Source: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hants/vol2/pp140-146
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 19:05:25+00:00

Document:
It would appear that in 1203 King John granted to the house of St. Mary of Citeaux, as the head of the Cistercian order, the manor of Faringdon in Berkshire, where some monks of this order had established themselves, upon the condition that a monastery should be built there. (fn. 1) In the following year the king founded in the New Forest the monastery of St. Mary of Beaulieu of the same order with provision in it for thirty monks. (fn. 2) The foundation charter is dated 25 January, 1204-5. (fn. 3) By this charter the bounds of the precincts are accurately defined, and the monks were endowed with the manors of Great and Little Faringdon, Great and Little Coxwell, Shilton and Inglesham, and the churches of Shilton and Inglesham and the chapel of Coxwell, and all that the king had in Langford. Beaulieu being thus founded the monks of Faringdon were transferred to it, and Faringdon was made a cell to Beaulieu.
The small chartulary of 179 folios, in the Cotton collection, (fn. 4) opens with a transcript of the charter of King John, dated 2 November, 1203. This is followed by three charters of Henry III. and an elaborate confirmation charter of Edward III., dated 23 February, 1328. The particulars with regard to the different vicarages, and more especially as to the customs of the numerous manors (Shilton, Great and Little Faringdon, Great and Little Coxwell, Langford, Inglesham and Westbrook), which are given in great detail, are of considerable interest but pertain to the history of Berkshire.
Among the Harley MSS. is a transcript of a register or chartulary of Beaulieu, copied from one in the possession of the Duke of Portland, in 1739, and collated with the original in 1836 by Sir F. Madden. (fn. 5) It opens with the long foundation charter by John, relative to the important cell at Faringdon. This is followed by the charter of Henry III., regarding the New Forest, and confirming the grants of Bishop Peter and William Briwer. The third charter is that of the same king confirming 239 acres of land in the New Forest, granted at the dedication of the church, when the king and Queen Eleanor and Prince Edward were present. The charters referring to the possessions of the abbey in Berkshire are numerous; there are also many pertaining to Soberton, Bucks; Blacheford, Hants; the town of Southampton, and the church of St. Keverne, Cornwall.
In March, 1208, came the famous interdict of Innocent III. over all England which lasted until the king's submission in May, 1213, at which time Hugh, the first abbot of Beaulieu, acted as an intermediary between the king and the pope. On 4 April, 1208, the abbot obtained the royal passport for the conveyance of himself and servants and five horses across the Channel at Dover, evidently on a mission to Rome touching this business. (fn. 8) In the following month the pope issued a monition to King John to fulfil his promise to the abbot of Beaulieu to receive the cardinal Archbishop of Canterbury and to make due restitution, and again in the following August he instructed the Bishops of London, Ely and Worcester to warn and induce the king to carry out at once his various promises made to the abbot of Beaulieu. (fn. 9) Meanwhile the king, whilst staying at Waverley, the earliest of the English Cistercian foundations, on the immediate confines of the county, issued an order by which he restored to the monks all the lands which had been seized by occasion of the interdict. Abbot Hugh returned to England in November, and received from the king 30 marks for himself, 30 marks for fees and vails, and 40s. to buy himself a palfrey.
On 24 February, 1219, Abbot Hugh was consecrated Bishop of Carlisle in York Minster. (fn. 14) He died in 1223. His successor, Azo of Gisors, was a good deal engaged in diplomacy, and was dispatched by the king to France in the year of his appointment.
The annals of Waverley, which can scarcely in such a matter be wrong, describe the monks of Beaulieu as entering with great joy into their new church on the vigil of the Assumption, 1227. (fn. 17) This entry has been supposed to clash with the definite statement of the same annals and of Matthew Paris twenty years later. The term ecclesia however is sometimes used to apply to the whole of a religious house, and the explanation seems to be that the great conventual church was opened in 1227, but that the cloister and conventual buildings as a whole were not ready for occupation until 1246.
At the end of the chartulary proper, already referred to, (fn. 26) come certain memoranda, among which is one to the effect that in 1274, at the general Council of Lyons, when a subsidy for a crusade for six years was enjoined, the pope granted to the Cistercians that the abbot of Citeaux should be responsible for the contributions of their whole order. The abbot, with the advice of the chapter-general, taxed each individual house of the order, according to his will, for the six years. Beaulieu, with its three daughters of Netley, Hales and Newenham, for the first and second year were to pay £26; namely Beaulieu, £13; Hales, £5 6s.; Netley, £4 14s.; and Newenham, £3. In 1276, when the English Cistercian houses paid £1,000 to Edward I., twothirds of which were due from Canterbury province, Beaulieu's share came to £23 6s. 8d.; Netley, £12; Hales, £14 13s.; and Newenham, £5. Beaulieu's share was higher than any other of the forty-nine Cistercian houses of the province; the next on the list was Warden, rated at £22 13s. 4d.
