LIBRARY
UNIVBRSITY Of CAUFORNIA
SAN oiceo
0?/
SO.
Zbc IDictotia 1bi8tov\> of tbe Counties of Englanb
EDITED BY WILLIAM PAGE, F.S.A.
A HISTORY OF DORSET
VOLUME II
THE
VICTORIA HISTORY
OF THE COUNTIES OF ENGLAND
DORSET
LONDON
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE
AND COMPANY LIMITED
This History is issued to Subscribers only By Archibald Constable & Company Limited and printed by Eyre & Spottisivoode H.M. Printers of London
INSCRIBED
TO THE MEMORY OF
HER LATE MAJESTY
QUEEN VICTORIA
WHO GRACIOUSLY GAVE
THE TITLE TO AND
ACCEPTED THE
DEDICATION OF
THIS HISTORY
»
I
THE
VICTORIA HISTORY
OF THE COUNTY OF
DORSET
EDITED BY
WILLIAM PAGE, F.S.A.
VOLUME TWO
LONDON ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE
AND COMPANY LIMITED 1908
CONTENTS OF VOLUME TWO
Dedication ..... Contents .....
List of Illustrations and Maps . Editorial Note ....
Ecclesiastical History Religious Houses : —
Introduction ....
Abbey of Abbotsbury
Abbey of Cerne
Abbey of Milton
Abbey of Sherborne .
Priory of Cranborne .
Priory of Horton
Abbey of Shaftesbury
Priory of Holne or East Holme .
Abbey of Blndon
Abbey of Tarrant Kaines .
Preceptor)- of Friar Mayne
Dominican Friars of Gillinghain .
Dominican Friars of Melcombe Regis
Franciscan Friars of Dorchester .
Carmelite Friars of Bridport
Carmelite Friars of Lyme .
Austin Friars of Sherborne .
' Priory Hermitage ' of Blackmoor
Wilcheswood ....
Hospital of St. Mary Magdalen Allington ....
Hospital of Long Blandford
Hospital of St. Mary and the Holy Spirit, Lyme
Hospital of St. John the Baptist, Bridport
Hospital of St. John the Baptist, Dorchester ....
Hospital or Lazar-House, Dorchester
Hospital of St, John the Baptist Shaftesbury . . ,
Hospital of St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, Sherborne
Hospital of St. Thomas, Sherborne
Hospital of St Leonard, Tarranl Rushton ....
Hospital of St. Margaret and St Anthony, VVimborne
Hospital of Wareham
Wimborne Minster .
Priory of Frampton .
By Miss M M. C. Calthrop
Bv A. G. Little, M.A
By Miss M M. C. Calthrop
PAGE V
ix xi
xiii I
47 48
53 58 62 70 7' 73 80 82
87 90 92 92 93 95 96 96 96 98
98
100
100 100
lOI
103
103
104 105
105
106 107 107 113
CONTENTS OF VOLUME TWO
Religious Houses {continued) — Priory of Loders Priory of Povington . Priory of Spettisburv Priory of Wareham .
Political History
Maritime History
Social and Economic History
Table of Population, 1S01-1901 Agriculture
Forestry .... Sport, Ancient and Modern Introduction Hunting . Foxhounds .
Blackmore \'ale Hounds The Cattistock . The South Dorset Lord Portman's Houn Point-to-Point Races Stag-Hunting
The Ranston Bloodhound Roe-Deer Hunting Harriers and Beagles Otter-Hunting Racing
Racing Celebrities Training Establishments and Farms Polo
Shooting Falconry Angling Golf Industries : —
Introduction
Quarrying
The Hemp Industry
Fisheries .
Cloth .
Silk
Pottery and Tiles
Brewing .
Cider
Stud
By Miss M. M. C. Calthrop .
By Mrs. Edward Fripp, Oxford Honours Schoo of Modern History ....
By M. Oppenheim .....
By Miss Madeleine C. Fripp and Miss Phylli Wrahce, Oxford Honours School of Modern History ......
By George S. Minchin ....
By A. J. Buckle
By the Rev. J. C. Cox, LL.D., F.S.A
Edited by the Rev. E. E. Dorlino, M.A.
By the Rev. Pierce A. Butler (' Purbeck Pilgrim ')
PAGI
116
118 119 121
123
'75
229 264
27s 287
299 300 joo
308 310 312 313 313 3'3 31 + 315 3'5 316 317
317
., . ,. . 318
•, „ .318
By Capt. Eustace R^uclvfff, J. P. , . . ^19
By the Rev. Pierce A. Butler ('Purbeck Pilgrim ') 320
By the Rev. E. E. Dorlino, M.A. . . . 322
By Miss M. M. Crick, B.A. (Dublin), Oxford Honours School of Modern History
By C. H. \'ellacott, B.A. ....
By Miss M. M. Crick, B.A. (Dublin), Oxford Honours School of Modern History
By Miss M. M. Crick, B.A (Dublin), Oxford Honours Schoul of Modern History, andC. H. V'ellacott, B.A. ......
325 331
34+ 353 360 362
363
366
369
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
PACE
Dorchester. By William Hyde .......... Frontispiece
Etclesiastic.ll Map of Dorset .......... ficing 45
Dorset Monastic Ssals : —
Plate I . . . . . . . . . . full-page plate facing 62
Plate II „ „ „ 102
Map of Dorset shewing excess of Hamlets over Villages . ..... Jacing 126
Plan of Portland Harbour shewing New Breakwater .... full-page plate facing 226
EDITORIAL NOTE
The Editor wishes to express his acknowledgements to Mr. J. Merrick Head and Sir J. Charles Robinson, C.B f.S.A., for notes and assistance on the section on Mining in the article on the Industries of the county, and to the Hon. Thomas A. Brassey for an illustration to the article on Maritime History.
XIII
A HISTORY OF DORSET
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
SAVE for the discovery of that early Christian emblem, the chirho, in a Roman pavement excavated at Frampton ^ there is no evidence to connect Dorset w^ith the early Roman-British church, or any proof that Christianity existed here before the later Roman mission.'' Nor can the ecclesiastical history of this county be said to commence in the seventh century with the conversion of the West Saxons at the preaching of Birinus their apostle and first bishop, who, on his landing in 635, found the inhabitants of the district ' most pagan ' {pagannissimos) according to Bede.^ Dorset, it should be remembered, formed no integral part of the West Saxon kingdom in which it afterwards became absorbed and no men- tion of it occurs under the earlier Wessex bishops whose seat was established at Dorchester (Oxford). While discarding an ancient record which names Cenwalch of Wessex, who died in 672, as one of the ' kings, founders of the church of Sherborne,' * an early foundation at Wareham may indicate previous fugitive attempts to draw Dorset into the channel of church organiza- tion in Wessex as it then existed by establishing a mission centre to its south-east, but it was not until the military subjugation of the county had been completed that it was swept into the main stream of national ecclesiasti- cal life by the establishment of a bishop-stool at Sherborne in 705 on the death of Bishop Haeddi and the division of the West Saxon diocese.'
What the precise limits of the new see were is not easy exactly to define. The two sees formed out of the old Wessex diocese are described roughly as ' east and west of Selwood,' the large forest of that name which stretched between them constituting a convenient border line. The Anglo- Saxon Chronicle^ recording the death of Bishop Aldhelm in 709, says, ' this year died bishop Aldhelm : he was bishop of the west of Selwood.' * Henry of Huntingdon again states : ' Ine in the twentieth year of his reign divided the bishopric of Wessex which used to be one into two sees : that portion east of the woods Daniel held, that which was west of the woods was held by Aldhelm.' ^ According to William of Malmesbury the see ' west of Selwood,' the bishop-stool of which was fixed at Sherborne, included the counties
' Anh. Jout-n. xxviii (1872), 217-21.
' Mr. Moule, in his description of Old Dorset (pp. 50-51), comments on the absence of reference to this county in the Monumenta Historica Britannka, which focusses all classic authoritie? of the period. In refer- ence to the ancient British church in Wessex, the fact that St. Chad, afterwards bishop of Lichfield, was consecrated to the see of York by Wine, bishop of Wessex, assisted by two British bishops, seems to show that in that district the bishops who owed their ordination directly to Rome after the Roman Kentish mission were in communion with those of the earlier British school. Dioc. Hist, of Salisbury (S.P.C.K.), p. z8.
' Eal. Hist. lib. iii, cap. vii. * Cott. MS. Faust. A. ii, fol. 23.
' Wm. of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontif. (Rolls Ser.), 375. The division of the Wessex dioceses into two sees, one e t.iblished at Sherborne and the other at Winchester, is usually attributed to King Ine, but has also been ascribed to synodal authority. Wharton, Jtiglia Sacra, ii, 20.
^ Anglo-Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), 38. ' Hist. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), i, no.
A HISTORY OF DORSET
of Wilts., Dorset, Berks., Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall ; ' and we may per- haps conclude that the new diocese consisted at least of the whole of Dorset and Somerset, with a large part of Wiltshire, and probably included Devon and Cornwall.
If there had been delay and difficulty in bringing this county into line with the rest of Wessex, Dorset certainly sprang, ecclesiastically as well as politically, into the front rank from the date of the constitution of the see. The saintly Aldhelm, kinsman and partner of King Ine in all schemes for the welfare and advancement of the kingdom, was elected and by Archbishop Berchtwald consecrated first bishop of Sherborne in 705.' As regards his previous connexion with this county, William of Malmesbury recounts how, prior to his departure for Rome to obtain from the pope various privileges for the monasteries he had established, Aldhelm visited his Dorset estate near Wareham and Corfe Castle and built a church two miles from the sea, * wherein he commended to God his going and returning.' According to the chronicler the church was still standing in his day — about the beginning of the twelfth century — and was regarded by the inhabitants of the country with singular veneration on account of the signs and miracles which had taken place there. The shepherds of the district, it was said, when storms broke over them, would fiy for shelter within its walls, where no rain ever fell though the roof had fallen and all attempts to cover it had failed.^" During the four short years of his rule the bishop worthily initiated the work of the church in Dorset. At Sherborne he built, or at least com- menced, his minster or cathedral church," to which was attached a house of secular canons, the ' familia,' or household, at that time always forming part of a bishop's seat. Another important religious foundation, dating not later than the formation of the episcopal see, was the house of religious virgins built by St. Cuthburga, sister of King Ine, at Wimborne, and specially referred to by Aldhelm in a letter, dated 705, giving liberty of election to the monasteries under his charge, as ' the monastery by the river which is called Wimburnia presided over by the abbess Cuthburga.' ^^ During the eighth century the fame of the nuns here and the report of the training and discipline of the abbess-founder and her successors spread even to the Con- tinent, and St. Boniface, the apostle of the Germans, sent over to make request that the sisters Lioba and Agatha might be allowed to proceed abroad to take charge of the monastery he had founded at BiscofFsheim in order that the same rule and discipline might be planted there.^*
To enumerate briefly the succession of bishops of Sherborne in the eighth and ninth centuries : Aldhelm, on his death in 709, was followed by Forthere," who in 737 is said to have accompanied Queen Frythogith to Rome,^° and was succeeded by Herewald, consecrated by Archbishop Nothelm in 736,^* in whose time was held the council of Clovesho (747), at which
' Ges/a Pon/if. (Rolls Ser.), 175.
' Flor. Vi^orc. Ciron. (Engl. Hist. Soc), i, 46 ; Wm. of Malmesbury, Gafa Pontlf. (Rolls Ser.), 376.
" Ibid. 363-4. " Ibid 378. " Birch, Carl. Sax. i, 168.
" Cressy, Church Hist, of Brit. lib. xxi, cap. xviii.
" Flor. Wore. Chron. (En^l. Hist. Soc), i. 47 ; Bede, Eccl. Hist. lib. v, cap. yi'iii.
" Anglo-Sax. Ckron. (Rolls Ser.), 40.
" Sim. of Durham (Twysden), 100. Herewald appears to have acted as suffragan to Forthere before the death of the latter, for in a charter dated 734-7, they both appear as bishop of the church of Sherborne ; Kemble, Codex Dipl. i, 82.
2
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
he assisted." ^thelmod, 766-78 ; Denefrith, consecrated by Archbishop yEthelheard in 793;" Wigberht or Wibert, who went with Archbishop Wulfred to Rome in 8 i 2.^' Ealhstan, a vahant soldier no less than bishop, and esteemed for his military prowess, took an important part in the conflicts of his time, and not only assisted King Egbert in the subjugation of the kingdoms of Kent and Essex, but afforded him and his successor material help as well as active encouragement in their struggle against the Danes.^° William of Malmesbury, who described the bishop as of singular power in secular matters and pre-eminent in counsel, but resented his action in having appropriated the abbey of Malmesbury to the episcopal see, declared that avarice, spite of his liberality in the national cause, was the besetting sin of Ealhstan, adding, however, that he left his church well endowed." Accord- ing to i\\Q Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Ealhstan died in 867, after he had held the bishopric of Sherborne ' fifty winters,' and ' his body lies there in the town.' "^ Bishop Heahmund, who subscribed 868—70, again recalls the fierce conflict going on with the Danes, for he, ' with many good men,' was slain in battle at Merton in 871 ; ''^ his successor, iEthelheah, subscribed 871—8 ; Wulfsige, ^Ifsige, or Alfsius, 883.'* Asser, chiefly remembered as the friend and biographer of King Alfred, signed acts in 900 and 904. He was in all probability made bishop of the western portion of the diocese, which at that time reached to Land's End, in the lifetime of his predecessor and succeeded to the whole on the death of Wulfsige ; this, at any rate, offers a solution of the fact that Asser is described by Alfred as ' my bishop ' at a date previous to 890, while Asser himself states that the king bestowed on him the charge of Exeter with the whole diocese that pertained to it in Saxony (Wessex) and Cornwall,^^ and disposes of the confusion resulting from the two bishops appearing as contemporary occupants of the same see.^°
The beginning of the tenth century brings us to what has been described as 'the great ecclesiastical event of the reign of Edward the Elder,' " the second division of the West Saxon see, with the account of the consecration of the seven bishops at Canterbury. 'In the year 904 of our Lord's nativity,' writes William of Malmesbury —
Pope Formosus sent letters into England by which he pronounced excommunication and malediction on king Edward and all his subjects, instead of the benediction which had been sent by Pope Gregory from the seat of St. Peter to the English people, because for 7 whole years the whole district of the West Saxons had been destitute of bishops. On hearing this king Edward assembled a council of the senators of the English people, over which Plegmund, archbishop of Canterbury, presided interpreting carefully the words of the apostolic message. Then the king and bishops chose a salutary council for themselves and their people and, according to the word of our Lord ' the harvest truly is plenteous but the
" Wilkins, Condi, i, 94. " Wharton, Anglia Sacra, i, 79.
" Flor. of V7orc. Chron. (Engl. Hist. Sec), i, 64.
" Gesta Regum Angl. (Rolls Ser.), i, 109. King .(Ethelwulf is said to have had two excellent bishops : St. Swithun of Winchester, who directed the king in celestial matters ; and Ealhstan of Sherborne, who advised him in earthly affairs.
»' Gesta Pontif. (Rolls Ser.), 175-6. " Op. cit. 53.
" Ibid. 62. The following year King .iEthelred, who received mortal injuries in the same battle, died and was buried at Wimborne (ibid.), his predecessors, .^thelbald and .(Ethelbert, having received burial at Sherborne; ibid. 58-9.
" Wm. of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontif. (Rolls Ser.), 177. " Petrie, Monumenia Hist. Brit. 4, 9.
" Lingard, Anglo-Saxon Church, ii, 433 ; W. H. Jones, Early Annals of the Episcopate in Wilts and Dorset, 20-1.
" Stubbs, William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum (Rolls Ser.), Introd. ii, p. liv.
3
A HISTORY OF DORSET
labourers are few,' they elected and constituted a bishop to every province of the West Saxons and divided the district which formerly had two bishoprics into five. The council being dismissed, the archbishop went to Rome with many presents and conciliating the Pope with great humility recited the king's ordinance which gave the pontiff great pleasure. And returning home, in one day he consecrated in the city of Canterbury 7 bishops to 7 churches, namely, Frithstan to Winchester, .(Ethelstan to Ramsbury, Waerstan to Sherborne, Athelm to Wells, Eadulf to Crediton, also to other provinces he constituted 2 bishops, Beornege to the South Saxons (Selsey) and to the Mercians Ceolwulf whose see was at Dorchester.^*
On critical examination many of the details in the above account are shown to be inaccurate.^' The story of the negotiations of Edward the Elder with Pope Formosus falls to the ground as his pontificate ended four years before the king's reign began, while the immediate successor of Asser, whose death is recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the year 910,'" was not Waerstan but ^Ethelweard, who as bishop of Sherborne attested a charter of King Edward in 909.*^ As to the tradition, dating from the eleventh century, of the consecration of seven bishops at Canterbury in one day, the story is said by its most eminent critic to contain ' no special improbability although it would be unwise to risk a positive identification of the persons consecrated.' ^^ The points to be retained are that the visit of Archbishop Plegmund to Rome in 908 '^ was followed by the division of the diocese of Winchester into two bishoprics,'* one remaining at Winchester as before, the other fixed at Ramsbury, and comprising the two counties of Wiltshire and Berkshire or such portion of them as belonged to the territory of the West Saxons ; and that subsequently the diocese of Sherborne, as it existed prior to 909, was divided into three bishoprics : Sherborne for the county of Dorset, Wells for Somerset, and Crediton for Devonshire.'^
To return to the succession of bishops of Sherborne after the division of the diocese : Waerstan, one of the seven prelates consecrated in one day by Archbishop Plegmund, was killed, according to William of Malmesbury, in 937, on the eve of the battle of Brunanburh ; '° his signature is not found attached to any genuine charter. An interpolation of Florence of Worcester states that ' on the death of Waerstan, iEthelbald succeeded,' " and his name follows in the list of bishops given by William of Malmesbury ; Sighelm, or Sigelm, subscribed 925-932 ;'* Alfred, 933— 943 '^^ ; Wulfsige, said to have been abbot of Westminster,*" signed 943, as Mlsius Dorsetensium Episcopus his death is recorded in the year 958 ; *^ his successor ^Ifwold, designated in the same manner,*^ died in 978 and was buried at Sherborne ; *' ^thelsige, 979—991, was present at the consecration of Winchester Cathedral in 981 ; ** Wulfsige,
-'' Gesta Regum (Rolls Ser.), i, 1 40-1.
■' W. H. Jones, Early Annals of the Episcopate in Wilts and Dorset, 22-3. '" Op. cit. 77.
'' Kemble, Codex Dipl. v, 1093. According to one account of William of Malmesbury the alms sent by King Alfred to St. Thomas of India and Christians beyond sea were conveyed by Sighelm, bishop of Sherborne, whom elsewhere he makes successor to Asser [Gesta Regum (Rolls Ser.), i, 130 ; Gesta Pontif. (Rolls Ser.), 177]. But a bishop of the name of Sighelm does not occur until three successors of Asser had passed away, and it is hardly probable that the two should be identical.
'' Stubbs, Reg. Sacrum Anglic. 23. '^ Petrie, Monumenta Hist. Brit. 519.
" Wm. of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontif. (Rolls Ser.), 20 ; W. H. Jones, op. cit. 24-5.
" Wm. of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontif. (Rolls Ser.), 178.
'* Ibid. ■" Chron. (Engl. Hist. Soc.) i, 128, note I ; 133, note 2.
'' Stubbs. Reg. Sacrum Anglic. 25. " Ibid. p. 26.
" Wm. of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontif. (Rolls Ser.), 178.
" Flor. Wore. Chron. (Engl. Hist. Soc), 137. *- Ibid, i, 146.
" Angl.-Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), 178. " Arch. Journ. (Winchester), 15.
4
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
Wulfsin or Wulfsy, 992—1001, was responsible for the reorganization of Sher- borne, monks being substituted for the secular canons who had occupied the house since its foundation in 705;*^ iEthelric, looi ; *" yEthelsige or ^Ethelsie,*^ 1012— 14 ; Brihtwy or Brihtwin, included in the list of bishops given by William of Malmesbury and Florence of Worcester, but whose name does not appear in any charters of that period ; i^lfmaer, 1017, whose succession is recorded under the year 1022 in the Decern Scriptores*^ ; Brihtwy, 1023, subscribed in 1044 as bishop of Sherborne to a charter of Edward the Con- fessor;*' iElfwold, 1045, to whom the Confessor addressed a charter testi- fying a grant to Ore or Orcus his minister, the founder of Abbotsbury, of the shore of all his lands/" In 1058 by the appointment of Herman 'the king's priest,' who already held the bishopric of Ramsbury, the two sees of Sherborne and Ramsbury which had been separated on the division of the diocese in 909, became again united under one bishop holding jurisdiction over the counties of Berkshire, Wiltshire and Dorset." The bishop's stool re- mained at Sherborne till the year 1075, when, by decree of the council of London ordering the removal of sees from small towns and villages to more populous centres, it was transferred to the city of Old Sarum,^^ and the head of the diocese, which had hitherto pertained to Dorset, passed finally away from the county.
Glancing back over the three and a half centuries that elapsed between the foundation of the see at Sherborne and its transference to Old Sarum, the characteristic feature of this period as regards this county will be found in the rise and growth of those religious houses on whose pivot the whole ecclesiastical structure seemed to turn. To it belonged those great Benedictine houses that were at once the glory and the distinctive feature of Dorset. Sherborne, coeval with the bishopric itself ; Shaftesbury, linked in memory with the greatest of Saxon kings, the long line of whose abbesses commences in Alfred's daughter ; ^^ Milton, built by King iEthelstan about the year 953 to commemorate for the soul of the young Prince Edwin, or, as some monkish chroniclers insist, to expiate the crime of a brother's murder ; " Cerne and Abbotsbury, whose traditionary history goes back to the very dawn of Christianity in this island, and the early mission of St. Augustine"; the later dependent cells of Cranborne and Horton, which before the Conquest enjoyed the status of abbeys. The action of the claimant vEthelwold in seizing Wimborne on the accession of his cousin Edward the Elder to the throne in 901, and the declaration that here 'he would either live or lie,'^' illustrates the early importance that the town and church enjoyed as th^ residence and sepulchre of Wessex kings. Few counties of the size of Dorset can show such a list of wealthy and influential houses as are to be found here at the time of the Domesday Survey.
" Leknd, Collect, iii, 150 ; Ititi. ii, 51-2. " Kemble, Codex Dlpl. iii, 708.
*' Ibid, vi, 1302.
*' W. Thome, De rebus Abbat. Cant. (Twysden), 1782.
" Codex Dlpl. iv, 771, 774-5. His death is recorded in the Angl.-^ax. Chron. (Rolls Ser. 134) under the year 1043.
" Codex Dlpl. iv, 871.
" Wm. of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontif. (Rolls Ser.), 183. " Ibid. 66-8.
■"' See Alfred's Charter of endowment. Birch, Cart. Sax. ii, 148.
" Dugdale, Mon. ii, 348, Cbart. under Milton, No. iii.
" Coker, Particular Surv. of Dorset, 30, 66. " Angl.-Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), 75.
5
A HISTORY OF DORSET
These early foundations, as in other parts of the country, appear in the first instance to have been occupied by secular canons, or monks following no established rule. Following the monastic reforms of Edgar and Archbishop Dunstan we find in 904 the seculars at Milton replaced by monks under the rule of Abbot Cyneward." In 987 ^Elfric, the author of the famous Homilies, was appointed first abbot of Cerne, the inmates of which were ordered to follow the Benedictine rule." Bishop Wulfsige, or Wulfsy, in 998, as we have seen, substituted monks for the secular canons who had previously formed the community attached to the cathedral church of the diocese at Sherborne.^' The society of secular canons, established at Abbotsbury about 1026 by Ore or Orcus, steward of the household to King Cnut, was afterwards changed into a house of Benedictine monks by the founder, or by his widow after his death.*" On the other hand, Wimborne, originally ' a house of Holy Virgins,' was, on its restoration, converted into a house of secular canons, and continued as a royal free chapel under the govern- ment of a dean down to the Reformation."
