A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



ance of the great honours of Pontefract and 

 Clitheroe, on the death in 1193 of his kinsman, 

 Robert de Lacy, whose surname he assumed, 

 opened a new epoch in the history of Stanlaw. 

 From Roger himself, who died in I2II, the 

 house received a grant of the valuable rectory of 

 Rochdale -''' and lands in that parish. ^^' The 

 appropriation of the church was confirmed, sub- 

 ject to the rights of the existing incumbent, by 

 Pope Honorius III in 1218,^" and by Bishop 

 Cornhill of Lichfield, who in 1222 ordained a 

 vicarage of 5 marks with 4 oxgangs of land 

 and a house. ^°' A few years later Bishop 

 Stavenby instituted the first vicar, and the abbey 

 entered into full possession of the rectorial 

 tithes.^^ 



Roger's son John de Lacy, who became earl 

 of Lincoln in 1232 and died in 1240, was an 

 even greater benefactor of the house. In or 

 before 1228 he gave the advowson of one of the 

 two medieties of the rectory of Blackburn, 

 which Bishop Stavenby appropriated to the 

 uses of the abbey,-''' and some years later he 

 conferred the second mediety upon the monks, 

 to whom it was appropriated by Bishop Roger 

 Longesp^e in 1259, subject to the ordination 

 of a vicarage of 20 marks.^"" 



John de Lacy was also the donor of the 

 advowson of the church of Eccles. A licence for 

 its appropriation to the abbey was obtained from 

 Bishop Stavenby in 1234.^" 



These gifts led to grants of land by various 

 persons in the three parishes. Another instance 

 of John de Lacy's generosity, the gift of the vill 

 of Staining (with Hardhorn and Newton) in 

 Amounderness,^^ involved the abbey in fre- 

 quent litigation over the tithes with Lancaster 

 Priory, the appropriators of Poulton, in which 

 parish it lay. In 1234 Stanlaw undertook to 

 pay 5 marks a year for them. As the area of 

 cultivation extended the question was re-opened 

 and the commutation was gradually raised to 1 8 

 marks (1298).-'^ Edmund de Lacy gave the 

 whole township of Cronton near Widnes.'" 



^^ Coucher, 135. 



'" Including the hamlet of Marland, which be- 

 came a grange of the abbey ; ibid. 591. The Lacys 

 and their tenants gave at one time or another much 

 land in Castleton, Rochdale, Whitworth, and Spot- 

 land ; ibid. 595, sqq. ; 637, sqq. Several members 

 of local families vyere monb of the house in the 

 later years of the thirteenth centur}-, and one of 

 them (Robert Haworth) abbot. This no doubt 

 tended to divert land there into the possession of 

 the abbey. 



'" Coucher, 168. »« Ibid. 139. 



«' Ibid. 145. 



«' Ibid. 72, 78. 



*^ Ibid. 74, 80. The appropriation followed a 

 re-grant by Edmund de Lacy in 1251 which was 

 aftenvards regarded as the title ; ibid. 77, 252 



-"' Ibid. 36-7. "> Ibid. 419. 



-'■' Ibid. 425-42. '"Mbid. 811. 



The preponderance of the Lancashire pro- 

 perty of the house among its possessions increased 

 the growing discontent of the monks with the 

 desolate and sea-beaten site of their monastery. 

 A more than usually destructive inundation in 

 1279 perhaps brought matters to a head,*''' and 

 four years later Henry de Lacy, third earl of 

 Lincoln, consented to the removal of the abbey. 

 On the plea that none of their existing lands 

 afforded a suitable site, they persuaded him to 

 grant them the advowson of Whalley with a 

 view to the appropriation to their use of the 

 whole of the tithes of this extensive parish (of 

 which they already held a fourth part as par- 

 cel of their rectory of Blackburn) and to 

 the reconstruction of the monastery on its 

 glebe, which comprised the whole township of 

 Whalley. 



A licence in mortmain was obtained from the 

 king on 24 December, 1283,^" and on the first 

 day of the new year Lacy formally bestowed the 

 advowson and authorized the translation on 

 condition that the ashes of his ancestors and 

 others buried at Stanlaw should be removed to 

 the new abbey and that it should be called 

 Locus Benedictus de Whalley.^'* The bishop 

 of Lichfield's consent to the transference was 

 not granted until two years afterwards ; ^'' the 

 papal approval was still longer delayed. A draft 

 petition to the pope recites that the land on 

 which the house stood was being worn away by 

 every tide and must in a few years become totally 

 uninhabitable and that each year at spring tides 

 the church and monastery buildings were flooded 

 to a depth of three to five feet.^™ This asser- 

 tion contained obvious exaggeration, the rock on 

 which the principal buildings stood being 12 ft. 

 above the level of ordinary tides,"" and it 

 was afterwards softened into a statement that the 

 offices, which lay below the rock, were inundated 

 to a depth of 3 ft.^'" Other considerations laid 

 before the pope were that the greater part of 

 their possessions were situated near Whalley, 

 that the new site, lying in the midst of a barren 

 and poverty-stricken country, would afford great 

 scope for hospitality and almsgiving, and that 

 it was proposed to increase the number of 

 monks by twenty, whose duties would include 

 prayers for his soul. Three or four monks 

 were to be kept at Stanlaw so long as it remained 

 habitable.280- 



On this understanding Nicholas IV granted 

 a licence on 23 July, 1289, for the translation 

 of the abbey and the appropriation of Whalley 

 church on the death or resignation of its aged 

 rector, Peter of Chester, who had held the 



"* Ormerod, Hist. ofChes. ii, 398. 

 "'Coucher, 186. «<■ Ibid. 189. 



'"Ibid. 195. "Mbid. 191. 



Urmerod, op. cit. u, 400. 

 *" Recital of the petition in Pope Nicholas's bull. 

 '*" Coucher, 192. 



I72 



