RELIGIOUS HOUSES 



PRIORS OF WORKSOP 



William de Huntingdon, first prior * 3 



William, n8o 34 



Stephen, c. ngS 35 



Henry, 1200 36 



Walter, occurs c. 1230" 



Robert de Pikebow, 1260 88 



J., occurs 1267 * 8 



Alan de London, resigned i 300 40 



John de Tykill, 1 303, also occurs 1311 and 



1313 



41 



Robert de Carlton, 1313 a 



John, 1396" 



Roger de Upton, died 1404** 



John de Leghton, 1404" 



Charles Flemmyng, occurs 1458, resigned 



1463" 



William Acworth, 1463 47 

 Robert Ward, occurs 1486, died 15 18 48 

 Robert Gateford, I5i8 49 

 Nicholas Storth, I522 60 

 Thomas Stokkes, occurs 1535 " 



HOUSE OF PREMONSTRATENSIAN CANONS 



ii. THE ABBEY OF WELBECK 



Joceus de Flemmaugh is said to have formed 

 one of the train of William of Normandy at the 

 time of the Conquest ; he acquired the third 

 part of a knight's fee in Cuckney. Joceus begat 

 a son named Richard who married a Nottingham 

 lady. There was living in Cuckney a man 

 called Gamelbere, 1 described as a ' dreng,' who 

 held, before the Conquest, two carucates of land 

 of the king in chief by the service of providing 

 a palfrey for the king, shod on its four feet at 

 the king's forge, whenever he visited his manor 

 of Mansfield, and by attending him in the time 

 of war. Gamelbere died without heir, and 

 his land escheated to King Henry I. The 

 king gave this land to Richard the son of 

 Joceus. Richard had a son of the like name 

 by his first wife, and on her death he took 

 for a second wife Avice, a kinswoman of Earl 

 Ferrers, granting her as dower the two caru- 

 cates of land at Cuckney. By his second wife 

 Richard had a son called Thomas. Thomas 

 was brought up in the king's court, and on his 

 father's death inherited the two carucates. 

 Thomas is described as a most warlike man, who 

 followed the king (Stephen) throughout his cam- 

 paigns ; but when there was peace in the king- 

 dom, in the reign of Henry II, founded the 

 abbey of Welbeck. 2 



This is the first part of the account set forth 

 at length towards the end of the Welbeck char- 



M White, Worksop, 33. Signs, as ' William,' the foun- 

 dation charter of Welbeck Abbey. 



84 Ibid. * Ibid. " Ibid. 



" Harl. MS. 6972, fol. 3. 



"White, Worksop, 33. 



39 Harl. MS. 6972, fol. 2. "Ibid fol. 7. 



"Harl. MS. 6970, fol. 146 ; ibid. 6972, fol. II. 



"Ibid. "White, Worksop, 33. 



"Harl. MS. 6972, fol. 74. "Ibid. 



46 Bodl. Chart. Notts, no. 10 ; Harl. MS. 6972, 

 fol. 31. 



"Ibid. * Ibid, fol 45. 



49 Ibid. M Ibid. fol. 46. 



" Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), v, 1 74. 



tulary as to the history of the foundation and of 

 the founder's ancestry and progeny ; but it repre- 

 sents a very confused tradition as to the origin of 

 the house, for another shorter account, which 

 immediately follows, makes Richard the son of 

 Joceus the original founder of the abbey. 3 This 

 latter statement is nearer the truth, for the abbey 

 was begun by Richard in 1153, and finished 

 by his son Thomas in the reign of Henry II ; 4 

 but, even so, the fact remains that ' Joceus ' 

 cannot be identified in the more authentic re- 

 cords of the period to which this tradition would 

 assign him. 



Nevertheless, as Thomas carried out and ful- 

 filled his father's intentions with definite endow- 

 ments, he is generally regarded as the founder ; 

 but it was in his father's lifetime that a colony 

 of Premonstratensian canons from the abbey of 

 Newhouse, Lincolnshire, established themselves 

 in this north-west corner of the county of Not- 

 tingham. Thomas's charter, addressed to Roger, 

 Archbishop of York, and to all faithful sons of 

 the Church, sets forth that he has granted to 

 Berengarius, Abbot of Welbeck, and his successors, 

 by the counsel of Serlo, Abbot of Newhouse, the 

 site of the abbey of Welbeck, where the church 

 of St. James is founded, and all the land from 

 that site to the place called Belph, between the 

 rivulet and the wheel road (viam quadrigarum) 

 from the abbey to Belph. He also granted all 

 the meadows, pastures, groves, and cultivated 

 ground in Belph, and all his adjacent wood- 



1 The name is pure Danish ; see V.C.H. Notts, i, 243, 

 where also reference is made to the significance of the 

 title ' dreng.' 



'Harl. MS. 3640, fol. 160-1. This MS. is a valuable 

 but irregular and imperfect register or chartulary of 

 Welbeck Abbey of 175 folios, in hands of the end of 

 the 1 3th and of the I4th and 1 5th centuries ; it is the 

 one cited by Thoroton in his history of the county, 

 but parts are missing since that date. Harl. MS. 

 5374, fol. 1-18, contains a number of excerpts from 

 Lord Chesterfield's chartulary of this abbey relative; 

 to benefactions of the de Vylers family, of Lincoln. 



'Harl. MS. 3640, fol. 161 d, 162. 



4 Ashm. MS. 1519, cited in Dugdale, Man. vi, 87*.. 



129 



