Chapter III: Part 3

The period after the Reformation is not within the province of this chapter; but a word may be added as to the survival of Gothic work after the civil war at St. Nicholas in Nottingham, and in the well-designed central tower at East Retford, and to the beautiful modern churches, in which the spirit of medieval Gothic architecture is so well maintained, designed by Mr. G. F. Bodley, at St. Alban’s in Sneinton, and at Clumber. Something, however, remains yet to be said of towers and spires. Of spires later than those that have been mentioned, the best is at West Retford, where the flying buttresses seem to indicate a Lincolnshire origin for the design. Scrooby, Weston, and Tuxford, in the same part of the county, and Edwinstowe, further west, have good spires. In the district round Nottingham, spires, where they occur, are, as already has been said, very plain. The unusually lofty tower and spire at the north-west corner of Gedling church, however, would call for honourable mention in any part of England. The tower and spire of Attenborough are also an excellent composition. The massive and heavily buttressed tower at Keyworth is crowned by a stone octagon rising from a square base, and surmounted by a small spire, and is engaged within aisles, which are not continued the full length of the nave eastwards: the elevation and plan are altogether exceptional. Of fifteenth-century towers, a large number, especially in the north of the county, are of the ordinary type found in south Yorkshire--_e.g._ at Silkstone, South Kirkby, or Fishlake. The details are plain, there is a single window of two lights in each face of the belfry-stage, and a battlemented parapet with slender pinnacles at the angles. Such towers are found at Blyth, where the elaborate parapet was clearly suggested by that of the neighbouring church of Tickhill, and at Mattersey, East Markham, Saundby, Bole, Gamston, West Drayton, and several other places: the type occurs as far south as Hickling. At Carlton-in-Lindrick a belfry-stage and buttresses were added to an eleventh-century unbuttressed tower. Sturton-le-Steeple owes the latter part of its name to the far-seen array of twelve pinnacles with which the builders thought fit to surround the parapet. The tower of Dunham-on-Trent has a very lofty belfry-stage, pierced with enormous windows of three lights, with different tracery in each face--a design as unique in its way as the chancel at Barnby. Near Newark a different type of tower comes into use about 1480. This has double window openings in the belfry-stage, with depressed heads and prominent hoods: the string-courses are more in number and project more boldly, and the pinnacles of the parapet are less thin in design. Hawton is the best example of this type, which has more architectural ambition than the other: it is also found at Rolleston, and across the Lincolnshire border at Beckingham and in the upper stage of Hough-on-the-Hill. South Muskham, more massive and earlier in date than Hawton and Rolleston, belongs to the same family. Upton, near Southwell, has a small fifteenth-century tower, in the centre of which is a solid stone pinnacle or spirelet. Other towers, such as Sibthorpe, Woodborough, or Linby, of various dates and designs, are merely serviceable bell-towers of no special architectural merit. For gracefulness of design, no Nottinghamshire tower of the later Gothic period appeals to the present writer so much as that of Car Colston, with its long and slender belfry-openings. Indeed, the whole church, with its thirteenth-century south doorway and its beautiful fourteenth-century chancel, is pre-eminently one of those buildings in which, as Dr. Whitaker said of Patrick Brompton in Yorkshire, “the antiquary may happily waste an hour”; and, in its peaceful seclusion at the head of one of the prettiest village greens in England, is the appropriate last resting-place of the historian of the county, Robert Thoroton.

NEWSTEAD PRIORY AND THE RELIGIOUS HOUSES OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE

BY REV. J. CHARLES COX, LL.D., F.S.A.

The county of Nottingham, considering its limited area, was rich in old religious foundations. Almost every variety of mediaeval monasticism was found within its bounds. There were Benedictine monks at Blyth, and Benedictine nuns had a small house at Wallingwells. Those reformed Benedictines, known as Cluniacs and Cistercians, were each represented in this county--the former at the important priory of Lenton, and the latter at the abbey of Rufford. The Carthusians, the most rigorous order of all the monks, had a house of some note at Beauvale. The Black or Austin Canons had five priories, of varied importance, at Felley, Newstead, Shelford, Thurgarton, and Worksop. The White or Premonstratensian Canons had a large and important abbey at Welbeck; whilst at Broadholme was one of the only two English nunneries pertaining to this order. The Gilbertine Canons were also represented at the priory of Mattersey. The Knights Hospitallers had a preceptory at Ossington, and they also held other property which they inherited from the dissolved Templars.