As regards the state of the church during the long and protracted struggle against the Danes, little can be positively ascertained save as it affected materially the religious foundations of the county. Wareham, one of the oldest monasteries in Dorset, is said to have been destroyed in an assault on the town in 876.** Horton, again, is supposed to have shared the fate of Tavistock, which was destroyed in the raid of 997—8.** A blank succeeds in the history of Wimborne after the reign of Edward the Elder, and the next mention of it records its restoration by Edward the Confessor.** Cnut, we are told, raided the counties of Dorset, Somer- set and Wiltshire in 1015," and plundered the monastery of Cerne of which he afterwards became a benefactor.** Ethelred ' the Unrede ' in the midst of the troubles and turmoils of his reign granted by charter, dated 1 00 1, to the nuns of Shaftesbury the vill and monastery of Bradford (Wilt- shire) that they might there retire as to a place which offered greater security against the attacks of the enemy. *^ It would be impossible to leave the tenth century, with its disconnected record of destruction and reconstruction, with- out referring to the events of 978— 80, which took place within the borders of Dorset and played so important a part in determining the future greatness of the abbey of Shaftesbury : the cruel murder of the young King Edward, if not by the actual hand, at least with the connivance of his stepmother ^Ethel- thryth or Elfrida, the daughter of Ordgar, earl of Devon, the founder of Horton; and the solemn translation of his body by Dunstan and the alderman Alfhere from Wareham to the conventual church of the nunnery which, originally dedicated to the honour of the Blessed Virgin, soon after appears under the popular designation of St. Edward's.**
" Leland, Colkcl. ii, 1 86 ; iii, 72. " Cart. Antiq. D. 16. " Leiand, Itin. W, 51-2.
'" Tanner, Notitia (ed. 1744), 105 ; Coker, Particular Surv. of Donet, 30.
" Leland, Collect, i, 82 ; Itin. iii, 72. " Cressy, Church Hist, of Brit. lib. xxviii, cap. ix.
" Matt, of Westminster, Flores Hist. (Rolls Ser.), i, 324.
" Or 'King Edward,' supposed to be the Confessor ; Leland, Collect, i, 82 ; Itin. iii, 72.
" Jngl.-Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), 121. ^ Leland, Collect, i, 66 ; iii, 67. " Had. MS. 61, fol. i.
^ Jngl.-Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 234 ; Wm. of Malmesbury, Gesta Reg. (Rolls Ser.), i, 258 ; Gesta Pontif. (Rolls Ser.), 202-3. The relics of the murdered Icing, who as early as the year 1001 was referred to as 'the Blessed Martyr' (Harl. MS. 61, fol. l), and whose festival was afterwards kept four times in the year, early attracted crowds of worshippers to his shrine.
6
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
The Domesday Survey of 1086 not only serves to show the ecclesiastical configuration of the county in the eleventh century, but confirms the im- pression of the wealth and importance already attained by the Church and the monasteries at that time. It has been pointed out that the great and dominant feature in the disposition of Dorset lands as there recorded is that more than a third of the whole county was in ecclesiastical hands at the time the Survey was taken, and that the patrimony of the church was greater than that of all the barons and greater feudatories combined/' Among the seventy-six tenants including the thegns, holding in chief of the king, are entered the names of five bishops, eleven abbots, four abbesses, the community of Sherborne, the chapter of Coutances, and four Saxon priests, whose lands are designated under the title terra elemosinariorum Regis ; the abbot of Marmontier, a sub- feudatory, is entered under the holding of the earl of Mortain. As regards the estates of the various ecclesiastics, the bishop of Salisbury, besides the nine manors assigned to the use of the monks of Sherborne,™ held by right of the bishopric, the manors of Charminster, Alton Pancras, Up Cerne, Yetminster, Beaminster, Netherbury, Chardstock, a carucate of land at Lyme, half an acre at Bridport, two houses in Wareham, one in Dorchester, and other lands obtained in exchange." Odo, bishop of Bayeux, half-brother of the Conqueror, had as his sole Dorset estate the manor of Rampisham ; ^^ Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances, who for his services at the time of the Conquest had been granted large tracts of land in different counties, held the manor of Winterborne Houghton;'" the bishop of Lisieux, Gilbert Maminot, had the manors of Tarrant Keynston and Coombe Keynes, with a hide of land in Tarrant Pres- ton ; ^* the small estate of Maurice, bishop of London, consisted of half a hide of land in Odeham.''^ The eleven abbots holding in chief include the superiors of Cranborne, Cerne, Milton, Abbotsbury, and Horton, all belonging to this county ; the superiors of Glastonbury, Winchester, Athelney, and Tavistock outside its borders ; and the Norman abbots of St. Stephen, Caen, and St. Wandragesil or Fontanel. The four abbesses were the superiors of Shaftesbury (Dorset), Wilton (Wiltshire), Holy Trinity Caen, and St. Mary of Montevillers. The holding of the Dorset religious houses was briefly as follows: — Cranborne held 2 carucates of land in Gillingham, the manors of Boveridge and Up Wimborne, Lestesford, half a hide in Langford, and the manor of Tarrant Monkton ; under the holding of the widow of Ralph Fitz Grip, the Norman sheriff, it is recorded that Hugh gave to the church of St. Mary of Cranborne half a hide of land in Orchard, ' and it is worth 20J.' ; ^^ Cerne held manors or estates at Cerne, Little Puddle, Radipole, Bloxworth, Affpuddle, Poxwell, East Woodsford, Heffleton, ' Vergroh,' Little
'^' R. D. Eyton, Key to Domesday Surz>. of Dorset, 156. Thus, supposing the whole territory of Dorset to be divided into 265 parts, the iilng held nearly 36J such parts, the bishop of Salisbury followed with nearly 26, the abbess of Shaftesbury had more than i6i, the abbots of Cerne and Milton more than i 2 each, the abbot of Abbotsbury more than i\ ; ibid.
" These included the manors of Sherborne, Oborne, Thornford, Bradford, Over and Nether Compton, Stalbridge, Weston, Corscombe, and Stoke Abbott.
" Dom. Bk. (Rec. Com.), i, 75-7. From the enumeration of estates in the foundation charter of the cathedral by Bishop Osmond in 1091 it is evident that many of the old endowments of the bishopric of Salisbury had passed over into the possession of the church of Sarum ; Reg. of St. Osmund (Rolls Ser.), i, 198.
" Dom. Bk. (Rec. Com.), i, 77. " Ibid. " Ibid. yjb.
" Ibid. In the parish of Wimborne which it is conjectured he held in virtue of the deanery ; R. D. Eyton, op. cit. 113, note 3.
" Dom. Bk. (Rec. Com.), i, 84.
A HISTORY OF DORSET
Bredy, Winterborne Abbas, Long Bredy, Nettlecombe, Milton, Kimmeridge, Rentscombe, and Symondsbury ; " Milton at Sydling, Milton, Compton Abbas, Cattistock, Puddle, Clyffe, Osmington, Whitcombe, Lyscombe, Wool- land, Winterborne Hillfield, Ower, Stockland, Piddletrenthide, and Cerne ; Abbotsbury, the manors of Abbotsbury, Tolpuddle, Hilton, Portisham, 5 virgates of land at Shilvinghampton, 2^ hides at Wootton Abbas, half a hide in Bourton, and the manor of Stoke Atrum. To the abbey of Horton, besides estates in Devonshire, belonged the manor of Horton, the two best hides of which had been retained by the king in his forest of Wimborne, the little church (ecclesiold) in Wimborne, with the site of two houses, a church in Wareham with five houses paying a rent of 65^'., and a house in Dorchester.'* The abbess of Shaftesbury, the largest monastic landowner in the county, besides extensive estates outside Dorset, held here the manors of Handley, Hinton St. Mary, Stour, Fontmell, Compton Abbas, Melbury, Iwerne Minster, Tarrant Hinton, Fifehead, Stoke, and Cheselbourne, with a hide of land at Farnham." The chapter of Coutances in Normandy held the manor of Winterborne Stickland, which they retained in their possession down to the fourteenth century.
As the object of the Survey was purely fiscal and it did not include within its scope the return of parish churches no clue is afforded as to the number of churches then in existence ; even in those instances where a reference to a church occurs, it is almost invariably in connexion with the endowment or lands belonging to it. The names of those actually given are as follows : — the four churches belonging to the Norman abbey of St. Wandragesil, viz. Burton Bradstock, Bridport, Whitchurch Canonicorum and St. Mary Wareham ; *" the six entered under the heading terra elemosi- narioritm Regis : Holy Trinity Dorchester, Bere Regis, Winfrith Newburgh, Puddletown, East Chaldown, and Fleet. *^ Under the estates of the abbey of Shaftesbury it is recorded that the king gave to the abbess the advowson of the church of Gillingham in exchange for one of the i 6 hides of the manor of Kingston, on which he built the castle of Wareham or Corfe.^" Besides the brief reference to the collegiate church of Wimborne Minster,*' the little church ieccksiola) belonging to the abbey of Horton in Wimborne" must not be forgotten, which, with the church in Wareham," completes the list.
" Dcm. Bk. (Rec. Com.), -j-b, 78.
'* As regards superiors outside this county holding land in Dorset, the abbot of Glastonbury held then, and in the time of Edward the Confessor, the manors of Sturminster Newton, Okeford Fitzpaine, Buckland Newton, East Woodyates, Pentridge, and three hides of land in Lyme Regis (ibid. ~~b) ; the abbot of St. Peter, Winchester, had only the manor of Piddletrenthide (ibid.) ; the abbot of Athelney (Somerset) the manor of Caundle Purse (ibid. 78^), still in the possession of the abbey when the Taxatio of Pope Nicholas was taken if ope Nick. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 185) ; the abbot of Tavistock the manors of Askenwell and Poorton (ibid.) ; the Norman abbey of St. Stephen of Caen held the manors of Frampton and Bin- combe (ibid.) : and the abbey of St. Wandragesil the churches of Burton Bradstock, Bridport, and Whit- church Canonicorum, with four hides of land appurtenant thereto, the church of St. Man-, Wareham, with one hide of land (ibid).
'* Ibid 78. The abbess of Wilton had the manor of Didlington and 3^ hides of land in the parish of Wimborne St. Giles (ibid. 79) ; the abbess of Holy Trinity, Caen, the manor of Tarrant Launceston (ibid.); the abbess of St. Mary of Montevillers the manor of Friar Waddon (ibid.).
*° Ibid. 78^. *• Ibid. 79. ^ Ibid. 78^. ^ Ibid. 75. " Ibid. 783.
" Said to be that of St. Martin ; R. D. Eyton, op. cit. 44. Various references to priests imply at least the existence of churches elsewhere ; thus under the survey of the manor of Hinton, which had devolved to the crown through the death of Hugh Fitz Grip, besides a mention of two priests who had parcels of land in the time of Edward the Confessor, there is incidentallv a reference to the priest of the manor, who was probably the incumbent of Hinton (ibid. 75) ; while the further entry 'of this land' (the fourteen hides and one virgate
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
The addition of Norman and foreign superiors to those monastic bodies already holding property in Dorset marks the great dynastic and political change that had recently taken place, but so far as the older houses are concerned the Survey shows that it had had, with some excep- tions,** comparatively little effect in the loss or depreciation of their lands ; while in the case of Shaftesbury these had greatly risen in value. If the monks of Abbotsbury had reason to complain of the losses they had suffered under Hugh Fitz Grip, late Norman sheriff, and his widow," and the com- munity at Sherborne reported that William, son of the Conqueror, had seized three virgates of land in their manor of Stalbridge ' without the consent of the bishop and the monks,' ** the abbess and nuns of Shaftesbury had not forgotten their injuries at the hands of Earl Harold, while they placed on record that the Conqueror had, at least, restored to them the manor of Stour of which they had been deprived by the late earl though he still retained that of Melcombe.*^
But if the Conquest brought little territorial change to the mon- astic establishments of the county, the eleventh century witnessed various other changes that had a distinct bearing on the social and ecclesias- tical position of Dorset,'" An administrative scheme, rendered necessary by the Conqueror's action in separating the secular from the ecclesias- tical courts of justice, was the division of the diocese into districts and the appointment of an official hitherto known as the bishop's ' eye,' his deputy or archdeacon, who now became a territorial officer with definite functions, holding courts and presiding over a district for which he was per- sonally responsible to the bishop. The first mention of this newly constituted officer occurs in a copy of that original Institutio Osmundi, contemporary with the foundation charter of the cathedral of Salisbury in 1091, which, in elaborating and explaining the rights and duties of the cathedral dignitaries, orders that the attention of the archdeacon should be specially directed to the 'care of parishes and the cure of souls.' *^ The 'Consue- tudinary ' of the bishop states that in the church of Sarum are four archdeacons, one for Dorset, one for Berkshire, and two for Wiltshire.'^ To the archdeaconry of Dorset, sometimes called the Jirst {primus) arch- deaconry,*' was annexed the rectory of Gussage Regis, the valuation of which was assessed in the Taxatio of 1291 at £j2 ^^- 8^^-^* The Register of
of" Hinton) 'holds another priest living in Tarrant one hide and a third part of a hide,' probably constitutes a reference to the incumbent of a church at Tarrant. A resident priest is mentioned under the manor of Roger de Belmont in Church Knowle (ibid. Son), and another priest is recorded in the manor of Long Blandford or Langton held by Edwin Venator (ibid. 84J).
** The exceptions are notoriously house property in the boroughs. In Shaftesbury, for example, of the 153 houses belonging to the abbess in the time of Edward the Confessor, 1 1 1 were left at the date the Survey was taken ; 42 had been altogether destroyed (ibid. 75 a). In Wareham of 45 houses standing in the demesne of the abbey of St. Wandragesil 1 7 were laid waste. The estates of the abbot of Glastonbury are another exception, but the lands of the abbey had recently been in the custody of the crown following the wasteful management of Abbot Thurston. R. W. Eyton, op. cit. 21.
«' Dcm. Bk. (Rec. Com.), i, 78. *» Ibid. 77. ^' Ibid. 78^.
'" The transfer of the bishop's seat from Sherborne to Old Sarum and the removal of the capital from Winchester to London naturally moved this county further away from the centre of activity and tended to place it outside the circle of influence it had once occupied. As regards this diminution of importance it has elsewhere been pointed out (H. J. Moule, Old Dmet, 51), that in the following centuries the position of Dorset, as compared with the advance of other counties, would more fitly be described as stationary.
" Reg. of St. Osmund {Ko\h Ser.), i, 214. '' Ibid, i, 3.
'" Valor EccL (Rec. Com.), ii, 72. '' Pope Nick. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 182^.
2
A HISTORY OF DORSET
Bishop Osmund records the names of two of the earliest archdeacons of the county, Adam, about the year 1097, and John, about 1120.'^ Adelelm, archdeacon of Dorset, occurs in a charter of Bishop Roger of SaHsbury, 1130-35,'^ and WiUiam witnessed a deed of Bishop Hubert about 1190." Later on, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the abuse of papal provision was at its height we find the archdeaconry constantly held in succession by Roman cardinals and ecclesiastics.
In passing we may note that the strong wave of monastic feeling and sympathy which swept over the country in the twelfth century left its trace in Dorset in the number of foreign cells and dependent priories which then sprang into existence. The two centuries that elapsed between the Survey of 1086 and the Taxatio of 1291 witnessed the introduction of an alien community at Loders belonging to the abbey of St. Mary of Montebourg ; the grant of Povington to the abbey of Bee, Spettisbury and Stour Provost to the abbeys of St. Peter and St. Leger of Preaux, and of Winter- borne Monkton to the Cluniac priory of Wast or de Vasto ; the Norman abbeys of Tiron and Lyre were also among the ecclesiastical landowners of the county. As regards the older and pre-Conquest foundations, many of the changes brought about in the earlier part of the century were doubtless necessary modifications and adjustments in face of altered cir- cumstances.''
For information as to the spread of parish churches and the systematic organization and adjustment of parochial endowments in Dorset in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries one turns again to the Register of St. Osmund, as well as to the collection of deeds and charters relating to the cathedral of Salisbury with their many references to this county, as the most available source.'' The foundation charter of Salisbury in 1091 enumerates, among the endowments of the cathedral, the churches of Sherborne, Bere Regis, and St. George of Dorchester, the last generally identified with the church of Fordington which, united with the manor of Writhlington in Somerset, made up a prebend in Sarum.^"" The parish churches of Yetminster, Alton Pancras, Charminster, Beaminster, and Netherbury, the manors of which were also included among the possessions of the cathedral in 1091,'"' are afterwards found among the peculiars of the dean and chapter of Salisbury.^"' The Norman abbot of St. Wandragesil or Fontanel in 1200 released to the chapter the church of Whitchurch Canonicorum,^"^ already in his hands at
"Jones, Fasti Eccl. Sarisb. 137. Le Neve quoting from the same register gives Adam as the firot archdeacon of Dorset ; Fasti Eccl. Angl. ii, 637.
'' Reg. of St. Osmund (Rolls Ser.), i, 349. " Ibid. 241.
'' Thus Bishop Roger of Salisbury endeavouring to restore the loss of status consequent on the removal of the see constituted Sherborne into an abbey and annexed to it as a dependent cell the former abbey of Horton, now evidently in a state of decay. The bishop's action in appropriating Abbotsburj' to the episcopal see 'as far as he could' does not on the other hand appear to have had a lasting effect [William of Malmesbury, Hist. Novella (Rolls Ser.), ii, 559]. Another modification took place in 1122 when the former abbey of Cranhorne was reduced to a priory and made subordinate to Tewkesbury, of which formerly it had been the head house.
" The general scheme of organizing and adjusting the estates of the cathedral church at this period had the effect of adding many more churches to those already held by the cathedral chapter in Dorset.
"" Reg. of St. Osmund (Rolls Ser.), i, 195. "" Ibid.
'" Falor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), i, App. p. 458.
" Of the four churches belonging to this Norman abbey in the Domesday Survey two were granted, Whitchurch Canonicorum, and Burton Bradstock by charter of the Conqueror to the abbey ' for the sake of Guntard my chaplain,' monk of the monastery ; Reg- of St. Osmund (Rolls Ser.), i, 231.
10
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
the time of Domesday, and was granted the prebend of Upavon in the cathedral which entitled him to a stall in the choir and a voice in the cathedral chapter."* The abbot of St. Mary Montebourg, who had a cell at Loders, likewise conveyed to the chapter about the year i 2 1 3 his churches of Powerstock. and Fleet,"^ and in return was allowed to retain the church of Loders and the chapel of Radipole as a prebend in Salisbury."* The church of Sherborne appears from the foundation of the cathedral to have constituted a prebend in Salisbury, held by the abbot in virtue of his office."' A dispute arising early in the thirteenth century respecting the claim of the dean of Salisbury to the church of Frome Whitfield, as attached to his prebend of Charminster, was peaceably settled by an agreement whereby the church itself was annexed to the prebend, but the patronage vested in William de Whitfield, Matilda his wife, and their heirs who, on a vacancy, should present a candidate for institution to the dean and his successors."* By an arrangement in 1225 certain pensions out of the churches of Tarrant Keynston, Combe, Somerford, and Lulworth were reserved to the priory of Merton, the church of Tarrant Keynston at the special request of the prior and canons being assigned to the perpetual use of the nuns of Tarrant, who in return for this grant were charged to offer special prayers every Sunday for the brethren of Merton as for their benefactors."^ In 1224 the church of Bishop's Caundle was made over to the ordinary by the prior and canons of Breamore,"" The churches of Stourpaine and Burstock were placed by the prior and convent of Christchurch (Twyneham) in 1 244 at the disposition of the bishop who the following year ordained that the church of Fleet, previously resigned by the abbot of St. Mary Montebourg, should be appro- priated to the convent of Christchurch, the church of Stourpaine to the chapter of Salisbury, while the church of Burstock was assigned to the maintenance of the bridge at Salisbury, all three churches being made exempt from the jurisdiction of the ordinary and the archdeacon, the bishop in his deed stipulating that they should be ' honestly ' and fitly served and the cure of souls in no way neglected."^
With reference to the question of parochial endowments, instances are not wanting to illustrate the liberty of large landowners to bestow tithes of their lands at will on one place or another. A deed of Ralph de St. Leger about the year 1217 recites that he has granted to Roger, chaplain of Petersham, within the parish of Wimborne, his oratory or free chapel of Todber, together with all tithes of his demesne &c., as an endowment. "'^ Sir Bartholomew de Turbervill, by deed in 1242, attached all tithes of his demesne at Winterborne Turberville, which he declared had been always bestowed by his ancestors and himself on whomsoever they desired, to the prebend of Charminster and Bere Regis, in consideration of which grant he obtained a licence for a private chantry or chapel for the use of himself, his household
"* Reg. of St. Osmund (Rolls Ser.), i, 71. "" Ibid, i, 225.
'°° Ibid, i, 226. The abbot of Bee, to whose abbey belonged a small cell at Povington reckoned as parcel of the priory of Ogbourne (Wilts.), held the prebend of Ogbourne constituted in the cathedral by Bishop le Poor in 1208 ; ibid, i, 189.
""Ibid. 249. '"'Ibid. 255. "» Ibid, ii, 26.
"° Sarum Chart, and Doc. (Rolls Sen), 163-6.
'" The canons of Christchurch were ordered to pay the sum of a mark yearly to the archdeacon of Dorset by way of compensation for the loss of jurisdiction involving dues ; ibid. 291-3.
'"Ibid. 81.
II
A HISTORY OF DORSET
and guests, and his heirs, to be served by a perpetual chaplain. ^^' Perhaps the most interesting case of voluntary endowrment was the one confirmed by Bishop Richard le Poor in 1218, w^herein seven parishioners of Mosterton bestowed various gifts of land for the establishment and maintenance of a chaplain who, with the consent of the rector of South Perrott, should make personal residence and serve a chapel there."* With the growth of parish churches there were springing up through the thirteenth century these dependent chapels whose claims impinging on parochial rights required constant readjustment, and were the cause of so many of the ecclesiastical disputes in the succeeding century."*
During this period of parochial organization which marks the thirteenth century, the ordination of vicarages was not neglected. The practice which came into vogue after the Conquest of granting the presentation of churches and alienating the tithes to cathedral and monastic bodies had as a consequence lowered incumbents from the position of rectors, which they enjoyed, in primitive times, to that of curates forced to content them- selves with whatever remuneration they might be allowed. Various attempts were made to counteract this evil, which in addition left the spiritual needs of the parishioners at the mercy of rectors with whom their importance was not always paramount. In i 200 the council of Westminster directed that every vicar should be instituted by the bishop to whom he should be responsible for the discharge of his duties, and that he should be provided with a suffi- cient competence from the issues of the church."' The vicar's income in addition to a competent manse was usually reckoned at about a third of the total profits. The rector took the great tithe, viz., of corn, and the incidental charges such as synodals, and the archdeacon's fees were usually arranged be- tween the rector and the vicar in proportion to their respective portions. An €arlv instance of care in defining precisely the portion that should be assigned to the vicar occurs in a deed appropriating to the abbey of Sherborne the churches of Stalbridge and Stoke Abbott in 1191, The vicar of Stalbridge, according to this ordination, was to have all that estate [tenementuni) which Sewale had of the estate of the said church and all things pertaining to the church save the free land and those tithes, viz., of sheaves as well as small tithes, which should be assigned to the use of the sacrist of Sherborne ; in addition he should have free pasture and a horse and four beasts in the pasture of the abbot's demesne and should sustain all episcopal dues. The vicar of Stoke Abbott should have all things pertaining to the church which Gerrud used to have and should sustain all episcopal dues like- wise ; the remainder of the issues were to be assigned to the clothing of the monks of Sherborne."^ The dean and cathedral chapter confirmed the ordination of the vicarage of Fordington made by Lawrence of Saint
™ Sarum Chart, and Doc. (Rolls Ser.), 278-80. '" Ibid. 82-3.
'" In some instances these chapels became further endowed and were eventually erected into parish churches, but after the Black Death they frequently became too impoverished to support a chaplain, and sank into disuse.
"° The council of Oxford laid down the principle of providing a sufficient income, irrespective of the actual value of a benefice, by decreeing that the vicar's stipend should not amount to less than 5 marks, except in Wales. Wilkins, Concilia, i, 587.
"' Sarum Chart, and Doc. (Rolls Ser.), 49. In 1238 the abbot and convent of Sherborne resigned to Bishop Robert Bingham of Salisbury and the chapter the appropriation of these two churches of Stalbridge and Stoke Abbott, reserving to themselves the advowson and certain issues ; ibid. 248-9.
