RELIGIOUS HOUSES 



taken refuge there. 1 On 6 March Henry III 

 commanded the sheriff of Gloucester to take 

 with him the constable of St. Briavel's and the 

 king's coroners of the county, and go to the 

 abbey of Flaxley to offer to persons there who 

 were against the king that they should come out 

 to stand their trial or else abjure the kingdom. 

 The sheriff's men, armed with bows and 

 hatchets, kept watch around the abbey and took 

 fuel in the abbot's woods. The constable of 

 St. Briavel's seized the abbot's horses, and was 

 in consequence excommunicated by Hugh Foliot, 

 bishop of Hereford. On 20 March Henry III 

 sent a mandate to the constable to deliver up the 

 horses, and to the bishop to remove the excom- 

 munication. On 28 March he ordered the 

 constable to recompense the abbot for his burnt 

 hedges, and commanded that the keepers of 

 Richard Marshal's servants should remain out- 

 side, not inside, the gates of the monastery. 



The revenues of Flaxley were never large, 

 and in 1276 it was one of the poorer houses of 

 the southern province, assessed only to pay ,8 

 towards the 'courtesy* of ,1,000 to Edward I, 

 when Kingswood paid 13 161. and Hayles 

 14. 13*. \d? Like a number of other Cistercian 

 monasteries, 3 it was heavily in debt. Building 

 was going on in the reign of Henry III, for on 

 several occasions the king granted oaks for the 

 church and buildings of the abbey. 4 In 1277 

 Edward I appointed his steward, Ralph of 

 Sandwich, to the custody during pleasure, of the 

 abbey of Flaxley, because it was in debt to the 

 king* for a considerable sum, and would so con- 

 tinue for a long time, also on account of a loan 

 contracted in the Jewry and elsewhere, and of 

 various immense debts to merchants alien and 

 denizen, and others. 1 In 1281 the king issued a 

 mandate to Grimbold Pauncefort, the keeper of 

 the Forest of Dean, to take the abbey of Flaxley 

 under his special protection for three years, 

 because it was burdened with debt and im- 

 poverished both by murrain among the sheep, 

 upon which the monks mainly depended for 

 their subsistence, as well as by sheriffs, bedels, 

 foresters, and others consuming their goods by 

 faculties, so that the abbey could no longer 

 perform its customary distribution of alms or 

 other works of mercy, and the monks were in 

 danger of dispersion. He was bidden to apply 

 the revenues thereof to the use of the said abbey, 

 except such as were necessary for the mainten- 

 ance of the abbot and convent and their house- 

 holds, and for the distribution of alms to the poor.' 

 The situation appears to have been one of special 

 difficulty, and two years later Edward I gave the 



1 Cartu/. of Flaxley, 55-7. 



' Harl. MS. (B.M.), 6603, fol. 384. 



* Roj. Hist. Soc. Tram, xviii, 142. 



' CaL tf Clou, 1 5 Hen. Ill, m. 1 5. CartuL of Flaxley, 



* Cal. of Pat. 5 Edw. I, m. 20. 

 ' Ibid. 10 Edw. I, m. 22. 



custody of Flaxley to Thomas de Basing, a 

 citizen of London, bidding him apply the issues 

 to the satisfaction of the multifarious and 

 immense debts of the house. 7 A great murrain 

 among sheep began in 1276 and lasted for several 

 years.* The debts of Flaxley probably prevented 

 the convent from restocking their pastures, and 

 perhaps explain the fact that about the beginning 

 of the fourteenth century the annual average 

 sales of wool amounted only to six sacks a year, 

 the prices varying from 15 to 8^ marks a sack, 

 when Kingswood was selling forty sacks and 

 Hayles twenty sacks.* 



In 1335 misrule as well as misfortune brought 

 the monastery once more into grievous pecuniary 

 difficulties. Edward III gave the custody of 

 Flaxley during his pleasure to the abbots of 

 Bordesley and Dore, and the prior of the house. 10 



In 1353, in consideration of the great losses 

 which the abbot and convent had sustained from 

 the deer and other wild beasts of the forest, and 

 from the expense incurred by many visits from 

 the king, Edward III granted a yearly payment 

 of ^36 9*. id. out of the rents of newly assarted 

 crown lands in the Forest of Dean. 11 



As one of the lesser monasteries Flaxley came 

 under the Act of 1536. On 4 September a 

 commission was issued for a survey of all those 

 monasteries in Gloucestershire of which the 

 revenues fell below ^200 a year, with a view 

 of taking them over on the king's behalf. u The 

 commissioners reported that at Flaxley there 

 were seven monks, all priests, ' by report of 

 convenient conversation.' 13 Three of them de- 

 sired to have ' capacities ' that they might hold 

 benefices, the other four wished to continue in 

 religion. There was one lay brother, and the 

 household consisted of eighteen servants. The 

 house itself was in ruin and decay, and the 

 church had been destroyed by fire ; the bells had 

 been melted and the metal sold for the restora- 

 tion of the building. There is no evidence to 

 show how soon afterwards the house was dis- 

 solved ; on 21 March, 1537, tnc s ' te an ^ posses- 

 sions of the late monastery were granted to Sir 

 William Kingston. 14 The abbot, Thomas Were, 

 retired to Aston Rowant in Oxfordshire. 18 Under 

 the Act pensions were only provided for heads 

 of houses ; in the case of the Cistercian monas- 

 teries the monks who wished to continue in 

 religion were usually received into the larger 

 houses of the order, when possible into the 



' Ibid. 1 1 Edw. I, m. 9. 



1 Fkr. ffigorn. (Engl. Hist. Soc.), ii, 217. 



' Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Com- 

 merce, i, 633 (ed. 1905). 



" Cal. of Pat. 9 Edw. Ill, pt. ii, m. 16. Cartu/. 

 of Flaxley, 117. 



" Ibid. 1 1 6. 



" Dublin Review, April, 1894, p. 250. 



Ibid, 275, 276. 



14 L. and P. Hen. Vlll, xii, pt. i, No. 793 (42). 



Cartu/. of Flaxley, p. 88. 



95 



