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