As to the friars, it is not a little singular that so powerful an order as the preaching Dominicans had no house in the county; they had, however, friaries near at hand in the counties of Derby, Leicester, and Lincoln. The county town, however, had settlements of both Franciscan and Carmelite friars, whilst there was an establishment of Observants or reformed Franciscans at Newark.

The colleges or collegiate churches, wherein a company of priests led a more or less regulated common life, were six in number--namely, the great collegiate church of Secular Canons, probably based on an earlier monastic foundation, at Southwell, and five later congregations of chantry priests at Clifton, Newark, Ruddington, Sibthorpe, and Tuxford.

The hospitals or almshouses of mediaeval foundation, under a more or less definite religious rule, numbered thirteen--namely, five at the county town, two at Blyth, and one each at Bawtry, Bradebusk, Lenton, Newark, Southwell, and Stoke. In Nottinghamshire, as indeed throughout the greater part of England, the story of the old hospitals is a gloomy record of peculation by the masters or wardens of funds intended by the founders for the relief of the sick and needy, so that the seizing of their funds, as planned by Henry VIII. and carried out by Edward VI., did but little harm to God’s poor. In this county, too, the exceptionally large proportion of three of these houses managed to survive the cruelly avaricious storm of the sixteenth century--namely, Bawtry, Newark, and Plumptre (Nottingham); they are still doing good work.

Although it is proper to include the mediaeval colleges and hospitals under the head of religious houses, the description of them in this short survey would too much curtail the limited space that can be allotted to the more important foundations. It is much to be desired that some one with the necessary ability and leisure would undertake a Nottinghamshire Monasticon on a thorough scale, so rich and abundant is the material ready to hand for those who know where to look for it. In fact, several of the houses, notably Lenton, Newstead, Welbeck, Blyth, and Beauvale--notwithstanding all that has been written of them--might readily be treated in monographs on no meagre scale.

In order to find room for these brief historical sketches, it has also been necessary to omit any reference to existing monastic remains. In the majority of cases there are no traces left above ground of any of the Nottinghamshire houses, but to this rule Newstead Priory is an extensive and distinguished exception, whilst certain parts of the Beauvale Charterhouse still standing are of importance and interest.

A few general remarks may be permitted before proceeding to the more particular but very brief discussion of each house.

In Nottinghamshire there is an exceptional amount of general interest pertaining to the history and development of several of the monasteries. Thus Blyth Priory, in addition to the difficult problems involved under its rule between the foreign abbot in Normandy and its diocesan the Archbishop of York, had a direct influence on the trade of Nottinghamshire and south Yorkshire by reason of the considerable tolls that it was enabled to levy on all merchandise passing through Blyth, either by road or water. Again, the great semi-foreign Cluniac priory of Lenton entirely overshadowed the town of Nottingham in matters spiritual, and to some extent in matters temporal, after the like fashion that the Cluniac priory of St. Andrew overshadowed the town of Northampton.

Various picturesque incidents telling of the wildness of the districts on the border of Sherwood Forest pertain to the story of Welbeck Abbey, the greatest of the Premonstratensian houses, towards the end of its life; whilst the special position and privileges of the houses of Newstead and Rufford, within the centre of the same forest, are briefly mentioned in another article in this volume.

Much can be gleaned as to the condition of the monasteries of Nottinghamshire from time to time from the various visitations recorded of the houses subject to diocesan control, as well as those made by special visitors of exempt Orders, such as those of Cluni and Prémontré. In these sketches nothing of the nature of evil or careless living that is brought to light is omitted; but the noteworthy smallness of the number of grave charges, as compared with the number of the inmates, and of the great frequency of visitations wherein no laxity was discovered, cannot fail to bring every honourable and competent judge to the twofold conclusion that (1) the life and work of the great majority of the Nottinghamshire “religious” were distinctly praiseworthy and in accordance with their vows, and (2) that there was a persistent determination on the part of those in authority to deal sternly with careless or criminal living. To pass judgment on a whole class, because of the sins or laxity occasionally detected among an insignificant minority, is as malicious and absurd in connection with England’s vowed religious of the past, as it would be to do the like with England’s clergy of the present day.

