A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



In November 1314 the parish church of Blyth was interdicted by the 

 archbishop for not having paid the fees of Thomas Bishop of Withern in 

 Galloway, who had been commissioned to reconcile it when it had been polluted 

 by the violent effusion of blood. No offices were to be performed in it except 

 the baptism of infants and the absolution of penitents near to death. The 

 convent of Blyth were to see that this interdict was observed, and when they 

 said mass it was to be with closed doors, in a low voice, and without ringing 

 of bells, the parishioners being rigorously excluded. A body that had been 

 brought privily to the church and buried was to be exhumed, nor was it to 

 be interred in the chapels of Bawtry or Austerfield or in any other dependen- 

 cies of the church of Blyth. 83 



Greenfield's successor in the archbishopric, William de Melton, ruled 

 from 1317 until his death in 1340. Almost the whole of his diocese, with 

 the exception of the archdeaconry of Nottingham, suffered grievously from 

 the forays of the Scottish marauders. The rout at Myton-on-the-Swale went 

 by the name of ' the Chapter of Myton,' from the number of the clergy whom 

 the archbishop persuaded to enter the ranks to oppose the Scots. In No- 

 vember 1319 Archbishop Melton made an appeal to the abbot and convent of 

 Welbeck to help him in his great need ; he recited the very great losses he 

 had sustained in the Scottish war, wherein he had suffered the destruction and 

 waste of his manors of Hexham, Ripon, Otley, and Sherborne, particularly at 

 the battle of Myton, where he had lost all his plate and other valuables. 

 Similar letters were sent to the Nottinghamshire houses of Rufford, Shelford, 

 Thurgarton, Worksop, Lenton, Newstead, Blyth, and Mattersey. 84 



The following are some of the more interesting Nottinghamshire in- 

 cidents of Melton's rule. In 1320 the Abbot and convent of Rufford entered 

 into obligations to entertain for a day and a night each Archbishop of York 

 on coming to his diocese ; a most exceptional step to be taken by a Cister- 

 cian house. The archbishop issued a commission in 1323 to dedicate the 

 altars in the monastic church of Thurgarton, which had been reconstructed. 

 On 12 June 1326 the certificate of baptism and conversion of a Jew, named 

 Walter de Nottingham, in the church of St. Mary Nottingham, which had 

 taken place on Monday after the octave of the Holy Trinity of the previous 

 year, was entered in the diocesan register ; Sir Walter de Goushill and Sir 

 Richard de Whatton, knights, and Orframia wife of Robert Ingram of Not- 

 tingham, were the godparents. A further notice, apparently referring to the 

 same case, was entered by the archbishop in his register in March 1334, 

 stating that Walter Conversus, formerly called Hagyn in the Hebrew tongue, 

 was baptized at Nottingham on 30 June 1325. A further entry of about 

 the same date tells of the severe penance enjoined on Sir Peter de Mauley, 

 knight (an old offender), for adultery ; he was to fast every Friday in Lent, 

 Ember Days, and Advent for seven years on bread, water, and small beer, and 

 Good Friday and the Vigil of All Saints on only bread and water, to make 

 pilgrimages to the shrines of St. William of York, St. Thomas of Hereford, 

 the Blessed Virgin of Southwell, St. John of Beverley, and St. Wilfrid of 

 Ripon ; and further to be fustigated or scourged seven times before the 

 Sunday procession in the usual scanty dress of penitents. 85 



89 Harl. MS. 6970, fol. 241. "York Epis. Reg. Melton, fol. 9*. 



84 Raine, Hist, of Archbps. ofTork, 415-19. 



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