A HISTORY OF YORKSHIRE 



The keeping of useless or wasteful servants, 

 and also of a superfluity of dogs, was strictly pro- 

 hibited. No woman was to be received as guest 

 except the honourable wife of the patron, who, 

 for one night only, might stop at the monastery. 

 No one was to receive payments or gifts without 

 the consent of the president, and then was not 

 to keep such himself, but they were to be assigned 

 to common use by the prior or president. Hunt- 

 ing, moreover, on the part of the canons and 

 unlawful outings were wholly forbidden, and the 

 doors and exits of the monastery were to be 

 better guarded than they had been. William de 

 Foxholes, Robert Wrot, William de Endreby, 

 and Anselm de Pontefracto, whose morals and 

 deeds had hitherto been discordant with the 

 rule, were committed by the archbishop for 

 correction to the prior and sub-prior. 



A certain Roger, a conversus of the house, had, 

 to the scandal of the order, left it. Archbishop 

 Romanus, on 26 May 1286,** wrote to the prior 

 to receive him back to his habit again. He was, 

 no doubt, the same as Roger de Soureby, con- 

 cerning whom the archbishop in his decretum of 

 1 1 October of the same year " (which deals 

 mainly with Marton)," directed that as he was 

 penitent he was to be admitted to the house, but 

 sent to reside at Hood. 



On 29 December 1292," the archbishop 

 ordered the public excommunication of Robert 

 de Wetwang, who, nineteen years before, had 

 entered Newburgh as an Augustinian canon, and 

 was at the time an apostate, wandering about to 

 the great peril of his soul and the scandal of the 

 people, leading a very dissolute life. 



On 28 September 1312 '^ Archbishop Green- 

 field commissioned two of his clerks to receive 

 the purgation of the Prior of Newburgh, who 

 stood charged with certain unspecified acts of 

 incontinence. Two years later the archbishop 

 wrote (3 April 13 14) to the prior,'' that during 

 a recent visitation held in the city of York, a 

 canon of Newburgh, John de Baggeby, had 

 sinned carnally with a certain Alice de Hextil- 

 desham, and had confessed his sin. The arch- 

 bishop sent him to the prior to be punished. 



On Monday after the Translation of St. Thomas 

 the Martyr in the same year ^ the archbishop 

 held a visitation of Newburgh, on which he sent 

 a decretum to the prior and canons, couched in 

 terms common to such documents, and throwing 

 little light on its internal afifairs, except that the 

 house was heavily in debt and burdened by 

 pensions and hveries. 



" York Archiepis. Reg. Romanus, fol. 50. 

 " Ibid. fol. 5+^. 



" A summary will be found under the account of 

 that house. 



" York Archiepis. Reg. Romanus, fol. 54. 



" Ibid. Greenfield, ii, fol. 25. 



" Ibid. fol. 98. » Ibid. fol. 99. 



In May 1318 " a visitation of Newburgh was 

 held for Archbishop Melton, who issued a long 

 series of injunctions, which are, however, for the 

 most part of a general character. Charity was 

 to be nurtured. Divine services properly per- 

 formed, and especially those of our Lady and 

 for the departed, and others said without note, 

 which were not to be gabbled, and one side was 

 not to begin the verse of a psalm before the 

 other side had finished. Seculars were to be 

 restrained from frequent use of the cloister 

 and infirmary and other private places. No 

 strangers were to eat in the refectory except 

 mature and worthy persons. The sick were to 

 be attended to as their needs required and the 

 means allowed, and they were to have a dis- 

 creet and modest canon, at the appointment of 

 the prior, who should say the canonical hours, 

 and celebrate mass to their edification and 

 solace. All the members of the house were to 

 use the accustomed habit, and avoid novelties in 

 dress. 



In July 1328 ^' Archbishop Melton ordered 

 three canons, for disobedience, to be sent to other 

 houses of the order — John de Thresk to Cartmel, 

 John de Kilvington to Hexham, and William de 

 Wycome to St. Oswald's, Gloucester. Four 

 other rebellious canons were to receive a weekly 

 discipline. 



It was the custom for the archbishop to claim 

 a pension for someone nominated by himself, on 

 the occasion of the creation of a new abbot or 

 prior, in certain of the monasteries. The custom 

 prevailed in regard to Newburgh, and on 

 2 August 1323*' Archbishop Melton wrote to 

 the prior and convent to assign a decent annual 

 pension to Richard de Whatton, clerk, virtute 

 creacionis novi prions. Apparently the new prior 

 was John de Cateryk, who had been elected two 

 years before. 



In 1366'* Archbishop Thoresby gave notice 

 of his intention to visit Newburgh, because a 

 rumour had reached him that the house, by the 

 indiscreet rule of the prior and the carelessness 

 of the officials, was very greatly in debt and 

 almost bankrupt. The result of the visitation 

 is not recorded. In 1380-1 "' the convent 

 comprised the prior and fifteen canons. 



In 1404^' one of those little gleams of light 

 which help to make the daily routine of the 

 house more realistic is thrown upon the scene 

 by an indult granted by Pope Boniface IX to 

 William Chester, priest and Augustinian canon 

 of Newburgh ; seeing that by the customs of the 

 priory each of the canons, being a priest, was 

 bound in a certain order to say mass week by 

 week, in a loud voice and with music, such 



" Ibid. Melton, fol. 230. 



" Ibid. fol. 2503. " Ibid. fol. 2413. 



" Ibid. Thoresby, fol. 184. 



» Subs. R. (P.R.O.), bdle. 63, no. 12. 



" Ca/. of Papal Letters, v, 609. 



228 