As to the slanderous _Comperta_, or abbreviated charges of Legh and Layton (men themselves of infamous life), Cromwell’s notorious visitors of 1536, their amazing accusations against the religious of this county are at once confuted by a study of the subsequent pension lists. Take a single instance, the charges against Abbot Doncaster of Rufford were of an appalling character; nevertheless, within a few months of this report being presented, the abbot received a pension of £25, which was, however, very speedily withdrawn in favour of his appointment by the Crown to the important living of Rotherham. Or again, in the cases of Welbeck and Worksop, the foul-minded visitors singled out four of each house as guilty of peculiarly vile offences, and yet seven of them were pensioned and the eighth retained in a vicarage. Supposing for a moment that the black lists of the _Comperta_ were true, which no one worthy of the name of historian now ventures to contend, the action of the granters of pensions and preferments was worse than that of the accused.

As there are still one or two writers who persist in trying to make their readers believe in the generally foul life of the old monks and nuns, with a malignant and ignorant persistency, it may be well to point out that a second commission was sent out by the Crown in 1536, consisting of State officials and leading gentlemen of each county visited. Their elaborate and detailed reports are extant for religious houses in the counties of Gloucester, Hampshire, Huntingdon, Lancaster, Leicester, Norfolk, Rutland, Suffolk, Sussex, Warwick, and Wiltshire. In these returns, as Dr. Gairdner, the official historian of the reign of Henry VIII. says, “the characters of the inmates of the houses visited are almost uniformly good, the country gentlemen who sat on the commission somehow came to a very different conclusion to that of Drs. Layton and Legh.” The returns for Nottingham are unfortunately not extant; if they were there is every reason to believe that they would flatly contradict the pair of professional slanderers.

It may be well here to confute the current notion that the suppressed monks, nuns, canons, and friars were all pensioned. The fact is that it was a distinct minority of the ejected religious that obtained a pension in Nottinghamshire or elsewhere. A large number of the younger professed members, namely, all under twenty-five years of age, were ruthlessly ejected by order of Cromwell, as Visitor General, before ever the scheme of thorough dissolution began. With regard to the smaller religious houses, which were dissolved in 1536–7, the rule was to grant pensions only to the superiors. Thus the prior of Blyth was the only one of that house who obtained any pension, and the like was the case with regard to the prioress of Broadholme. Friars received no pensions, and on being ejected were simply presented with a suit of secular clothes. Every excuse was made to avoid pension granting; thus the Lenton monks received nothing, as they were supposed, on paltry evidence, to be all tainted with high treason. The judicial murders in connection with the suppression of Lenton and Beauvale are peculiarly odious.

In the case of Nottinghamshire, it can readily be seen how serious a matter the sweeping away of monks, canons, and nuns was to the poor of the county. Not only was relief in kind given at the gates of every monastic house, small or large, as well as a great variety of voluntary doles and aids in sickness, and the assigning to the poor after an inmate’s death the commons of the deceased for a whole year, but there were actual obligatory alms that various houses were bound by their statutes to distribute on specific days, often dating back to the very time of their foundation. Among such obligatory alms were: Lenton, £41, 1s. 8d.; Worksop, £25, 1s. 4d.; Welbeck, £8, 13s. 4d.; Thurgarton, £6, 8s. 1d.; Newstead, £4; Blyth, £3, 6s. 8d.; and Shelford and Wallingwells, £2, 6s. 8d. each--yielding an annual total of £93, 4s. 4d., or considerably more than _£_1000 a year according to the present purchasing power of money. Not a shadow of attempt was made by Henry VIII. and his abettors to save for the poor a single penny of this money, which had been definitely dedicated to the service of the poor.

When we come to the consideration of particular religious houses of the county, there is no doubt that there were several of exceptional interest, and whose history could be gleaned from unprinted or little-known records with so much amplitude that there would be abundant justification for the issue of monographs of no mean dimensions. Such is emphatically the case with the Cluniac house of Lenton, with which the town of Nottingham was so intimately connected, and with the important Premonstratensian house of White Canons of Welbeck. A third instance is undoubtedly to be found in the Black Canons of Newstead. Newstead was by no means one of the largest or wealthiest of the English houses of Austin Canons, but its history can be so fully exemplified, its situation in a beautifully timbered glade, surrounded on all sides by Sherwood Forest, is so exceptionally picturesque, the extent of the remnants of its conventual buildings so extensive, and its post-dissolution story, especially in connection with Lord Byron, so romantic, that a complete and carefully compiled work is much to be desired. It is proposed, then, to devote the remainder of this sketch to a record of some of the facts relative to Newstead Priory. In the later Byron period its title was changed to Newstead Abbey, a piece of mendacious pride of which several other lay owners of monastic sites have been guilty.