12
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
Nicholas, canon of Salisbury, in 1222, wherein was assigned to Robert de Dorchester, chaplain, perpetual vicar, all obventions of the altar and ceme- tery of the church, all small tithes, and the sum of 24^. id. to be annually paid by the tenants of the said church ; to the canon and to his successors were assigned all sheaves of whatever kind of grain and wherever sown. The vicar was bound to serve the church personally and at his own expense, and to bear all charges incumbent on the vicarage."' The endowment of the vicarage of Alton Pancras was fixed in 1227,"' the ordination of the vicarage of Whitchurch, the church of which was appropriated to the chapters of Salisbury and Wells, in 1240 ; the vicar of the latter was charged to find a chaplain and clerk to serve the dependent chapels of Stanton and Chideock and another chaplain and clerk for the chapel of Marshwood, and the ordina- tion included the appointment of a chaplain to celebrate daily in the church for the benefactors and faithful departed of both cathedral chapters, and the assignment of a certain portion of tithes for his maintenance.^-" The chapter of Salisbury in 1242 confirmed the endowment of the vicarage of Bere Regis by Robert de Lexinton, canon of Salisbury, who by deed notified that he had granted to John de Dorchester, chaplain, the whole altarage of the church of Bere Regis and the chapel of Winterborne Regis with tithes of wool and lambs, and all small tithes and oblations, together with a messuage and two acres of land in the town of Bere Regis, which William the vicar had held in the name of a perpetual vicarage, reserving to himself and his successors all tithes of corn, hay and mills, with all the oblations of ' Win- debyre ' on the feast of the Nativity of the B.V.M. and the sum of 6 marks to be annually received in equal portions at the four terms.^^^ In 1255 the vicarage of the church of Powerstock with the ordination of its endow- ment was granted by the cathedral of Salisbury to Roger de Mere, chaplain, who as vicar was charged with all expenses incumbent on the dean and chapter for the said church and its chapels in keeping the roof of the chancel in repair, and in providing books, vestments, and other neces- saries for divine service, as well as with the annual payment of a mark to the abbot and convent of Cerne for the chapel of Milton in virtue of a former composition between the abbey and the chapter of Salisbury. ^"^ It will be noted that as a rule these early examples of ordination of vicarages relate to churches in the possession of the cathedral church of the diocese, but they may be accepted as fairly typical of the work then going forward in regulating and systematizing parochial endowments generally.
The work of two centuries seems fitly crowned by that compila- tion of church property known as the taxation of Pope Nicholas IV which marks the close of the thirteenth century, and from it may be gathered a fairly comprehensive picture of the ecclesiastical organization of the county as it was then complete. Within the archdeaconry of Dorset, divided into the five deaneries of Shaftesbury, Pimperne, Whitchurch, Dorchester, and Bridport,^^^ are recorded the names of 171 churches exclusive
"» Reg. of St. Osmund (Rolls Ser.), i, 322. '" Ibid, ii, 33.
"" Sarum Chart, and Doc. (Rolls Ser.), 261-6. "' Ibid. 277. "" Ibid. 324.
'^' Though rural deans are frequently mentioned in the ecclesiastical councils of the twelfth century (Wilkins, Concil. \, 388, 502, 505), the date when the territorial limits of the deaneries were fixed is uncertain.
13
A HISTORY OF DORSET
of Wimborne Minster, which constituted a deanery in itself.^*'* The value of the spiritual property of the church in Dorset was assessed at ^1,418 16s. 5^.,^^^ the temporalities were valued at ^^1,929 os. 8;^^'.'^^ None of the benefices were of any great value, only nine amounted to jTao or more, thirty-seven were under ^5 a year with one not reckoned at all ; among the prebends Sherborne was assessed at ^(^40.'" Twelve other vicarages are recorded in addition to those vicarages established in connexion with these churches prebendal to Salisbury : Sturminster Newton in the deanery of Shaftesbury, the church of which was appropriated to the abbey of Glastonbury ; Blandford Forum appropriated to the priory of Christchurch, Cranborne to Tewkesbury, Horton to Sherborne in the deanery of Pimperne ; Canford appropriated to the priory of Bradenstoke, Stur- minster Marshall to the hospital of St. Giles of Pont Adomar, Puddle- town to the priory of Christchurch, Dewlish belonging to Tewkesbury and the vicarage of Buckland, all in the Whitchurch deanery ; in the deanery of Dorchester there was the vicarage of Coombe Keynes ; and the vicarages of Portisham and Abbotsbury, the churches of which belonged to the abbey of Abbotsbury, in the Bridport deanery. Of the twelve, Sturminster Marshall, valued at X^20, was the richest, Sturminster Newton came next valued at jTio, Canford was assessed at ^^6 ly. ^d., Horton, Puddletown and Dew- lish were worth ^^5 a year, Cranborne and Buckland, the poorest, ^4 6s. 8d. As regards chapels, at that period to be found annexed to nearly all large churches,^^^ the following are amongst those entered by name : Hinton St. Mary, in the parish of Iwerne Minster, and Wimborne St. Giles, now parochial churches ; Charlton Marshall annexed to the rectory of Spettisbury ; Studland now a rectory and parish church ; Broadway now a rectory annexed to Bincombe ; St. Aldhelm's chapel, Burton Bradstock, and Little Bredy now erected into parish churches.
The blight even at that time affecting the spiritual side of monas- ticism, and the practical restraint placed on religious endowments on a large scale by the statute of Mortmain, are the causes no doubt that con- tributed to the particular form adopted by the pious donor of the thirteenth century for the expression of his devotional feelings. Instead of erecting fresh monasteries he endowed chapels attached to existing churches with priests to sing masses for his soul, the souls of his family and all the faithful departed. As the practice of endowing such memorial chapels or chantries spread the ranks of the beneficed clergy, in addition to the parochial chaplains, became further reinforced by the chantry priests to be found in all churches of any size officiating side by side with the parish priests. The conventual churches of the monasteries generally, and in Dorset of the Bene- dictine houses in particular, lent themselves readily to this develop- ment, and the popular nature of it as a means of religious expression is evidenced by its growth during the centuries that preceded and led up to its abolition. The trend of religious feeling may be clearly traced from the foundation of the earlier chantries, ordained simply for the performance
'" Under the deanery of Shaftesbury 32 churches are recorded, 31 under Pimperne, 38 under Whit- church, 41 under Dorchester, 29 under Bridport ; Poj)e Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 177-80.
'" Ibid. 180. "^ Ibid. 185. '" Ibid. 182.
'" Gillingham with its numerous chapels is a striking example.
14
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
of prayers and masses for the benefit of the donor and his family, and friends, combined in most instances with almsgiving, and the establishment of such a chantry as that founded by the countess of Richmond and Derby in Wim- borne Minster, in the early sixteenth century, when education was beginning to be part of the popular religious creed, to which was appointed a priest ' ther to kepe continuall residence and teche frely gramer to all them that will come thereunto.' Of the number of these memorial chapels the return furnished by the commissioners of Henry VIII and Edward VI in the six- teenth century furnishes but a slight idea. Most of those connected with the monasteries appear to have vanished at the Dissolution, of the ten or a dozen founded in Shaftesbury Abbey, for instance, only three are given in the return ; and it is equally certain that many had ceased previously, owing to the difficulty in maintaining them during the financial difficulties of the four- teenth and fifteenth centuries.
In spite of the advance in ecclesiastical organization the episcopal registers, the series of which commence on the eve of the twelfth century, show a considerable amount of neglect and irregularity then prevalent in the diocese : churches so defective that Bishop Simon of Ghent in a letter addressed to all his archdeacons in October, 1 299, after a recent visitation, remarks a year's income would hardly suffice to cover the cost of their repair; want of books, ornaments, and other necessaries for the celebration of divine service ; absentee rectors and vicars, incumbents who had neglected to take higher orders, benefices held in plurality and in the possession of those who could show no title. ^^' Measures were in the first instance taken with regard to those fabrics that had not yet been dedicated, and in 1298, soon after his promotion to the see. Bishop Simon wrote to the locum tenens of the dean of Salisbury calling his attention to this matter, citing in particular the church of Lyme Regis, and desiring that all the prebendal churches should be consecrated without delay.'"" A further examination brought the extensive nature of this neglect into such prominence that the bishop in April, 1302, wrote to the archdeacon of Dorset, ordering him to institute a special inquiry into the circumstances of those churches still uncon- secrated, of which he had heard an inordinate number {effrenatam multitudineni) still remained in the archdeaconry, and to warn all rectors and vicars ; ''*' this order was followed by a commission to the archdeacon's official directing him or the dean of Shaftesbury to summon the rectors of the following churches to provide everything necessary for the consecration of the edifices at the dates fixed in the inclosed schedule : Stour Provost on the Friday after the Feast of St. James the Apostle, Manston the Sunday following, Iwerne Courtney, Okeford, Stoke Wake, Bishop's Caundle, and Pulham on the days immediately succeeding as should be most convenient.'^^ The
'" Sarum Epis. Reg. Simon of Ghent, fol. 23. In regard to the care of churchyards and cemeteries, regulations for which were passed in the thirteenth century, the bishop in 1 3 1 1 wrote to the dean of Shaftesbury denouncing the rough games and sports that were allowed in the inclosure {atrium') round the canventual church of Shaftesbury, and the pasturing of animals turned in to graze ' where the bodies of the faithful rest,' desiring that such practices should be put a stop to, and all neighbouring rectors and vicars warned to proclaim their abolition ; ibid. fol. I 34.
'■* Ibid. fol. 5 d.
"' Ibid. fol. 22. This refers, probably in every case, to re-consecration necessitated by structural alterations, and does not imply that the churches had not been duly dedicated at the time of their erection.
■'■ Ibid.
15
A HISTORY OF DORSET
early part of the fourteenth century was probably marked by much activity in the building, or more probably the rebuilding on a larger scale, of churches in this county ; of the fifty-three dedicated by Robert Petyt, bishop of Enaghdun,^'^ in 1326, by authority of the diocesan, by far the greater number were in Dorset.^"
As regards non-residence, the practice so frequently noted of granting licences to incumbents to absent themselves for purposes of study did much to nullify the earnest efforts of Simon of Ghent and his successors to enforce personal residence on the clergy ; ^'^ nevertheless, it must be remembered that the carelessness of patrons as to the age and qualifications of the candidates they presented for institution rendered such a measure the best guarantee for the spiritual welfare of parishioners that the ordinary could perhaps at that time enforce.''^ Another element of disorder was to be found in the increasing demands of Rome and the abuse then generally rampant of papal provision. That the bishops were keenly alive to these contributive causes is evident from various records in their registers. After a meeting of the chapter at Salisbury, 18 March, 1326, at which the bishop, dean, and others were present, a letter was addressed to Pope John XXII by Bishop Mortival, in which he stated that though there were in the church of Salisbury forty-one prebends, four digni- ties, four archdeaconries, and the sub-deanery to which he had the original right of collation, there were, nevertheless, at that time a dean, an archdeacon, and six prebendaries who had been appointed by the late pope, while the precentor, treasurer, one archdeacon, and seventeen prebendaries held their offices by provision of the present pope ; that hardly more than three out of that whole number ever resided in Salisbury, and finally that there were no less than eight who were waiting for vacancies, having been appointed as canons with the right
'" Both Simon of Ghent and Roger de Mortival made use of suffragans to assist them in their diocesan duties, especially in such offices as the dedication of churches and altars, the reconciliation of churches, &c., which required the personal services of a bishop. The institutions of Bishop Simon in particular witness the bishop's readiness to grant a coadjutor to the parochial clergy in the case of sickness and disablement.
"' The list includes the following : Wimborne St. Giles, Horton, Edmondsham, Winterborne Vyshath, Winterborne Tomson, Cheselbourne, Turners Puddle, Milborne, Ringstead, Poxwell, Winterborne Abbas, Winterborne Steepleton, Little Bredy, Tyneham, Chaldon Boys, Ham-by-Sturminster, Fifehead, Stafford, Bincombe, Stour Provost, All Saints Dorchester, Frome Whitfield, St. John Shaftesbury, Moreton, Povington, Minterne, Up Cerne, Batcombe, Yetminster, Ryme Intrinseca, Evershot, Stockwood, Pulham, Bishop's Caundle, Caundle Haddon, Fifehead, ' Tarrant-Abbates, Stower Wake, Stower Weston,' Gillingham, Caundle Purse, and Rarapisham [Ibid. Mortival, ii, fol. 185]. One of the first acts of Bishop Mortival on his promo- tion to Salisbury in 1315 was to issue a commission for the dedication of altars [Ibid. fol. i]. In 1317 he granted letters of indulgence for the altar in the conventual church of Shaftesbury, rebuilt and dedicated in honour of St. Mary and St. Edward, king and martyr. [Ibid].
'" Bishop Simon in 1 301 addressed a letter to his archdeacons bidding them summon all absent rectors. and vicars to make personal residence, understanding that many were at that time absent without licence [Ibid. fol. 17]. His successor, Mortival, wrote in December, 1319, to the archdeacon of Dorset denouncing all such incumbents as let their churches to farm, and did not make personal residence, desiring that their names should be sent in to him by a fixed date [Ibid. Mortival, lib. ii, fol. 95 if]. Bishop Wyville, in March,. 1343, forwarded to the archdeacon a schedule with list of offenders who were to be summoned to appear before the bishop or his commissary in the prebendal church of Chardstock the next law d.iy after the Feast of St. Edward, king and martyr, a strict inquiry was to be made into the issues of their churches which were to be sequestered, care being taken that the services of the church should not be neglected [Ibid. Wyville, lib. i]. After the losses and disorder occasioned by the Black Death the abuse of non-residence increased rather than diminished.
'^ Licence to let his church to farm for the purpose of study being only in acolyte's orders was granted to the rector of Bentfeld ' in 1316 ; ibid. Mortival, ii, fol. 31 J.
16
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
of succeeding to prebends as they became void.^" For instances of this particular abuse in Dorset we need go no further than the archdeaconry. The papal registers record a faculty granted by Alexander IV in 1258 to the bishop of Salisbury to give the archdeaconry of Dorset, held by Martin Jordan, vice-chancellor of the Roman Church and notary apostolic, to Simon de Bridport, canon of Salisbury, or any other person by the consent of the said Jordan so soon as he shall have obtained a prebend of Salisburv to the value of 150 marks.^'^ Six years later this same Jordan, cardinal of Sts. Cosmos and Damian, and archdeacon of Dorset, received from Pope Urban IV a grant of one of the ' fattest ' prebends of Salisbury ' if one is vacant, and if not the reser\^ation of one.' '"'^ In 1300 the then archdeacon, Henry de Bluntesdon, received at the king's request a dispensation to retain the archdeaconry of Dorset, to which was annexed the church of Gussage All Saints, with the churches of Grittleton, Wootton Bassett, Hannington, Runwell, and Middleton in the dioceses of Salisbury, London, and York, which he had obtained without licence since the council of Lyons, together with canonries and prebends of Salisbury, Wells, Chichester, and St. Paul's London.^" Bertrand d'Eux, cardinal of St. Mark's, obtained in 1 347 an indult to visit his archdeaconry of ' Dorchester ' (Dorset) by deputy for five years, and to receive procuration not exceeding 30 silver tournois a day.^" The intrusion of these Roman ecclesiastics into English benefices was anything but welcome,^'' and a brawl arose towards the close of the same year on the occasion of the appointment of another cardinal to the treasurer- ship of the cathedral ; Thomas Hotoft, with other citizens of Salisbur)-^ and armed accomplices, upholding the claim of the then holder of the prebend, John de Breydon, attacked the sub-executor and proctor of the cardinal, saying they should lose their heads, and according to the report would have actually killed them had they not been restrained by one of the canons and one of the vicars.^^ In 1373 Robert of Geneva, cardinal of the Twelve Apostles, bishop of Tironane, and afterwards anti-Pope Clement VII, received as sub-dean of York and archdeacon of Dorset an indult to visit his archdeaconry by deputy for five years.^** The office was held by the cardinal of Naples about the year 1 379, the king in June of the following year granting a licence for any of the king's lieges to become the proctors of the cardinal of Naples and receive the profits of his archdeaconry of ' Dorchester,' the treasurership of Salisbury Cathedral, and prebend of Erpingham in Lincoln. ^*^ In 1410 John Mackworth, then in possession of the Dorset archdeaconry, obtained a dispensation to hold that office with the arch- deaconry of Norfolk, in respect of which he was already litigating in the apostolic palace, ' if he should win it.' ^*® The claims of the apostolic see,
'"Cited from the bishop's register in the Diocesan Hiit. of Salisbury, 119, 120. Simon of Ghent, Mortival's predecessor, at fint refused to admit Reymund, a Roman cardinal to the office of the dean, to which he had been provided, on the ground that election to the same belonged to the chapter, and issued monitions to various of the cathedral digniuries to make residence ; ibid. 117.
■" Cal. Pup. Letters, i, 356-7. '^ Ibid, i, 41 1.
'" Ibid, i, 5S8. "' Ibid, iii, 255.
'" An entr)- in the patent rolls of 1347 (21 Ed.v. Ill, pt. I, m. 35) records that letters of protection were obtained from the king for Master Robert de Redynges, proctor of Bertrand, cardinal of the holy Roman Church and archdeacon of Dorset, an alien, and for his fellows.
"' Cat. Pap. Letters, iii, 255. '" Ibid, iv, 188. '" Pat. 3 Ric II, pt. 3, m. 4.
"* Cal. Pap. Letters, vi, 211. Mackworth aftenv.irds became dean of Lincoln, where he proved a veritable firebrand, and involved his chapter in almost endless dissension. See V.C.H. Lines, ii, 85-6.
2 17 3
A HISTORY OF DORSET
which included a right to the reservation of benefices rendered vacant by the death of holders at the Roman Court, frequently led to conflicting appointments and protracted disputes. Thus in 1397 on the death of Adam, cardinal priest of St. Cecilia's, who held the archdeaconry of Dorset by grant of the papal court, the appointment was claimed by two candidates, Nicholas Bubwith provided by the pope, Michael Cergeaux nominated by letters patent of Richard 11.^" The latter prevailed, but two years later Bubwith again put forward his claim to the archdeaconry, void by the death of Cergeaux or Sergeaux, ' pretended ' archdeacon, and was again opposed, this time by Henry Chicheley, who claimed to have obtained the appointment by authority of the ordinary.^** A dispute ensued, and the case being referred for trial to John, bishop of Liibeck and papal chaplain and auditor, it was decided on a report that the late Michael had only held the archdeaconry by despoiling Adam, cardinal priest of St. Cecilia's, that neither litigants had any claim. The pope commissioned the judge if he found this to be the case to collate and assign the dignity to Henry Chicheley; he, however, adjudged it to Bubwith; Chicheley appealed without success, but on the strength of his former collation continued to intrude himself still in the archdeaconry, and the pope having imposed perpetual silence on Nicholas extinguished the suit."' In 1403 Nicholas Bubwith was collated to the archdeaconry of Dorset in the place of Henry Chicheley, who had been appointed to the archdeaconry of Sarum the previous year,^'" and finally became archbishop of Canterbury in 1408. Nicholas Bubwith was in 1406 elected to the see of London by the chapter of St. Paul's in ignorance of the fact that the pope had already made reservation of it for him."^ The papal registers throughout this period afford ample evidence of the extent to which papal provision was carried in this county as elsewhere. The prebends in the conventual church of Shaftesbury continually fell a prey to Roman usurpation, and Fuller instances the archdeaconry of Dorset as a flagrant instance of what, in a characteristic passage, he designates 'the greatest grievance of the land, namely, foreigners holding ecclesiastical benefices.' *" As for the kindred evil, the holding of benefices in plurality, the royal college and chapel of Wimborne Minster in this county again affords a
"' Cal. Pap. Letters, v, 82 ; Pat. 20 Ric. II, pt. i, m. 8. Both were largely beneficed, Bubwith held canonries in Beverley, Lichfield, Ripon, and York, and the rectories of Brington and Naseby in the Lincoln diocese ; Cergeaux besides holding the rectory of Harrow was canon of Chichester, Exeter, Howden, Lichfield, and Wells.
"' Besides the two there appears to have been a third claimant, Walter Medeford, nominated by patent letters of Richard II, 20 Aug. 1397; Pat. 21 Ric. II, pt. i, m. 21.
'" Cal. Pap. Letters, v, 206. "» Le Neve, Fasti Ecd. Angl. ii, 539.
'" Cal. Pap. Letters, vi, 82.
'*' For at this time [says Fuller], the church of England might say with Israel ' Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.' Many Italians who knew no more English than the difference between a teston and a shilling, a golden noble and an angel in receiving their rents, had the fattest livings in England by the pope collated upon them. Yea, many great cardinals resident at Rome (those hinges of the church must be greased with English revenues) were possessed of the best prebends and parsonages in the land whence many mischiefs did ensue. First they never preached in their parishes : of such shepherds it could not properly be said that he leaveth the sheep and flee th, who (though taking the title of shepherd upon them) never saw their flock nor set foot on English ground. Secondly, no hospitality was kept for relief of the poor ; except they could fill their bellies upon the hard names of their pastors which they could not pronounce. . . . Yea, the Italians generally farmed out their places to proctors, their own countr)men, who instead of filling the bellies grinded the faces of poor people ; so that what betwixt the Italian hospitality which none could ever see and the Latin service which none could understand the poor English were ill-fed and worse taught. Church Hist, ii, 350-2.
18
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
striking instance. Presentation to the deanery was in the hands of the crown, and as a court appointment was always held by men holding other offices and frequently pursuing secular avocations/^*
Of the new religious orders in the thirteenth century, to whose example so many bishops turned as a means of rousing the parochial clergy to a more lively sense of their responsibilities, little is heard till the following century. The Franciscans had a house at Dorchester founded according to Tanner by the ancestors of Sir John Chideock, but no reference to it occurs earlier than the reign of Edward 11.^^* Entries in the episcopal registers of Ghent and Mortival show that the friars were already making their presence felt throughout the diocese,"^ but their most effectual work in this county was due to the Dominicans, whose establishment at Melcombe Regis deserves special attention. The twin boroughs of Weymouth and Melcombe, com- posing the modern town of Weymouth, were at that time served respectively by the mother churches of Wyke Regis and Radipole in the parishes of which each lay. The register of Bishop Simon of Ghent records various unsuccessful attempts on the part of certain parishioners of Melcombe to obtain parochial rights for a chapel, to the detriment, it was complained, of the mother church of Radipole,^^' and Bishop Mortival in 1 321, granting an indulgence of thirty days for the parishioners of Wyke who should attend their parish church on Sundays and feast days, mentions a complaint that certain of the inhabitants were in the habit of attending a chapel at Weymouth"^ to the obvious injury of the said parish church.
As time went on, and the importance of those two outlying districts increased there seems to have been — particularly on the part of the Melcombe parishioners — a constant struggle to obtain a right to a place of worship of their own, which was as often defeated by the authorities. The Dominicans in the meantime settled at Melcombe and a return made on 1 8 November, 1425, by John Morton, commissary and sequestrator-general to the bishop, respecting the erection of an altar at Melcombe Regis in a place ' profane and inhonest ' without the consent or authority of the ordinary, stated that the said altar had been erected for the celebration of mass by Edward Poliny and John Lok of the order of friars preachers, and that many of the inhabi- tants of Weymouth had assisted in its erection. For some reason not stated the friars thought fit to disregard the bishop's citation to appear before him or his commissary on the 21st of that month to explain their action, and
'"Thus Martin de Patishull, appointed to the deanery in 1223, besides holding various ecclesiastical appointments, was a justice of the King's Bench, a justice itinerant and constantly employed as a judge. His successor, Randolf Brito, was in the year of his presentation to Wimborne appointed constable of Colchester Castle and warden of the ports of Essex (Pat. 1 3 Hen. Ill, m. 9). The deanery of Wimborne is not even mentioned in the list given by Matthew Paris {Chron. Maj.) of the many offices held by John Mansel appointed in 1247. In the case of John de Kirkeby, who had recommended himself to the court by his success- ful methods of collecting subsidies and taxes. Archbishop Peckham annulled his election to Rochester in 1285 on the ground of his notorious pluralism ; Reg. Efist. Peckham (Rolls Ser.), ii, 575. He appears to have held the deanery from I 265, while only in deacon's orders, being ordained priest the day before his consecration to Ely in 1286 [ibid, iii, App. 2, p. 1041]. Down to the suppression of the college under Edward VI 'the little deanery ' was frequently one of the main links connecting this county with current political events and personages outside its borders.
