#valor ecclesiasticus

[cinemaocd]

Thomas Cromwell's big book, The Valor Ecclesiasticus

Reading this morning in History Today about the Valor Ecclesiasticus, a massive survey of all religious holdings that was begun in 1535, and completed in less than 18 months (or at least it was completed enough to be acted upon as 1/4 of the religious houses in England were closed by the end of that period). It details not only the holdings down to every last bone of every last saint, but maps, and the detailed accounts of the tenants, as the Church was the largest landlord in England.

This document was probably Cromwell's greatest achievement, just in terms of sheer output, as it covered not only the 800 religious houses and their tenants' activities, which often required tracing people across county lines, etc. something that had never been done at that point. The data was collected rapidly, from a wide variety of sources. In many cases, church officials simply refused to meet with Cromwell's commissioners. In those cases the commissioners took matters into their own hands and made broad guesses about holdings based on what they could observe.

After the Valor was completed and the associated religious houses closed, it was set aside and forgotten until 1800, when Parliament funded a team of scholars led by John Caley to "translate" the document into some useful information, attempting essentially turn it into a modern ledger book. Caley took 38 years to do this, spent thousands of pounds more than he was meant to, held the documents hostage in his home and then promptly died as soon as the last volume was published. The government found the results "a mischief of confusion" and it was never used. Historians largely ignored the Valor and Caley's "translation" for the most part, except, fascinatingly, around the time of the Russian Revolution, some Marxists attempted to use it as a blueprint for modernizing Russian agriculture!

Now it is being digitized for the first time.

One thing that I gleaned from the article, was that special attention was paid to dams on rivers, which were used by many religious houses for private fisheries. This interfered with Cromwell's general scheme of improving the navigability of waterways (no son of Putney could love a dam that stops a barge moving on a river). This right of the government to take private property away from the church was critical to create a modern government that could conduct nationwide schemes like improving the navigability of the waterways.

The leap from not having fishing dams on every river, to the profitable canal system borrowed from the Low Countries in later centuries, was not dramatic after the legal impediments were removed. And you really can't have the industrial revolution in England without it.

I have for a long time characterized Cromwell as someone had multiple motivations for almost every decision he undertook. Usually there would be a personal profit motive as well, which is unseen. It really depends on the political leanings of the historian as to which of those motives people have tended to see, be they greed, Lutheranism, Machiavellian political maneuvering etc, but as far as I'm concerned, his motivations could simply be: I find fisheries on the Themes and its tributaries annoying because they interfere with my daily commute.

Another interesting thing in the article was the discussion of class mobility provided by unseen parts of the monastic system. There was a class of clerks, agents, etc. that were enriched by managing the church's land holdings. Cromwell's agents often came from this pool of men, and he himself, given his start assisting Wolsey, could be seen as also coming from this class. Putting the overall management of this class of people into the hands of Parliament and away from the Pope was a huge improvement for them and you can see it as the bedrock on which the British Civil Service was built.

[fideidefenswhore]

☕️ + Thomas Cromwell

Was permitted to live in St James' Palace, after the death of Fitzroy, who had previously lived there (1536)

The first Master of the Revels (not an official title, persay, until 1544) had been a Cromwell protege (Cromwell, being, well, party king, means this adds up)

To wit: “ "Also of [Cromwell’s] housekeeping, it is showed me there is never an Englishman, the King's grace except, that doth keep and feast Englishmen and strangers as [he] do[es]." (1532)

Wolsey’s building projects early on (thereabouts 1515) were first run by Robert Cromwell, a cousin of Thomas (it’s possible this was the connection that introduced him into his service later on)

Once Henry took over York Place, Cromwell was the one that handled the transactions of buying up the neighbouring private properites.

Cromwell was Wolsey’s property lawyer, negotiating terms for his colleges at Ipswich and Oxford

Once he was made Master of the Jewel House (April 1533), set up shop in the Jewel House at the Tower near the Great Hall

Claimed his mother had him at 52, which...while possible, seems unlikely (the context of this claim is also Chapuys trying to convince him to get Henry to return to Catherine as his wife, and have children by her, very late in the game, 1534-5 iirc, so he might have just been humoring him)

Wrote an aide-memoir to himself “To show the King the patterns for the the embroidery for the Queen” (October 1533)

Led Henry and Anne through the royal lodgings of the Tower to check the progress made thus far, after their return from Calais (December 1532)

Had rooms at Greenwich 'to which the king can go by certain galleries without being perceived'

There was a shift in the structure of counsel after Cromwell's execution, from that point on Henry created two positions of Secretary of State, one who would stay with the Privy Council and the other to follow the King around the country.

