A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



whereof to this my present abjuration I have subscrybed my name and sett to 

 the Crosse.'"" 



The treatment of the large number of varied monastic establishments 

 that w^ere suppressed in Nottinghamshire will be dealt with in detail in the 

 article on ' Religious Houses.' One point in connexion with the suppression 

 of the Nottinghamshire religious houses, not noticed elsewhere, may be here 

 set on record, namely the sweeping away with the monks, canons, and nuns of 

 a great store of alms by which the poor of the county had to no small extent 

 benefited for centuries, without compensation. We do not now allude to the 

 almost universal distribution of broken victuals daily at the monastic gates, 

 the relief of the very poorest class of wayfarers, or the rule of assigning to the 

 poor after an inmate's death the commons of the deceased for a whole year — 

 but to the actual obligatory alms that various houses were bound by their 

 statutes to distribute on specific days, often dating back to the very time of 

 their foundation. Among such obligatory alms were : Worksop £2^ is. 4^'. ; 

 Welbeck ^^8 i^s. 4^.; Thurgarton £6 %s. id.; Newstead ^"4 ; Blyth 

 £t^ 6s. Sd. ; and Shelford and Wallingwells £2 6s. Sd. each — yielding a total 

 amounting to £^2 2s. Sd. or considerably more than £500 a year accord- 

 ing to the present purchasing power of money." 



Lee's episcopate, which ended with his death in i 544, was marked by 

 the alienation to the Crown in 1 542 of various ancient episcopal manors, 

 including that of Southwell, in exchange for lands which had belonged to 

 certain of the dissolved priories. To this course of action, by which, it is 

 needless to say, the Crown profited, the archbishop was practically compelled 

 to submit. His successor, Robert Holdegate, an ex-canon of the Sempring- 

 ham Order, and a man of very different calibre, submitted so readily to 

 wholesale stripping of the emoluments of the see — including six Nottingham- 

 shire manors — within a few weeks after his translation, that there can be 

 little doubt as to this spoliation being a condition of his appointment.'* 



The obsequious Holdegate was in power during the reign of Edward VI. 

 The suppression of the chantries at this period was a far severer blow to the 

 general ordinances of religion than the dissolution of the monasteries, and 

 was carried out on like lines of spoliation, mitigated by pensions to the 

 dispossessed. It cannot be too plainly stated that the popular idea of a 

 chantry priest as a mere mass priest for the souls of the departed, with no 

 other functions attached to his office, is a complete misconception. The 

 chantry priests were often assistant parochial clergy, or, as we should now say, 

 curates, and occasionally had sole charge of detached places of worship at 

 some distance from the parish church, which served as chapels of ease to the 

 hamlets. In 1545 Henry VIII decided on appropriating the revenues 

 belonging to chantries, collegiate churches, and like foundations, and in that 

 year obtained an authorizing Act from his subservient Parliament.'' 



Few foundations, however, were actually dissolved under this Act 

 owing to the king's death, but as a preliminary measure, commissions were 

 issued to take valuations of the properties and inventories of the chattels. A 



^ York Epis. Reg. Lee, fol. 150. " P^aior Eccl. (Rec. Com.), passim. 



'' Sixty-seven manors in all were transferred to the Crown in exchange for the paltry grant of thirty-three 

 small impropriations and advowsons late pertaining to monasteries. See Drake, Hist, of York, 452. 

 "' Stat. 37 Hen. VIII, cap. 4. 



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