page_title: Alan fitz Flaad
section_title: Religious grants and foundations
hierarchical_section_title: Alan fitz Flaad / Religious grants and foundations
caption_attribution_description: The view looking east down the nave of Norwich Cathedral in Norfolk, England.
context_page_description: Alan fitz Flaad was a Breton knight, probably recruited as a mercenary by Henry I in his conflicts with his brothers. After Henry became King of England, Alan became an assiduous courtier and obtained large estates in Norfolk, Sussex, Shropshire, and elsewhere in the Midlands, including the feudal barony and castle of Oswestry in Shropshire. His duties included supervision of the Welsh border. He is now noted as the progenitor of the FitzAlan family, the Earls of Arundel, and the House of Stuart, although his family connections were long a matter of conjecture and controversy.
context_section_description: Alan was actively involved in a number of grants to religious institutions. One of the grants to Norwich Cathedral that he witnessed in 1101 concerned advowson of the church at Langham, Norfolk, which "had been Alan's", along with the tithes. It is possible this was a donation by himself. At some point unknown he gave the manor of Eaton near Norwich, to Norwich Cathedral, a gift the king promised "to confirm when Alan comes to my court." It is unclear whether this implied the king doubted the existence or the authenticity of the monks' charter: it certainly implies that Alan's attendance at court was to be expected. He also made considerable grants of land to Castle Acre Priory, which lay on the boundary of his Norfolk honour of Mileham.
  However, his most important grants in Norfolk were to Sporle Priory, another Benedictine house subject to St Florent de Saumur, which he founded. He gave to the monks of St Florent the church at Sporle, its tithes, a man's landholding, a ploughland in Sporle and another in Mileham, firewood and building timber, and pasture for sheep. The Liber Albus of St Florent mentions that one of the monks present when Alan made the gift was Wihenoc, who initiated the action at Andover. Sporle was later endowed with property in Norfolk villages, including Great and Little Palgrave, where the priory had the church, Great Dunham, Hunstanton and Holme-next-the-Sea.
  Alan acquired Upton Magna, the manor in Shropshire on which Haughmond Abbey was later built, as part of the group of estates that had belonged to earlier sheriffs. A note at the beginning of the abbey's cartulary dates the foundation to 1100 but attributes it to Alan's son, William Fitz Alan, which is impossible, as he was not yet born. The existence of a religious community at Haughmond is not definitely attested before a grant of a fishery to what was still a priory by William, around 1135. While Eyton assumed that William was the founder, although at a later date than suggested by the introductory note on the cartulary, the Victoria County History account leaves open the possibility that a small semi-eremetic community existed earlier at Haughmond under Alan's protection, without leaving a written trace.
  Alan probably gave many small grants of land or property rights. He gave land at his manor of Stretton-on-Dunsmore in Warwickshire to Burton Abbey. He granted the tithes from his demesne at Burton on Trent to the monks of Léhon in Brittany, where there was a priory subject to the Abbey of Marmoutier: this is known from its confirmation some decades later by his grandson, Alan fitz Jordan. Alan fitz Jordan also confirmed his grandfather's grant to Marmoutier of property at Cuguen, in Brittany, and confirmed or restored Alan fitz Flaad's gift of a mill at Burton to Sele Priory, a small Sussex monastery subordinate to St Florent de Saumur.
caption: The very long nave of Norwich Cathedral, a Norman foundation under construction in Alan's day. He both witnessed grants to the cathedral and made considerable donations of his own.
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