Valor Ecclesiasticus was twenty-two volumes

Cromwell established the Court of Augmentations, an administrative oversight committe of sorts for the land and cash that came from the Church, it received £1.3 million in Henry's reign (not in today's money...but theirs)

Was appointed the King's principal secretary (1534)

Chapuys would report that he "stood above everyone except the Lady, and every one considers he has more credit with his master than Wolsey had” (1535)

The livery of his retainers was “of grey marble” (Lacey Baldwin-Smith referred to this as ‘an imitation of the aristocracy’, but actually, it seems to have been an imitation of Henry VIII specifically...’marble cloth’ was the livery issued to officers of the Privy Chamber, first noted 1527, last noted 1539, when they were worn for the first meeting with Anne of Cleves)

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for 8th Sat per annum (I)

Ecclesiasticus 51:17-27; Ps 18; Mark 11:27-33

In 2017 Bishop Robert Barron gave a lecture in which he repeats his long-held conviction that evangelisation in our time – reaching out to young people and to those of no religion (the so-called ‘nones’) – should begin with beauty. He observed that in our current post-modern cultural context “any claim to know objective truth or attempt to propose objective goodness tends to meet now with incredulity at best and defensiveness at worst” because our contemporaries often only accept the authority of their own experience. He says: “within our cultural matrix, so dominated by relativism and the valorization of the right to create one’s own system of meaning, commencing with either moral demand or the claim to truth will likely raise insuperable blocks in the person one wishes to evangelize.  (Who are you to tell me how to behave or what to believe?  How can you be so arrogant as to think that you should impose your thought patterns on me?)”

I was prompted to think about this because of the challenge posed to Jesus in today’s Gospel: “What authority have you for acting like this? Or who gave you authority to do these things?” Our contemporaries, it seems, when confronted with our moral arguments or even our intellectual arguments will ask us: What authority do we have for telling them what to think or what to do? In our present context, when faced with such challenges, Barron says “moralizing and intellectualizing are often non-starters in regard to persuasion. But [he says] there is something unthreatening about the beautiful.”

Barron’s evangelisation strategy, therefore, is, in his own words: “first the beautiful (how wonderful!), then the good (I want to participate!) and finally the true (now I understand!).” I was reminded by this of what for me is one of the most memorable stories told by Joseph Ratzinger. He recounts a time when he was bishop of Munich, and he was at a performance of a Bach cantata, and he says that at the end of the performance, deeply moved by the music, he looked at the Lutheran bishop who was sitting next to him, and they spontaneously said: “Anyone who has heard this knows that the faith is true”. I find this story very haunting and evocative because this great theologian and intellectual does not appeal to rational arguments or theological arguments, as such, but to beauty. Of course, he says that “exact and careful theological thought [is still] absolutely necessary”, but he admits that rational arguments can be “turned around in any direction”. And so, he says that we must be “overcome by the beauty of Christ” because he says that beauty “is a more real, more profound knowledge than mere rational deduction”. Beauty, in other words, has an experiential authority that is suited to our current cultural context. It is, as Robert Barron says, “a more winsome, less threatening, path” for evangelisation whereby people are drawn to Christ by beauty.

It is for this reason that we have invested much time and resources into making our church shine with beauty. Today, our church and our Rosary Garden will be opened to new visitors, and they will come, we hope, because they have been drawn here by beauty. So many people who walk past the Rosary Garden will stop and tell me how beautiful it is, and in doing so, an encounter with a stranger is made possible. People stop in their tracks when our church doors are open, and they are drawn by beauty to come in and visit. Beautiful music, beautiful liturgy, beautiful architecture, beautiful flowers, beautiful devotions, which are all seen online through social media and YouTube or heard on Radio Maria, are all the initial parts of an evangelisation strategy that we pray will lead souls to Christ who is Beauty itself.

As Barron says, speaking from his own experience, beauty can captivate “even the most bored agnostic.” Such is the authority of Beauty: that it can stop us in our tracks and awaken us from our existential slumbers. And then, Barron thinks, “the captivation would lead to a desire, perhaps vague at first, to participate in the moral universe that made those artistic expressions possible.  And finally, the participation would conduce toward a true and experiential understanding of the thought patterns that undergird that way of life. First the beautiful, then the good, then the true.”

This is the evangelisation strategy proposed by Bishop Robert Barron for our time, and it is one that we are engaged in here at St Dominic’s. For countless people have been telling me how beautiful our church, our garden, our liturgy is. These are the external signs that draw people in. But when they have come in, the onus falls on each of us to ensure that they encounter the beauty of authentic Christian lives as a community; the beauty of our moral lives as friars and priests; and also beautiful preaching that articulates the truth clearly, and beautiful and attractive catechesis that will, altogether, lead them to know and love Christ better.

May Our Lady, Mother of the Church pray for us and help us to lead people to her Son.

[humane-surekha]

Thomas Cromwell and Reformation of Church

Thomas Cromwell (c. 1485–1540) was an English statesman, 1st Earl of Essex, and chief minister of King Henry VIII.

Recently I have been watching ‘The Tudors’ The TV series which details the fascinating but despotic rule Of Henry VIII.

King Henry VIII has captured lot of attention amongst the Tudor dynasty as he had six Queens.

Two of them were executed and one Queen after Henry annulled his marriage to her, became his sister.

The historians have focused a lot of attention on King Henry VIII for obvious reasons, but during his reign there were many other powerful but selfish, enigmatic, sycophant personalities

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey the archbishop of York, Thomas More, two clergies who were his confidante.

His intimate friend Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk

Thomas Howard Duke of Norfolk and uncle to two of Henry’s wives

But the most influential, fast to rise and equally fast to fall from grace was King Henry VIII’s right-hand man, Thomas Cromwell.

