SS Mary and Hardulph Breedon

The lovely chap who's spending his retirement blogging about Great English Churches has a good post on this one, so I'm not going to describe it (much), and he's got plenty of nice photographs.  There's another good post on Leicestershire Churches.

Photo: Archaeodeath

Breedon is one of a number of Austin priories with Anglo-Saxon foundations, like Bodmin or Plympton. (There's a whole thesis you can read on this here.)  Breedon was re-founded in the early 12th century with canons from Nostell, and seems to have been a cell of Nostell, with only as many canons as you could count on one hand.  But it kept its Anglo-Saxon minster sculpture, and its dedication to St Hardulph, though now, of course, accompanied by the BVM (although from the looks of this sculpture, she was already there!).

Hardulph was probably Eardwulf of Northumbria.

At some point, one of the priors tried to get independence for Breedon from Nostell.  He resigned.

Now, the seal (no picture, sorry).  An oval at 7/8 x 3/4", this seal is on the small side.  It's from 1377, and shows St Peter standing beside a tree, with a book in his right hand and two keys in his left hand.  I'm not quite convinced by Birch's transcription of the inscription - SAVN…PETR’ - I don't know what he thought 'savn' means, but I've not seen the seal, and he's usually pretty good.

I don't know any other depiction of St Peter standing by a tree.  I am, ahem, intreegued.

Grace Dieu

While we're on extraordinary women (see last post on the Elas Longspées), let's look at Rohesia de Verdun, founder of Grace Dieu, north-west of Leicester.

Photo: de-verdon.uk

Roesia de Verdun (d.1247) was the heir to a not-insignificant house, and therefore was quite eligible.  Shewas married first (it seems) to Nicholas de Beaulieu (whoever he was) or was it William Perceval de Somery (whoever he was)?  Different sources say different things.  But they agree on her second husband, Theobald Butler of Ormond.  This marriage was Henry III's particular request.  Roesia bore Theobald five children, but the fact that she shelled out 700 marks on his death to remain a femme sole suggests that marriage didn't agree with her - or else that she was determined to hold on to her estates. And here's an interesting thing about her - like Ela II, she kept her family name.  As sole heiress, she also kept the family estates, which she passed on to her son John.

In the 1230s, Roesia built Castle Roche, Co. Louth.  She reportedly defenestrated the master mason towards the end of the project, so that he'd not be able to divulge the secrets of its unique construction, but that no doubt is misogynist hogwash.

In the late 1230s, she established Grace Dieu, and had retired there by 1242, dying only in her mid-forties in 1247.

A couple of years later, Adam Marsh, perhaps at the behest of his friend Mr Thomas de Verdun (relationship to Roesia not clear), wrote to the Bishop of Lincoln and others to make sure that the convent was adequately founded and provided for.  And it seems to have been.  It attracted other benefactions in the 14th century; by the 15th, there were 14 nuns (it's not unlikely that this number was fairly stable throughout), with two dozen male servants and a handful of female ones.  The nuns' clothing allowance was worth 6s. 8d., so a couple of stones of wool per year, or a couple of hundred quid in today's money.

And now, the seals.  Alas, no pictures (yet).  The 13th-century priory seal is a pointed oval: Christ, on a throne, under a trefoiled canopy supported on slender shafts; right hand in benediction; left hand holds a book. In base, under a trefoiled arch, female figure (the founder) kneeling and holding a charter.
SIGILL' CONVENT' . . . . ALVE DE GRATIA . . .

Theobald de Verdun

This charter is a lovely touch. I've not come across other such charter-bearers, although I'm sure that the unique Roesia can't be unique here.

Roesia's own seal:  she stands in a tunic of the Verdun arms (fretty), holding two shields, one being the Verdun arms. The other has, apparently, an indenty fess; possibly Butler. (I’ve not seen this seal). Nigel Tringham describes another seal, in which ‘she holds a burning lamp in her right hand’.