'^* Tanner, Notitia, Dorset, x.
'" The bishop in a letter to the archdeacon of Dorset in 1319 directed the names of all friars of the Franciscan and Dominican orders and of the order of the hermits of St. Augustine to be submitted to him before being licensed to hear confessions, and to absolve. Sarum Epis. Reg. Mortival, ii, fol. 94.
'" Ibid. Simon of Ghent, fol. j d. 35 a'. 37. '" Ibid. Mortiv.il, ii, fol. 125.
19
A HISTORY OF DORSET
among the last entries of Bishop Chandler, who died the following July> was a notification dated 7 May, 1426, wherein he interdicted Edward Poliny, John Lok, and John Lowyer, of the order of mendicants of St. Dominic, for their contumacy in disobeying his citation, and denounced their conduct in putting up an altar within the limits of the parish church of Radipole, extorting the oblations and devotions of the faithful in Christ flocking to them whom they had callously seduced. It was forbidden either to celebrate or to hear celebration in the place, and all those who had assisted, contrary to the bishop's admonition, were ordered to appear before him to give account of their conduct."^ The matter did not end here, for John Roger and Hugh Deveril, knt., and others came forward and stated that ' there was no place dedicated to God in the vill of Melcombe Regis,' that the parish church, distant by a mile and a half away, was not easy of access to the inhabitants of the town, their families, guests, and the merchants who visited the town by land and sea, so that the said inhabitants were notoriously rude and unlearned {•valde riides sint et indocti), that moved by the spirit of piety, and pitying the desolation of the vill they had begun a house for the perpetual habitation of the friars preachers, who had for no small time given themselves to the service of God and the salvation of men in the place where they laboured. The petitioners further begged the bishop's consideration of the following articles : (i) of the intention of the builders in beginning the work, (2) the fitness of the place to be dedicated as a church, (3) its endowment, (4) the apostolic and regal licence obtained for com- mencing the foundation, (5) the question whether the house of the friars' preachers could be dedicated without diminution of the episcopal jurisdiction and saving the rights of the parish church.'" The registers record no definite reply to this petition, but among the orders celebrated during the rule of Neville are entries stating that Richard, bishop of ' Caten,' held ordina- tions for the diocesan in the church of the Dominican friars of Melcombe on 22 May, Vigil of Holy Trinity, 1434, and on 25 May, 1437.'^°
That terrible landmark of the fourteenth century, the visitation of the plague known as the Black Death, acquires a special interest in this county, inasmuch as nearly all contemporary writers are agreed that Dorset was the first district to be attacked, and Melcombe Regis is usually supposed to be the place where the disease first showed itself. ' In the year of Our Lord, 1348, about the feast of the translation of St. Thomas (7 July),' says the author of the Eulogium Historiarum, ' the cruel pestilence, terrible to all future ages, from parts over the sea came to the south coast of England to a port which is called Melcombe in Dorset, and sweeping over the southern districts destroyed innumerable people in Dorset, Devon, and Somerset.' '" Judging from the institutions of that time the epidemic did not fully manifest itself till the year had somewhat advanced, when it fell with fatal effect on the county, its ravages being especially marked on the coast where it first showed itself, and in the low-lying districts. One of the earliest victims
'*^ Sarum Epis. Reg. Chandler, fol. 54, 55. ''' Ibid. Neville, fol. 3+. "* Ibid. Orders celebrated.
"" Op. cit. (Rolls Ser.), iii, 213. The graphic account of Henry Knighton, canon of Leicester, says that at that time a lamentable pest penetrated into those parts nearest the sea by Southampton, and coming to Bristol there died of it as it were all the healthy folk of the town, taken away by sudden death, for few people kept their beds more than two or three days, and some only half a day, before death came to them at the set- ting of the sun, Leic. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), 61.
20
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
was the superior of the alien priory of Wareham to whom the king appointed a successor on 4 November,'^^ and by the i8th the churches of Bridport, Tyneham in Purbeck, Lulworth, and Cerne were all vacant by death of their incumbents."* A table of the institutions for Dorset during this period shows that the mortality, beginning in October, was highest during the months of November, December, January, and February."* From 8 October, 1348, to January, 1349, the crown, it is said, presented to no less than thirty livings in the diocese of Salisbury, the greater number of which belonged to this county. "'^ In all probability, the regulars suffered no less than the secular clergy, though it is impossible to calculate in the same manner the number swept away. Following the prior of Wareham, the abbot of Abbotsbury was dead before 3 December for on that date the presentation to the vicarage, vacant also by death of the vicar, was in the king's hands by reason of the voidance of the abbey."' The warden of the hospital of St. John, Shaftesbury, fell a victim about the same time ; "^ on 7 February, 1349, John Firth received confirmation of his appointment as abbot of Sherborne."' The second visitation of the plague in 1361 was hardly less severe, the list of institutions for the last six months of that year being especially heavy."'
The effect of these terrible scourges, accompanied by mortality among the cattle and followed by a scarcity of labour owing to the number of agricultural labourers who died, pressed very heavily on all landowning classes, and especially on the monks, whose difficulties, in the case of those living near the sea, and whose lands adjoined the coast, were much increased by a position which exposed them to inroads from sea marauders and foreign invaders, while their stores were eaten up by defenders sent to repel invasion."" The temporal decline of the monasteries, dating from the great pestilence, reached a climax towards the close of the century, when they sank to a spiritual level from which in a measure they appear to have been rescued before their final disappearance. As regards the local clergy the effect of the loss in their ranks was to accentuate many existing abuses ; in the scarcity of priests to fill the places of those swept away scruples as to fitness and capacity had perforce to go by the board.*" Licences to study increased in the absence
"' Orig. R. 22 Edw. Ill, m. 4. '" Sarum Epis. Reg. Wyville, ii, fol. 90-191.
'" Dr. Gasquet, from whom these figures are taken, estimates the number of institutions as follows : — Oct. 5, Nov. 15, Dec. 17, Jan. 16, Feb. 14, Mar. 10, Apr. 4 {The Great Pestilence, yg). He reckons the whole number of collations by the bishop in the diocese consisting of the three counties of Dorset, Wilts, and Berks, for the year beginning 25 Mar. 1348, and ending 25 Mar. 1349, at no less than 202, and at 243 for a like period the succeeding year. Ibid. 162. In Dorset it is reckoned that about half the number of benefices became vacant during the whole course of the visitation.
'" Ibid. 78. Among other collations the patent rolls record the presentation to Blandford (Pat. 22 Edw. Ill, pt. 3, m. 23), and to Spettisbury on 7 and 10 Dec. 1348, and on 4 Jan. 1349 (Ibid. m. 1 1, 16, 17).
'^ Sarum Epis. Reg. Wyville, ii, Inst. fol. 192.
"'Ibid. fol. 193. ""Ibid. fol. 199.
""' The cause of vacancy is not always stated in the institutions of 1 36 1, and as exchanges were at that time becoming very general it prevents such an accurate return being given of the number of deaths in that year.
"" In 1397 Pope Urban VI ordered the church of Tolpuddle to be appropriated to the abbey of Abbots- bury on this account. Ca/. Pap. Letters, v, 77.
'" So great, [says Knighton] was the scarcity of priests that many churches were desolate, being without divine offices. Hardly could a chaplain be got under j^io or 10 marks to minister in any church, and where before a chaplain could be had for 4 or 5 marks, or 2 marks with board, so numerous were priests before the pestilence, now scarce any would accept a vicarage of ^20 or 20 marks. But in a short time there came crowding into orders a multitude of those whose wives had died in the plague, of whom many were illiterate, only able to read after a fashion, and not able to understand what they read. Lek. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), 63.
21
A HISTORY OF DORSET
of a sufficiency of candidates who had attained the requisite orders. Bishop Wyville in a letter to the archdeacon in 1366 refers to a report of the number of absent rectors and vicars in the diocese and particularly in Dorset who let their churches to laymen, religious men "- being specially mentioned in this connexion."' Erghum, six years later, noting the neglect of divine service and hospitality and the danger to the souls of parishioners resulting from the practice of absentee incumbents making over their churches to laymen and unfit persons, desired to be certified as to their number in the archdeaconry, the period of absence and the names of those to whom bene- fices had been let."* Waltham, early in his episcopate, issued an order to his vicar-general in spirituals to enforce residence on the clergy, and punish those who did not comply."" The deaneries of Shaftesbury and Pimperne were visited by the bishop in 1393—4, the chief offences recorded in the list of presentments for the Shaftesbury deanery, visited in the church of Holy Trinity, Shaftesbury, appear to have consisted of moral lapses and the detention of tithes."* Many rural districts never fully recovered from the effect of the pestilence. There was a general fall in parochial endowments, and from the registers we learn of a number of churches, or moieties of churches, united on account of the insufficiency of the stipend to support an incumbent."'^ At the same time we find the bishops striving to restrain the ' insatiable rapacity ' of the clergy much in the same way as Parliament was endeavour- ing to put down the demands of the labourers."* Bishop Hallam in a monition (undated) addressed to his sons in general respecting a report of John Rygges, rector of Holy Trinity, Dorchester, that the church of St. Peter in the same town remains unserved denounces the refusal of any chaplain to accept a cure for a competent wage."^ Hallam's register contains frequent entries of licences for private oratories, and confronted by the difficulty of obtaining a sufficient supply of well-educated men to meet the growing demand it is evident that the bishops of that period turned for assistance to the use of licensed preachers.^
180
'" i.e. men of the religious orders. '" Sarum Epis. Reg. Wyville, ii, fol. 225.
'"' Ibid. Erghum, ii, fol. 8.
'" Ibid. Waltham, fol. 15. '"« Ibid. fol. 72-7.
''' These include the union of All Saints and St. James, Shaftesbury, in 1424, the church of All Saints being very much reduced (ibid. Chandler, fol. 41 <2'.) ; the two moieties of Child Okeford on account of poverty (ibid. Neville, ii, fol. 2 </.); the church of Winterborne Clenston to Winterbome Nicholas in 1436, the issues being insufficient to maintain two priests (ibid, ii, fol. 42 d.) ; the rectory of Chaldon Boys to Chaldon Herring in 1446, the issues of Chaldon Boys being insufficient to sustain a rector and the church consequently remaining vacant (ibid. Ayscough, fol. 57) ; the union of the vicarage of Spettisbury to the rector}' at the request of the rector, Robert Wade, the revenues being insufficient to maintain a vicar, Oct. 1439 (ibid. fol. 69 </.); the church of Puncknowle to that of Bexington in 1431 (ibid. Beauchamp, ii, fol. 1 1). The chaplain of the chantry in the church of Whitchurch was in 1454 licensed to accept a cure on account of the decay in the issues of the chantry (ibid. fol. 43) the churches of Ringstead and Osmington were united in 1488 (ibid. Langton, fol. 29 a'.); the church of Wraxall was on account of its poverty united to the church of Chilfrome in 1503 (ibid. BIyth, fol. 11); the churches of Durweston and Knighton were by the request of the patron, Robert de Fitzhaye, united in 1 38 1 (ibid. Erghum, fol. 44 </.).
'" Wilkins, Concil. iii, 30, 50, 135.
'" Sarum Epis. Reg. Hallam, fol. 52. The clerg)' were denounced by the people for their supposed greed and rapacity, but it should be remembered that they shared the gener.il agricultural distress, and were ground down by the increasing demands of the papal curia and the abuse of papal provision and reservation.
"° In 1409, John Yo%%t\\, prefositus of Oriel College, Oxford, Richard Stabull, vicar of St. Peter in the East, Oxford, John Luke, bachelor of theology, were licensed to preach throughout the city and diocese of Salisbury ; the following year the bishop granted a similar licence to Walter Bexhampton of Bridport, chaplain; Ibid. pt. ii (Inst.), fol. 4, 5, 46.
22
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
The general distress and discontent of the period did much to foster that form of religious activity which marks the later fourteenth and earlier fifteenth centuries. But with signs of a loosened hold on the part of the Church on other rural districts, so far as this county is concerned there is little evidence of any active sympathy with the movement identified with the name of John Wycliff. Prevalent as was LoUardy in other parts of the diocese, at Devizes, Reading, and along the valley of the Thames, it never seems to have taken strong hold of Dorset, and the instances recorded are very few and unimportant. The first that occurs is that of William Ramsbury, whose trial in June, 1389, was presided over by Robert Regenhill, archdeacon of Dorset ; having been found guilty of heretical views and opinions respecting the sacra- ments, and confessed that he had openly affirmed and published the same in different parts of the diocese, Blandford, Sturminster, &c., as well as in secret, he was condemned to make public recantation of his errors in the cathedral of Salisbury."^ The fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, so prolific else- where in religious persecution, only produce two further examples in Dorset. On 6 May, 1414, the official of the dean of Salisbury certified the bishop that in obedience to his commission he had cited Thomas Turle, vicar of the pre- bendal church of Bere, to appear before the bishop on the iith inst., in the church of Potterne, to answer the charge of holding heretical opinions requiring correction. ^*^ The register of Bishop Blyth in i 5 1 6, amidst various trials for heretical opinion in Wiltshire and Berkshire, records the abjuration of one Michael Gamare, of the parish of Wimborne St. Giles who, ' being easely and lightly suspecte of heresye to you myne ordinarye by the depositions and sayings of certayn witnesses deposying agenst me,' first that he had said
it is a lewde thyng and a madde condition or use occupyed in this contree or paryshe that women will come and sette their candles afore a tree, the image of Saynt Gylys, and that it were as good and as myche remedy . . . and they myght as well sette their candles in their pewys setys or upon a chymney and as grete devocion the oon as the other ... for the very saynte is in hevyn or where it pleasith God and the image of Saynt Gylys is but a stocke or a stone and if the saide image fell doune it wold breke their hedes
confessed the above saying to be ' blassemose sclanderose and heresie and he does forsake and abjure ye same.' "'
The suppression of alien houses in England by decree of the Parliament of Leicester in 141 4 brings again to our notice those alien dependencies whose erection here was the feature of the monastic revival in the twelfth century. Their career and the presence of foreign beneficed clergy in Dorset deserves a passing notice. With the loss of Normandy in the succeeding century the prospects of these foreign settlements darkened considerably, and John's action in seizing their possessions among the estates of Norman landowners in England in retaliation for his loss of the duchy "* was but an earnest of their fate during the greater part of the remainder of their existence. In truth the position of these alien communities was but a thankless one ; placed on the basis of the native clergy and expected to contribute towards royal subsidies and national expenses in times of peace ; '*^ in war time they were
»> Sarum Epis. Reg. Waltham, ii, fol. 31. '»' Ibid. Hallam, ii, fol. 16.
'»' Ibid. Blyth, fol. 158. "' Rot. Norman, (ed. Hardy), i, 122-4.
•'^ Close 3 Edw. II, m. 5 d. ced. ; 5 Edw. Ill, pt. \,xa.6d.
23
A HISTORY OF DORSET
regarded as adherents of the enemy, their goods taken into custody and heavily taxed ; they escaped none of the burdens and enjoyed none of the immunities. From the commencement of the Hundred Years' War these foreign cells were, with brief intervals, seized into the hands of the king, who appointed custodians to farm their revenues. It was to the advan- tage of the head house abroad to get rid of their English dependencies, on as advantageous terms as possible but in any case to rid themselves of what involved merely responsibility, and the chapter of Coutances were fortunate in obtaining a purchaser for their manor of Winterborne Stickland in the earlier part of the French wars."' After a continued course of farming the spiritual duties that attached to these dependent cells became almost lost sight of ; at the close of the war the general verdict pronounced that charity and almsgiving had been withdrawn and divine service ceased in the case of the greater number of them, and it cannot be said that the country generally seems to have suffered much spiritual loss by their suppression. In Dorset their number and proximity to the coast, bringing them within easy reach of communication with the enemy, rendered their presence a very lively source of suspicion. The fear of invasion which marked the close of the reign of Edward II is reflected in the register of Bishop Mortival, which at that time teems with entries dealing with precautions for preventing any possible collusion between the foreigners domiciled in the country and the threatening force of invasion. ^*^ The return furnished by the bishop of those foreign beneficiaries who were ordered to appear before the council at West- minster and to give security for their good behaviour includes the names of Richard Gouch, rector of Toller Porcorum, Simon Avenel, rector of Winter- bourne Stickland, Ralph Moreb, rector of Spettisbury and canon of Salis- bury."^ In obedience to an order for the removal of certain religious men from their houses near the sea to others further inland, the bishop certified that he had transferred William Pyequier of Frampton and Ralph Pothyn of Loders to the abbey of Sherborne."' The final seizure of the cells and granges of alien houses in Dorset greatly enriched the English foundations to which they were granted as their leases fell in. Thus on its reversion to the crown in 1437 Henry VI bestowed the priory of Frampton in free alms on the dean and canons of St. Stephen of Westminster."" The cell of Loders was made over by Henry V to the nunnery of Syon (Middlesex) which he had founded, the grant being afterwards confirmed by Henry VI. "^ Muckleford, as parcel of the alien priory of Andwell (Hants), passed over to Winchester college,"^ Povington to Eton college,"' Spettisbury became the property of the Car- thusian priory of Witham (Somerset),"* Stour Provost, bestowed in the first instance by Henry VI on Eton College, was transferred by Edward IV to the provost and scholars of King's College, Cambridge."^ The prior of Wast or de Vasto succeeded in the reign of Edward II in letting his estate at Winter- borne Monkton and Bockhampton, and from that time the property remained in the hands of English tenants."' Wareham was granted by Richard II
'^' Pat. 10 Edw. Ill, pt. 2, m. 8. '*" Sarum Epis. Reg. Mortival, i, pt. 236.
'^■^ Ibid. fol. 240a. '■' Ibid. fol. 27+.
'» Pat. 16 Hen. VI, pt. I, m. 14. "' Ibid. 2 Hen. VI, pt. 3, m. 20.
'" A. F. Leach, Hist. 0/ Wimhesler College, x, 144. '=« Falor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv, 206.
'" Pat. 7 Hen. VI, pt. 1, m. 13. "' Ibid. Edw. IV, pt. 3, m. 23.
"* Hutchins, Hist, of Dorset, ii, 321.
24
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
in May, 1 399, together with the priories of Hinckley (Leicestershire) and Carisbrooke (Isle of Wight) and all other possessions of the Norman abbey of Lyre in England to the prior and convent of Mountgrace of the Carthusian order."^ Though these dependencies of foreign houses are often alluded to as ' reputed ' priories, only four of them can be proved to have maintained a religious community.
It is difficult to summarize the religious position of the fifteenth century as it advanced, or rather it requires a summary from more than one point of view^. With an inevitable amount of dissatisfaction, and, on the part of the faithful, of discontent with the secular aims that animated most of the bishops and the higher ranks of the clergy, we have still to consider the evidence of the reality and movement of church life and the progress of religious aspiration. The chantries founded at that time and up to the Reformation are perhaps most significant of this advance, for, while the devout remained faithful to the form chosen by an earlier generation for the expression of their religious feelings, the introduction of other objects in their ordination testifies to the spread and growth of the ideal of education and enlightenment as a means to the amelioration of society. Again, indulgences are more frequently granted for purely secular objects. The register of Bishop Ayscough, 1439—50, records an indulgence for those assisting the building of a new haven at Bridport for the safety of merchants and mariners, to further the construction of which all the ecclesiastical authorities of the town banded themselves into a common association.^'^ Neither was diocesan visitation neglected. In January, 1503, in the midst of a visitation of the diocese by the bishop's vicar-general in spirituals, Bishop Audley wrote to the deans of Bridport and Shaftesbury respecting the excessive number of those begging alms and attempting to deceive the people by selling indulgences, denouncing all such traffic, forbidding the vendors to be allowed to preach in any of the churches of the above deaneries, and ordering the clergy to be warned against them ; this prohibition was not to apply to the nuncios of the order of St. John of Jerusalem in England."'
The religious houses of Dorset appear to have reached their lowest level in the fourteenth century when their condition frequently called for interven- tion on the part of the king and ordinary and the appointment of custodians. Their poverty, the natural result of the economic pressure of that time, was in many cases greatly enhanced by the bad and inefficient rule of superiors, the effects of which lasted much longer than the actual period over which it extended. The troubles, for instance, of the Cistercian abbey of Bindon, whose history throughout the fourteenth century is one sordid record of debt, disorder, and dissension calculated to lower the tone of any community, came to a climax under the rule of John de Monte Acuto ; and his deposition in 133 i by order of the chapter-general of Citeaux -'"' by no means put an end to the embarrassments his government had done so much to foster. The difficulties again of the abbey of Shaftesbury, the extent of whose property gave rise to the proverb ' if the abbot of Glastonbury could marry the abbess of Shaftesbury their heir would hold more land than the king of England,' ""' were mainly
'" Pat. 22 Ric. II, pt. 3, m. lo-il. '°* Sarum Epis. Reg. Ayscough, fol. 71.
'" Ibid. Audley, fol. 1 14. '"' Close, 6 Edw. Ill, m. 3 </.
"" Fuller, CAii/ri Hist, iii, 332.
25
A HISTORY OF DORSET
caused by the unwieldiness of a community whose numbers taxed even its resources, and demanded powers of organization and government not always at command.
The absence of visitation reports in the century preceding the Dissolution makes one hesitate to pronounce with any certainty as to the condition of the monasteries in the latter part of their career, but, in spite of the fact that the number of their inmates had undoubtedly fallen, signs are not wanting of renewed vitality and a restoration of discipline and order. The chantries that continued to be founded in their conventual churches testify to the hold they still maintained on the affections of many. As the social and religious ideals of a succeeding age slowly emerged we find schools established in connexion with them, whose value even those engineering the changes of the sixteenth century were forced to recognize.""^ The Valor Eccksiasticus with its record of organized almsgiving and round of fixed anniversaries exhibits the monks still faithful to the memory and charitable bequests of their founders and benefactors.
It is interesting to note the shadow of coming events in the appointment of superiors on the eve of the Dissolution. Many appear to have been expressly chosen with a view to their compliance with court schemes, and all were care- fully imbued with the idea that liberal treatment would attend due submission. The example of Bindon, the only house in Dorset coming under the earlier Act for the suppression of monasteries under the yearly value of jTaoo,^"' doubtless encouraged a delusion that certain houses might be spared for a consideration. Sir Thomas Arundel wrote to Cromwell on i8 December, 1538 that in spite of representations the abbess of Shaftesbury refused to follow the ' moo ' (majority) and yield her abbey, and that she and the abbot of Cerne were pre- pared to offer 'His Majesty' 500 marks and 'your lordship' ^100 to obtain the continuation of their houses.^"* It was useless, the stroke that in less than a month should deprive Dorset of her sole remaining links with an historic past, the outward and visible signs of ancient glory departed, fell the March following (1539) ; Milton, which surrendered on the iith of that month, was followed by Abbotsbury on the 12th, Tarrant Kaines on the 13th, Bindon on the 14th, Sherborne with its dependent cell, the priory of Horton, on the 18th, Holme, a dependent cell of Montacute (Somerset), on the 20th, Shaftesbury, greatest and last of all,^°' fell on the 23 rd.
The heavy hand of Henry VIII did not stop with the monasteries, and to his successor he bequeathed measures for the suppression of colleges, chan- tries, gilds, and hospitals which were carried out by Acts i and 2 Edward VI. The commissioners appointed to report on the ' lands, tenements, jewels, plate, goods and stocke ' belonging to the colleges &c. in this county esti- mated their value at ^(^631 oj. id., with a deduction in 'rents resolute' of
'"- Besides the well-known school at Sherborne and the free school established in connexion with the chantry of the countess of Richmond and Derby in Wimborne Minster, there was a free school founded by William de Middleton, abbot of Milton, which was described as 'of good regard and in former times much frequented.' Hutchins, Hist, of Dorset, iv, 396.
"" Bindon, on the payment of ;^30o to the king, was restored by royal letters patent 29 Sept. 1538, only to fall a few months later with the larger houses. L. and P. Hen. VllI, xiii (2), 177 ; xiv (i), 506.
'»■' Ibid, xiii (2), 1090.
*"" The last with the exception of Cranborne which was surrendered with the abbey of Tewkesbury, 31 Jan. 1540. Ibid, xv, 49.