Cromwell was the architect of the English Reformation; who secured Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon Henry first wife then plotted the downfall of his second wife, Anne Boleyn and was finally beheaded as he was falsely accused of trying to usurp the king himself.

Rise of Cromwell

King Henry VIII was a staunch catholic, but he wanted to divorce his queen Catherine of Aragon who had failed to sire an heir and marry the conniving but beauteous Anne Boleyn.

The church refused to annul Henry marriage which infuriated the King and he broke ties with the Papal Catholic Church based in Rome. His disagreement with Pope Clement VII about such an annulment led Henry to initiate the English Reformation, separating the Church of England from Papal authority.

Cromwell was one of the strongest and most powerful proponents of the English Reformation and enacted and passed all the necessary legislative laws in the Parliament.

Henry was now the secular and spiritual head of England, and with that title came the power to appoint bishops, control church property, and recognize selected ecclesiastical courts.

Cromwell then began addressing the issue of anticlericalism through the petition of a bill entitled ‘Supplication of the Commons against the Ordinaries’. It was the reformative influence of Cromwell that was seen in the king’s demands to remove any independent ecclesiastic voice from his church for fear of divided loyalties, which was the been the foundation of Cromwell’s bill of Supplication itself.

Cromwell served the aspirations of both the King and himself.

Henry was now head of the Church of England and was thus free to enjoy his new role in ecclesiastical affairs and he annulled his marriage with his first wife Catherine of Aragon.

Cromwell benefitted both spiritually and politically. Within a month, he was rewarded by Henry with the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer.

England had been completely severed from the corruptive element of the Catholic Pope

Henry with shrewd and tactical thinking of Cromwell were now well-positioned to continue the advancement of reform in the Church of England

Cromwell Administrative Success

The decade of 1530 to 1540 proved to be productive and tragic for Cromwell.

In The year 1534, Cromwell firmed up and rendered a plan for creating a procedural mechanism for the appointment of bishops and archbishops under the Acts in ‘Restraint and Submission of the Clergy’, no longer under the auspices of the Pope.

Once a nomination had been made, the clergy had twelve days to elect and choose the individual named. Failure to elect the nominee within twelve days would ensure the election to go forward without ecclesiastic endorsement; failure to do so after twenty days would result in penalty.

This success galvanized Cromwell to introduce the Act in Repeal of Annates, which eliminated the collection of taxes to be sent to Rome.

Papal revues were instead collected by the king now.

The Dispensations and Peter’s pence Act rendered legislation in England impermeable to external influence (Read Papal here), unless unequivocally allowed by the king.

The Act further allowed the Archbishop of Canterbury (who is Primate of All England and first peer of the realm, and plays a leading role in the worldwide Anglican Church) the power to issue dispensations from canonical law in addition to the issuance of licenses necessary for church-approved actions.

. Between 1536 and 1540 over 800 religious houses in England were dissolved and the lands sold off. The proceeds went to the King.

In the mid-1530’s, Cromwell seized on a convenient opportunity to enrich Henry’s treasury.

The Act in Restraint was a stepping stone for Cromwell, who sought to provide the king with the funds he was in dire need of. Cromwell was able to persuade Henry that good governance was itself an acceptable reason for taxation, rather than the historically accepted threat of war.

The passage of the First Fruit and Tenths Act, ensured that all the taxes which were earlier sent to the Pope now remained in henry coffers.

The passage of this bill provided the treasury with a yearly income of £40,000.

The First Fruit and Tenths Act was eventually administered to the hoi polloi, under the title of the Subsidy Act, which accrued the Crown an additional £80,000 annually.

Cromwell was bestowed with the title of Vicegerent of Spirituals in January, 1535.

Tyranny of the King under the guise of Cromwell

Cromwell was entrusted the responsibility of visiting the churches of the realm to assess their wealth.

Cromwell constituted a commission who travelled and surveyed on his behalf during the 1535.

Cromwell drilled into them as to how to prevent underestimation and collusion with local aristocrats.

During the latter half of the 1535, the commission was again instructed, ostensibly to monitor the moral behavior of the monastic inhabitants.

The resultant document created from the compiled data was the ‘Valor Ecclesiasticus’, which estimated the value of church properties to be £800,000, a sum that could place Henry on equal footing with other European monarchs.

Armed with this information Cromwell strode further and began dissolution of smaller religious houses, which were more vulnerable and at risk

The act further dissolved religious houses with an income of less than £200, and provided pensions for the priors, as well as the opportunity for movement. For the lower ranked inhabitants, alternatives had been the acceptance of transfer to another larger house, or remain and be trained to serve as a secular priest.

Henry appointed himself Supreme Head of the Church of England and dissolved convents and monasteries, with the wily tactician Cromwell.

Conclusion

Cromwell was one of the strongest and most powerful proponents of the English Reformation.

Thomas Cromwell is a good subject for fact and fiction. He was and remains somewhat of an enigma both as a visionary for government efficiency and as an ambitious 'new man' rising to perhaps the most powerful man in England during the reign of Henry VIII.

Historians have tried to untangle how much influence Cromwell had over Henry VIII or whether he was the puppet-master or the puppet in the monarch’s affairs of state

Nonetheless there is no doubt that his life was remained dependent on the whims and commands of Henry VIII.