From the taxation roll of 1291 we find that the temporalities of Beaulieu in the archdeaconry were then valued at producing an annual income of £100, of which the immediate environs of the abbey supplied £66 13s. 4d. The temporalities in the archdeaconry of Berks produced an income of £91 1s. 8d.; those of the archdeaconry of Oxford £32 1s. 10d. There was also £11 11s. 8d. from St. Keverne in Cornwall, and £6 13s. 4d. from houses and fisheries in Little Yarmouth. In spiritualities there was the rectory of Shilton with an income of £7 6s. 8d., and Inglesham with an income of £4 6s. 8d.
Abbot Herring presided for twenty years, and on his death the custody of the abbey was assigned, on 6 January, 1392, to Thomas, Earl of Kent, and Tideman de Winchecombe, one of the monks. (fn. 42) After some delay Tideman de Winchecombe was elected abbot, but he only ruled for a very brief period; for in August, 1393, he was elected Bishop of Llandaff, at the instigation of the pope.
On 15 December, 1483, the abbot of Beaulieu was summoned, together with two of his community, by Richard III. to appear at Westminster, and bring with him all muniments and writings by which he claimed special sanctuary rights, within six days after the receipt of the mandate. (fn. 44) It has been conjectured, with much probability, that this summons arose from the abbey having given shelter to the enemies of the Yorkist faction. Every church and churchyard had certain temporary sanctuary rights pertaining to them; but in a few instances, of which Beaulieu was the most celebrated English example in the south, these rights were extended for an indefinite period and over a far wider area than the actual consecrated site. At Beaulieu Innocent III. had granted these special sanctuary rights to the whole of the original grant of land to the monks made by John, the bounds of which were clearly defined in the charter. Among those of note who availed themselves of this sanctuary may be mentioned Perkin Warbeck, Lady Warwick, after the field of Barnet in 1471, and according to some writers, Margaret of Anjou.
Abbot Thomas Skevington was consecrated Bishop of Bangor at Lambeth on 17 June, 1509, but he continued to hold the abbey in commendam until his death in 1533.
On the same day Lord Audeley wrote to the Duke of Suffolk as to the vacancy at Beaulieu, for which much suit was being made. He did not make any specific suggestion, but urged that whoever was appointed abbot should be ' a man of great gravity and circumspect, and not base of stomach or faint of heart when need shall require, the place standeth so wildly; and it is a great sanctuary, and boundeth upon a great forest and upon the sea coast, where sanctuary men may do much displeasure if they be not very well and substantially looked upon.' (fn. 50) In accordance with the king's wish John Browning, abbot of Waverley, the preserver of the king's game, was speedily made abbot of Beaulieu. In September Huttoft wrote a grateful letter as to the appointment to Cromwell.
The Valor of 1535, taken when Browning was abbot, gave the gross annual value of Beaulieu as £428 6s. 8¼d., and the net value £326 13s. 2¾d.
Stevens obtained a pension of 100 marks, but in February, 1540, was instituted to the rectory of Bentworth near Alton. In 1548 he was collated to the treasurership of Salisbury Cathedral, and died in 1550 seized of both these preferments. Seventeen of the monks also obtained small pensions.
The circular elaborate fifteenth century seal, of which an illustration is given, represents the crowned Virgin seated in a canopied niche with the Holy Child on left knee; on each side, in canopied niches, are five kneeling monks. In base is a crown enfiled with a crozier. Legend : Sigillum : Commune : Monasterii : Belli : Loci : Regis.
1. See King John's charter of confirmation to Beaulieu enrolled on Charter Roll, 53 Hen. III. m. 13, and printed in Dugdale's Monasticon, v. 683.
2. Chron. Job. de Oxenedes (Rolls Series), 118.
3. Printed in Dugdale's Monasticon, v. 683. The legend as to the first establishment of this important house is to the effect that King John, having grossly illtreated some Cistercian abbots at a parliament at Lincoln, was so alarmed at a dream about the crime and its consequences, that he resolved to found an abbey of that order at Beaulieu for thirty monks. The story, as told originally in a Kirkstall chartulary, is not improbable, for the innately cruel are usually superstitious.
