RELIGIOUS HOUSES 



rectory of Preston in Amounderness, and the 

 archbishop of York was petitioned to allow its 

 appropriation, reserving a vicarage of j^ 20 a year.'^* 

 But he did not give this permission and even the 

 advowson was not retained. 



A hermitage for female recluses in the parish 

 churchyard founded and endowed by Henry, 

 duke of Lancaster, and supplied with pro- 

 visions from the abbey kitchen led to some 

 disorders. In 1437 Henry VI dissolved the 

 hermitage on representations from the convent 

 that several of the anchoresses had returned to 

 the world and that their maid-servants were often 

 ' misgoverned.' The endowment was applied to 

 the support of two chaplains to say mass daily 

 for the souls of Duke Henry and the king and 

 for the celebration of their obits by thirty 

 chaplains.^^' 



In the last quarter of the fifteenth century a 

 fierce quarrel raged between the abbey and 

 Christopher Parsons, rector of Slaidburn, who 

 disputed its right to the tithes of the forest of 

 Bowland and of certain lands in Slaidburn. 

 Though in the county and diocese of York and 

 completely isolated from the parish of Whalley 

 these districts formed part of the ancient 

 demesne of Clitheroe and their tithes were in- 

 cluded in the endowment of the Castle chapel 

 of St. Michael.'^ The two parties soon came 

 to blows. On 22 November, 1480, while 

 engaged in driving away tithe calves from the 

 disputed lands Christopher Thornbergh, the 

 bursar of the abbey, was set upon by a mob 

 instigated by the rector with cries of 'Kill the 

 monk, slay the monk,' and severely beaten. Par- 

 sons made the forest tenants swear on the cross 

 of a groat to pay no tithes except to him.^^^ 



As each party appealed to his own diocesan the 

 dispute was ultimately referred to Edward IV, 

 who in May, 1482, decided in favour of the 

 abbey.^*^ The rector was ordered to pay all 

 arrears and ;^200 towards the expenses in- 



=^ Whitaker, op. cit. i, 168; Towneley MS. fol. 

 384. The monks pleaded that their new build- 

 ings would cost _£3,ooo, that they had lost 200 

 marks a year by the inroads of the sea at Stanlaw, 

 that their other Cheshire lands were unprofitable, and 

 'malefactors' there had caused them to lose ;^200 a 

 year. In 1339 the officers of the king's eldest son, 

 created earl of Chester in 1333, had seized one of 

 the lay brethren and distrained the abbot's cattle on 

 the ground that the abbey had been removed from 

 Stanlaw to Whalley without the earl's licence. The 

 king interposed in their favour ; Cal. of Close, IS39~ 

 41, p. 246. 



^'' Whitaker, op. cit. i, 97, 102. 



''° Ibid, i, 104 ; Towneley MS. fol. 208. 



=" Ibid. 



"^ Ibid. fol. 206. In January 1481 a statement of 

 the abbey's case was drawn up and attested by a 

 representative body of Lancashire clergy and laymen, 

 the mayors of Wigan and Preston attaching their 

 borough seals ; ibid. fol. 207-9. 



curred by the convent. Richard III in 1484, 

 and Henry VII in 1492, confirmed the find- 

 ing,''^ but Parsons was still giving trouble in 

 1494,'" and nine years later a royal order 

 commanded the men of the forests to pay their 

 tithes to Whalley .=" 



Little is known of the state of the abbey on 

 the eve of the Dissolution. John Paslew, the 

 last abbot, was afterwards accused of having sold 

 much of the plate of the house to defray the 

 cost of his assumption of the position of a mitred 

 abbot and of a suit for licence to give ' bennet 

 and collet ' in the abbey .^^^ A comparison of its 

 accounts for the years 1478 and 1 521 shows a 

 large increase of expenditure in the latter year, 

 especially in the items of meat and drink, though 

 this may possibly have been due, in part at least, 

 to an increase in the number of monks or to 

 some exceptional hospitality. It is noteworthy 

 that the income derived from the appropriated 

 rectories in 1 52 1 exhibits a more than pro- 

 portionate augmentation.'*' 



Only one of the monks was singled out for 

 immorality by the visitors of 1535.'*' Crom- 

 well subsequently relaxed in their favour the 

 injunctions laid upon them by the visitors. 

 Some restrictions on their movements were 

 removed and only three divinity lectures a week 

 were insisted on.'*^ 



In the autumn of the next year Abbot 

 Paslew became implicated in the Pilgrimage of 

 Grace. The abbey of Sawley, close by, was the 

 centre of the movement in Craven and the 

 adjoining parts of Lancashire. At the end of 

 October, 1536, Nicholas Tempest, one of the 

 Yorkshire leaders of the rising, came to 

 Whalley with 400 men and swore the abbot 

 and his brethren to the cause of the commons.'*" 

 Paslew is alleged to have lent Tempest a horse 

 and some plate ; '*^ Aske, however, said he had 

 no money from the abbot as he had from other 

 abbots and priors, but intended to have.^'^ It 

 may be that Paslew yielded reluctantly to the 



'" Ibid. fol. 206, 207. '" Ibid. fol. 225. 



^« Ibid. fol. 228. 



''« L. and P. Hen. nil, xii (i), 62 1. 



^" Whitaker, op. cit. i, 1 1 6-3 1 . Owing to some 

 error or misreading of a rubric Dr. Whitaker refers 

 the whole meat and fish bill of the abbey (which in 

 1478 was over ^97, in 1521 nearly ^^ 144) to the 

 abbot's own table. Comparison with the manu- 

 script ' Compoti ' of the bursars for 1484-1505 and 

 1507 to the end, preserved in a Towneley MS., 

 leaves no doubt on this point. 



''« L. and P. Hen. Fill, x, 364. 



'*' Whitaker, op. cit. i, 107. 



^'^ This step was decided on as early as 22 Oc- 

 tober (L. and P. Hen. Fill, xii (i), 1020), but the 

 only recorded occupation of Whalley by the rebels 

 took place on the last day of the month ; ibid, xi, 

 947. They dispersed the same day on hearing of 

 the truce concluded at Doncaster. 



=='Ibid. xii(i), 853, 879. ^"Ibid. 853. 



137 