Perhaps the most important aspect of Cromwell’s personality and political outlook is, according to Elton the famous historian is, a belief and reliance in the efficacy of the law and its use to reform and transform England.

Time and again it is proven that Cromwell as adept at manipulating Henry VIII.

Cromwell was a visionary bent on converting ideas into actions that succeed

Cromwell innate work ethic and drive, and his knack of pleasing his master endeared him to the king

In conclusion I think Cromwell had many faces, that of an administrator, church reformer but the everlasting image of him being a sycophant, groveler, bidding to do everything for his master stays with me

[tomproctor03-blog]

Weekly History writing essay: Week 1

To what extent did financial security change over the period of 1509-88?

Financial security changed drastically over this period. Argued firstly by Historian G.R. Elton, he says about how when Henry VIII came to the throne, he was the first “Renaissance King”, and what he meant by that was that Henry was not interested in the administrative side of Kingshi rather he wanted to have hunting seasons, host grand parties, and invade countries, in which fort his he needed money. He was lucky in the sense that his father, Henry VII, had a plethora of effective tax reforms and ideas (for example commissiong the Archbishop of Canterbury to create Morton’s fork, what was a catch-22 tax scheme targeted towards the Nobles), but also you had the excellent financial advisers of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, and Lord Dynham, and the two tax collectors of Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley in which they created tax laws and “dug-up” old and dubious financial laws that everyone had forgotten about, leading to Henry, at the point he died in 1509, having over $2,000,000 in his coffers, leaving all to his heir, Henry VIII. So in 1509, the financial security was the greatest iit could be. However, because Henry wanted to have a lavish lifestyle, this drastically went down. However the real reason why the financial security fell down to England being in debt, was because Henry wanted to be implemented and ingrained into History, as the King who took over lands and started an Empire. So in 1513, Henry used the $2,000,000 + that his father has kept in, and overall it was mediocre. Henry had created the Anti-French league, with the Holy roman Empire, in which in this attack, Maximilian I helped out Henry (Henry had 30,000 soldiers), and France could not stand a chance, in which they defeated France at the Battle of Spurs, and Henry gained the prestigious lands of Therouanne and Tournai, however because he spent that much money on the war, that he had no extra money to keep those lands and preserve them for Englishterriotiry, so Henry lost the lands almost instantly. However, the financial situation was exacerbated, and that was because during the Battle of the Spurs (because of the Auld alliance between France and Scotland), Scotland invaded England, and even though the English defeated the Scottish at the Battle of Flodden Field, in which King James IV of Scotland killed, England again was spending too much money. When all of these wars finished, England was in ultimate financial scarcity; something needed to change. So it did. With the rise of Wolsey, from 1515 to 1520, the financial security did rise a lot, and that was because of the intellectuality of Wolsey. Now, even though Wolsey came from a poor background in Ipswich, he worked his way up the ecclesiatical church, and attended the University of Cambridge at the age of 15, and one idiosyncratic trait of his, was that he was very good with finances, thus why Henry VII made him a royal chaplain during his reign. Wolsey implemented a lot of taxes that were new, for example the subsidy (what generates around $225,000 for Henry), and the fifteenths and tenths (what generated around $118,000 for Henry). However, Wolsey also used some other older tax laws, for example clerical taxation on the church, the Crown lands on the Nobles and also the forced loans, what generated around $250,000 for Henry, thus increasing the financial security, showing the change. Also, Wolsey implemented taxation laws in this period, in which the main one would be the Act of Resumptions, what would discard obsolescent roya grants, saving Henry asround $10,000 a year. Also, Wolsey’s domestic policy (that was a success), of launching an investigation into over 254 enclosures, leading to the crown finding a lot of corrupt families, resulting in more tax being paid, also increasing the financial security. From 1520 to 1536 the financial security dropped very low. This was because, Henry went back to his ways of wanting to invade countries, but also in one specific example, he wanted to boast against another country. In 1520, England was isolated from Europe, and decided that France would be the country that they would make good terms with, so this led to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, however it did not produce a treaty, rather it was just a boasting session, resulting in greater animosity between the two countries. The crown spent around ⅓ of their yearly budget on this failure of a peace agreement. Also, in this period the laity began to notice that the crown were just manipulating them to give them more taxes, and that it as not for the: “good of the country”. They especially got annoyed when Cardinal Wolsey seen as a: “base” person, spent over $1,000,000 on his own house of Hampton Court Palace , what was grander than the King’s palace. However, a specific example of the laity, and also the church, becoming more irate with the taxes that the crown tried to push down their throats would be the amicable grant. With some background information, when Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, defeated Francis I of France, Francis was taken hostage, making France very vulnerable, so Henry wanted to invade the country. However, he had o money to invade them with (showing how low the financial security was at the time), so Henry brought to Wolsey something called the amicable grant, in which the laity would be taxed ⅓ of their yearly wages, and the church ⅙; their target was $800,000. However they managed to raise $0, showing you how the perpetuated use of taxes, had led to the country, now being dubious of them, leading to a decrease in the financial security. However, in 1536, all of this changed, and that was because of the ideas of Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell, not naturally gifted with finances, learnt under the Florencians of Francesco Frescobaldi and also other merchants in Bruges and Antwerp. When he came back to England in around 1516, he also showed that he was financially coherent, due to the fact that he sorted out myriads of church’s bonds and contracts about money with Rome, in which Cromwell actually went to Rome and met with Pope Leo X. Also, he shows his tenacity when it came to finances, when Cardinal Wolsey wanted to build the twin Cardinal Colleges in Oxford, but he could not afford it, however he was able to, when Cromwell told him to dissolute 24 monasteries. Ironically, this is how Cromwell now made Henry money in 1536, in which during the Reformation Parliament, they passed the Valor Ecclesiasticus, what was the start of the dissolution of the monasteries. Now by 1539, all the monasteries in the country were gone, and Cromwell had gained these monastic lands and sold them to some poorer people, what would create the new middle-class, and create more money because Cromwell would now tax these people, leading to the financial security changing a lot. However antithetical to this idea, but still going on with the argument, when Cromwell died in 1540, this led to the financial security going down. Firstly, there was now no one who would help out Henry when it came to keeping their financial security stable. This was because at this point (after the death of Cromwell), there was the rise of the privy council feuds, what was between the Evangelics and the conservatives, and at its peak, you had Thomas Cranmer being accused of treason but also Stephen Gardiner’s relative (Germaine Gardiner) being executed for not following the oath of Supremacy, but also Henry Howard, Earl of Hertford, being executed, who was the son of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk. This led to the financial security being increased, and that was because Henry was not held back by someone, leading to Henry trying to invade France again, with the siege of Boulogne and also the Rough Wooing against Scotland, and because of these were very unsuccessful this led to financial security going down. During the reign of Edward VI, the financial security was very high, and it was stable throughout his whole reign. This was because, even though Edward’s advisers (for example, Edward Seymour and John Dudley), were egoists who mainly cared for themselves, they did do a lot, financially, for the country. For example, Edward Seymour led the dissolution of the monasteries, in which this generated thousands of pounds, and they then subsequently he sold them to the middle-class, further taxing them after, gaining more money. Also, under the protectoship of John Dudly, Duke of Northumberland, he managed to end all wars with France and Scotland, but also he introduced a lot of successful financial reforms, and it was even that successful that William Cecil, under the reign of Elizabeth I used reforms that were influenced by Dudley’s reforms. However, the real reason why their financial security did not go down dramatically, would be because Edward did not go to war as frequently as Henry, Edward was only young and there were effective tax laws, showing you the difference between the financial secretary of the reign of Henry VIII and Edward VI. However, go to the reign of Elizabeth I and this led to the financial security changing again. Firstly, at the start of her reign, Financial security as grate, and that was because of the cautiousness of Cecil and Elizabeth, but also because of the financial reforms of Cecil, but also because England did not go to war. That is because England was much more focused on: the Elizabethan religious settlement, the growth of Parliament, the marriage deal and also trying to make the country a politique and religiously stable country. However, go to the end of Elizabeth’s reign and the financial security was a different story. Many Historians, including J.J Scarisbrick, talk about after 1588, Elizabeth’ second reign started, in which she started to become too lethargic as a leader, and just allow the society to cope by itself. She spent too much money on the English armada (this was a retaliation to the Spanish Armada that occurred in 1588), in which she sent around 23,000 men and 450 ships, and around 12,000 died, resulting in mass money was spent. Also at the end of her reign, she went through with the debasement of the coin, but there were no financial reforms, leading to the subsidy decreasing from 140,000 to 80,000. Also, when she died, it was found that she had personal debts of over $350,000