By the way, the second prioress of Grace Dieu was Alice de Gresley.  Her seal, from 1269, has the BVM on a throne, Child on left knee, under a trefoiled canopy supported on slender shafts. At the sides of her head, dexter, a crescent, sinister, an estoile. In base, under an arch, the prioress kneeling in prayer.

Ela Longspée and Ela Longspée

I belong to a web group that occasionally posts 'silly plurals', and here's one for them, I think.  We have here two outstanding women, mother and daughter, both called Ela.  Are they the Ela Longspées, the Elas Longspée, the Elas Longspées?

The first Ela was Countess of Salisbury, and founder of Lacock Abbey.  The second, her daughter, was Countess of Warwick, a patron of Walter of Merton's college at Oxford, and was buried in Oseney Abbey.  Both women were, therefore, patrons and benefactors of the Augustinians.  (L. L. Gee has written about women as Austin patrons, and Emilie Amt has written about Ela II.)  So they can both quite happily appear here!  Let's look at their seals and counterseals.

 These make for a good spot-the-difference.  They are not dissimilar to that of Joan de Munchensy, Countess of Pembroke, who holds a hawk. Joan's background is plain; Ela is surrounded by .  What, if anything, the hawk signifies is discussed elsewhere, but the figure's dynamic-but-elegant pose is worth noting.  Ela I stands between two lions, not so much rampant as climbing the walls.  (Perhaps they're after the bird.)  She stands on a nice corbel.  Her daughter also has a nice corbel, and instead of rampant lions, she has a couple of rampant ramblers.

The counterseals:  both heraldic, showing that the shield had already gone from primarily military to a proclamation of lineage.  Ela I's has the six lions rampant of Longspée.  Ela II has two lions passant above and below her shield, which is encased in a hexafoil.  It has the six lions rampant, and the inscription shows that although she's Countess of Warwick, she's still a Longspée.  It wasn't common for women to keep their names, but not unknown, especially when the woman was descended from people like Ela's parents...  She was Longspée and proud.

Ela's second seal is more mid-to-late century in style, with a church-style canopy.  She stands on a fleur-de-lys corbel.  The three shields on seal and counterseal are hers and her husbands'.  Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick is dexter on the seal; she holds, sinister, her Longspée shield; the counterseal is Philip Bassett.  Again, the counterseal arms are encased in a foil, this time a quatrefoil, with dainty trefoils at the corners, and between two lions rampant.


Another image of Ela II's seal is here, from the Merton College archives.

Plympton

 

From Monasticon Dioesis Exoniensis (1846)

Bishop William Warelwast of Exeter was on a drive to improve the standards of canons in his diocese. In 1121 he disbanded the secular college founded by the Anglo-Saxons and instituted an Augustinian house, the Priory of St Peter and St Paul, using canons from Holy Trinity, Aldgate, and Merton Priory.  It's probable that one of those Merton canons was a chap called Geoffrey, who in 1130 or so became prior.  The history of Plympton is here, and de Gray Birch's description of the seals here.

The priory seal is 13th-century.  Peter and Paul sit on a bench or throne, with beaded nimbus and books, and their symbols.  They sit atop a lovely carved corbel of foliage.  The inscription Birch notes as

SIGILLVM : ECCLESIE : AP'LOR …..RI : ET : PAVLI : DE : PLIMTONA.

But surely that must be A PRIORATU SANCTE PETRI ET PAVLI.

He describes its counterseal - BVM, crowned and throned, the Child on left knee; in right hand an orb topped with a fleur-de-lis on which a bird perches.  + SIGNVM : SANCTE : MARIE : DE : PLIMTONA.  Mary was the most popular saint for Austin houses. 

Continuing the Marian theme, Prior Richard de Tregony's seal (1280) has a half-length BVM, with Child on left arm, under an arch of five cusps; below, two quadrilobes containing on the left, St Paul's bust, with a sword and over the head an estoile; on the right, St Peter's, with keys and over the head a crescent. In base, under a pointed and trefoiled arch, the Prior, kneeling in prayer.  The quadrilobes sound very similar to the windows on Merton's seal. Merton held land in Tregony, and indeed its prior in the 1290s was Nicholas Tregony - perhaps some relation to Richard.  I'll try to get a picture of this seal.

