey of Bee. 



The Order of Cluny (reformed Benedictines) was founded in 912 at 

 Cluny in Burgundy, by Berno, abbot of Gigny, with the co-operation of 

 William duke of Aquitaine. The monks of the new order came to England 

 in the following century and established their first house at Barnstaple.^ 

 Northamptonshire possessed two important priories of Cluniac foundation, 

 and a nunnery of the order. 



This order' was the first to obtain immunity from diocesan visitation ; 

 this coveted privilege being granted by Pope Gregory VII, who had 

 himself been a monk of the order. But all the houses, whether abbeys, 

 priories, or smaller cells, had to submit to visitation by commissioners of their 

 own order. Two were selected for this duty for each ecclesiastical province 

 (England and Scotland forming one) at the annual general chapter held at 

 Cluny. The time for meeting was September, and the attendance of the 

 superior of every house was compulsory ; the priors, however, of England, 

 Spain, Lombardy, and Germany were privileged, and not obliged to attend 

 more than once in two years, a period afterwards extended to three, with 

 occasional remissions up to seven years. The priors also of dependent houses 



^ Pignot, Ordre de C/uni, iii. 419. Lewes is generally named as the first English house, but this is an 

 error. 



- See tabulated list of affiliated foundations in England and Scotland, reproduced in Duckett, CbarUn 

 and Records ofCluni, 196. 



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