26
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
^94 Ss. 2J.^°^ Besides a number of small endowments for the maintenance of lamps, obits, and various services, the foundations surveyed in both certificates relating to Dorset comprise some 25 or 26 chantries, 14 free chapels, 4 gilds or fraternities,^"^ and 9 hospitals. ^°^ In many cases reference to the benefits rendered by these foundations gives some idea of what the county was to be deprived on the plea of abolishing the superstitions with which they had unfortunately become associated ; the worst to be gathered from the returns is that in a few cases funds had been diverted from the objects originally intended, while on the other hand frequent entries testify to the good work done in connexion with many of the chantries and of the lofs occasioned by their destruction. Thus, under the chantry in Netherbury church, the certificate notes a grammar school kept by Martyn Smyth, priest, who received for his stipend £^ 6s. 8^.^°' Under Wareham the sum of _^8 constituting the endowment of a free school founded by Sir John Loders, priest, and others in the parish of Milton Tregonwell, was yearly paid to the ' scole- master for his stipend.'"" A memorandum states that the free chapel of West Hemsworth was ordained for a schoolmaster to be maintained in Long Blandford."^ As regards the hospitals the endowment of that of Allington near Bridport served only to maintain a chaplain, the ' power men ' living by alms of the town,"^ and in the same way the income of St. John Baptist of Bridport, amounting to £6 Ss. gld. clear, was assigned to the priest serving it."'' The inmates, five poor men, of the hospital of St. John Baptist of Shaftesbury, had to rely for their maintenance on the charity of the inhabit- ants of the town, the whole of the revenues, consisting of 73J. 6d. yearly, being handed over to the chaplain."*
The district on which the confiscation of these endowments fell most heavily was Wimborne ; there are several indications of the important part played by the college in the social and ecclesiastical life of the neighbourhood now deprived of the services of four priests and four clerks which the dean and prebendaries were bound to provide to serve the four chapels round : St. Peter's in the town, St. Catherine's of Leigh, St. James at Holt, and St. Stephen's at Kingston. ' Mem"^.' runs the report of the commissioners
to have 4 priests to serve the cure in the parish of Wimborne because there be t, chapels wherein there is devyne service which said chapels be distant from the church of Wimborne 3 miles and are for the ease of the people.*''
There was also the ' schole masters chauntry ' of Margaret, countess of Rich- mond and Derby, in the collegiate church."*
'»" Coll and Chant. Cert, xiv, Nos. 1-35.
™' The gilds are that of Corpus Christ! in Wareham, the fraternity of Our Lady in St. Peter's church, Dorchester, that of St. George in Poole, and St. George in Weymouth.
"' These were at Allington, Bridport, Dorchester, Shaftesbury, Sherborne, Wimborne, and Wareham.
•"'Ibid. No. 59. ""Ibid. No. 81.
"' Ibid. No. 115. '" Ibid. No. 62. '" Ibid. No. 6i.
"* Ibid. No. 100. In the case of Wimborne the alms of the town supplemented the scanty endow- ment of the hospital which produced only a yearly income of 29/. id., and the return states that the eight poor men ' not only live by the profits of the said house but by the devotion of the people of Wimborne' (ibid. No. 112). The hospital of Sherborne, the last religious house to be erected in Dorset, had by far the richest endowment, out of a clear income of ^^3 1 5/. the chaplain received half- yearly £\o 6s. id., the remainder being assigned to the finding of eleven poor and impotent men and four poor women (ibid. No. 91).
"' Ibid. No. 1 10. »'« Ibid. No. 106.
27
A HISTORY OF DORSET
In addition to the suppression of colleges and chantries, which in effect deprived the parochial clergy of the services of a body of assistant chaplains whose services had cost them nothing, the reign of Edward VI was respon- sible for further changes in the removal of pictures and images from parish churches, the taking down of roods,'" the setting up of tables in the place of altars, the whitewashing of the walls of the edifice, the confiscation of vest- ments and parish plate. That section of the return of the commissioners appointed to take possession of all superfluous church plate for the king's use which relates to chalices has been already dealt with for the county of Dorset.'^' Of the 265 entries therein contained, 254 relate to parish churches, and eleven to attached chapels. Six of these parishes only had three chalices : Long and Little Bredy, Corscombe, Cranborne, MarnhuU, Bradford Abbas and Sturminster Newton ; the number having two in use was thirty-five, 204 had one. Eight parishes were entered under ' defaults,' seven of which had sold or otherwise disposed of a chalice, and there was one instance of a chalice being stolen.-^' As the plague was raging in the county during the proceedings of the commissioners no return was made for Canford, Wimborne Minster and Poole, and an entry explaining this absence states ' ther be no inventories taken by reason of the plague and they have lost ther olde enven- tories as they have sent us word wher uppon ther ys no newe taken.' Accord- ing to an earlier inventory specially taken in 1545 Poole made a return of seven chalices ; in a second return of the commissioners of Edward VI in 1553 it is stated that there were reserved for the use of the church of Poole one chalice weighing i2oz. and two bells in the town estimated at 6 cwt. ; the remaining six bells had been sold 'for the makyng of bulworks and dyches for the defence of the saide towne by direction of My Lord's Grace (the Protector Somerset) at his being in Poole.' "" Another return of the church goods of Poole in 1559 before the commissioners of Queen Elizabeth reported ' our images be all defaced and brente.' As for the chalices no parish was allowed to retain more than one, and the one left for future parish use was almost invariably the worst or the least.'^^
Under Mary there was an attempt to restore the confiscated church goods and in the absence of any settlement with regard to the transactions of Edward VI's commissioners the government issued an order to compel them to render an exact account of their proceedings. Accordingly Sir Giles Strangways"^ set off for London, the plate and money being sent after him. The plate was delivered at the Tower, and ^j^ paid in as part payment of
'" An entry of a payment of zs. for ' takyne downe ye rode ' occurs under the year 1 547 in the church- wardens' accounts of Wimborne Minster.
"* By Mr. Nightingale in his book. Church Plate of Dorset, from which the following figures are taken.
"' Mr. Nightingale quotes the following as typical of the church possessions of a Dorset village (it relates to Woolland) in 1552: ' Fyrst, j chalis sylver parcell gylt ; j pyx sylver, j whyte cope of sylke ; j whyt vest"" of dornix, j redd vest"" of dornix, ij table clothes, iij candlesticks of bras, j holy water pot bras, j lyche bell, ii cruets of leade, j surplis, ij crosses of tyn, j saucer of bras, j chasuble of grene, j vest"" of black velvet. To the use of the Churche. — Appoynted by the said commissioners j chalis, j white cope of sylk w"" all the table clothes and surplices. The residue of all the possessions commytted to the custody of these men whose names be underwrytten, Sir John Whyt, curate, John Hayson, senr., John Hayson, junr., John Carter, Thomas Baker, alias Galpyn. Ibid. Pref. 7. -"" Ibid. 126.
'"' Mr. Nightingale estimates the number of mediaeval church plate in use before the Reformation and now remaining in Dorset at only three.
"' The Commissioners appointed in Dorset were Sir Giles Strangways, Sir John Horsey, Sir George de la Lynde, and Thomas Trenchard. Later on we find them constantly employed as justices of the peace in trying recusants.
28
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
^^132 5J. z,d. for which the ornaments and other church goods in Dorset had been sold, the remaining sum being retained for the expense of conveying the money and plate to London.^^^
Another very material change brought about in the reign of Henry VIII was the removal of this county out of the see of Salisbury and its transference to the new diocese of Bristol, erected by letters patent of 4 June, 1542,^"* under which it remained until the year 1836, when by an order in council the archdeaconry of Dorset was again united to the Salisbury diocese. During the whole period of its existence under Bristol, however, those churches and prebends belonging to the chapter of Salisbury continued to remain under the peculiar jurisdiction of the dean by whom they were visited, and the records of whose visitations are preserved among the archives of the cathedral. *^^ The injunctions circulated by Bishop Shaxton throughout his diocese in 1538 give some idea of the parochial ministrations of the clergy on the eve of impend- ing change. They begin with provisions as to non-residents and their curates, directing that no French or Irish priest that could not perfectly speak the English tongue should be allowed to serve as curate. The clergy were charged at high mass to read the Gospel and Epistle in English, and to set out the Royal Supremacy with the usurpations of the bishop of Rome, they were also bidden to preach purely, sincerely and according to the true scriptures of God, and regulations were laid down for the frequent use of sermons in pro- portion to the value of their livings ; as a general rule four sermons were to be preached every year, one in each quarter. No friar was to be permitted to perform any service in the church. The clergy were also required to read a chapter of the New Testament every day, and every person having a cure of souls should be able to repeat without book, the gospels of St. Matthew and St. John, and the epistles to the Romans, Galatians, and Corinthians, with the Acts of the Apostles and the canonical epistles."'"
Probably the first effect of the transference to another see in the midst of other changes was to paralyse church effort and organization for a time ; we find that the services of the chapels attached to Wimborne Minster were not restored till the reign of Elizabeth, and as late as 1577 Sir John Horsey and George Trenchard explained to the Council the difficulty of obtaining information respecting recusants in Dorset, ' as it was uncertain in whose diocese the shire was.'*'" It is also unfortunate that we have no means of ascertaining definitely how far the personnel of the Dorset clergy was affected by the measures introduced on the accession of Mary in 1553: "^^ the queen's great Statute of Repeals abolishing the Edwardian Act of I 549, and the ' Injunctions ' for the removal of all priests who had availed themselves of the permission to marry granted in the last reign."^' Nor when the death of Mary and the accession of Elizabeth set the pendulum of religious opinion swinging in another direction can we find any evidence of the number of clergy deprived for refusing to subscribe to the queen's
'^' Nightingale, Church Plate of Dorset, Pref. p. 8. '" Pat. 34. Hen. VIII, pt. 10.
'" Liber Visitationum Decani.
■'^ Burnet, Hist, of the Reformation, iii, 245. "' Cal. S.P. Dam. 1547-80, p. 561.
'-^ Owing to the destruction of the records at Bristol in the fire of 1 831. W. H. Frere, The Marian Reaction, 32.
"' It was, however, provided that such priests as consented to put away their wives should, after due penance, be re-admitted to officiate 'so it be not in the s.ime place.' Ibid. 61.
29
A HISTORY OF DORSET
supremacy, and the Act for the Uniformity of Common Prayer and Adminis- tration of the Sacraments which formed the basis of the Elizabethan church settlement.^^"
As regards the state of feeling in the county generally there is no sign that the violent changes brought about by Henry VIII and Edward VI met with the strong disapproval they evoked in Lincolnshire and the north. -'^ At Poole especially, which afterwards distinguished itself as one of the strong- holds of Puritan feeling and the Parliamentary party, the accession of Mary was attended by religious feuds between the favourers of the new religion and the adherents of the old faith which were largely fomented by the influence of Thomas Hancock, nominated to the living of Poole in 1546, through whose preaching the inhabitants of the town became strong partisans of the new party in the Church, and were said to be ' the first that in that parte of England were called Protestantes.' -^-
But in spite of strong Protestant sympathy, specially marked in the towns of Poole and Dorchester, there are tokens of deep though latent and suppressed affection for the old religion, especially on the part of certain families whose loyalty survived all the changes of the sixteenth century and later persecutions. Tacit sympathy with recusancy is exhibited as late as 1 59 1, when an order was sent to Thomas Husseye and Robert Ken- nele, esqs., to make inquiry into a report that at the last quarter sessions when the Grand Jury were charged to present recusants and such as refused to come to church secret warning and intelligence was given them not to do this, ' according to the revelation of Mr. Coker of Ashe, and Mr. Seymor of Hanford.' "'' The prevalence of recusancy among the feminine half of the community provoked a query the following year (1592) as to whether the recusant wives of conforming husbands might be committed to prison and whether their husbands should be ' punishable by any pecuniary paine for that offence of their wives ; ' the commissioners for the apprehension of recusants in Dorset being directed by the council to forbear committing these ladies ' until Her Majestie has taken the opinion of judges.' "'*
At the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, save for the clergy, the Act of Uniformity does not appear to have been rigidly enforced, but the promul- gation of the bull of Pope Pius V in 1570 absolving her subjects from their allegiance materially altered conditions and placed Catholic Nonconformity in the light of a dangerous element in the state. In Dorset with the uncertainty ' in whose diocese the shire was,' no convictions were pressed till the year 1582, when an order was sent to Sir John Horsey, knt., and George Trenchard, esq., ' to apprehend and send up one Slade a verie dangerous Papist lurking within the countie of Dorset, and all such superstitious ornaments and tromperie as they can by diligent search find out,' with direc- tions to make search and apprehend from time to time ' anie Jesuit and seminarie priest.' ^^° The examination of John Meere of Dorset, student
"" Gee, The Elizabethan Clergy, 31.
*" It was the fear of being put again under the domination of Rome that was productive of disturbance in I 5 54, and in 1557 the authorities were ordered to be fully prepared in the event of a rising, j^cts ofP.C. (New Ser.), 1556-8, p. 87.
*'* Hutchins, Hist, of Dorset, i, 52, gives an account of the feuds there.
^ Jets ofP.C. (New Ser.), I 590-1, p. 358. »" Ibid. 1592, p. 182.
"^ Ibid. 1582, p. 446. The Recusancy Roll 37 Eliz. (1594-5) records that John Slade, late of Manston, gent, was fined £100 for non-attendance at church five months. L.T.R. (Pipe Off. Ser.).
30
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
in the Temple and prisoner in the Fleet, is recorded 23 June, 1585.^'® In February, 1586, letters were forwarded to special commissioners in various counties, including Dorset, to enforce a regular assessment of fines for recusancy.^" In December, 1591, a commission of inquiry was issued for Jesuits and seminary priests in Dorset, and the following year it was renewed for the purpose of adding to the commission.''*^ In spite of the increasing severity of the penalties inflicted on recusants, it seems evident that their numbers were largely increasing. The first Recusancy roll under Eliza- beth, 1 59 1— 2, gives eighty-six names, and indicates pretty clearly the chief centres of Catholic sentiment : Hampreston, the neighbourhood of Wimborne, Corfe, Canford, Swanage, and above all Chideock. where the forfeitures of Charles Sturton of Chideock, gent., Dorothea Arundel, Cecilia Arundel, Gertrude Arundel, Elizabeth Chernock, and John Chernock are followed by those of twenty-five retainers, members of the household and tenants.^'*' A list on I October, 1598, of certain recusants finedjri5 each towards the Irish Light Horse gives the names of Lady Sturton, Charles Sturton, esq., Mr. Martin of Athelhampton, Henry Cary of Hamworthy, and Mr. Slade of Mawston (Mansion), gent."*" The names of most frequent, and in some cases continual, recurrence in the recusancy rolls of the whole of Elizabeth and early part of James I are those of William Gerard of Clerkenwell, who forfeited two parts of the manor of Broadway, William Morecock of Nether Kincombe, Gregory Durdo of Iwerne Minster, Henry Yunge of Wimborne, Henry Cary of Ham- worthy, the Stourtons, the Arundels, the Wells, the Lockyers, the Loapes or Loopes of Hampreston, the Martins of Athelhampton, the Goulds of Cranborne and Edmondsham.''" The State Papers of James I, under date of 23 December, 1607, record the grant to Lawrence Marbury of the benefit of the recusancy of Elizabeth Wells of Dorset,"^ on 10 January, 1608, the grant of the benefit of the recusancy of Mary Gerard, widow ; ^" on 20 July, 1609, came an order to inquire into the goods of Anne Turber- ville of Dorset the benefit of whose recusancy was granted to Sir John Cowper.***
The chief source of anxiety to the authorities was the position that Catholicism was able to take up in Dorset owing to the support it con- tinued to receive from some of the oldest and most influential families in the county. The chief centre of Catholic leaning in the sixteenth century was at Chideock, the residence of the Arundel family,-*^ who like the Webbs of Canford, and the Welds of Lulworth, remained faithful to the Royalist cause during the later rebellion."" Most of the Popish priests executed during that
836
239
Cal S.P. Dom. 1581-90, p. 247. '" Jets ofP.C. (New Ser.), 1586-7, pp. 15, 16.
Cal. S.P. Dom. 1 591-4, pp. 137, 212.
Recus. R. 34 Eliz. Exch. L.T.R. (Pipe OfF. Ser.). In 1586 a note of the names of the wives and widows ' who are most obstinate recusants in the county of Bedford ' records the name of Elizabeth Char- nock, daughter of Sir John Arundel and wife of John Charnock. Ca/. S.P. Dom. 1581-90, p. 376.
™ Jcti ofP.C. (New Ser.), 1598-9, p. 203. "' Recus. R. Exch. L.T.R. (Pipe Off. Ser), 1-14.
'" Cal. S.P. Dom. 1603-10, p. 395. »" Ibid. "" Ibid. 530.
"' Chideock came into the hands of the Arundel family in the reign of Henry VII by the marriage of Katherine Chideock, youngest daughter of Sir John Chideock and last of the family, to Sir John Arundel, of Lanherne (Foley, Rec. of Engl. Province of S.J. iii, 426).
"* Chideock Castle fell alternately into the hands of the Royalist and Parliamentary party during the Civil War. According to Hutchins {Hist.of Dorset.u, 259) it was at last taken in 1645 by the Parliamentary forces quartered at Lyme, and in the same year thirteen owners of small tenements, whereof seven were recusants, had their estates sequestered, doubtless as a punishment for their loyal defence of the house.
31
A HISTORY OF DORSET
period are said to have officiated as chaplains at Chideock , Castle,"*^ and a sketch of the fortunes of this family under Elizabeth gives probably the best picture of the trials and risks of a Catholic household at that time. In 1 58 1 Sir John Arundel was summoned to London and for a time committed to close custody by the queen ; following her husband's arrest Lady Arundel, daughter of Edward earl of Derby and relict of Charles, Lord Stourton, also suffered a term of imprisonment. On 9 April, 1584, she was examined as to her speeches against the present government, reception of Jesuits and seminary priests, hearing mass and receiving letters from Charles Paget, &c.-" On 9 June she begged Walsingham to use his interest with the queen to procure her release, protesting that ' her own heart could not accuse her of any undutiful thought towards Her Majesty ' ; '" fortunately the lady's plea received favourable consideration, and she was soon after released."** On the death of Sir John at Isleworth his widow returned to Chideock where she took up her residence and, save for the fines imposed on the household for recusancy, appears for a short time to have been left in peace. But the castle remained a centre of Catholic influence in Dorset, and the resort of semin- arists, among whom was Father Cornelius, a native of Cornwall, who having been educated by Sir John Arundel at Oxford and the English college at Rheims, returned later to England in the capacity of chaplain to his patron and by him was recommended to the care of his wife on his deathbed. The priest was a marked man to the government who only required opportunity to lay hands on him. It came in the usual fashion by treachery ; a member of the house- hold, William Holmes, enraged at some reproof for his conduct went to the high sheriff, Sir George Morton, with information whereby a plan was con- certed for the apprehension of the priest. For this purpose Easter Sunday, 31 March, 1594, was chosen, when there was every prospect of a mass being celebrated, and for five miles watch and ward was set round the castle. The trap failed owing to the precautions taken, but a second attempt a fortnight later resulted in success, and after a prolonged search Father Cornelius was dragged from his hiding place in one of the priest's holes."' On 2 1 April the prisoner was examined before the justices. Sir George Trenchard, Sir Ralph Horsey, and John Williams, and the evidence taken of the informer, William Holmes, who testified to the presence of Catholic priests attached to the household of the late Sir John Arundel during the period he had been in his service ; that the said Cornelius dwelt with Sir John and his widow for a year ; that another priest, John Sherwood, now deceased,
'" One of these, Thomas Pilchard, was executed at Dorchester on 21 March, 1587, with all the barbarous rites that attended such executions ; another Catholic recusant, a Mr. Jessop, dying soon after in Dorchester gaol, was by his own desire buried next to Mr. Pilchard. (Foley, op. cit. iii, 428-9.) Other names given are Cornelius 1594, Green 1642. Arthur Browne, another seminary priest, purchased his life at the price of recantation (Oliver, Hist, of CathoFic Re/igiort in Conitc. and Dors. etc. 1857, pp. 35-9). John Mundyn, priest at Mapperton, was executed at Tyburn 12 Feb. 1589 (Ibid. 39).
"* Cal S.P. Dom. 1581-90, p. 171. "' Ibid. 180. "^ Ibid. 201-260.
"' The account of this famous semin.iry priest (Foley, Rec. of the Engl. Province of S.J. iii, 43 5 , 474) is largely based on the j^cts of Father Cornelius written by Miss Doroth}- Arundel, the daughter of Sir John, who after the priest's execution went abroad and entered the convent of the English Benedictine nuns at Brussels, where she was professed 1600 and died in 1613. She gives a graphic account of Cornelius' apprehension and pre- liminary examination before the justices. On being summoned together with the rest of the household and questioned as to her share in harbouring and concealing a public traitor and enemy to Her Majesty the Queen, this spirited lady broke out '/ gather together traitors and enemies of the Queen, I sustain them, / conceal them I If you would have men of that kind I know them not. I well know that I know none such.' Ibid. '". 455-
32
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
* dwelled likewise with the said Sir John Arundel and his lady for the space of viii years and upwards before his death, and others ' ; that after Sir John removed his house from Clerkenwell to Moushill, where he lived for about three years, the said Cornelius and Sherwood continued with him ; after that the knight removed to Isleworth where he remained for about six or seven weeks and then died, and there he was visited by another priest whose name was William Patinson. The witness further deposed that Cornelius and Sherwood did daily say mass at Clerkenwell and Moushill and at Isleworth, but that he was not admitted to hear mass until he came to Isleworth where he heard the three priests say several masses ; he was also present at many masses said by the three priests at Chideock, whither his lady had removed since the death of Sir John, and for a time was appointed to wait on them in their chamber. On the departure of William Patinson to London, where he was soon after executed,"" his place was taken by another priest, John Currie, who remained until after the death of Sherwood twelve months since, the latter, as the witness understood, being buried in the chapel of Chideock House, and on Currie's departure to London at Michaelmas, he was succeeded by Green, alias Lusty Green, who remained in company with Cornelius until Easter day last ; at which time, about one o'clock in the morning before day, having said mass and received intelligence of an intended search they each went their ways. Green going to Cornwall, but Cornelius having his mother in Chideock House returned there the next day and remained till he was apprehended. The informer gave the names of the household who daily attended mass; ~" the boys and hinds in the house were not admitted, nor had he, the witness, been admitted since a year last Michaelmas, and he stated that Cary and Patrick, now prisoners in Dorchester gaol, had been in attendance upon the said priests in their chamber both before and after his discharge from that duty. The priest, John Cornelius, alias Moone late of Bodmin, Cornwall, on interroga- tion, stated that he was forty years of age, had been ordained priest in the seminary at Rome thirteen or fourteen years since, had returned to England eleven years ago, and had since continued travelling to and fro ' to do good and to instruct in the Romish religion according to his function ;' he refused to say where he had lodged for fear of bringing others into danger.^'* That Chideock was regarded as a hot-bed of Catholicism is evident from the letter addressed by the justices of the peace who conducted this examination to Lord Keeper Pickering and Lord Buckhurst, together with their report, lo June, 1594. Referring to the priest Cornelius they say
his repair with tiiat of others not yet taken to the lady's house has nursed up many ill imps and given comfort to not a few ill subjects, whereby we are daily encumbered and the country is drawn back from the faith. In regard thereof we desire that the said lady may
m
He was hanged at Tyburn Z2 Jan. I 592.
"' The Lord Stourton ; Mr. Charles Stourton ; Mr. John Easton and Margaret his wife ; Mrs. Dorothy Arundel ; Mrs. Gertrude Arundel ; Mr. Thomas Bosgrave, Thomas Stone, committed to gaol ; Henry Barbye,. John Cooke ; Jeffrey Cardew; — Holcombe ; Ann Tremayne ; Margaret Tremayne ; Jane Tremayne; Dorothy PriJeaux ; Jane Woodcocks ; Julyan Morgan, widow ; Christian Storche; Mother Mawde, mother to Cornelius;: Faith Victor, attendant upon her ; Ellz. Diggenson, an old woman.
