THE RELIGIOUS HOUSES 

 OF YORKSHIRE 



INTRODUCTION 



The county of York was remarkable for the number and importance of 

 its religious foundations. Of the Benedictine Order there were only four 

 houses for men, but of these St. Mary's, York, Selby and Whitby, were all of 

 the first rank, and Monk Bretton is interesting as having been originally a 

 Cluniac house. Of the ten Benedictine nunneries none were of importance. 

 The striking feature of Yorkshire religious life, however, was the pre- 

 dominance of the Cistercian Order ; Byland, Fountains, Jervaulx, Kirkstall, 

 Meaux, Rievaulx, Roche and Sawley, forming a group of Cistercian 

 monasteries that cannot be paralleled elsewhere in England, and there were 

 twelve houses for women of the same order, though most of these were quite 

 small. It is noteworthy that in the case of the nunneries of Swine and 

 Wykeham the early records speak of certain canons being attached to the 

 convents.^ The Cluniac Order, after the secession of Monk Bretton in 1 279, 

 was represented by the monastery of St. John's, Pontefract, and the nunnery 

 of Arthington. The two Carthusian houses of Hull and Mount Grace were 

 comparatively late foundations, and there was at Grosmont a small priory of 

 the Grandimontine Order. 



Ten houses of Austin Canons were founded before the middle of the 

 1 2th century, and of these Bolton, Bridlington, Guisborough, Newburgh and 

 Nostell, were of considerable importance. Another house of this order, that 

 of Haltemprice, was founded as late as 1320. The only convent of Austin 

 Nuns, that established at Moxby about 1165, originally formed part of the 

 priory of Marton, founded about 1 1 35, as a double house for nuns and canons. 

 The Gilbertine Order, in which the double community was the rule, had 

 three houses in the county, and the Premonstratensian Canons also had three 

 abbeys. But the most remarkable house of Canons Regular was the priory of 

 North Ferriby of Austin Canons of the Order of the Temple ; they are some- 

 times erroneously said to have been affiliated to the Knights Templars, but 

 were in reality a cell of the abbey of the Temple of the Lord at Jerusalem 

 and in no way connected with the Knights of the Temple of Solomon ; at a 

 later date these canons seem to have been considered as ordinary Austin 

 Canons. 



Both military orders, of the Temple and of the Hospital, had extensive 

 possessions in Yorkshire and each appointed a chief preceptor or master for 



'Cf. Godstow, V.C.H. Oxon, ii, 73 ; and Nuneaton, V.C.H. Warw. ii, 66. 

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