From certain statements in the foundation charter of Henry II., it has been assumed by some that Newstead was a re-establishment of Austin Canons from some other part of Sherwood Forest, where they had been originally placed at an earlier date by Henry I.; but this is after all only a matter of somewhat vague conjecture. The very name of this religious house renders, however, some support to this idea. The prefix “New” has the same force as in Newark, Newcastle, Newminster, and the host of Newtons; and it was possibly here used in contradistinction to the Oldstead of a former foundation. There are two other English monastic establishments of this name--namely, the Gilbertine house of Newstead in Lindsey, and another Austin house of Newstead near Stamford; in both these cases a refoundation has been suggested.

Newstead Priory--officially termed Prioratus Sancte Marie de Novo Loco in foresta nostra de Scirwurda--was founded in Sherwood as a house of Austin Canons by Henry II., about the year 1770. The foundation charter, executed at the royal residence of Clarendon, Wilts, conferred on the canons a site near the centre of the forest, Papplewick, with its church and mill and other appurtenances; the meadow of Bestwood by the side of the water; and 100 shillings of rent in Shapwick and Walkeringham. The canons were also granted a great extent of the forest waste around the monastery, the bounds of which are set forth in detail at the beginning of the chartulary. King John, in 1206, confirmed the founder’s grant, together with the church of Hucknall, of his own gift when Earl of Mortain, and £7, 8s. 6d. of lands in Walkeringham, Misterton, Shapwick, and “Walkerith” in Lincolnshire.

In 1238, on 8th May, the mandate of Henry III. was sent to the prior of Newstead to allow Thomas de Dunholmia, citizen of London, to have all the goods late of Joan, Queen of Scots, which had been deposited with the canons after her death by John de Sancto Egidio and Henry Balliol, to do therewith what the King had enjoined on them.

The convent obtained the royal licence, in April 1241, to elect a new prior, when their choice fell on William the cellarer. The licence was delivered at Westminster to Henry Walkelin and Thomas de Donham, two of the canons, who took the news of the death of Prior Robert to the King.

The endowments slowly increased by various small benefactions. Thus Henry III., in 1251, granted the priory 10 acres of land out of the royal hay of Linby, to be held quit of all interference by the forest ministers, with licence to enclose the land with hedge and dyke. Nevertheless the convent was so seriously in debt in 1274, that the King appointed a receiver to administer their estates during pleasure. In 1279 the prior and canons obtained licence to fell and sell the timber of a wood of 40 acres which had been given them in 1245. Such a step as this would certainly bring considerable financial relief; but the regular income was after all very small for a house where wayfarers would so often claim hospitality. The income, according to the Taxation Roll of 1291, was only £83, 13s. 6d. The house was again pressed by its creditors in 1295, when, at their own request, Hugh de Vienne was appointed by the Crown to take charge of the revenue, applying the income, saving a reasonable sustenance for the prior, canons, and their men, to the relief of their debts; no sheriff, bailiff, or such-like minister were to lodge in the priory or its granges during such custody. On 25th July 1300, another like custodian, Peter de Leicester, a King’s clerk, was appointed after a similar fashion.

The King, in 1304, made an important augmentation of the possessions of Newstead by granting the house 180 acres of the waste in the forest hay of Linby at a rent of £4, due to the sheriff, with licence to enclose them and bring them into cultivation.

Both Edward I. and Edward II. seem to have been attached to this house in the centre of the forest, notwithstanding the important royal hunting lodge at Clipston. Edward I. sojourned at Newstead in August 1280 and in September 1290, and Edward II. in September 1307 and October 1315, as is shown by the Patent and Close Rolls. The royal licence was obtained from the latter King, in 1315, to permit the appropriation of the church of Egmanton.

News of the resignation of Prior Richard de Grange was brought to the King at Nottingham by the canons Robert de Sutton and Robert de Wylleby on 13th December 1324, and they took back with them leave to elect. On 10th December the King signified the Archbishop of York that he had assented to the election of William de Thurgarton, canon of Newstead, as prior. Owing to informality the archbishop quashed the election and claimed that the right of preferment had devolved upon him. Recognising, however, the worth of William de Thurgarton, the archbishop proceeded to collate him as superior; the King, when at Ravensdale, the forest lodge of Duffield, Derbyshire, on 10th January 1323, issued his mandate for the deliverance of the temporalities to the new prior.