"* Ca/. S.P. Dom. 1591-4, pp. 488-9. The prisoner, after confinement for a fortnight at the house of the justice Trenchard, was ordered by the Council to be removed to London unless he could be persuaded to renounce his religion. He spent two months in the Marshalsea and was then transferred to Dorchester, where- having been put upon trial he was convicted of the crime of high treason and rebellion against the queen andl executed 4 July, 1594, together with three companions from Chideock, Mr. Bosgrave, and the men-servants, John Cary and Patrick. Foley, op. cit. iii, 465-72.
2 33 5
A HISTORY OF DORSET
be removed to some other house and friends or placed with the sheriff of the county for the time being, for that if she should continue in the place where she is now resident we doubt would breed further mischief. For under cover of great hospitality and her bounty to the poor many are drawn to her faction and repair thither as to their only supporter.'"
Subsequently the lady was imprisoned together with nearly all her household and heavily fined. "^
During the seventeenth century. Catholic sentiment was kept alive in Dorset by the Webbs at Canford, and the Welds who came into possession of Lulworth Castle in 1641. Their sons swelled the ranks of the seminary priests, their daughters joined those communities established abroad for English nuns on their dispersal in whose establishment and maintenance they were largely instrumental."" Together with the owners of Chideock they remained faithful to the Royalist cause on the outbreak of civil war. Sir John Webb was ordered to be arrested by the Parliamentarians in 1641, but managed to escape, and rendered such services to Charles I, that in reward of them he was created a baronet."* Later on, about the time of Oates' plot, suspicion fell upon Mr. Humphrey Weld, and in 1679, by the advice of the Lords' Committee for investigating matters relating to the late ' horrid conspiracy,' he was deprived of the governorship of Portland Castle and his commission of the peace, the Privy Council directing that the castle of Lulworth, his dwelling in Portland Castle and 'Weld House,' London, should be searched for arms."' Since that time the Catholic owners of Lulworth have been visited by various sovereigns and members of the royal family, including George III and George IV when prince of Wales ;-^° The first Roman Catholic church erected in England since the Reformation was built here in 1794 by express permission of George III.-"
As regards the state generally of church activity in the archdeaconry during the earlier half of the seventeenth century, we may note that an Act was passed at the beginning of the reign of James I, for the transference of the rectory from Radipole to Melcombe, and the erection of a new parish church at the latter place, which was consecrated in 1606 by Dr. Zouch, suffragan to the bishop of Bristol."" Reports of the primary visitations carried out every three years by the dean of Salisbury in the prebends of the cathedral give a few entries of interest. A note in the year 1628 states that after the visitation of Sherborne, 14 July, it was ordained
upon entreaty of the minister and parishioners of Sherborne that for the convenience of the minister in going to the pulpitt and the people in hearing that the pulpitt shall be removed unto the next pillar of the church westward on that side where now he standith and so to be made that the minister may goe out of his seate where he readith prayers into the pulpitt, and the seates in the gallery which are so arranged that the faces of the people turn from the minister are to be altered so that they may face the minister for the better hearing.^^'
'" Cal. S.P. Dom. 1591-4, p. 521. '^ Foley, op. cit. iii, 472.
"' Ibid. 540. A member of the Webb family, Agatha, was one of several ladies of birth and 'singular virtue ' who accompanied Mary Caryll, of a well-known Catholic family of West Grinstead, as assistant in the establishment of a Benedictine monastery at Dunkirk, in 1662.
^» Ibid. 540, n. 9 ; v, 812. "' Lds. Jourv.
'™ The celebrated Mrs. Fitzherbert was by her first marriage a Mrs. Weld of Lulworth.
'*' It is said that George III gave permission for a mausoleum, which would include a church or chapel, but the idea of which was less calculated to upset lingering prejudice.
*«' Handbook for Church Congress at Weymouth, 1905 ; Rev. S. Lambert, T>!otes on Ch. 0/ Weymouth.
*" Liber Fisit. Decani, 1628.
34
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
In 1635 occurs a name destined to be one of the greatest in the century succeeding : John Deane of Lyme Regis was presented ' for refusing to receive the communion of Mr. Westley.'^^* Elizabeth Bugler was in 1639 presented for breaking the sabbath,
when summoned the widow confessed that upon the Sunday before Whitsunday upon urgent occasion she did for some of her customers grind in her mill at Sherborne certayne gristes for which she is heartily sorry .^*'
For the most part presentments at this time were made for moral offences, drunkenness and violence in church, occasionally for non-attendance at church or communion ; in 1635, Marian Davies, wife of Jenkin Davies of Sherborne, 'for striking Ryw Palmers wife in ye church'; ^^^ in 1638, Joanna Kelleway, ' for not receiving the Communion at Easter last ' ''^ ; Thomas Thomas of Alton Pancras was presented ' in that he absented himself from his parish church at tyme of divine prayers and hath not received the Sacrament in all his life tyme he being of the age of 27 yeares ' ; this last acknowledged his fault, humbly submitted himself, and was ordered to frequent the church and receive the sacrament the next week.^*^
Meantime, in spite of the existence of hotbeds of Catholicism such as we have indicated, the tide of public opinion in this county flowed steadily in the direction of Puritanism. So strong was the hold it had already obtained here, that in 1634 Laud complained that there were Puritans in nearly every parish in Dorset.'"' Bishop Skinner of Bristol in an address to the clergy at a visitation held by him at Dorchester, 18 September, 1637, proceeds, after emphasizing the importance of sound doctrine, to plead the value of ancient custom with regard to the practice of kneeling at prayers, the use of the cross in baptism, and the observance of set feasts and holidays."" That the general desire of a reform in church matters was very strong is shown by the message presented by this county to Parliament by word of mouth of Lord Digby in the general petition of grievances in 1 640."' The influence of John White, appointed to Holy Trinity in 1606, probably had much to do with making Dorchester a stronghold of Puritan sentiment."^ The ' Patriarch of Dor- chester,' as he was termed, was instrumental in organizing a scheme for sending out a colony chiefly composed of Dorset men to settle at New Dorchester, Mass. At the beginning of the Long Parliament he took the covenant, and succeeded in inducing many of his fellow-townsmen to do the same."" He and his friend William Benn, rector of All Saints', who
'" Liber Visit. Decani, 1635. This would be Bartholomew Wesley, the great-grandfather of the revivalist of the eighteenth century. '" Ibid. 1639. ^''Mbid. 1635. "'" Ibid. 1638.
'^ Ibid. 1669. The Rev. C. H. Mayo has noted in Buckland Neuilon Parish Reg. how church discipline was still maintained in the later part of the seventeenth century. On 3 May, 1674, the register records that Mr. William Aarnold and Jone Lane were excommunicated in Bucidand church ; on the i6th of the same month that Martha Lane, the reputed ' dafter ' of Thomas Trew of Clinger, was baptized ; a few days after, on 31 May, ' Thomas Trew bore penance in Church ' (p. 10). Mr. William Arnold was again excommuni- cated on 4 Oct. 1685.
""^ W. Densham and J. Ogle, Congregational Ch. in Dorset, Introd. p. vii.
''" Speech of Dr. R. Skinner, Lord Bp. of Bristol, at the Visit, at Dorchester (published 1744).
*" Shaw, Hist. ofCh. of Engl, during the Civil War, i, 9-12.
"' According to Fuller {IVorthies, i, 340), his influence brought about great reforms in the condition of the town. Beginning as a moderate Puritan, his views were probably rendered more extreme by the persecution to which he was subjected. He was summoned before the Court of High Commission in 1625, to answer respecting certain papers that had been found in his study, but was eventually discharged and his informant reproved for ' twattling.' Cal. S.P. Dom. 1635-6, p. 513 ; 1638-9, p. 217.
"^ Hutchins, Hist, of Dorset, ii, 375.
35
A HISTORY OF DORSET
seconded all his efforts to promote the Presbyterian cause in the town, were both among the triers deputed to examine the qualifications of candidates for the cure of souls under the Commonwealth, and two daughters of Mr. White married ministers who were among the ejected in this county at the Restoration: John Wesley and Benjamin Way.
The recent publication of the minute books of the Dorset Standing Committee,"^ which came into operation shortly after the issue of the ordinance of i July, 1644, affords ample information as to the ecclesiastical working of the county during the Commonwealth. The ecclesiastical powers vested in the members of this committee enabled them to determine the delinquency, scandal, or malignancy of any incumbent, whether he had preached against the Parliament or joined the king's army,""' to enforce the use of the Directory, and to make appointment of other ministers to serve in the cures that had been sequestered, provided their names had been approved by those deputed to examine them. Besides these duties they are found ordering additions to small stipends, as in the case of the vicar of Abbotsbury,-'^ appointing lecturers,"" assigning stipends to schoolmasters,"" directing the pay- ment of fifths to which the families of ejected ministers were entitled out of sequestered benefices ; in many cases intruded ministers showed great reluc- tance to pay and the committee had to resort to threats in order to enforce payment. Among these was Bartholomew 'Westleye' of Charmouth, the great-grandfather of the revivalist, who in January, 1648, was ordered to pay the full fifths of the parsonage, or to show cause why he refused ; the follow- ing February came the order, ' whereas it is made known to us that Mr. Nor- rington who was outed from the church of Charmouth for scandal hath since obtained in the county of Wilts ^^3° P^"" annum for his livelyhood, Mr. Westley is released from payment of fifths, as the whole profits of Char- mouth only amount to about ^20.'"'' Among smaller matters of detail referred to the committee was the official custody of the church key,"*" which at Stoke Abbott had been detained by the ' outed ' incumbent."*^ Out of the lands, tenements, &c., belonging to any dean and chapter or impropriated personages within the county under sequestration, they advised the assignment of certain sums in augmentation of the living or the maintenance of a lecture in some fifty different parishes, the ministers or lecturers of which should first be approved by the committee before the extra payment should be made to them."*" On 6 January, 1646, Walter Fry and John Squibb, gent., were appointed to receive and distribute their payments out of the rents payable from the
"* Dorset SlanJ. Com. ed. by C. H. Mayo, 1902.
'" On 22 Dec. 1642, it was moved in Parliament that in the case of those ministers who had left their charges and joi-ned the king's forces the profits of their livings should be sequestered and their names presented to ' this House.' Lds. Journ. v, 516. '" Min. Bks. ofDonet ^tand. Com. 78.
*" Ibid. 67. '"' At Beaminster and Dorchester. Ibid. 29, 85
"' Ibid. 491, 500-1. W.ilker's account of the fate of this outed minister is that ' he left his wife and Five Children as poor as Misery could make them,' and that ' his widow was at length constrained to beg the charity of the Corporation for Ministers' Widows by whom she was relieved ' ; Sufferings of the Clerg<i,\\, 318. Other intruded ministers who appeared unwilling to pay were John Galping at Durweston, who was admonished in 1647 and again in 1648, 'on the sad complaint of Mr. Richard Hooke, last incumbent of Durweston in this countie on the behalfe of himself his wife and children' {Jilin. Bks. 282, 432) ; James Rawson, of Haselbury Bryan (ibid. 304, 438) ; John Salway, of Whitchurch Canonicorum (ibid. 347, 403), who, according to Walker {Sufferings of the Clergy, ii, 293), protested ' that hee will rather leave the place than paie any fifths' ; John Moulas, at Tarrant G\m\\\\s. {Min. Bks. 374) ; William Hardy at Sturminster Marshall (ibid. 464, 538) ; Henry Lamb, at Burton Bradstock (ibid. 522).
-*» Ibid. 152, 176, 341, 540. '-' Ibid. loi. =" Ibid. 159-60.
36
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
irevenues of the dean and chapter.^^'' The following benefices, or portions of benefices, were ordered to be united : — Knighton to Lillington, Beer Hackett to Yetminster, Stockwood to Melbury Bubb, Knowlton to Horton, Chilcombe to Askerswell, Wraxall to Rampisham, East Holme to East Stoke and the three Wareham churches; the inhabitants of the annexed churches were admonished to attend the other. Motcombe was ordered to be separated from ■Gillingham.^"* On 25 December, 1646, we read an order was issued for the rebuilding of the town of Beaminster after the fire, to be paid for out of the ■sequestered estate (amounting to ^^2,000) of Mr. George Penny of Toller, a recusant.**"
As regards the actual number of sequestrations that took place during the Commonwealth and the new regime introduced by the Parliament, they •cannot be much under seventy. From the minute books of the committee as many as fifty-nine have been extracted, the greater number of which, it has been noted, had already occurred when the minute books, commencing in August, 1645, began.^"" The names of six more sequestered clergy are also given from another source,^" and Walker's list, containing only seventeen names, includes three that are not given in either of the other two lists. ^*'*' In October, 1646, William Gollop, rector of Stoke Abbott, was declared 'not only a delinquent and within the ordinance of sequestration, but allso a malignant and a scandalous minister and an enemy ag' the pliam'.'*"^ Another entry states: 'the inhabitants of Wareham desire the removall of Thos. Whiteroe clerke who now doth officiate in that towne in respect of his insufficiency and scandalous lyfe.' ''° On 6 January, i 646-7, an unordained person, one Mr. Stapleton, who had been admitted to preach in the church of Radipole ' to the great disturbance and hazard of the garrison of Wey- mouth and Melcombe Regis,' was inhibited. ^^^ The changes introduced by the committee did not, however, meet with universal approval in the county, and in sundry places parishioners refused to pay tithes to the newly-appointed ministers. At Charlton Marshall such a dispute arose between Mr. John Trottle and his flock that three members of the committee, Mr. Chettle, Mr. Elias Bond, and Mr. John Squibb, were desired to make inquiry into its cause.^^- At Silton the dissatisfaction of the parishioners with the minister for whom they had petitioned became so great that the Committee ' finde the discontent between them to bee growne soe high as that we conceive the sayd Mr. Boles will not be able to doe any good in the way of his ministry in that place,' and he was forthwith discharged from officiating there. Among the archives of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis a minute book of the Corporation, 1644—9, during the period when the town was occupied by the Parliamentarians, records, 10 April, 1646, that Robert Saunders, mariner, was heard to say ' that Mr. Ince and Mr. Way, the two ministers, were knaves both in their preaching, and that the said Mr. Way did preach plaine Popery; and that he would justifie to Mr. Ince his face, that he was a knave in his preaching, and that he would soundly heare of it, or used words to the like effect.' -^* A later entry the same year, however, states that the said Mr. Ince
'«' Miti. Bb. of Dorset Stand. Com. 1 59-60. "' Ibid. 60, 61, 106, 112, 125, 138, 148, 206.
■ »»' Ibid. 139-14-0. '"^ Ibid.Introd.pp. xxxvi-xxxviii. =>«' Add. MS. 8845.
"' Walker, Sufferings of the Clergy, W, passim. '"^ Minute Bks. 58, 59.
"» IbiJ. 67. "' Ibid. 130. ^" Ibid. 333.
^' Ibid. 234. »* Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. v, App. pt. i, 587.
37
93
A HISTORY OF DORSET
' having used his function of a minister in the town as a preacher to the garrison almost two yeares,' the mayor, aldermen, bailiffs, and burgesses were anxious to secure him as their pastor,"' and to this end sent a petition to- Parliament ' to settle some mayntenance on the towne for a minister, nothing arising out of the towne (being very poore and populous) but what the people please voluntarily to contribute.' A promise of >Ci°° P^f annum 'to be settled upon this and Radipole which is but one pastorall charge,' was obtained, and the townsmen generally promised to make a contribution according to their abilities and to provide a house, but Mr. Ince in the mean- time had been negotiating with the parishioners of Donhead in Wiltshire, and had promised himself as their minister. The ' souldiery and the townesmen ' were very much troubled and discontented upon receiving this news, and efforts were made to induce Mr. Ince to break, his promise to the people of Donhead. The matter was referred at last to the House of Commons who again referred the case to certain members of the Assembly of Divines, but their decision is not given. -'^
The confidence of the Puritan party in the sincerity of the promises contained in the Declaration of Breda, 1660, assuring ' liberty to tender con- sciences, and that no man shall be disquieted or called in question for differ- ences of opinion in matters of religion which do not disturb the peace of the kingdom,' "^ was speedily banished after the Restoration had become an accomplished fact. Of the 2,000 ministers — composing about a fifth of the entire number — who, in obedience to their consciences on the passing of the Act of Uniformity, laid down their offices ^^* some seventy or eighty belonged to this county.''^' The very date fixed for the Act in 1662 to come into operation (24 August) seems to have been designed with the object of making its severity most keenly felt, for it was appointed for a time when a whole year's tithe was due but not yet paid.'""^ Many of the ministers thus forcibly retired from their cures continued to reside in the places where they had officiated until they were driven from their homes by the Five Mile Act, holding services where they could in private houses and meeting with much persecution. Of these, Calamy notes Thomas Rowe, ejected from Lytchett Matravers, ' twice imprisoned with some other ministers tho' not above a fortnight either time. On the Five Mile Act he removed to Little Canford near Wimborne and preached several times in his own house without any persecution or disturbance, the reason of which was supposed to be the great number of Papists in those parts who lived under the countenance of a con- siderable knight of that religion, for they who were disposed could not for shame disturb him and leave them unmolested.''"^ Mr. John Weeks of Buckland Newton, for six months twice imprisoned for Nonconformity, during his confinement ' preached out of the prison windows to any that were disposed to hear him.' '"" Other ejected ministers were Mr. John Hardy of
''^ This was in November, 1646 ; the previous year on 11 March the authorities of the town sent a petition to the Standing Committee stating that ' being deeply affected with the necessity of having an able godly preacher of the Word to be settled amongst them, and a sufficient mayntenance for such a minister, doe conceive itt their duty to present their petition to that end unto youre high Court of Parliament ' ; ibid.
"* Ibid. 588-9. "" Clarendon, Hist, of the Rebellion, xvi, 193.
*" Calamy, Nonconformist Memorial, vol. i, Pref. iii.
**' Calamy records some 64 or 65 (ibid, ii, 115—76). W. Densham and J. Ogle in an appendix to their valuable work Congregational Churches in Dorset (407—15) give a list with some nine more.
*" Ibid. Introd. x. "" Nonconformist Memorial, ii, 133. '" Continuation, i, 415.
38
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
Symondsbury, who preached in Westminster Abbey on the Day of Thanks- giving for the Restoration ; ^^ Mr. Timothy Sacheverel of Tarrant Hinton, great-uncle to the famous Doctor Sacheverel of Queen Anne's time/"* who, with three other ministers, Mr. Ince, Mr. Hallet of Shaftesbury, and Mr. Bampfield, was arrested for preaching publicly, and indicted at the assizes 7 August, 1663, for 'a riotous and unlawful assembly held at Shaftesbury 23 July ; ' they were all found guilty and fined 40 marks each.'°^
But the most interesting of the sufferers of ' the fatal Bartholomew ' ^"^ are the Wesleys, Bartholomew and John, great-grandfather and grandfather respectively of the eighteenth-century Reformer. The former, who had been ' intruded ' by Parliament in the place of Mr. Norrington, ' outed ' minister at Charmouth, was in his turn ejected from his cure there. He continued to reside at Charmouth until driven away by the passing of the Five Mile Act, as his abode lay within two miles of the town.'" The final record of him states that ' he lived several years after he was silenced, but the death of his son made a very sensible alteration in the father, so that he declined apace and did not long survive him.''"' John Wesley, his son, sent in 1658 to preach at Winterborne Whitchurch on leaving Oxford, appears to have become early a marked man in the county. It was reported to the bishop of Bristol, Gilbert Ironside, when visiting the diocese on his appointment in 1661, that Mr. Wesley refused to read the Book of Common Prayer after the passing of the Act of Uniformity, and the bishop sent for him to question him as to his views and the legality of his orders. At the close of an interview, which in its real kindness and consideration on the part of the bishop is in marked con- trast to the one held by his successor, James Butler, in 1739, with the great revivalist,"" Ironside, finding the preacher deaf to all arguments, dismissed liim with the words ' I will not meddle with you, and will do you all the good I can.''^" But John Wesley was evidently a man to inspire animosity in those who differed from him and were not, like Bishop Ironside, able to appreciate the rigid honesty and sincerity of purpose that underlay his obstinacy. At the instigation, it is said, of some ' persons of Figure ' in the neighbourhood, he was seized on the Lord's Day as he was coming out of church early in 1662 before the Act had come into effect, carried off to Blandford, and committed to prison.'" He was afterwards released, but bound over to appear at the assizes, where he triumphantly asserted himself, and
'"' Continuation, 414. "' Nonconformist Memorial, ii, 157.
'"^ Continuation, \, 449.
'* The 24 Aug. was St. Bartholomew's Day, and the date fixed for the Act of Uniformity to take effect is often alluded to as ' the second Bartholomew.'
™' Beal, Biog. Notices of the Wesley Family, 13. ' Forbidden by law,' says Calamy, ' the Nonconformists ■of the south-west of Dorset stole away to the solitudes of Pinney, and there in a dell between rocks like the Covenanters elsewhere they worshipped their God. The place has ever since been known as Whitechapel Rocks.' Continuation, i, 429. ™* Ibid.
'"" The bishop of Bristol in his famous interview with John Wesley charged the Methodists with ' a horrid thing, a very horrid thing,' namely, with pretending to extraordinary revelations and gifts of the Holy Spirit and concluded by telling the reformer he had no business in the diocese, and advising him ' to go hence. Wesley's Works, xiii, 470.
"° Calamy, Continuation, i, 439. Kennett in his account of the interview says ' the bishop was more civil to him (Wesley) than he to the bishop.' A son of Ironside succeeded his father as rector of Long Bredy in Dorset ; he is said to have been ejected from his benefice by the Long Parliament, and reduced to the utmost poverty ; Hutchins, Hist, of Dorset, ii, 149.
'" An entry in the Cal.S.P.Dom. (1660-1, p. 504), under date 5 Feb. 1661, records information laid against John Wesley, vicar of Winterborne Whitchurch, ' for diabolically railing in the pulpit against the late iing and his posterity, and praising Cromwell.'
39
A HISTORY OF DORSET
though bound over to appear again ' came joyfully home,' and continued tO' preach every Lord's Day till 17 August, when he gave a final address to a ' weeping auditory ' from Acts xx, 32. On 26 October the place was declared vacant and an order given to sequestrate the profits, ' but his people had given him w^hat was his due.' Wesley then established himself with his family at Melcombe Regis, but the corporation made an order against his settlement there, imposing a fine of ^(^20 upon his landlady and 5J. per week upon him. These proceedings forced him out of the borough and he went to Bridg- water, Ilminster, and Taunton, where he met with great kindness from the three denominations of Dissenters, and was almost daily employed in preaching. At length a gentleman living at Preston, two or three miles from Melcombe, offered him the use of his house as a residence rent free. The offer was- accepted ; he removed thither,'^' and his son Samuel, the father of the Revivalist, is said to have been born at Preston. But the Five Mile Act subsequently drove John Wesley from this refuge. After being concealed for some time he ventured to return again to his family, was seized,, imprisoned, and finally died before his father."' At Dorchester, always a lively centre of Puritan feeling, it was reported at the close of 1664 that out of nine Nonconformist ministers four had been lately arrested on suspicion of being privy to the plot.'^* Six ministers and seventy others were now in prison for Nonconformity, ' the town is most factious and has daily conventicles.' '^°
The proclamation of an Indulgence for Nonconformists in 1672 was quickly followed by applications for licences to hold Nonconformist services in the following places : Beaminster, Bettiscombe, Bothenwood, Bradford Abbas, Bridport, Broadwindsor, Cerne, Dorchester, East Morden, Fordington, Hawk- church, Lyme, Marshwood, Milton Abbas, Morden, Motcombe, Over Compton, Quarleston Stickland, Stalbridge, Shaftesbury, Stour Provost, Tarrant Monkton, Thornhill, Wareham, Weymouth, Wimborne, Winterborne King- ston, Winterborne Zelstone, Wootton Fitzpaine ; "^ and a ' thankful address ' signed by thirty-eight dissenting ministers in Dorset was presented to the king thanking him for his clemency and promising continually to pray for ' Your Royal Person, familie, Councill and Government as Dutie obligeth us your loyal subjects and ministers of the Gospel.' "^ In all the principal towns in this county Nonconformity can show an honourable succession of dissenting ministers, many dating from the ejection of St. Bartholomew's Day, 1662, and subsequent persecutions. '''
Before quitting a period which closes with the passing of the Act of Toleration in 1689, a word must be said of the Quakers, of whom a consider-
''- Calamy, Continuation, i, 448. The borough records of Weymouth during 1665-6 record a number of people of Melcombe Regis and the neighbourhood convicted of meeting to hold services other than those allowed in the liturgy of the Church of England. Most of these meetings appear to have been held in the house of Henry Saunders, mariner of Melcombe Regis and Dorothy his wife, the latter being convicted several times. For a first offence they were fined, on a second conviction committed to the town gaol ' for the space of 3 months and a day.' In all probability John Wesley was present at some of these meetings. Beal, Fathers of the Wesley Family, 96—8.