Plympton's seal, I feel, needs the caption 'And it's goodnight from him...'

Gresley

Photo: Wikipedia

It's the trademark of Austin priories that they are of infinite variety, and Gresley is a bit different to some in that it was really very attached to its patrons, the Gresley family.  Gresley Priory was founded by William de Gresley, son of Nigel de Stafford, sometime during Henry I’s reign.  William lived in the castle in Gresley, and now the village is Castle Gresley.  His priory gave Church Gresley its name.

The Gresleys gave to the priory throughout the 12th and 13th centuries – for example, in 1291, Geoffrey de Gresley gave the priory land in return for a canon to sing mass for the soul of Agnes his wife.  Gresley wasn’t a rich priory:  its temporalities and spiritualities were valued in 1291 at £9 6s. 3½d  – according to the National Archives’ currency converter, that’s around £6,848 in today’s money. In 1339, the priory was claiming poverty as a reason to appropriate a church.  By the 16th century, they were doing a bit better, but not much – the Valor Ecclesiasticus (1535) calculated the priory’s T and S as £39 13s 8d, around £17,511 today.

Unusually, the Priory's dedicatee is St George (the church is also to St Mary, who is the usual Austin dedicatee, so I presume it was a double dedication).  Samuel Pegge, in his Observations on the History of St George (Archaeologia, 1777) noted:

William, son of Nigel de Greisley, dedicated the Priory of Canons at Greisley, in the county of Derby, to St. Mary and St. George, in the reign of king Henry I. The seals of this religious foundation are extant in drawings in a MS. Chartulary of the library at Manchester, one with the Equestrian figure of St. George alone, inscribed Sigillum Prioratus Sti. Georgii de Greseley, and another with the same type, and the Dragon underneath, whereof the Legend is Sigillum Coventus Sti. Georgii de Greseley. The first of these seals belongs plainly, as appears from the instrument it hangs to, to the reign of Henry II. or Richard I. and the latter to the year 1420.  It appears to me from a deed sans date, and from another of 19 E. I. in the same Cartulary, that the family Greisley, which is indeed very ancient, made use of the same device on their seals; whence it would seem, that they regarded St. George as the peculiar Patron and Advocate of their house; and, that the Saint was, commonly, represented here in the 12th and 13th century on horseback.

Photo: British Museum

We've had priory seals aping episcopal seals (Merton, Drax); this seems to be one aping the equestrian seal!  This matrix shows Robert FitzWalter (d.1198), and he even has a pet dragon (and lots of heraldry, the new fashion).

The progenitor of the Gresley line (and I use this word deliberately, as you’ll see) was called Nigel, and it’s a forename that carried on certainly into the 20th century.  The most famous Gresley nowadays is Nigel, designer of the Mallard and the Flying Scotsman.  Both of which used many seals of a different sort.

Photo: Hugh Llewelyn/ Wikipedia

Kirkham

Photograph:  Wikipedia

We've had Butley, so we'd better have the priory with that other great heraldic gatehouse, Kirkham.

It's a stunner.  One of a number of Dec gatehouses, it shares all sorts of features with its fellows -  part-church, part-castle (the church militant?!), it has a wealth of Dec motifs - quatrefoils, crockets, heraldry. There's a nice description of it by the Scarborough News, here, an interesting article on gatehouses in general (it's on JSTOR; subscription needed), and the article on the buildings of Kirkham here (subscription needed).  The history of Kirkham is succinctly laid out in a Borthwick Paper by Janet Burton.

The heraldry proclaims various local lords - Ros, Clare, Vaux, Fitz-Ralph, Scrope, Fortibus, Espec - and the arms of England:  it's a great early example of heraldic display on buildings.  The gatehouse probably dates from c.1300, and the couple funding it were probably William de Ros and Matilda de Vaux, his wife:  he was buried in Kirkham in 1314.  (At that point, the prior was William Wetwang.  Wetwang has to be one of my favourite place names.  I admit to a childish chuckle every time I come across it.) 