The financial troubles do not appear to have much abated when Edward III. was on the throne. In 1330 the priory had remitted to them the rent of £4 due to the sheriff for the 180 acres within the hay of Linby. Licence was granted in 1334 for the alienation to the priory by William de Cossall of 12 messuages, a mill, and various lands in Cossall and Nottingham, to find three chaplains, two to serve in the church of St. Katherine Cossall, and one in the priory church, celebrating mass daily for himself, his ancestors, and successors. Considerable additional grants of land were made in 1341, conditional on the maintenance of two chaplains to say daily mass in the church of St. Mary Edwinstowe.

Richard II., in 1392, granted to the prior and convent of Newstead a tun of wine yearly in the port of Kingston-upon-Hull, in aid of the maintenance of divine service.

Henry VI., in 1437, licensed Prior Robert and convent to enclose 8 acres within Sherwood Forest, just in front of the entry to the priory, and to dyke, quickset, and hedge it, for which they were to render at the Exchequer one rose at midsummer.

Edward IV., in 1461, licensed John Durham, the prior, and his convent to enclose 48 acres of forest granted them by Henry II., adjoining the priory on the north, east, and south, with a ditch and low hedge, and to cut down and dispose of the wood growing thereon.

The Valor of 1534 gave the clear annual value of this priory as £167, 16s. 11½d. The spiritualities, amounting to £58, included the appropriated Nottinghamshire rectories of Papplewick, Hucknall Torkard, Stapleford, Tuxford, and Egmanton, and the Derbyshire rectory of Ault Hucknall. The considerable deductions included 20s. given to the poor on Maundy Thursday in commemoration of Henry II. as founder; and a portion of food and drink, similar to that of a canon, given to some poor person every day, valued at 60s. a year.

The episcopal registers at York contain various records as to diocesan visitations of Newstead. Archbishop Grey visited the priory in person in 1252, when he found, after individual examination, that the prior and canons were fervid in religion and lovers of peace and concord. He laid down a number of minor injunctions for their still better rule, which were to be read twice a year before the convent.

Archbishop Geoffrey de Ludham personally visited Newstead on 4th July 1259, and approved of the statutes made by Archbishop Grey, adding certain injunctions of his own. The prior, considering the evil days in which they were living, was to do his best to obtain grace and favour with patrons; he was personally to receive guests with a smiling countenance (_vultu prout decet hilari et jocundo_), and to merit the love of his convent, doing nothing without the counsel of the older canons. Medicines were to be reserved for the sick; any brother noticing the infringement of a rule was to speak; there was to be no drinking after compline, nor wanderings outside the cloister; and a canon was to be specially deputed to look after the sick.

The record of a visitation by Archbishop Wickwaine in 1280 brought to light certain irregularities. In addition to general injunctions, such as the unlocking of the carrels twice a year, and oftener if necessary, in order to eradicate the vice of private property, it was ordered that two of the canons were to be confined to cloister for the improvement of their manners, that another canon was to be restored to the general convent through penitence, but that the cellarer and cook were to be deprived of their respective offices.

Consequent on a visitation of Newstead by Archbishop Romanus, in 1293, injunctions were issued for the correction of the house, which followed the usual formal lines, save that he prohibited the resort to any games with dice, and that the sick were to be more delicately fed, and not with the usual gross food of the convent. The archbishop at the same time laid down that John, their late prior, was to be honoured and his counsel followed, because of his great services to the house and his generosity about his pension in freely and voluntarily giving up much to which he was entitled. As a new ordinance for his pension, the archbishop ordered that Brother John was to have his chamber and garden as previously arranged, with a canon’s livery for himself and another for the canon who was to dwell with him and say the divine offices, and another for his boy; and 30s. a year for his own necessities and for the boy’s wages; any guest who came to visit him was to have his meals in the frater or in the hall.