The financial situation over the course of this period changed massively, and there is no debating over that, however the actual debate is when there was the biggest change. The biggest change that occurred over this period would be the start of the reign of Henry VIII. That is because, when Henry VIII became King in 1509, many Historians in that period said that his future looked: “bright and colorful, full of promises and pulchritudinous events and occurrences”. However within 4 years, the country was in mass debt. So, to go from a coherently economic country,that had been carefully and tenaciously carved out by Henry VII, Edmund Dudley, Richard Empson , Lord Dynham, Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, John Morton, Archbishop of Canter Tb of others, to a country that was seriously in debt and in urge of an adviser to guide the economy in the right direction, just shows how drastic the changes were, showing the ultimate change in financial security in this period.       

[km-english-heritage]

Cleeve Abbey  Washford Somerset, UK

I visited the Abbey in June 2017

**********************

The abbey was founded by William de Roumare, Earl of Lincoln. On 25 June 1198 a colony of 12 monks led by Abbot Ralph arrived at the site from Revesby Abbey in Lincolnshire. The official name of the abbey was Vallis Florida, (Latin: 'Flowering Valley') but throughout its history it was generally known as Cleeve after the nearby village. In addition to various landholdings with produced rent for the abbey they held the Right of Wreck, which meant they could claim shipwrecks washed up on the shore of their lands.

The monastery, which is next to the River Washford, would have been surrounded by gardens, fishponds, orchards, barns, guesthouses, stables, a farmyard and industrial buildings. The abbey grounds were defended by a water filled moat and a gatehouse.