'" Ibid. Blog. Notices of Wesley Family, 31.
^" In 1663 it was reported that a rising was daily expected in Somerset and Dorset ; Cal. S.P. Dom. 1663-4, P- 150-
^'^ Ibid. 1664-5, p. 130. "« Ibid. i67i-2,p. 664.
^" Ibid. 527. The Indulgence was withdrawn the following year.
'" Somerset and Dorset N. and Q. ; Nonconformist Succession In Dorset, vols, i, ii, passim.
40
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
able number were formerly to be found in Dorset."' The sect of the Society of Friends, which sprang up towards the middle of the century and to whom the term Quaker was first applied in 1650/^" appears to have suffered equally under the regime of the Parliament and the Acts passed on the Restoration.*^' The tenets of their persuasion, their refusal to pay tithes or to be chargeable for the rates and assessments of churches whose worship they disapproved, exposed them to much contempt and dislike, while their objection to taking an oath in a court of justice or to remove their hats seems to have been universally misunderstood. In Dorset, between 1650 and 1660, some fifty-six names are recorded of those committed to prison, and sixty-six from 1660 onwards ; '"^ there is evidence of meeting houses at Bridport, Dorchester, Hawkchurch, Sherborne, Evershot, Corfe, South Perrott, Poole. At the beginning it must be admitted many convictions were due not only to adherence to the above unpopular views, but also to ' speaking to the people in the steeple-house,' or ' declaring truth,' &c. Thus
on 1 6th of the 9th month (1656) Jasper Bett being at the steeple-house in Weymouth (Melcombe Regis) when the Priest had clone asked him whether he was a ?ninister of Christ ? The Priest answered / am, and went away ; but the People fell violently upon Jasper beating and abusing him sorely and then hailed him to prison where he lay several days.'-^
As persecutions became severer these officious testimonies to the ' truth ' were dropped, offenders were ' set in the stockes,' ^"* several on their way to attend meetings were ' whipped and put outside the town under pretence that they were vagabonds.' ^~' In 1657 six were committed to gaol for ' uncourtly behaviour before the justices,' i.e. refusing to uncover.*^' Quaker meetings were always subject to interruption, and those attending them to insult, even in the open street.^" An Act was passed in 1661 with special reference to their refusal to take an oath,'"' and the following year it is stated there were about 200 Quakers imprisoned in Dorset for wearing their hats in court, not swearing, and opening their shops on 29 May and 12 June, days appointed to be observed as a fast for fine weather. '*-"
Non-juring at the close of the century seems to have confined itself mostly to the Roman Catholics, or ' popish recusants ' as they were still called,^'*" who, after the 'Unnatural Rebellion' of 17 15, were obliged to register their names and estates. The return furnished of those ' Roman Catholic Nonjurors and others in Dorset, who refused to take the oaths to king George ' gives fifty-
'" In response to an inquiry in the Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries as to Dorset Quaker burial grounds a list is there given (i, 1 53) showing their existence at Bridport, Cerne, Corfe, Dorchester, Hawkchurch, Lyme Regis, Marnhull, Poole, Ryme Intrinseca, Shaftesbury, Sherborne, and Weymouth.
^'° The year succeeding the imprisonment of George Fox at Nottingham.
'*' Besse, Abstract of Sufferings of the Quakers, i, Introd. vi, vii, viii, ix.
"» Ibid. 530-1 ; ii, 463-4. "3 Ibid, i, 75. '-'' Ibid. 77.
'« Ibid. "« Ibid. 79.
'=' Ibid. 80-81. ^'» Ibid, ii, Pref pp. xi-xv.
*" Cal. S.P. Dom. 1661-2, p. 426. Persecutions did not cease till the passing of the Act of Toleration, 1689, and members of this sect continued to be presented at the assizes at Dorchester for adherence to their opinions. 'A powerful factor,' says Bejse, ' in granting warrants for distresses in 1674 for holding meetings, amounting to ^^97 9/. lod. was Justice Culliford, who much transgressed the Bounds of his office in kicking Deborah Coleman an innocent woman on her Belly and other parts of her Body and striking her with his Dog- whip ' ; Collections of Sufferings of Quakers, i, 1 70.
"" Oberton's list of clerical and lay non-jurors who refused to take the o.ith of allegiance to William and Mary in 1689 and again in I 70 1-2 and 1 7 14, only gives the name of one clergyman in the Bristol diocese who can be claimed for Dorset : W. Flud, Fludd, or Flood, vicar of Halstock ; The Nonjurors, 478.
2 41 6
A HISTORY OF DORSET
eight names, of whom many, like the Arundels, Sir John Webb of Great Canford, and Humphrey Weld of Lulworth Castle, are already familiar/'^
After the turmoil and struggles of the seventeenth, the eighteenth century with its moral and spiritual destitution, its ' colourless indifferentism,' comes as a period remarkable chiefly for its stagnation and lack of effort generally in the church. '^^ The abuses, pluralism, and non-residence, that marked the clergy in the mass, the poverty of the greater number of them, the great social difference that showed itself between their different ranks '^^ were probably as much present in Dorset, with its rural districts comprising many small and ill-paid benefices, as in other parts of the country. From the churchwardens' accounts of Ashmore, says the historian of the parish,
to some extent we can trace the degradation of the church. It was found at three vestry meetings held in succession in 1 80 1-2 that the roof of the church was dangerous to worshippers, the pulpit and altar rail rotten, that the gallery, the steps into it, and the seats both in gallery and body of the church were in need of repair. The Holy Communion, it appeared, was celebrated three times a year — Christmas, Easter and Whitsunday — till 1 79 1, afterwards quarterly for a considerable number of years.'^*
As regards those flourishing Nonconformist communities that the previous century had done so much to establish and organize, though there may have been, as has been said, an awakening among them contemporaneous with Wesley's great work,''^ it has also been shown what a disintegrating in- fluence Arianism had especially in the west of England where it seized on the younger and more highly educated generation of ministers.^'* ' Non- conformity went into the controversy united and strong,' say the authors of the Story of Congregational Churches in Dorset, ' having the adhesion of a large number of the most influential and even aristocratic families in the country. It came out of it disunited and impoverished.' '" That Nonconformist suc- cession in Dorset, to which allusion has been made, in many cases shows the manner in which congregations split up and seceded over this controversy.
As far as the work of John Wesley actually in Dorset is concerned the Joi/rna/ shows that, with the exception of Shaftesbury, he visited the county where his name was already so familiar but rarely. At Shaftesbury he stopped frequently on his way to and from the west. On the first of these occasions, recorded in the Journa/, 31 July, 1750, he preached in the evening in a house accommodating from four to five hundred people, ' it was soon filled from end to end . . . none stirred, none spoke, none smiled, many were in tears and many others were filled with joy unspeakable.' ^'^ Return- ing from Cornwall Wesley called again at Shaftesbury, and the day after his
^^' Return transmitted to the Commissioners (printed 1 745).
''' The bishopric of Bristol — the poorest in England — was throughout the century held in succession by men who obviously only accepted it as a stepping-jtone to higher things. Thomas Gooch, 1737-8, stayed so short a time 'as never to have visited his diocese.' Joseph Butler accepting the offer of the bishopric in 1738 could not help remarking that it was ' not very suitable either to the condition of my fortune or the circum- stances of my preferment, nor as I should have thought to the recommendation with which I was honoured,' referring to the queen's interest {Diet. Nat. Biog. viii, 69). Bishop Newton, 1761-82, 'plaintively' enumerates the various preferments he was called on to resign on his promotion to Bristol, 'the prebend of Westminster, the precentorship of York, the lectureship of St. George's, Hanover Square, and the genteel office of the sub-almoner.'
'^ Overton, EngL Ch. in Eighteenth Cent. 287. ^' E. W. Watson, Hist, of Parish of Ashmore, 92.
"' W. Densham and J. Ogle, Congl. Churches in Dorset, Introd. xiv.
^= Ibid. App. +24-6. *" Ibid. ''^ fount, ii, 167.
42
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
arrival ' preached at noon in the most riotous part of the town where four ways met ; but none made any noise or spoke one word while I called the wicked to forsake his way.' ^'^^ The civic authorities, however, took alarm, and ' after I was set down a constable came and said, " Sir, the mayor dis- charges you from preaching in the Borough any more," ' whereupon Wesley replied, ' While King George gives me leave to preach I shall not ask leave of the mayor of Shaftesbury.' "° Wesley's impressions of the town underwent many changes in the years succeeding. In 1755, after preaching to ' sleepy ' congregations at Reading, he reported ' a much more lively people at Shaftesbury,' '" but on the occasion of a visit, 28 September, 1766, described the town as ' cold, uncomfortable Shaftesbury . . . spoke exceeding strong words.' '''^ The previous 29 August he had opened the new chapel here.'*'' In 1 771, stopping at Shaftesbury on his way to Portsmouth from Bristol, the 'Journal records ' preached to a numerous congregation but wonderfully unconcerned. I scarce know a town in England where so much preaching has been to so little purpose.' '** The indifference and coldness of which Wesley complained at Shaftesbury may possibly be explained by a reference to another town not far removed : Frome, ' dry, barren, uncomfort- able place.' '*^ ' In this town,' says Wesley, ' there be such a mixture of men of all opinions, Anabaptists, Quakers, Presbyterians, Arians, Antinomians, Moravians and what not. If any hold to the truth in the midst of all these surely the power must be of God.^*^ His last reference to Shaftesbury, how- ever, is more encouraging, 'I preached,' says the yoi^r/7rt/, 15 August, 1785, ' at Shaftesbury at nine to such a congregation as I had not seen there before. I was glad to see among them the gentleman who thirty years ago sent his officer to discharge me from preaching in his borough.' '*^
The spiritual awakening in the Church, which towards the middle of the nineteenth century resulted from the Oxford Movement, dates in Dorset from the year 1836, when by an order in council the whole county forming the archdeaconry was detached from the diocese of Bristol and became again united to that of Salisbury. In such dioceses as Salisbury under Bishops Denison, Hamilton and Moberly you trace, says the ecclesiastical historian of this period, the peculiar stamp of the Revival in what was done.'*^ The charge delivered in 1855 by Bishop Kerr Hamilton in which he outlines the changes initiated by his predecessor Bishop Denison, 1837—54, gives some idea of the practical work accomplished in the parishes and in the diocese at large.'*^ Beginning with confirmation, the late bishop's first care, he says :
The old custom in this diocese before the present century was, I believe, to confirm only at the few places at which visitations were held. This number had been afterwards a little increased, but the year in which Bishop Denison began his ministry he formed, with the assistance of the archdeacons, a much enlarged scheme for holding 28 confirmations in Dorset and 29 in Wilts. At his last tour of confirmations this number was increased to 45 in Dorset and to 40 in Wilts, and he also arranged that there should be an annual confirmation in the chief towns of that part of the diocese where the general confir- mation was not held.^^°
S39
' Journ. ii, 172. "" Ibid. "' Ibid. 305. '" Ibid, iii, 351. '" Ibid. 217.
'" Ibid. 451. Another entry records that Wesley preached at Melcombe and Shaftesbury on 15 Sept. 1779. Ibid, iv, 169.
^" Ibid, ii, 264. "■ Ibid, iii, 351. '" Ibid, iv, 327.
"* Overton, The Anglican Revival, 2 1 8.
"' Charge to the Clergy of Diocese of Salisbury at his primary visitation. '^ Ibid. 13.
43
A HISTORY OF DORSET
Sixteen years ago (continues the bishop) out of the 556 churches and chapels in the diocese there were 2 sermons on Sunday in only 143. There are now 2 sermons or lectures in 426, that is to say 214 out of the 298 churches and chapels in Dorset. Of the 84 churches and chapels in Dorset where there are not 2 services and 2 sermons the account is as follows : in 16 parishes where there are 2 churches there is only I service and I sermon, in 33 parishes where there is one church there is one sermon, and in 24 only one service. In 35 parishes held in plurality there is but one sermon, and in 33 parishes similarly circumstanced one service.^^'
Bishop Kerr Hamilton, 1854-69, threw himself strenuously into the work of church building and restoration. The number of churches con- secrated during his episcopate amounted to 84, of those restored, to 104.*" Under his successor Bishop Moberly, 1869—85, the number of churches restored in the diocese reached a figure of 160.^" The nineteenth century was prolific in church building ; to take the largest town in Dorset, Wey- mouth, no less than five churches have been built within the borough since its commencement : St. Mary's church, the foundation stone of which was laid in 1 8 1 5 by command of Princess Charlotte of Wales ; Holy Trinity, erected 1836 ; St. John's, 1854 ; Christchurch, built in 1874 as a chapel of ease to the parish of St. Mary ; St. Paul's of Westham, formerly within the parish of Wyke Regis but formed in 1902 into an ecclesiastical parish under the name of St. Paul's Weymouth, was opened in 1896.'°*
In Dorset, as elsewhere, the duty that confronts the Church is not only to carry on the work and organization so well begun but to grapple with the difficulties presented by the different circumstances that have arisen since the earlier part of the last century. That this is well understood may be seen from the objects and purposes of the Queen Victoria Clergy Fund, to which the Salisbury Diocesan Board has been affiliated since its incorpora- tion in 1897, which aims at raising the value of poor benefices, with popula- tions of not less than 150, to an income of _^200 per annum, while a move- ment has been set on foot in the diocese for the union of small benefices and the re-arrangement of neighbouring parishes enabling them to be worked by one incumbent.'*^" In this manner it is hoped to meet the difficulties of the present agricultural decline, the diminishing number of candidates who offer themselves for ordination, and to ensure the fulfilment of the Apostolic injunc- tion that they which 'preach the Gospel ' shall also 'live of the Gospel.'
'^' Charges to the C/ergy of Diocese of Salisbury at his primary visitation, 14, 15. The bishop in 1842 in his charge spoke of an improvement in the observance of Ash Wednesday and Holy Thursday, ' of late almost universally neglected ; ' but by the returns made in 1854 Ash Wednesday was still disregarded in 1 1 2 churches and chapels in Dorset, and in 133 the Feast of our Lord's Ascension was still not kept. Ibid. 15. As regards the practice of morning and evening service daily, Bishop Hamilton, at least in later years, took occasion to uphold their being said in prii'ate if not in public according to the directions of the Prayer Book. H. P. Liddon, Walter Kerr Hamilton, Bp. of Salisbury : A Sketch, 57. In 185 S there were twenty-six churches in the whole diocese where daily services were held, in 1861 there were thirty-nine.
^'^ Ibid. App. 126.
'*' Though some smaller works may be included in this list. John Wordsworth, Bp. of Salisbury, Four addresses to clergy and churchwardens of diocese of Salisbury at his primary visitation.
"' Handbook for Church Congress at JVeymouth, 1905 ; Rev. S. Lambert, Notes on Ch. of JVeymouth, 75-81.
"' Report of the Board to the Diocesan Synod, Salisbury Diocesan Gazette, April, 1906, 67.
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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
APPENDIX
ecclesustiCjIL divisions of the county
The conversion of Dorset, as has been already described, was finally accomplished by the establishment in 705 of a bishop-stool at Sherborne, the see of which, described roughly as lying ' west of Selwood,' was carved out of the old Wessex diocese on its partition at the death of Bishop Haeddi. For more than three centuries — and in spite of many fluctuations — the head of the diocese pertained to this county, but in 1075, following the decree of the Council of London which ordered the removal of sees generally to more populous centres, it was transferred to Old Sarum and subsequently to Salisbury to the diocese of which Dorset was attached down to the sixteenth century. In 1542 this county, then forming the archdeaconry of Dorset, was severed from Salisbury and annexed to the new see erected at Bristol under which it remained until the year 1836, when by an order in council it was again united to the Salisbury diocese.
The thirteenth-century compilation of church property, known as the Taxation of Pope Nicholas IV, gives the five rural deaneries into which the archdeaconry of Dorset was then divided, namely, Shaftesbury, Pimperne, Whitchurch, Dorchester, and Bridport, and records the names of 171 churches besides Wimborne Minster — a deanery in itself — and several dependent chapelries. The Survey of 1340, recording the value of the ninth of corn, wool, and lambs which had been granted to Edward III, shows a marked increase in churches, which then numbered 218. The f^ahr Ecc/esiasticus, which Henry VIII ordered to be taken in 1 535, shows a further increase to 234.
At the present time no addition has been made to the number of deaneries, but each deanery has been subdivided into two, three, or four portions.
The names of the difiFerent parishes under their several deaneries and portions are as follows : —
Deanery of Bridport
Jhhotshury Portion : Abbotsbury, Long Bredy with Little Bredy, Cattistock, Chilfrome, Compton Abbas or West Compton, Langton Herring, Litton Cheney, Maiden Newton, Portisham, Puncknowle, Swyre, Winterborne Abbas with Winterborne Steepleton.
Bridport Portion : Allington, Askerswell, Bothenhampton, Bradpole with St. Andrew's Chapel, Bridport, Burton Bradstock with Shipton Gorge, Chilcombe, Loders, Powerstock with West Milton, North Poorton, Rampisham with Wraxall, Symondsbury with Eype and Broad Oak, Toller Porcorum, Walditch, Wytherstone.
Lyme Portion : Bettiscombe, Catherston Leweston, Chardstock St. Andrew, Chardstock All Saints, Chideock, Hawkchurch, Lyme Regis, Monkton Wyld, Pilsdon, Thorncombe, Wam- brook, Whitchurch Canonicorum with Marshwood and Stanton St. Gabriel, Wootton Fitzpaine.
Bearnimter Portion : Beaminster with Trinity Chapel, Broadwindsor with Blackdown and Drimpton and Burstock, Cheddington, East Chelborough or Lewcombe with West Chelborough, Cors- combe, Halstock, Hooke, Mapperton, Melplash, Netherbury with Solway Ash, South Perrott with Mosterton, Stoke Abbott or Abbotstoke, Toller Whelme.
Deanery of Dorchester
Dorchester Portion : Bradford Peverell, Broadmayne with West Knighton, Charminster with Stratton, Compton Valence, Dorchester St. Peter, Dorchester Holy Trinity with Frome Whitfield, Dorchester All Saints, Fordington, West Fordington, Frampton, Frome Vauchurch, Moreton, Stafford, Toller Fratrum with Wynford Eagle, Whitcombe, Winterborne Monkton, Winterborne St. Martin, Winterborne Came, Woodsford.
JVeymouth Portion : Bincombe with Broadway, Buckland Ripers, West Chickerell, Fleet, Melcombe Regis with Christchurch and Radipole, Osmington, Owermoigne, Portland St. George with Southwell St. Andrew, Portland St. John, Portland St. Peter, Preston, Upway, Warmwell with Poxwell, Weymouth St. John, Weymouth Holy Trinity, Weymouth St. Paul, Wyke Regis.
45
A HISTORY OF DORSET
Purheck Portion : Branksea, Chaldon Herring, Church Knowle, Coombe Keynes, Corfe Castle, East Holme, Kimmeridge, Kingston, Langton Matravers, East Lulworth, West Lulworth, Steeple with the Grange Chapel and Tyneham, East Stoke, Studland, Swanage with Herston, Winfrith Newburgh with Burton, Worth Matravers, Wool.
Deanery of Pimperne
Blandford Portion : Ashmore, Blandford Forum, Chettlc, Farnham, Handley with Gussage St. Andrew, Langton Long Blandford, Pimperne, Shapwick, Steepleton Iwerne, Stourpaine, Tarrant Crawford, Tarrant Gunville, Tarrant Hinton, Tarrant Keynston, Tarrant Monkton with Tarrant Launceston, Tarrant Rushton with Tarrant Rawston.
Wimborne Portion : Alderholt, Chalbury, Colehill, Cranborne with Boveridge, Long Crichel with Crichel Moor, Edmondsham, Gussage All Saints, Gussage St. Michael, Hampreston, Hinton Martell, Hinton Parva or Stanbridge, Holt, Horton with Woodlands, West Parley, Pentridge, Verwood with West Moors, Wimborne Minster, Wimborne St. John, Wimborne St. Giles, Witchampton.
Deanery of Shaftesbury
Shaftesbury Portion : Bourton, Buckhorn Weston, Fifehead Magdalen, Gillingham with East and West Stour and Milton, Kington Magna, Marnhull, Motcombc with Enmore Green, Shaftesbury St. James, Shaftesbury Holy Trinity with St. Peter, Shaftesbury St. Rumbold or Cann, Silton, Stour Provost with Todber.
Stalbridge Portion : Long Burton with Holnest, Bishop's Caundle, Caundle Marsh, Purse Caundle, Stourton Caundle, Folke, Haydon, Holwell, Lydlinch, Stalbridge, Stock Gaylard, North Wootton.
Sherborne Portion : Batcombe, Beer Hackett, Bradford Abbas with Clifton Maybank, Castleton, Over Compton with Nether Compton, Hermitage, Leigh, Lillington, Melbury Osmond and Stock- wood with Melbury Sampford, Oborne, R.yme Intrinseca, Sherborne, Thornford, Yetminster with Chetnole.
Sturminster Newton Portion : Compton Abbas, Fontmell Magna with West Orchard, Hammoon, Hanford, Hinton St. Mary, Iwerne Minster, Iwerne Courtney with Farringdon, Manston, Melbury Abbas, Child Okeford, Okeford Fitzpaine, East Orchard with Margaret Marsh, Sturminster Newton, Sutton Waldron.
Deanery of Whitchurch
Bere Regis Portion : AfFpuddle with Turners Puddle, Athelhampton with Burleston, Bere Regis with Winterborne Kingston, Cheselbourne, Milborne St. Andrew with Dewlish, Melcombe Bingham, Piddlehinton, Piddletrenthide, Puddletown, Stinsford, Tincleton, Tolpuddle.
Poole Portion : Aimer, Arne, Bloxworth, Branksome All Saints, Branksome St. Clements, Canford Magna, Charborough, Corfe Mullen, Hamworthy, Heatherlands, Kinson with Talbot Village, Longfleet, Lytchett Matravers, Lytchett Minster, East Morden, Parkstone, Poole St. James, Poole St. Paul, Sturminster Marshall, Wareham, Winterborne Anderson, Winterborne Tomson, Winterborne Zelstone.
Cerne Portion : Alton Pancras, Buckland Newton with Plush, Cerne Abbas, Fifehead Neville, Frome St. Quintin with Melbury Bubb and Evershot, Godmanstone, Haselbury Bryan, Hillfield, Mappowder, Minterne Magna, Nether Cerne, Pulham, Sydling St. Nicholas, Up Cerne, Wootton Glanville.
Mi/ton Portion : Blandford St. Mary, Bryanston with Durweston, Hilton, Ibberton with Belchal- well, Milton Abbas, Shillingstone, Spettisbury with Charlton Marshall, Stoke Wake, Turnworth, Winterborne Clenston, Winterborne Houghton, Winterborne Stickland, Winterborne Whitchurch, Woolland.
46
THE RELIGIOUS HOUSES OF DORSET
INTRODUCTION
Dorset enjoyed a unique pre-eminence for the number and importance of its religious houses founded during the Saxon period. No fewer than nine monastic establishments are known to have existed in the county prior to the Norman Conquest ; of these the great houses of Sherborne, Shaftesbury, Abbotsbury, Cerne, and Milton continued after that epoch to rank as Bene- dictine abbeys ; the two abbeys of Cranborne and Horton survived as priories, dependent respectively upon the abbeys of Tewkesbury and Sherborne ; the famous early nunnery of Wimborne was converted into a college of secular canons, while at Wareham, where an early house of nuns is said to have been destroyed by the Danes in 876, a small priory sprang up as a cell to the Norman abbey of Lire.