It is often forgotten that all the chief religious Orders had their own scheme of visitation independent of the diocesan. An interesting reminder of this occurs in an entry of a Newstead visitation which took place on 16th July 1261; it was subsequently entered in Giffard’s register. The visitors on this occasion were the priors of the two Austin houses of Nostell and Guisborough, who were at that time the duly appointed provincial visitors of the order. They enjoined that a good servant, with a boy, was to be placed in the infirmary, and that one of the canons was to say the canonical hours for them, as well as celebrate mass, according to the rule of the Blessed Augustine.[38] A chamberlain was to be appointed to provide clothes and shoes for the convent; he was to have a horse to attend fairs and a servant assigned him to buy necessaries. The canons’ dishes were to have more eggs and relishes, but within moderation; never more than three eggs. No one was to drink but in the refectory after collation, and then to attend compline. Accounts were to be rendered twice a year. Canons were to make open amends in chapter on Sundays for transgressions. A lay brother (_conversus_) was to look after the tannery, with a canon to superintend and to see to the buying and selling. Another lay brother was to have charge of the garden, under the sub-cellarer. Finally, the prior was ordered to bring Canon Richard de Walkeringham with him to the next general chapter; he was to testify whether these injunctions had been obeyed.

The clear annual income of Newstead having fallen considerably below the amount of £200 fixed as the limit for the suppression of the smaller houses in 1536, its fate seemed certain. But this was one of the cases in which a semi-fraudulent arrangement was encouraged by officials, who well knew that the doom of all monasteries was fixed, whereby Newstead obtained exemption on payment of the heavy fine of £233, 6s. 8d. A patent to this effect was signed on 16th December 1537; but it only held good for about eighteen months, for on 21st July 1539 the surrender of the house was extorted. This document was signed by Robert Blake, prior, Richard Kitchen, sub-prior, John Bredon, cellarer, and nine other canons, Robert Sisson, John Derfelde, William Dotton, William Bathley, Christopher Matheram, Geoffrey Acryth, Richard Hardwyke, Henry Tingker, and Leonard Alynson.

Dr. John London, the commissioner who took the surrender of Newstead, was one of the most objectionable and hateful of these suppression officials. He held no small amount of preferments in the Church, being a considerable pluralist. He was dean of Osney, dean of Wallingford, and canon of Windsor, and from 1526 to 1542, warden of New College, Oxford. He was one of the most thorough-paced spoilers of monasteries, so far as the work of devastation was concerned. His letters to Cromwell show that he delighted in the disfiguring of all that was fair and beautiful in the monastic churches and chapels, personally superintending the defacements. In connection with the friaries, he avowed that his orders for immediate destruction of roofs and windows were for the purpose of preventing the friars again taking possession of their property. He showed marvellous ingenuity in hunting out valuables of all kinds, but occasionally fell a victim to his credulity in listening to slanders. Being assured by a tale-bearer that the abbot of Combe had hidden £500 in a feather bed in his brother’s house, he forthwith proceeded to that residence and ripped open the beds in search for the money. Eventually he examined the abbot himself, who readily acknowledged that he held some money belonging to his former house, but it proved to be only £25. London’s shameful treatment of the abbess of Godstow is well known, and in that instance even Cromwell had to remonstrate with his conduct. Bishop Burnet, the historian, states that he has “seen complaints of Dr. London soliciting nuns.” That he was a man of odiously dissolute life is beyond all contradiction.

Archdeacon South has left the following record of this dissolute bully, and his subsequent public exposure:--

“But to what open shame Doctor London was afterwards put, with open penance, with two smocks on his shoulders, for Mrs. Thykked and Mrs. Jennynges, the mother and daughter, and how he was taken with one of them by Henry Plankney in his gallery, being his sister’s son, as it was then known to a number in Oxford and elsewhere, so I think that some yet living hath it in remembrance, as well as the penner of this history.”[39]

Archbishop Cranmer summed up his judgment of this suppressor of Newstead by styling him, in a still extant manuscript, in his own hand, “a stout and filthy prebendary of Windsor.” He died in utter misery in the Fleet Prison in 1543, after having been found guilty of perjury, and condemned to ride through Windsor, Reading, and Newbury, with his face to the horse’s tail, and to stand in the pillory in each of these market towns with a paper on his head announcing his offence.

A pension scheme was drawn up on 24th July, and forwarded to Sir Richard Rich for ratification. To the prior was assigned the not unhandsome sum of £26, 13s. 4d., to the sub-prior £6, to the cellarer £5, 6s. 8d., and to the remaining canons annuities ranging from £4, 13s. 4d. to £3, 6s. 8d.