4. Cott. MS. Nero A. xii.
5. Harl. MS. 6603, ff. 253-398.
6. See entries from the Close Rolls cited in Woodward's History of Hants, iii. 78-9.
7. Close Roll, John (Rec. Com.), 32b.
9. Cal. of Papal Letters, i. 31.
10. Close Roll, John (Rec. Com.), 144, 175b, 211b.
11. It is stated in Woodward's History of Hants that Anastasius was termed abbot in the grant of £100 on 4 November, 1214; unfortunately there are no references in that history, but the Close Roll entry of 4 November calls him prior.
12. Close Roll, John (Rec. Com.), 194.
13. Matth. Paris, Hist. Angl. (Rolls Series), ii. 168.
14. Woodward calls him Henry, a mistake made also by others. There seems a little uncertainty whether this Hugh was the first abbot or a second of that name.
15. Close Roll, John (Rec. Com.), 299.
16. Ibid. Hen. III. (Rec. Com.), 441b, 457b, 486, 521.
17. Annales Monastici (Rolls Series), ii. 304.
18. Ibid. ii. 90, 337; Matth. Paris, Chron. Maj. (Rolls Series), iv. 562.
19. Cal. of Papal Letters, i. 129.
21. Cal. of Papal Letters, i. 155.
23. Annales Monastici (Rolls Series), i. 113.
25. Ibid. p. 323. Newenham in Devonshire was another Cistercian house colonized in the thirteenth century from Beaulieu. Dugdale's Monasticon, v. 693.
27. Cal. of Close Rolls, Edw. I. i. 145, 148, 149, 265, 365, 462; Cal. of Patent Rolls, Edw. I. i. 301.
28. Close, 3 Edw. I. m. 22.
29. Pat. 4 Edw. I. m. 14.
30. Cal. of Close Rolls, Edw. I. i. 116, 341, 559.
31. Cal. of Pat. Rolls, Edw. I. 11. 35, 191, 236.
32. See Yorks Arch. and Topog. Assoc. Cistercian Statutes, by J. T. Fowler, ix. 223; x. 51, 217, 388, 502; xi. 95.
33. Pat. 9 Edw. I. m. 6.
34. Ibid. 5 Edw. II. pt. 1, m. 1.
35. Ibid. 10 Edw. II. pt. 1, m. 33.
36. Ibid. pt. 2, m. 23.
37. Ibid. 3 Edw. III. pt. 1, m. 35.
38. Ibid. 6 Edw. III. pt. 3, m. 12.
39. Feudal Aids, ii. 327.
41. Pat. 15 Edw. III. pt. 3, m. 35.
42. Cole MS. xxvi. f. 87b.
43. Woodward's Hist. of Hants, iii. 86.
44. Harl. MS. 6603, f. 336.
45. Letters and Papers, Hen. VIII. iii. 2483.
49. Ibid. v. 1694 (2).
50. Letters and Papers, Hen. VIII. vi. 1001, 1006, 1007.
51. Gasquet's Henry VIII. and the Monasteries, ii. 453.
52. Letters and Papers, Hen. VIII. x. 339, 1058.
54. Letters and Papers, Hen. VIII. xii. (2), 728, 765, 766.
55. Dep. Keeper's Reports, viii. appendix ii. 9.
56. Letters and Papers, Hen. VIII. xiii. (1), 750.
58. The first Mins. Acct. recited in Dugdale's Monasticon, v. 683.
59. Letters and Papers, Hen. VIII. xiii. (1), 668, 792, 796, 877, 1309 (23).
60. He was made Bishop of Carlisle in 1219 and died in 1223.
61. Pat. 6 Edw. I. m. 10.
62. Annales Monastici (Rolls Series), ii. 395, iv. 479.
63. Dugdale's Monasticon, v. 693.
65. Winton. Epis. Reg., Wykeham, i. f. 42.
66. Ibid. i. f. 232.
67. Pat. 20 Rich. II. pt. 2, m. 6.
68. Ibid. 11 Hen. IV. pt. 2, m. 6. Richard de Middleton had been ejected and was restored.
69. Lateran Regesta, clxxv. 278b.
70. Salbury and the subsequent abbots are given in the list in the Cole MSS.
71. Made Bishop of Bangor in 1509.

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