RELIGIOUS HOUSES 



necessaries in that neighbourhood, gave them 

 (25 July, 1316) Toxteth and Smithdown, near 

 Liverpool, part of his forest, w^ith licence to 

 translate their house thither."'^ The king con- 

 firmed the grant,'"^ but, perhaps owing to 

 episcopal or papal opposition, no action was 

 taken upon it. 



In 1330 the abbey induced Bishop North- 

 burgh to cut down the vicar of Whalley's 

 portion, as fixed in 1298, on the ground that 

 it was excessive.'^" Northburgh also allowed 

 them to present three of their own monks in suc- 

 cession to the vicarage.'^^ A general licence 

 for this practice was obtained from Pope Inno- 

 cent VI in 1358 on the plea that the residence 

 of secular clerks within the monastic inclosure 

 led to disturbances.'^^ The vicars continued to 

 be taken from the monastic body down to the 

 Dissolution.'^' 



The troubles in which the abbey became in- 

 volved by its acquisition of Whalley were not even 

 yet exhausted. Among the direct consequences 

 of this aggrandizement were disputes with its 

 mother house of Combermere and with its own 

 lay patrons. 



With Combermere it came into conflict over 

 its assessment to the Cistercian levy. In 

 this order the filial tie was strong ; '" not 

 only had the mother house the right of visita- 

 tion,'^' but the contributions imposed by the 

 general chapter at Citeaux were partitioned 

 among the groups (generations), consisting of a 

 mother house with its daughters, and re-par- 

 titioned by the abbot of the former. Abbot 



^ Dugdale, Mm. v, 6^6. 



'» Towneley MS. fol. 222. 



"" Coucher, 217. He was henceforth paid ^^44 in 

 money. The receipts under the old ordination can 

 hardly have been much more, but the vicar had now 

 to find chaplains for eight chapels, which, with some 

 other new deductions, left no great margin. The 

 glebe and rights of common were also reduced. In 

 1 4 1 1 the value of the vicarage was said not to be above 

 12 marks ; Cal. Pap. Letters, vi, 276. By 1535 the 

 abbey compounded by a payment of j^l 2, rather more 

 than half of which was absorbed by fixed charges ; 

 VaLEccl. v, 220. The building of the abbey church 

 was begun in the year of Northburgh's reduction of 

 the vicarage ; Whitaker, op. cit. i, 93. 



"■"^ Cal. Pap. Letters, 'm.,t,^l. "'Ibid. 



"' The presentation of monastic vicars was pro- 

 hibited by statute in 4 Hen. IV, but this was held 

 not to apply to appropriations prior to the Act ; 

 Phillimore, Eccl. Law, 276. In the fifteenth cen- 

 tury the abbey occasionally put in monks as vicars ot 

 Blackburn and Rochdale. 



"* Engl. Hist. Rev. viii, 642. 



'" For an undated visitation of Whalley by the 

 abbot of Combermere in the first half of the fourteenth 

 century, in which charges were brought against the 

 abbot and the question of his retirement raised, see 

 Whitaker, op. cit. 1, 175. This may belong to the 

 attempt to supersede Abbot Lmdley m 1365 ; see 

 below. 



Norbury of Whalley complained that the abbot 

 of Combermere had raised their share to a figure 

 out of proportion to the increase in their income. 

 The possession of Whalley was attended with 

 so many expenses that it yielded little net profit.'" 

 After appealing to the abbot of Savigny, the 

 mother house of Combermere, and to the general 

 chapter, Norbury secured an undertaking from 

 the father abbot to consult the filial abbots before 

 fixing their contributions.'^' The matter was 

 reopened in 1 3 1 8, when the abbot of Comber- 

 mere in apportioning a levy of £,1X1 upon his 

 ' generation,' called upon Whalley to pay as 

 much as Combermere and its other filiations, 

 Dieulacres and Hulton, put together. Whalley 

 appealed, and in 1320 delegates appointed by 

 the abbot of Savigny reduced its share to 

 ^80.'" 



The question at issue between the abbey and 

 its patrons related to the status of the chapel of 

 St. Michael in the Castle at Clitheroe. The 

 Earl of Lincoln, having obtained a quitclaim 

 of it from the monks before they settled at 

 Whalley, treated it as a free chapel and not 

 one of the chapels of Whalley church which he 

 conveyed with that church to Stanlaw. On the 

 next vacancy of the chaplaincy he gave it to his 

 clerk William de Nuny, ' not without grave 

 peril to his soul,' in the opinion of the monks.'^^ 

 There is nothing to show, however, that they 

 ventured to put forward their own claim in 

 Lacy's lifetime or that of his son-in-law Thomas 

 of Lancaster. After the attainder of the latter 

 and the forfeiture of his estates, Edward II 

 appointed two chaplains in succession,'*" and 

 when Edward III conferred the honour of 

 Clitheroe on his mother Queen Isabella she 

 filled up several vacancies. But in a petition to 

 the king in 1 33 1 Abbot TopclifFe claimed that 

 St. Michael's had always been a chapel dependent 

 upon Whalley until the earl of Lincoln wrong- 

 fully abstracted it, and that possessing no rights 

 of baptism or burial it could not be a free 

 chapel. '^^ An inquiry was held, and on 



"'Whitaker, op. cit. i, 175. Norbury reckoned 

 the increase in their ordinary annual expenses at 

 £93 i8j-. ()d., of which £(>6 xy. i^d. was the cost 

 of maintaining twenty extra monks. But it is 

 doubtful whether the number of monks had been 

 raised to the maximum promised. For Norbury's 

 dealings with recalcitrant monks see ibid, i, 153. 



"' Ibid, i, 153, 177. Ormerod (op. cit. iii, 403) 

 gives the date as March, 1 3 1 5, probably a mistake 

 for 1305. Norbury died in 1 3 10. Licences for 

 abbots of Whalley going to the general chapter occur 

 on the Close Rolls. 



"' Whitaker, op. cit. i, 177. 



"' Coucher, 227. It is here asserted that they were 

 in possession until the appointment of Nuny, but it 

 was not included in the chapels of Whalley in the 

 valuation made for the vicar's portion in 1296 ; ibid. 

 206 ; cf Whitaker, op. cit. i, 258. 



™ Whitaker, op. cit. i, 257. '" Coucher, 227. 



'35 



