RELIGIOUS HOUSES 



It may be noted here that besides these regular and ordinary forms of 

 the religious life, Lancashire had also from time to time its hermits and 

 anchorites. Hugh Garth, the founder of Cockersand Abbey, was a hermit/ 

 Kersal Cell grew out of a hermitage. William the Hermit, of Heaton, near 

 Lancaster,^ is mentioned about 1280." In 1366 John ' dictus le Hermit de 

 Singleton ' was licensed to have Divine service in the chapel at the foot of the 

 bridge of Ribble for three years.^ John of Gaunt, in 1372, granted to 

 Brother Richard de Goldbourne, hermit, the custody of the hermitage of the 

 chapel of St. Martin in Chatburn with its lands and other property, as the 

 hermits, his predecessors, held it.' The ' hermit of Lancaster ' is mentioned 

 in 1403.^ Five oaks were given in 1406 to Thurstan de Oakenshaw, hermit, 

 to repair Warrington bridge.* The life of the hermit, though further with- 

 drawn from the throng of men, was more open to the world than that led by 

 the other type of solitary, the anchorite or recluse, whose voluntary prison 

 usually adjoined or formed part of a church. Brother Richard Pekard, recluse 

 of the Dominican Friary at Lancaster, was licensed to hear confessions in 

 1390.' This form of solitude was, as a rule, the only one possible for women, 

 and several recorded recluses in Lancashire were anchoresses. Henry, duke of 

 Lancaster, made permanent provision for one at Wh alley, but after several of 

 them had escaped into the world, the hermitage, as it was loosely called, was 

 dissolved in 1437.^° In 1493 ^^^ bishop of Lichfield issued an injunction to 

 the abbot of Cockersand to include Agnes Booth or Shepherd, a nun of 

 Norton Priory, who wished to lead the solitary life at the chapel of Pilling." 



The religious houses of Lancashire, with the one great exception of 

 Furness, have few points of contact with general history until the eve of the 

 Dissolution, and only one produced a chronicle. Their local influence, ex- 

 cluding those which were mere cells of external houses, was extensive, 

 especially in the north of the county, where the people were poor and 

 Lancaster and Preston the only urban centres. Furness, Cartmel, and Whalley 

 exercised feudal lordship over wide tracts of country ; Burscough and Furness 

 were lords of the small boroughs of Ormskirk and Dalton. A considerable 

 number of the churches of the county were in the patronage of the religious 

 houses. Lytham Priory and others had trouble with neighbouring lords, but 

 these turned on disputed claims to land and common rights, rather than any 

 matter of religion. There are some records of disputes between the various 

 houses ; these, however, do not seem to have had anything to do with 

 iealousy between the different orders. Furness naturally resented the founda- 

 tion of Conishead so close to itself, and on land under its own lordship, but 

 the quarrel was soon composed. Difficulties arose between the former house 

 and Lancaster Priory over their respective fishing rights in the Lune, and 

 between Lancaster Priory and the abbeys of Cockersand and Whalley, in 

 regard to tithes and parochial rights over lands held by those abbeys in the 

 parish of Poulton, whose church belonged to the priory. These disputes, too, 

 were ultimately settled by legal or friendly arrangement. 



' See p. 154. * Lane. Church (Chet. Soc), 278. 



* Lich. Epis. Reg. Stretton, vol. 2, fol. 13. 



° Misc. Bks. (Duchy of Lanes.), vol. 13, fol. 74^. Goldbourne was to pray for the souls of the duke and 

 his progenitors. 



' Cal. Pat. 140 1-5, p. 225. ' Wylie, Hist, of Hen. IV, iv, 144. 



' Lich. Epis. Reg. Scrope, fol. 126^. '» See p. 137. " Chet. Soc. Publ. (Old Ser.), Ivii (2), p. 30. 



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