Though Cleeve was by no means a wealthy house, the monks were able to make significant investment in remodelling their home so as to match the rising living standards of the later mediaeval period. In the fourteenth-century elaborate polychrome tiled floors (an expensive and high status product) were laid throughout the abbey and in the mid-fifteenth century radical works were undertaken. The last building work to be completed was the remodelling of the gatehouse, performed after 1510, though as late as 1534 the monks were engaged in a major project of renewing the cloister walks in the latest fashion.

A major source of income was the export of wool. However, the fourteenth century saw a change in fortunes: the Black Death, a worsening economic climate and poor administration left the abbey (like many others of its order) with sharply declining numbers of monks and saddled with major debt. The internal discipline and morals of the community declined too: in 1400–01 it was reported to the government that the abbot of Cleeve and three other monks were leading a group of 200 bandits and attacking travellers in the region.

In 1535, the abbey's income was only assessed at £155 in the Valor Ecclesiasticus, Henry VIII's great survey of church finances. It meant the following year that it came under the terms of the first Suppression Act, Henry's initial move in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Abbot William Dovell and his 16 monks were forced to surrender the abbey on 6 September 1536.  Abbot William was given a pension of 40 marks per year, not large but certainly comfortable, which he was still drawing 20 years later.

[cinemaocd]

Valor Ecclesiasticus, illuminated initial

[cinemaocd]

How Cromwell used one of Call-me's shared confidences to seize the opportunity to take down Anne Boleyn...

This is paraphrased from Diarmaid MacCulloch's biography of Cromwell:

"A 1559 letter of remarkable circumstantial detail to Anne's daughter, the newly enthroned Queen Elizabeth by that self re-named wanderer Alexander Alesius contains an eye witness account for the tangled events of the spring of 1536 that has not been taken seriously enough. His esteem for Anne was based on her reputation, he never met her....He was first the guest of Cranmer and then Cromwell, later a lecturer at Cambridge, well placed to observe and understand events at court. His message emphatically was that from the beginning Cromwell engineered Queen Anne's downfall. Alesius blamed the Papist malice of Bishop Gardiner as the spark for the story that Queen Anne had been accused of adultery. Gardiner had claimed that French court was inundated with rumors of Anne's infidelity to the King. Gardiner had written this from his mission in France to his old servant, Thomas Wriosthley who Alesius records had been placed at court to look after the Bishop's interest while he was away. Wriosthley passed the news to Cromwell. Alesius expressed much admiration for Cromwell in later years and saw him as a protestant hero. Yet he was able to see him as the collaborator of 'Willie Winchester' in these events, particularly when recounting them to the Protestant Queen Elizabeth. It also corroborates Chapuys claim that Cromwell told him he was responsible for her downfall.

...

Both men [Cromwell and Gardiner] were instictively in favor of alliance with the Empire...this resisted the tendency of the [Boleyns and Norfolk to stay close to the French]....Cromwell's correspondence with Gardiner in this period goes out of the way to mend fences with gestures of friendship and confidential gossip and he even sang Gardiner's praises to Chapuys commending his skepticism about French diplomatic overtures to Henry. Chapuys noted his [Cromwell's] extraordinary vehemence on the French manuevers 'in a passion, so much that he could hardly get his words out.'

Alesius tells us the Wriosthley told them about the rumors circulating in France. [Gardiner then ceases to figure in his narrative, except that Wriosthley spent the latter half of the 1530s regretting this betrayal of Gardiner's confidence.] The King reacted in a fury. He needed agents to turn the rumors into a case... So according to Alesius, Henry put Cromwell and Wriosthley secretly to work, together with some unnamed accomplices, well known to dislike the Queen, because she had sharply reproved them and threatened to denounce them to the king for serving their own interests under a pretense of evangelical religion, making everything available for sale and being bribed into making unworthy ecclesiastical appointments for enemies of the gospel. This very specific set of charges sounds unmistakably like a critique of the vicegerential bureaucracy, particularly the visitation commissioners. It also agrees with accounts of clashes between Cromwell and Anne later in the Spring. "

-Diarmaid MacCuloch

[cinemaocd]

The ruins of Tilty Abbey, Essex

In an Essex field not far from London's Stansted airport, lie the ruins of Tilty Abbey, one of the victims of the Dissolutions of the 1530s. Diarmaid MacCulloch writes about Tilty as an exception to Thomas Cromwell's usual policy of closing the smallest, most impoverished houses first. Tilty survived the first round of closures because, MacCulloch implies, it was also the retirement home of one of Cromwell's widow friends, "ladies of a certain age," for whom he did favors over the years. Her name was the Marchioness Dowager Margaret Wotton and she was apparently fond of the monks--there were only seven of them and saw them as a comfort in her old age. MacCulloch writes that this was a common arrangement for widows of the gentry, to take a house near or on the grounds of an abbey. Of course, this technically violated the policy that forbade female visitors in monastic precincts. Cromwell's nephew Richard saw to it that the Marchioness kept the house on the abbey grounds well into the Elizabethan era, though the abbey itself was surrendered to the crown in 1536.

Cromwell's connection to the widow, was that her late husband, Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquess of Dorset, was his former employer. Cromwell had worked for the family before he had worked for Cardinal Wolsey. Cromwell was at the center of a web of alliances based in Kent, including Anthony St. Leger, who Cromwell made Lord Deputy of Ireland, perhaps in return for his assistance in these early years. St. Leger was a relative of Margaret Wotton, another strand in the web.