More relevant to us are the religious figures, and especially Christ.  Kirkham was dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and the gatehouse has at the top Christ in Majesty.  Kirkham's seals also show Christ in Majesty, or, rather, its variant, Christ in Judgement.

The first seal is from the early 12th  century, appearing on a document from the priorate of Andrew (c.1200-10).  Christ's right hand is in benediction, and his left holds a book.  He has a cruciferous nimbus.  His 'manspreading' is to achieve an elegant effect - his body form matches the vesica (pointed oval); his left knee props up the book, and his folds drape stylishly below.  It's a lovely seal.  The inscription is SIGILLVM  SANCTE TRINITATIS DE CHIRCHAM.

The counterseal used on this document was a secretum of an antique gem with two female figures and the inscription SINGNUM SERVI DEI.  These are in the Durham Cathedral Archives (no.3501).  Here's an article on antique gems and the 12th century.

A later seal, from 1336, has C-in-J under a trefoiled, crocketed arch, supported by columns with three traceried storeys, or niches.  It's very similar in style, of course, to the gatehouse - an architectural fancy.  Under an arch beneath Christ's feet, the prior prays.  Either side of Christ are roses (for Espec - gules three roses argent), and water bougets (for Ros - gules three bougets argent).  (Peter de Ros married Walter Espec's daughter and heir, Atheline.)  SIGILLUM ... PRIORIS DE KIRKEHAM.

Other C-in-J seals, for interest, are Ralph Nevill, Bishop of Chichester (1224-44) and Walter Suffield, Bishop of Norwich (1245-57).

Newstead Priory

Newstead, just north of Nottingham, is now called Newstead Abbey, but it never was an abbey - that was a gothic fancy after the Reformation.  Newstead was frequently referred to in Augustinian documents (as Novo Loco), and it hosted a fair few general chapters.  It seems to have punched above its weight, for it was perpetually in debt.

Photo: a northern vicar

It would make an interesting study from that point of view - a totally different interesting from Marton and Moxby, for the canons of Newstead seem to have been irreproachable:  indeed, the priors of Nostell and Guisborough, the visitors of 1261, recommended that the brethren have more eggs - suggesting a very Spartan diet indeed.

There's a nice little blog about Newstead Abbey here, with some good pictures, one of which is the seal, and I've shamelessly half-inched it.  It's the first seal, from the 12th century, and is the BVM and Child, she sporting a fleur-de-lis virga in her right hand, and tenderly holding the Child with her left. She has lovely maunches (sleeves) on her bliaut, and they sit on a beautifully padded seat.  Her crown looks fleur-de-lizé, and she's wearing a veil or a barbette. Birch's description is here.

+ SIGILLUM . SANCTE MARIE NOVI LOCI ISCHI.

Newstead is called Novo loco - confusingly there is another Austin priory called Novo loco:  Newark in Surrey.

Bridlington

The s-Bek-tre (geddit?) of the Durham bishopric is apparent in the seals of Gisburne and Moxby, and it certainly is on this seal.

Spot the difference.  Left is Bridlington, late 13th-century.  Right is Anthony Bek's seal from 1284.  Charles Clay noted that 'Two of the Bridlington seals are closely similar in design to certain episcopal seals at Durham, indicating the probability of a local school of workmanship.'





















It seems to me that Bek's seal is of a superior workmanship, although that could just be the quality of impressions.  Both show the Coronation of the Virgin, and we can imagine a canon worshipping where Bek himself is, at the bottom.  The diapering recalls the seal of an earlier bishop of Durham, Richard Poor, but also (of course!), Merton Priory.  Its inscription S’ COMMVNE : ECCLE….BRIDELINGTONA.


Its counterseal was the chapter seal ad causas.  This is exciting - it's a matrix!  The BVM (crowned) holds the Child (nimbed) under a crocketed trefoiled arch supported by slender columns with pinnacles.  Either side are quatrefoils, and she stands on a corbel which slightly suggests Gisburne's first seal.  The similarity of Gisburne's second seal with Bek's obverse is commented on in that post.  So perhaps Clay is right, and there's a workshop with a number of house styles, which produced seals for Bek, Gisburne and Bridlington.  The BVM's folds are rather splendid.  Inscription S’ CAPITVLI : SCE : MARIE : …. BRIDELINGTONA AD CAVSAS.

