RELIGIOUS HOUSES 



Whitby. It was a small cell, with but few 

 monks resident, in the valuation of York churches 

 1413-22, the value of All Saints Church being 

 put down as ;^i." Doubtless the needs of the 

 monks would be supplied from the abbey at 

 Whitby, all deficiencies being made up from the 

 abbey revenues. Every trace of the small priory 

 has disappeared, and as many changes have taken 

 place in that part of York where it used to stand 

 it is difficult to locate the site of the cell. 



7. GOATHLAND, QUASI-CELL OF 

 WHITBY 



The ecclesiastical establishment at Goathland 

 was at first a hermitage. Henry I,^ by a charter 

 addressed to Archbishop Thomas (i 109-14), 

 Nigel de Albini and Osbert, Sheriff of Yorkshire, 

 granted to Osmund the priest and the brothers 

 o.f ' Godelane ' that place for entertaining the 

 floor, and the brothers were to hold it free of all 

 interference from the king's foresters and others, 

 in perpetual alms, and Nigel de Albini and the 

 :sherifF were to give them seisin. 



By a later charter,^ addressed to the same 

 persons, the king granted that Osmund the 

 priest and the brothers of Goathland might 

 transfer themselves and their hermitage with 

 all its appurtenances to the Abbot and convent of 

 Whitby, in perpetuity, to be received to the 

 habit of religion in the chapter of the monks. 

 The king enjoined the abbot and monks to 

 receive the brethren to the rule of St. Benedict, 

 and confirmed the hermitage with all its appur- 

 tenances to the abbey of Whitby. 



King John ' confirmed the grants made by 

 Henry I, which included also the gift of a caru- 

 cate of land, and from a certain William Boie 

 the brothers had also received a toft in Lockington, 

 both of which were transferred to Whitby. 

 There is really no evidence that the hermitage 

 of Goathland, after it passed into the possession 

 of Whitby, became a cell of the abbey. Appar- 

 ently the hermitage had at one time or other 

 been turned into a house for the abbot. On 

 22 December 1538^ Henry Davell, Abbot of 

 Whitby, leased to Robert Cokerell of ' Godland ' 

 for eighty-one years at a yearly rent of 20s. ' one 

 fermehold in Godland called the Abbot House.' 

 Nothing is known of Goathland after it passed 

 to Whitby. 



'* Drake, Eior. 234. 



' Whitby Chartul. 161. Dr. Atkinson gives good 

 reasons for expanding the ' T Archiepiscopo ' of the 

 charter into Thomae rather than, as Burton and the 

 Monasticm, into Turstino. 



^ Ibid. 



' Dugdale, Mm. Angl. iv, 545. 



* Conventual Leases (P.R.O)., Yorks. no. 929. 



8. HACKNESS, QUASI-CELL OF 

 WHITBY 



Although the name of Hackness is so closely 

 associated with that of the monastery of Whitby, 

 both its relation to the post-Conquest Benedictine 

 monastery and its history are sorhewhat obscure. 



William de Percy gave to the re-founded 

 monastery not merely the site at Whitby on 

 which the earlier house had stood, but also the 

 church of St. Peter at Hackness, and certain 

 land there, which in the Domesday Survey is 

 spoken of as the land of St. Hilda.' When 

 Prior Reinfrid was accidently killed at Ormes- 

 bridge he was buried at Hackness. 



It would seem, though there are discrepancies 

 in the dates, that Prior Serlo and the monks left 

 Whitby for Hackness ^ owing to the depredation 

 by robbers, who hid themselves in the woods in 

 the daytime, and the over-sea pirates who 

 ravaged the monastery at Whitby. They do not 

 seem to have remained very long at Hackness, 

 and Serlo died about iioo at Whitby. There 

 is no doubt that some of the monks remained at 

 Hackness and that afterwards there was a cer- 

 tain undetermined number of Whitby monks 

 there ; but, in the common acceptance of the 

 term, Hackness cannot be correctly spoken of as 

 a distinct cell, such for instance as was Middles- 

 brough. It had no separate government under 

 a subordinate prior, and its accounts were entered 

 in the compotus rolls of the abbey with those of 

 the other manors and granges. It was, in fact, 

 part of the corporate body of the monastery of 

 Whitby under the direct government of the 

 abbot and convent, and was never a separate 

 subordinate establishment, dependent on the 

 parent house, as a cell is generally understood to 

 have been. It is spoken of as a manerium^ and 

 not a cell, as Middlesbrough is. Unfortunately 

 its subsequent history is a blank, all that is 

 known is that a certain number of the Whitby 

 monks generally resided there. Burton says 

 their number was probably determined by the 

 abbot,' and it is said elsewhere that at the 

 Dissolution there were four monks at Hackness.* 



9. ST. MARY'S ABBEY, YORK 



On the north side of the Ouse at York there 

 stood in pre-Conquest days the church or monas- 

 terium of St. Olave,^ which in the days of the 

 Conqueror had come, together with 4 acres of 



' Young, Hist. Whitby, 257. 



° Dugdale, Mon. Angl. ii, 634, no. 2. They began 

 to construct a monasterium at the church of St. Mary 

 Hackness (not St. Peter's) also granted by William de 

 Percy. ' Whitby Chartul. 746. 



' Burton, Mon. Ebor. 83. 



° Dugdale, Mon. Angl. iii, 634. 



' See account of Whitby Abbej', above. 



107 



