ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



religious houses to others. To this latter cause of confusion has been attri- 

 buted the dispute which raged during the first half of the twelfth century 

 between the abbey of Shrewsbury and Lancaster Priory over the advowson 

 of Kirkham church. Shrewsbury Abbey had been colonized from Sees by 

 Roger of Montgomery, and his first intention may have been that it should 

 remain an affiliated house of the great Norman abbey. At any rate the 

 latter laid claim to certain possessions of Shrewsbury Abbey for fifty years 

 after its foundation. But in the case of Kirkham the Sees claim rested on 

 more definite ground than this. It had been clearly granted to both houses. 

 The grant to Shrewsbury by Godfrey the sheriff^ confirmed by Roger of 

 Poitou son of Roger of Montgomery was the earlier, and in 1143 William 

 Fitz Herbert, archbishop of York, finally decided in its favour. Count 

 Roger's grant of it to Sees for Lancaster Priory must, if correctly dated, 

 have followed that to Shrewsbury in a very few months. The only reason- 

 able explanation of this double grant would suppose some transfer of God- 

 frey's interest in Kirkham to his superior lord in the interval. For this, 

 however, there is no evidence. It is true that Godfrey's lands reverted to 

 the demesne, apparently before 1102, and that Walton-on-the-Hill, the 

 other church which he gave to Shrewsbury Abbey, was, there is reason to 

 believe, regranted to that house by Count Roger. But this general resump- 

 tion must have been subsequent to the grant of Kirkham to Lancaster 

 Priory, which was accompanied by his own concession of the tithes of 

 Bispham close by.** 



A dispute which arose at the end of the twelfth century between 

 Furness Abbey and Conishead Priory over the churches of Pennington and 

 Ulverston illustrates another way in which rival claims to advowsons by 

 monasteries might arise. The monks of Furness, who resented the estab- 

 lishment of the priory in close proximity to their own house and on land 

 over which they possessed the lordship, put in a claim to the two churches 

 which had been granted to Conishead by its founders on the ground that 

 they were chapels of its own church of Urswick. The dispute was ulti- 

 mately settled by a compromise, Furness relinquishing its claim to the 

 churches in question on certain conditions which included the abandonment 

 by Conishead of its counter-claim to the chapel of Hawkshead." 



Monasteries had also to defend their title to advowsons against laymen. 

 Church patronage was valuable as a means of providing for younger members 

 of families and dependants, and the successors of donors not infrequently 

 begrudged their generosity and were ready to seize upon any defect of title 

 to get it reversed. Thus Theobald Walter on receiving a grant of all 

 Amounderness from Richard I in 1 194 immediately laid claim to the advow- 

 sons of Kirkham, Poulton, and Preston, founding it, we may suppose, upon 

 the ground that the validity of Roger of Poitou's gifts had been impaired 

 by his disinherison and banishment in 1102. The result of the suits which 

 he instituted in the royal courts was that Shrewsbury Abbey had to surrender 

 the advowson of Kirkham church to Theobald, reserving only an annual 

 pension of twelve marks, and the monks of Sees, while obtaining a confirma- 

 tion of the churches of Poulton and Bispham, gave up that of Preston with 



^ See below, ' Religious Houses.' ^ Ibid. 



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