The reformed Benedictines of the order of Cluny had a small priory at East Holme, and the Cistercians an abbey at Bindon, both founded before the end of the twelfth century. The Cistercians had also a house of nuns of much celebrity at Tarrant Kaines ; and it is probable that the ' Camesterne,' where, according to the Mappa Mundi^ compiled at the close of the twelfth century, certain ' white nuns ' were established, is a corruption of Kaines Tarrant.
It is remarkable that the canons of the Austin and Premonstratensian ! rules, so numerous elsewhere, had no foundations within this county, unless perhaps the obscure ' priory ' or ' chantry ' of Wilcheswood in Langton Wallis belonged to the canons regular. It seems, however, more probable that Wilcheswood should be considered as a small collegiate church, of which class the other example in Dorset was Wimborne Minster.
The Templars were unrepresented, but the Knights Hospitallers had a preceptory at Friar Mayne. The Dominican Friars are mentioned at Gil- lingham in 1267; their other settlement, at Melcombe Regis, was of far greater importance, and is remarkable as being the last house of the order established in England. The Franciscans settled at Dorchester, and the Carmelites had a short-lived settlement at Bridport. During the fourteenth century unsuccessful attempts appear to have been made to introduce Car- melites at Lyme, and Austin Friars at Sherborne. A remarkable ' priory
' Gervase of Cant. Op. Hist. (Rolls Sen), ii, 422. On the other hand, it has been suggested (Hutchins, Hist, of Dorset, ii, 289) that this was a settlement at VVinterborne Came. Leland's statement that .the nuns were Benedictines (Jtin. viii (2), 62) is presumably a slip, as the latter wore black.
47
A HISTORY OF DORSET
hermitage ' at Blackmoor, although stated to have been under the rule of St. Augustine, does not seem to have belonged to the Austin ' Friars Hermits,' nor yet to have become a house of Austin canons, as was sometimes the fate of such hermitages.
Some twelve hospitals are known to have existed in this county, but they were mostly small, and some were apparently unendowed lazar-houses.
A considerable amount of property was held in Dorset by alien houses, and in five or six cases the parent house established a cell or small priory upon its estates. These instances were at Frampton (the abbey of St. Stephen of Caen), Loders (St. Mary of Montebourg), Spettisbury (the abbey of Preaux), Wareham (the abbey of Lire), and possibly Povington (the abbey of Bee Hellouin). The latter is only called a priory in 1467, more than fifty years after it had been separated from the Norman abbey, and it is probable that it was never more than a grange or estate managed by the abbey's chief English cell, the priory of Ogbourne. In the same way the lands given by Roger de Beaumont in Stour Provost to the nuns of St. Leger of Preaux, and those in the neighbourhood of Winterborne Wast bestowed upon the Cluniac priory ' de Vasto,' near Boulogne, were never the site of any cell and priory. At Muckleford, which estate was granted with the advow- son of Bradford Peverell to the Norman abbey of Tiron," a cell was said to have been established,' but it is clear that the estate was really under the control of the abbey's cell of Andwell in Hampshire.* Similarly, the sup- posed cell of the Carthusian priory of Sheen at Shapwick ' was clearly no more than a grange.
HOUSES OF BENEDICTINE MONKS
I THE ABBEY OF ABBOTSBURY In the above account we have the name of the
founder of Abbotsbury as generally accepted :
Coker states in his Survey of the Countte of ' Sir Ore ' or Ore, Orcus, Orcy or Urce, steward
Dorset, quoting the register of the monastery, un- of the palace of King Canute and Tola or Thola
fortunately destroyed with the mansion-house of his wife. The date of their foundation however
the Strangeways at Abbotsbury in the civil wars varies with different historians. Reyner, in his
of Charles I, that here history of the Benedictine order in England,
..... • ■ r • r.".L • .- •.• . gives the year 1026,* Tanner states that about
was built in the verie mfancie of Chnstianitie amongst ^ r^ ^ • ■ ■, ■ r i
the Britains a church to St. Peter by Bertufus an ;°26 Orcus instituted a society of secuar canons
holie priest unto whom the same saint had often ap- ^ere which he or Tola his widow changed to
peared and amongst other things gave him a charter » monastery of the Benedictine order in the
written with his owne Hande, reign of Edward the Confessor ' Again, accord- ing to Coker, the monastery was built by Orcus
professing therein ' to have consecrated the church in 1044 and ' stored ' with Benedictine monks
himself and to have given it to Name Abodes- from the abbey of Cerne.* It would seem from
byry.' Afterwards the rules drawn up by Orcus for his gild or
King Canute gave to Sir Ore his Houscarle this Maternity of St Peter at Abbotsbury' that a
Abotsbury as alsoe Portshara and Helton ; all which society existed here previously which was later
the said Ore and Dame Thole his wife having no issue converted into a monastic establishment,
gave unto the church of St. Peter at Abotsbury, longe , ,
before built but then decayed and forsaken by reason , ^M'l^l' Benedict. T.^ct n, sec. v,, m. 3.
the Rovers from the sea often infested it.' , /"""^ (^^- ' 74+). Donet, 105 Orcus the steward
01 King Canute having expelled secular canons in-
' Ca/. Doc. France, 358. troJuced monks. He was buried here with Thola
' Hutchins, Hijt. of Dorset, ii, 536. his wife. Leland, Collect, iii, 254.
* Arch. Journ. ix, 250. ' Surv. of Dorset (1732), 30.
' Hutchins, Hist, of Dorset, iii, 166. ' Dugdale, Mon. (Charters under Abbotsbury,.
' Particular Surv. of the Ccurtie of Dorset (1732), 30. No. iii), iii, 35.
48
RELIGIOUS HOUSES
Canute by charter dated 1024 bestowed Por- tisham on his servant Orcus.^ Tola or Thola, the wife of Orcus, and a native of Rouen, Nor- mandy, purchased Tolpuddle, and with her husband gave it to the monks together with Abbotsbury, Portisham, Hilton and 'Anstic.'' Edward the Confessor by one charter gave to Orcus, who was his housecari as he had been Canute's, the shore in all his lands and all wrecks of the same,* and by another charter notified Her- man the bishop and Harold the earl that he had granted a licence to Tola the widow of Orcus to bequeath all her land and goods to the monastery of St. Peter of Abbotsbury, accord- ing to an agreement that on the death of husband and wife their possessions should pass to the house, of which the king now declared himself the guardian and protector.' William the Conqueror testified by his charter to the same bisiiop and Hugh Fitz Grip, the Norman sheriff, that, for the love of God and the soul of his kinsman King Edward, he had granted to the abbot and brethren of Abbotsbury their land as fr-;e and quit as it was held in the time of his predecessor together with the right of soc, sac, tol, team, infangnetheof and wreck of the sea, and he desired the abbey should lose nothing unjustly but should be honourably treated.'"
In the Domesday Survey the abbey held the following manors : Abbotsbury, Tolpuddle, Hilton, Portisham, Shilvinghampton, Wootton Abbas, Bourton and Stoke Atram. The monks complained at the same time that a hide belong- ing to the manor of Abbotsbury, which had been assigned to their living in the time of Edward the Confessor, had been unjustly reft from them by the Norman sheriff Hugh Fitz Grip, and that his widow had taken six ; in the same manner they had been deprived of a virgate of land in Portisham. ^^ In a letter to the king about his assessment in the year 1 166 Abbot Geoffrey deposed that Roger the bishop when he had the custody of the abbey gave to Nicholas de Meriet 2 hides of land at Stoke Atram for the marriage of a niece, the deed being contrary to the wish of the convent.'^
By an inquisition before the king's escheator John le Moyne, and Andrew Wake sheriff of Dorset, at Uggscombe, Wednesday before the Feast of St. Simon and St.Jude (28 Oct.), 1268, as to the rights and privileges of the abbey, it was declared that the abbot and his predecessors had all liberties and free customs with soc, sac, tol, team and infangnetheof within their lands in the hundred of Uggscombe but not in their
* Dugdale, Mon. (No. ii), iii, 55.
' Ibid. (No. i), iii, 54. « Ibid. (No. iv), iii, 36.
" Ibid. (No. v) ; Kemble, Codex Dipt, iv, 841. '» By inspex. Ch.irt. R. 8 Edw. II, No. 5. " Dom. Bk. (Rec. Com.), i, 78. " Red Bk. of the Exch. (Rolls Ser.), i, 2 1 1. William of Malmesbury records {Gesia Regum [Rolls Ser,], ii,
2 49
other lands at Hilton, Tolpuddle, * Oth,' and Wootton Abbas ' which last is in the hundred of Whitchurch,' that they were free of the suit of that hundred by grant of Robert de Mande- vile, formerly lord of the hundred, except that their villeins were bound to come thrice a year to la lagh-day to present the pleas of the crown with- out hindrance. The abbot and his predecessors were discharged from all military service to the king by the service of one knight;'' wreck of the sea was said always to have belonged to them, and they had always enjoyed it. The jury further declared that the abbey had acquired grants of land in the following places : Cran- ston, Wytherstone, ' Deneham,' ' Poeyeto,' Bex- ington, Shipton, Poorton, East and West Chaldon, Morebath, Wraxall, Winterborne Steepleton, Wareham, Upway, Broadway, Lang- ton, Bridport, Dorchester, ' Brigge,' Preston in co. Somerset, and Hornington." Henry III by charter dated 15 November, 1269, inspected and con- firmed the charters previously granted to the abbey by his predecessors the kings of England, William the Conqueror, Henry I, Stephen, and Henry II, with all privileges and gifts.'* The convent obtained from the king two years later a grant enabling them to hold a weekly market and yearly fair in their manor of Hilton.'^ Edward I gave them leave to hold a market at Abbotsbury." Edward II in 13 1 5 confirmed anew their right to wreck of the sea in connexion with a whale {crassus piscis) cast up on the coast.'* Edward III confirmed their right of free warren over their lands at Abbotsbury, Portisham, Granston, Wootton Abbas, Wytherstone, Hilton, Tol- puddle, Ramsbury (Dorset), and Holwell (Som- erset." Edward IV in the first year of his reign, 1 46 1, made a grrnt to the abbot and convent of St. Peter's, Abbotsbury, of the hun- dred of Uggscombe, with view of frankpledge and all issues pertaining thereto, rendering the true yearly value at the exchequer.""
According to the Taxatio of 1 29 1 the spiri- tualities of the abbey amounted to j^i3 gs. ^.d.^
559) that Bishop Roger appropriated Abbotsbury to the bishopric so far as he was able.
'^ The abbot was returned for the service of one knight's fee under Henry II {Red Bk. of the Exch. [Rolls ^e.r.\ passim), Richard I, John, Henry III (Pat. I Hen. Ill, m. 8), and Edward I (Close, 16 Edw. I, m. 3).
" Chan. Inq. p.m. 53 Hen. Ill, No. 40.
" The original of this charter according to Hut- chins, who cites it {Hist, of Dorset, ii, 733), was inj the possession of the earl of Ilchester, 1867.
'" Chart. R. 56 Hen. Ill, m. 3.
" Ibid. 9 Edw. I, No. 55.
" Chart. R. 8 Edw. Ill, No. 5 ; Pat. 8 Edw. If, pt. 2, m. 6, 19 a'. In 1388 the owner of a cargo com- plained that his merchandise had been seized by the abbot and others as though it had been wreck, although thirteen of the crew had escaped. Ibid, i 2 Ric. II, pt. I, m. II ^. " Chart. R. 10 Edw. Ill, No. 41.
'"Pat. I Edw. IV, pt. 3, m. 19.
A HISTORY OF DORSET
including ^\1 from the church of Tolpuddle assigned to the pittance of the monks; their temporahties were valued at ;^8i lOi. lod. in the deanery of Bridport including ^31 7/. id. from Abbotsbury with ' Luk ' and Langton, j^3 If. from the deanery of Dorchester, ^^36 7^. td. from the deanery of Whitchurch and ;^i 6j. %d. from the deanery of Shaftesbury, the whole income of the convent being assessed
at ;Ci35 15^- \^^^
At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the abbey in common with other ecclesiastical appointments was kept vacant by John who, in the meantime, enjoyed the proceeds or bestowed them on his followers. We read that in April, 1212, the king presented to the church of Hilton, the abbey being void and in his hands. "^ The January following, the custody of the house was granted during pleasure to Roger de Preauton ; it was not until 15 July, 1213, that an order was directed to the prior and convent to send certain men out of their number whom they should choose to the king for an abbot to be appointed."'' A few days later the custodians of the abbeys of Abbotsbury, Milton and Sherborne were notified that the king had sent to them eighteen cart-horses and seven sick palfreys, and that all charges both for them and the men accompanying them should be accounted for at the exchequer."''
Abbotsbury escaped none of the burdens in- cidental to a religious house of any importance and under the royal patronage. In 1244 Henry Lombard was sent to the abbot and convent with a request that they would find him the necessaries of life in their house.^' Edward II in 1309 sent Norman Beaufiz to receive main- tenance, and a robe or 20i. yearly.-^ During the period of the Scotch wars the abbey received the usual requests for aid, and a little later for shelter for disabled warriors."' William Spyney, crossbow- man, was transferred here in January, 1 317 ; "' William Deyvill was sent in August, 1331, to receive such maintenance as Norman Beaufiz, deceased, had had ; "' and six years later a re- quest was made that the abbot and convent would give maintenance to John de Sancto Albano.^" It is evident that demands of this kind were not welcomed by the different re- ligious houses. On 20 April, 1 339, the abbey of Abbotsbury was ordered to receive and pro- vide maintenance for two hostages of the town of
" Pope Nkh. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 183-5. " Pat. 13 John, m. 3. " Close, 14 John, m. 3 ; 15 John, m. 7. " Ibid. m. 4.
" Ibid. 22 Edw. I, m. 11 d. '" Ibid. 2 Edw. II, m. 13 a'.
" Ibid. 3 Edw. II, m. sd.; S Edw. Ill, m. 5 </. ; Par/. flYtts (Rec. Com.), iii, div. ii, 430. -* Close, 10 Edw. II, m. 15 (j*. "Ibid. 5 Edw. Ill, pt. i,m.6d. '» Ibid. 1 1 Edw. Ill, pt. I, m. zj d.
Berwick-on-Tweed to be sent to them from the abbey of Glastonbury,'^ and on 6 October of the same year they were ordered to transfer them to the abbey of Tavistock.'" The monks of Tavistock appear to have flatly declined to receive the hos- tages,'' who consequently remained at Abbotsbury. On 3 December orders were issued for their re- moval to the priory of Bruton ; '* on 16 Jan- uary next, 1340, to the abbey of St. Augus- tine, Bristol ; '° on 15 February the abbot and convent of Chertsey were ordered to receive these unwelcome guests ; '° the abbot and convent of Shrewsbury received a similar order the fol- lowing day."
Nor did this exhaust the calls made upon the house ; the community who enjoyed the royal patronage were required on the creation of an abbot to grant a pension to a clerk of the king's appointment, and in December, 132 1, following the election of Peter de Sherborne, we read that the pension was claimed by John Bellymont, king's clerk ; '^ in 1324, on the election of William Fauconer, Peter de Mount Toure ob- tained letters entitling him to the same ; '^ and in 1344, on the election of Walter de Saunford, the abbot was ordered to grant the customary pension to Jordan de Cantuaria.^" These vari- ous grants and liveries were still claimed in the succeeding century. Thomas Ryngwode in 1400 was sent to the convent to receive such sustenance as Thomas Stanes deceased, had had,''^ and a corrody in the monastery was granted in 15 1 7 to Robert Penne, gentle- man of the Chapel Royal vice Edward Jones deceased.''"
The abbey was frequently chosen as a place of burial, and for the foundation of chantries. A licence was granted in 1323 to Robert le Bret for the alienation of certain lands in Holwell to the abbot and convent for the provision of a chaplain to celebrate daily in the abbey church for the soul of Richard le Bret, the father of the founder, for the souls of his ancestors, and all the faithful departed ; '" and in 1392, on payment of j^20 by the monks, Robert, vicar of Portis- ham, and others were licensed to alienate two messuages in Dorchester, &:c., for the provision of a monk chaplain who should celebrate daily at the altar of St. Andrew in the abbey for the good estate of Elizabeth, late the wife of John Mau-
" Ibid. 13 Edw. Ill, pt. I, m. 12.
'•' Ihid. pt. 2, m. 9 d.
'' Ibid. pt. 3, m. 26.2'.
" Ibid. m. i6</.
" Ibid. m. 9.
'° Ibid. 14 Edw. Ill, pt. I, m. 43.
"Ibid. 35.
'' Ibid. 15 Edw. II, m. zi d.
'' Ibid. 17 Edw. II, m. 19^.
*" Ibid. 18 Edw. Ill, pt. I, m. 29^.
*' Cal. of Pat. 1399-1401, p. 359.
"Z,. and P. Hen. VI H, i, 3101.
" Pat. 16 Edw. II, pt. i,m. 1.
5c
RELIGIOUS HOUSES
travers, knt., for her soul after death, and that of her husband, for the maintenance of their anni- versary, and for certain other charges and works of piety .''■' The Clopton chantry, founded by Sir Walter Clopton, was valued at the time of its suppression at io8s. 4*/." The Strangeways chantry was founded in 1 505 in the chapel of St. Mary within the abbey, the abbot by a tri- partite deed between himself and the convent of the one part, William abbot of Milton of the other part, and Thomas Strangeways, executor of Alianor, late the wife of Thomas Strangeways, senior, of the third part, engaging in return for certain benefactions to provide a chaplain to cele- brate daily for the good estate of Henry VII and Edmund, bishop of Salisbury, &c., and for the souls of the said Alianor and Thomas Strange- ways and their friends and ancestors.^^ This does not exhaust the number of those who made considerable bequests to the community in order to receive the benefit of their prayers.
The poverty which befel Abbotsbury in the fourteenth century, though largely due to its situation — exposed on the one hand to the attack of invaders, and eaten up on the other by the forces sent to defend the coast — was at the same time greatly fostered by the bad govern- ment of one of the abbots, Walter de Stokes (1348-54).*' The attention of the bishop was drawn to the house during his rule, and on 29 October, 1353, he wrote to the abbot and convent that since visiting their monastery ' for various causes ' and being at considerable pains to reform what he had found amiss, it had come to his ears that against ' good obedience ' the community had deliberately spurned his orders to the danger of souls and the scandal of the neighbourhood ; he therefore summoned them to appear before him or his official in the chapter-house of their abbey on Monday, after the feast of St. Martin the Bishop (11 November) to answer for their conduct.^* A letter from Edward III to the bishop soon followed, stating that he had committed the custody of the goods of the house, which, owing to the defective rule of the abbot, were insufficient to maintain the
" Pat. 16 Ric. II, pt. I, m. 79.
" Chant. Cert. 16 (Dorset), Nos. 45-64. Thomas Jenkyns is here given as the last incumbent.
" Dugdale, Mon. iii, 58, No. 12. A copy of this deed may be seen in Hutchins, Hist, of Dorset, ii, 720.
" He succeeded to Walter de Saunford, who pro- probably fell a victim to the plague in 1348. The episcopal registers record that in December of that year the abbot and vicar of Abbotsbury were both dead. Sarum Epis. Reg. Wyville, pt. 2, fol. 192.
" Ibid. pt. I, fol. 167. In his inability to attend personally to the matter, the bishop wrote to two canons of Salisbury and commissioned them, with John de Wyley, rector of S., to correct the mis- deeds of the brethren, and see his decrees carried out ; ibid. fol. 166 d.
community or to meet its debts, to Robert de Faryngdon, prior, and Henry de Tolre, monk, Walter Waleys, clerk, Thomas Carey, and John de Mautravers.*^ This arrangement was not destined to run as smoothly as might have been desired. Among the collection of Ancient Petitions is a letter addressed by the abbot, whose bad rule had caused him to be set aside, to the archbishop of York, in which, complaining bit- terly of his treatment at the hands of the above custodians, he states that they had withdrawn from him all the privileges to which he was entitled — his accustomed chamber, competent board and clothing, the services of a squire, two chamberlains and two grooms to attend to his horses — so that, 'insufficiently clad' {indecenterves- W«j) and with his shoes ' enormously in holes' {enorrniter infracth) he had been compelled to proceed more than 18 miles on foot in order to execute his business.'" The prior and other custodians had also their tale of complaints. According to them, the abbot had declined to fall in with the arrangements made for the whole community to lodge in one convenient house until the debt on the abbey, amounting to ;^534, had been wiped off ; he omitted to attend the offices, would not come to the refectory, required all his meals to be served at his own convenience in his own chamber, and was spending money in divers parts of the county, heaping up debts and obligations which the house was wholly unable to meet ; at the same time the seal of the abbey had been stolen by his adherents, and affixed to various deeds and grants prejudicial to the monas- tery." These complaints were not groundless, as was found by an inquisition held on 25 March, 1354, to inquire as to the lands and rents illegally alienated ; the jury reported that among various grants by the abbot before the custody had been taken out of his hands was one for a corrody and a robe for which he had received ^^20 ; he was also said to keep hunting dogs, to have retained an excessive number of servants, and retainers, and to be in the habit of giving unnecessary presents ; the injury he had thus done to the house being estimated at ^£85 5 lOJ. id}'' Fortunately for the community the abbot's career was cut short by death the same year. The follow- ing year the church of Winterborne St. Martin was appropriated to the monastery ; '^ in 1 36 1 the church of Toller Porcorum was annexed on account of poverty, and the charges incurred by the reception of numerous guests.'* In 1386 Pope Urban VI, in reply to a petition from the abbot and convent representing their house, which was situated on the coast, as
" Ibid.
'° Anct. Petitions, 10470.
" Ibid. 1047 1-2-3-4.
" Ibid. 10475.
" Sarum Epis. Reg. Wyville, pt. I, fol. 241.
" Ibid. fol. 242.
51
A HISTORY OF DORSET
frequently invaded by Spaniards, Normans, and Bretons, and eaten up by the defenders of the kingdom, so that unless help could be afforded it must be destroyed and divine services cease, re- quested the bishop of Salisbury to appropriate the church of Tolpuddle to the uses of the breth- ren.'* The convent in 1390 obtained from Boniface IX a grant appropriating anew the parish churches of Abbotsbury, Portisham, Win- terborne St. Martin, Toller Porcorum, and Tol- puddle, ' of which the first two were of old and the next 3 over 40 years ago incorporated by au- thority of the ordinary, and the last 2 by papal authority.' Their revenues, after deducting vicars' portions, came to 400 marks, the revenues of the monastery being 500, and 14 marks were to be assigned to each vicar. ^^
With the exception of the appointment of abbots, references to Abbotsbury in the fifteenth century are rare." VVe have the decrees pub- lished by Bishop Chandler after visiting the abbey in 1436. The community were warned generally against making grants rashly, and greater formality in their drawing up was en- joined. The abbot was directed, 'as wine and women cause men to err,' not to buy more wine than was absolutely necessary for the use of the monastery ; he was to be permitted to have sweet wine for his table and the entertainment of his guests ' in small and minute vessels ' (vasis) ; the entrance of women was prohibited, the abbot, if convicted on the evidence of two witnesses, should be suspended for a month ; the brethren were forbidden to resort to a cer- tain chamber for the purpose of 'confabula- tion.""
The notorious Dr. Legh appears to have visited this house on the eve of the Dissolution, for in a letter headed ' Thos. Legh, visitor of Abbotsbury,' he appoints a certain Vincent to be prior in the house, and desires tiie inmates to be attentive and obedient to him.^^ Thomas Brad- ford occurs, however, as prior in the surrender deed of the house.
In the Fa/or of 1535 the spiritualities of the abbey were returned at £i\.^ gs. ^d- from the churches of Tolpuddle, Portisham, Abbotsbury, Winterborne St. Martin, and Toller Porcorum*'";
" Sarum Epis. Reg. Erghum,fol. 81,82. Richard II licensed the appropriation on account of expenses connected with the defence of the coast ; Pat. 9 Ric. II, pt. I, m. 19.
'° Cal. Pap. Letters, iv, 342 ; v, 77.
'" With the exception also of bequests and references in wills.
" Sarum Epis. Reg. Chandler, fol. 6j d. Unfor- tunately no report can be found of the visitations ordered in 1488 and I 503.
''■' Cott. MS. Cleop. iv, 57. The letter is inscribed on the back. 'To the abbot of Abbotsbury, or in his absence to Dom Vincent.'
«° Valor EccL (Rec. Com.), i, 277-8.
the temporalities were valued at ;^356 6j.