A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



disaffection by which he was surrounded. A 

 grant by the convent of a rent of £(> ly. ^d. 

 to Cromwell on i January, 1537, perhaps marks 

 an attempt to make their peace with the 

 government.'" But such offences as theirs 

 were not overlooked. Yet as they were 

 covered by the pardon granted in October there 

 must have been subsequent offences. Shortly 

 after Paslew sent a message to the abbot of 

 Hailes that he was 'sore stopped and acrased.' 

 His letter was intercepted and may have 

 contained something incriminatory.^" Doubt- 

 less he involved himself in the last phase of the 

 ' Pilgrimage.' ^'^ He was tried at Lancaster and 

 executed there on 10 March. ^'^ His fellow 

 monk William Haydock shared his fate, but was 

 sent to Whalley for execution.'" The Earl of 

 Sussex, royal commissioner with the Earl of 

 Derby, wrote next day to Cromwell 



the accomplishment of the matter of Whalley was 

 God's ordinance ; else seeing my lord of Derby 

 is steward of the house and so many gentlemen 

 the abbot's fee'd men, it would have been hard 

 to find anything against him in these parts. 

 It will be a terror to corrupt minds hereafter."' 



The possessions of the house were held to be 

 forfeited by the abbot's attainder, and the king 

 gave orders that as it had been so infected with 

 treason all the monks should be transferred to 

 other monasteries or to secular capacities. He 

 wrote vaguely of a new establishment of the 

 abbey ' as shalbe thought meet for the honour 

 of God, our surety and the benefit of the 

 county,' '*' but it remained in the hands of 

 the crown until 6 June, 1553, when the site 

 and the manor of Whalley were sold to John 

 Braddyl (to whose custody they had been 

 committed after the forfeiture and who had 



'" Whitaker, op. cit. i, 108. 



"' L. and P. Hen. VIII, xii (i), 389. 



*" This seems implied in L. and P. Hen. Fill, xii 

 (2), 205. 



"* Stow, Chron. 574. Whitaker (op. cit. [ed. 3], 

 82, 140, corrected ed. 4., i, 109) accepted the tra- 

 dition that he was executed at Whalley and gave 

 the date as 1 2 March, referring to a register of the 

 abbey. But Stew's accuracy is established by Sussex's 

 letter from Lancaster on 1 1 March and the king's 

 reply ; L. and P. Hen. mi, xii (i), 630 ; S.P. 

 Hen. Fill (Rec. Com.), i, 54.2. A letter of Paslew 

 is in Bodl. MS. 106, fol. Z2. 



"' Stow, loc. cit. He aids that John Eastgate, 

 another monk of the house, was executed with the 

 abbot and his quarters set up in various Lancashire 

 towns. But he seems to have confused him with 

 Richard Eastgate, a monk of Sawley ; L. and P. Hen 

 VIII, xii (I), 632; S.P. Hen. Fill (Rec. Com.), i, 54.2^ 



"^ L. and P. Hen. Fill, xii (i), 630. 



"^ S.P Hen. Fill (Rec. Com.), i, 542. An inventory 

 of its goods made on 24 March is in the Appendix to 

 the Cotuher 1255. A letter to Cromwell implies that 

 the monks were given 40/. and their ' capacities ' to 

 enter secular life ; L. and P. Hen. Fill, xii (z), 205. 



leased them since 12 April, 1543,) and Richard 

 Assheton.''"' A partition was at once arranged 

 by which Braddyl took most of the land and 

 Assheton the house. 



The abbey was dedicated to St. Mary. The 

 most important of the new endowments bestowed 

 upon the house in the twelfth and thirteenth 

 centuries have already been noticed. Few 

 additions were made after the acquisition of 

 Whalley. Thomas of Lancaster gave half the 

 adjoining township of Billington in 1318,'°^ and 

 the other moiety was granted with the manor of 

 Le Cho in 1332 by Geoffrey de Scrope."^^ The 

 gift of Toxteth by Earl Thomas seems to have 

 been cancelled when the project of removing the 

 abbey thither was abandoned. A third of the 

 manor of Wiswell and a tenth of that of Read, 

 both in the vicinity of the abbey, were acquired 

 respectively in 1340 and 1342.^°' Some smaller 

 gifts of land were made to the abbey in the 

 parish of Rochdale. Its temporalities before the 

 removal to Whalley had been assessed in 1291 

 for the tenth at just over ;^75.'" In 1535 they 

 were worth ;^279 a year, almost exactly the 

 figure at which they had appeared in the 

 'compotus' of 1478.'*° 



Its four appropriated churches, Eccles, Roch- 

 dale, Blackburn, and Whalley, were rated in the 

 taxation of 1291 at something less than ;^I50 

 a year, but their real value was greater.''" In 

 the ' compotus ' of 1478 the income derived from 

 them is stated to be ^^356, which rises in 1521 

 to ;^592.'" In 1535 it was ;^272 Js. Sd.^"^ 

 The gross income of the abbey's temporalities 

 and spiritualities in that year amounted therefore 

 'o ;£55i ¥• (>d. After the deduction of certain 

 fixed charges the abbey's new assessment for the 

 tenth was ^32 1 gs. i^. The fixed charges 

 mcluded ;^43 los. in pensions to the four vicars 

 of its churches, a contribution of £2 31. 4^. to 

 the Cistercian College of St. Bernard at Oxford,'"' 



'^ Coucher, 1175. The purchase-money was^z ,132. 

 Braddyl was a servant of that devourer of monastic 

 lands Sir Thomas Holcroft ; Lanes. Pleadings, ii, 215. 



«' Coucher, 939. »«» Ibid. 998. 



^ ibid. 1082, 1092. ^ PopeNich. Tax,2S9, 309- 



"^ Falor Eccl. v, 229 ; Whitaker, op. cit. 1, 1 17 sqq. 

 Their most valuable lands were those of Staining, Bil- 

 lington, Rochdale, Stanney, and Cronton in the order 



^"Tt;.-,7^^''' "^°°" ^^""^ Stanney, Ashton, Acton, 

 and WiUmgton in Cheshire; Whalley, Marland, Stain- 

 mg, Cronton, and Billington in Lancashire. For their 

 ecclesiastical jurisdiction see ibid. 174-5 263 270- 

 Coucher, 1173 ; ActBL of Whalley (Chet. Soc. [New 



■■ >Vhitaker, op. cit. i, 1 16. The latter year was 

 probably exceptional. 



L! ^."^"A"}- "' "7- Whalley, ^9, 6s. Sd. 



In addition to the keep there of a scholar from 

 the abbey, which seems to have cost /c a year, and 

 the expenses of his graduation. The bachelor gradua- 

 tion expenses of a scholar in 1478 appear in the 



'38 