Marton and Moxby

Charles Clay's descriptions of Yorkshire seals has pictures (you need access to Cambridge Core for this article).  One day I might take some pictures myself, but until then, I've shamelessly infringed copyright, I'm sure, but copyright didn't exist in the Middle Ages...

Bertram de Bulmer founded a double house of Augustinian canons and nuns at Marton in the

mid-12th century.  (This aerial photo shows the farm that it's become, but if you look closely, you can see its outlines.)  This wasn’t too far either in time or area from Gilbert’s double house at Sempringham, so Bertram was perhaps following Gilbert’s lead.  The nuns, however, quickly moved out, to the neighbouring hamlet of Molesby (the area is now Marton-cum-Moxby).  If the 12th-century canons of Marton were anything like their 13th-century successors, the reasons for the nuns moving out would be obvious.  In 1280, Marton was in dire financial straits; the prior ‘resigned’, and the Archbishop brought in a new one (from Newburgh) and brought in the Archdeacon of Cleveland to supervise.  He also sent some of the brethren off to other monasteries – a bit like moving unruly pupils to another school.  Things didn’t improve much in the 14th century.  In 1308, the canons elected William de Bulmer prior, but Archbishop Greenfield quashed the election and sent him to Drax.  Greenfield’s visitations found a den of iniquity:  brother Alan de Shirburn was having it off with three women (one married); brother Stephen de Langetoft had two mistresses; brother Roger de Scameston had five (one married).  The brethren tried to elect Alan de Shirburn as prior in 1318, but, unsurprisingly, the archbishop quashed this.  In 1321, the Scots raided and laid waste to Marton; the brethren, apart from the prior and sub-prior, were dispersed to other houses (including Bridlington).  Marton straggled on till the Dissolution, caving in quite willingly.

Meanwhile, next door at Moxby, the nuns followed the Augustinian rule, and their house and chapel were under the invocation of St. John the Evangelist and the charge of a local vicar.  If Archbishop Greenfield was having trouble with Marton, Moxby didn’t give him much rest, either.  Sister Sabina de Apelgarth was in danger of apostasy; the Archbishop instructed the nuns to receive her penitential self back.  His visitations of 1314 didn’t dig up the scandals that afflicted Marton, but he did note that they were to stay within the convent (and that included the prioress).  The nuns were dispersed by the Scottish raids that did for Marton, and they were sent to Nun Monkton, Nun Appleton, Nunkeeling, and Hampole.  In 1325 the prioress resigned because of her affair with the chaplain.  The convent was also in debt.  And Sabina de Apelgarth was still being troublesome:  a brief spell as prioress was ended, for misconduct, by the archbishop.  The rest of the life of Moxby was apparently uneventful.

Moxby's seal is quite interesting.  It was dredged from the Foss in 1884, and is apparently now at the Yorkshire Museum.  It's late-12th/ early-13th century, and probably depicts Augustine. He's vested for mass, with crozier in left hand and right hand in benediction.  The mitre is on at a rather old-fashioned angle, more in keeping with early 12th-century mitres, e.g. Nigel of Ely.  But the cross molines on his chasuble recalls Anthony Bek's (see post on Gisburne).  The cross molines is not the Bulmer arms, and nor does it appear on the seals of the archbishops of York.  A bit of a mystery.  The inscription is SIGILL': CAPITVLI: SCA N: JOHANNIS: DE MOLESBI.

Clay didn't give pictures of the chapter seal of Marton, but only the seals of Prior Henry (c.1203-27), left, and John de Thirsk (1349-57), right.  The photos aren't great.  Henry's is a prior with hands on chest; John's is BVM and Child, reversed from the usual way round, within a polylobed vesica, and the prior praying beneath (cf. Merton, Oseney, etc.).