[cinemaocd]

Please tell us about chapter 2 of Tom Smyth and the Howyrd Women! (Is Chapter Two part of the title?)

LOL no, it is the second chapter in a planned long fic...

The premise is the wife of a historian stumbles upon the racy memoir of a prominent Tudor figure.

+++

She opened the book. It creaked as if it were being tortured as she flattened it on it’s spine, gently. It was very old, likely the oldest book, the oldest thing she'd ever held in her hands, saving perhaps the deeds of the Marquis' estate. It had the same smell: dust upon dust upon dust until it was almost sweet.

There was no author noted but the hand is the same as some of the correspondence in the pile of papers. She had no signature, but if she were to replace the papers, re-order them, she could perhaps learn the identity of the author. The other pages are rows of figures, numbers, lists of livestock. A ledger.

"This book is dedicated to my son, who once told me “some of these things are true. Some of them are made up. They are all good stories.”

+++.

[cinemaocd]

WIP Title Ask Meme

Tagged by @tenderbittersweet✨️

Prompt:

Make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous.

Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it!

And then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

Another Minot Story

A Fool's Face (folder with several outlines, chapters and fragments)

The Third Wheel

Mercy's List

Groomed (notes)

A Different Kind of Memoir: fragments

Fifty Shades of More

Valor Ecclesiasticus

The Calleys

Chapter Two Tom Smyth and the Howyrd Women

Also in there I found two mostly finished long essays that I have no idea why I never attempted to publish. They both were topical and have kind of missed their moment, I think...

I'm tagging 8 people: @clarasteam, @titleleaf, @davantagedenuit

@kurhanchyk, @stilltrails, @idlesuperstar, @gwinforth, @elenatria

[km-english-heritage]

Cleeve Abbey  Washford Somerset, UK

I visited the Abbey in June 2017

**********************

The abbey was founded by William de Roumare, Earl of Lincoln. On 25 June 1198 a colony of 12 monks led by Abbot Ralph arrived at the site from Revesby Abbey in Lincolnshire. The official name of the abbey was Vallis Florida, (Latin: 'Flowering Valley') but throughout its history it was generally known as Cleeve after the nearby village. In addition to various landholdings with produced rent for the abbey they held the Right of Wreck, which meant they could claim shipwrecks washed up on the shore of their lands.

The monastery, which is next to the River Washford, would have been surrounded by gardens, fishponds, orchards, barns, guesthouses, stables, a farmyard and industrial buildings. The abbey grounds were defended by a water filled moat and a gatehouse.

Though Cleeve was by no means a wealthy house, the monks were able to make significant investment in remodelling their home so as to match the rising living standards of the later mediaeval period. In the fourteenth-century elaborate polychrome tiled floors (an expensive and high status product) were laid throughout the abbey and in the mid-fifteenth century radical works were undertaken. The last building work to be completed was the remodelling of the gatehouse, performed after 1510, though as late as 1534 the monks were engaged in a major project of renewing the cloister walks in the latest fashion.

A major source of income was the export of wool. However, the fourteenth century saw a change in fortunes: the Black Death, a worsening economic climate and poor administration left the abbey (like many others of its order) with sharply declining numbers of monks and saddled with major debt. The internal discipline and morals of the community declined too: in 1400–01 it was reported to the government that the abbot of Cleeve and three other monks were leading a group of 200 bandits and attacking travellers in the region.

In 1535, the abbey's income was only assessed at £155 in the Valor Ecclesiasticus, Henry VIII's great survey of church finances. It meant the following year that it came under the terms of the first Suppression Act, Henry's initial move in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Abbot William Dovell and his 16 monks were forced to surrender the abbey on 6 September 1536.  Abbot William was given a pension of 40 marks per year, not large but certainly comfortable, which he was still drawing 20 years later.

[km-english-heritage]

Cleeve Abbey  Washford Somerset, UK

I visited the Abbey in June 2017

**********************

The abbey was founded by William de Roumare, Earl of Lincoln. On 25 June 1198 a colony of 12 monks led by Abbot Ralph arrived at the site from Revesby Abbey in Lincolnshire. The official name of the abbey was Vallis Florida, (Latin: 'Flowering Valley') but throughout its history it was generally known as Cleeve after the nearby village. In addition to various landholdings with produced rent for the abbey they held the Right of Wreck, which meant they could claim shipwrecks washed up on the shore of their lands.

The monastery, which is next to the River Washford, would have been surrounded by gardens, fishponds, orchards, barns, guesthouses, stables, a farmyard and industrial buildings. The abbey grounds were defended by a water filled moat and a gatehouse. 

Though Cleeve was by no means a wealthy house, the monks were able to make significant investment in remodelling their home so as to match the rising living standards of the later mediaeval period. In the fourteenth-century elaborate polychrome tiled floors (an expensive and high status product) were laid throughout the abbey and in the mid-fifteenth century radical works were undertaken. The last building work to be completed was the remodelling of the gatehouse, performed after 1510, though as late as 1534 the monks were engaged in a major project of renewing the cloister walks in the latest fashion.

A major source of income was the export of wool. However, the fourteenth century saw a change in fortunes: the Black Death, a worsening economic climate and poor administration left the abbey (like many others of its order) with sharply declining numbers of monks and saddled with major debt. The internal discipline and morals of the community declined too: in 1400–01 it was reported to the government that the abbot of Cleeve and three other monks were leading a group of 200 bandits and attacking travellers in the region. 

In 1535, the abbey's income was only assessed at £155 in the Valor Ecclesiasticus, Henry VIII's great survey of church finances. It meant the following year that it came under the terms of the first Suppression Act, Henry's initial move in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Abbot William Dovell and his 16 monks were forced to surrender the abbey on 6 September 1536.  Abbot William was given a pension of 40 marks per year, not large but certainly comfortable, which he was still drawing 20 years later.

[km-english-heritage]

Brinkburn Priory  Northumberland  UK

Wednesday 12 July 2017

Brinkburn Priory was a medieval monastery built on a bend of the River Coquet, some 4 miles (6 km) east of Rothbury, Northumberland, England. Little survives of the structures erected by the monks apart from the Priory Church .

It was founded by William Bertram, Baron of Mitford, in the reign of Henry I as an Augustinian priory. The exact date is not known but cannot have been later than 1135, as Henry died that year. About 1180 or so, Brinkburn became an independent house, and the building of the monastic church was commenced. The architectural style has been described as "transitional" (i.e. between Norman and Gothic).

Although the Priory acquired lands in Northumberland and Durham over the years it was never particularly wealthy. Little is known of the early history of the priory, although it is known that it survived some difficult times. In fact, as late as 1419 it was raided and robbed.

Brinkburn Priory was dissolved in 1536 after Parliament enacted the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries Act. The "lesser monasteries" were those with an income of less than £200 per annum, and Brinkburn fell into this category as in 1535 the priory's value had been recorded as £69 in the Valor Ecclesiasticus. After the dissolution the estate was mainly owned by the Fenwick family and in the late 16th century they built a manor house on the ruins of the Priory buildings and adjacent to the Priory Church.

Services continued to be held at Brinkburn and the church was retained in a fair state of repair till the end of the 16th century. In 1602 it was reported to be in a state of decay, and at some point before 1700 the roof had collapsed and regular services were abandoned.

[km-english-heritage]

Brinkburn Priory  Northumberland  UK

Wednesday 12 July 2017

Brinkburn Priory was a medieval monastery built on a bend of the River Coquet, some 4 miles (6 km) east of Rothbury, Northumberland, England. Little survives of the structures erected by the monks apart from the Priory Church .

It was founded by William Bertram, Baron of Mitford, in the reign of Henry I as an Augustinian priory. The exact date is not known but cannot have been later than 1135, as Henry died that year. About 1180 or so, Brinkburn became an independent house, and the building of the monastic church was commenced. The architectural style has been described as "transitional" (i.e. between Norman and Gothic).

Although the Priory acquired lands in Northumberland and Durham over the years it was never particularly wealthy. Little is known of the early history of the priory, although it is known that it survived some difficult times. In fact, as late as 1419 it was raided and robbed.

Brinkburn Priory was dissolved in 1536 after Parliament enacted the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries Act. The "lesser monasteries" were those with an income of less than £200 per annum, and Brinkburn fell into this category as in 1535 the priory's value had been recorded as £69 in the Valor Ecclesiasticus. After the dissolution the estate was mainly owned by the Fenwick family and in the late 16th century they built a manor house on the ruins of the Priory buildings and adjacent to the Priory Church.

Services continued to be held at Brinkburn and the church was retained in a fair state of repair till the end of the 16th century. In 1602 it was reported to be in a state of decay, and at some point before 1700 the roof had collapsed and regular services were abandoned.

[km-english-heritage]

Brinkburn Priory  Northumberland  UK

Wednesday 12 July 2017

Brinkburn Priory was a medieval monastery built on a bend of the River Coquet, some 4 miles (6 km) east of Rothbury, Northumberland, England. Little survives of the structures erected by the monks apart from the Priory Church .

It was founded by William Bertram, Baron of Mitford, in the reign of Henry I as an Augustinian priory. The exact date is not known but cannot have been later than 1135, as Henry died that year. About 1180 or so, Brinkburn became an independent house, and the building of the monastic church was commenced. The architectural style has been described as "transitional" (i.e. between Norman and Gothic).

Although the Priory acquired lands in Northumberland and Durham over the years it was never particularly wealthy. Little is known of the early history of the priory, although it is known that it survived some difficult times. In fact, as late as 1419 it was raided and robbed.

Brinkburn Priory was dissolved in 1536 after Parliament enacted the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries Act. The "lesser monasteries" were those with an income of less than £200 per annum, and Brinkburn fell into this category as in 1535 the priory's value had been recorded as £69 in the Valor Ecclesiasticus. After the dissolution the estate was mainly owned by the Fenwick family and in the late 16th century they built a manor house on the ruins of the Priory buildings and adjacent to the Priory Church.

Services continued to be held at Brinkburn and the church was retained in a fair state of repair till the end of the 16th century. In 1602 it was reported to be in a state of decay, and at some point before 1700 the roof had collapsed and regular services were abandoned.