Thus, in July 1539, came to an end the continuous services to God and man, for upwards of three and a half centuries, of those devoted religious the canons of St. Augustine of Sherwood Forest. That which one royal Henry had founded of his beneficence, another royal Henry blotted out through consummate greed. As Lord Byron says:--

“Years roll on years; to ages, ages yield;
Abbots to abbots, in a line, succeed;
Religion’s charter their protecting shield,
Till royal sacrilege their doom decreed.

One holy Henry rear’d the Gothic walls,
And bade the pious inmates rest in peace;
Another Henry the kind gift recalls,
And bids devotion’s hallow’d echoes cease.”

The following is a list of the successive priors (not abbots) of this house so far as at present ascertained:--

Eustace, 1216.
Richard, 1216.
Aldred, 1230.
Robert, 1234.
William, 1241.
William de Mottisfont, 1267.
John de Lexinton, resigned, 1288.
Richard de Hallam, 1288.
Richard de Grange, 1293.
William de Thurgarton, 1324.
Hugh de Collingham, 1349.
William de Collingham, resigned, 1356.
John de Wylesthorp, resigned, 1366.
William de Allerton, 1366.
John de Hucknall, 1406.
William Bakewell, 1417.
Thomas Carleton, 1422.
Robert Cutwolfe, 1423.
William Misterton, 1455.
John Durham, 1461.
Thomas Gunthorp, 1467.
William Sandale, 1504.
John Blake, 1526.

Immediately on the surrender being accomplished the custody of the house was handed over to Sir John Byron of Colwick. In May 1540, Sir John Byron was put into legal possession of the house, site, church, steeple, churchyard, and of all the lands, mills, advowsons, rectories, and of the late priory in return for the then large sum of about £800 handed over to the Crown.

This Sir John Byron was by no means the mushroom man, like so many of Cromwell and Henry VIII.’s _novi homines_ who were bribed with monastic estates to support the policy of reckless confiscation, not a few of whom found further reward in the creation of peerages. This “Little Sir John with the Big Beard” was descended from the Byrons who had fought at Crecy, was grand-nephew of the Byron of Bosworth Field, and he himself had helped to turn Henry Tudor into Henry VII.

No sooner had the canons been turned adrift than the great conventual church, 257 feet in length, the nave of which had always been reserved for quasi-parochial use by the tenants on the prior’s estates, was deliberately unroofed and dismantled. The great block of the conventual buildings, surrounding the cloisters, on the immediate south of the church, were preserved by Sir John, the south transept with its stone Maundy seat, escaped destruction, as it completed the square of the buildings now occupied as a domestic residence. He is said to have moved the fountain, or water-conduit, which occupied the centre of the cloister garth, to the west front of his reconstructed house. Among the more striking survivals of the work of the first lay-owner of the priory are two brilliantly coloured overmantels, carved with busts in relief of Henry VIII. and other contemporary personages.

The successive owners of Newstead Priory were:--

Sir John Byron, who died in 1576.

Sir John Byron (2), who died in 1609. He was the founder of the Hucknall Broomhill charity. In June 1603 he entertained at the priory Queen Anne of Denmark and her son Prince Henry, when on their way from Scotland to join James I. in London.

Sir John Byron (3), who died in 1625.

Sir John Byron (4), M.P. for Nottingham, a faithful adherent of Charles II.; he was created Lord Byron, with remainder to his brother, in 1643; he died in Paris in 1652.

Richard Lord Byron, the defender of Newark, succeeded his brother, and died in 1679; he entertained Charles II. at Newstead.

His son William, the third baron, died in 1695; his wife, Lady Elizabeth, gave the large silver-gilt chalice and paten to the church of Hucknall Torkard.

William, the fourth baron, son of the third, died in 1736.

His son William, the fifth baron, known as “Devil Byron,” who killed William Chaworth in a duel, died, without surviving issue, in 1798.

George Gordon, the sixth Lord Byron, the poet, was great-nephew of the fifth baron. His two predecessors had seriously embarrassed the estate; it was so heavily mortgaged that in 1814 he finally left Newstead, to his intense grief, and after prolonged negotiations, the property passed, in 1817, into the hands of his friend and schoolfellow Colonel Wildman.

Colonel Wildman, at great cost and with considerable taste, considering the general lack of taste of those days, proceeded to rescue the priory from its deplorable condition. He replaced the water-conduit in the centre of the cloisters; removed a disfiguring stone stairway; and generally altered the interior in an endeavour to restore as much as possible the original features. At a later period he erected the Sussex tower, in commemoration of the visit of the Duke of Sussex. He left the beautiful pile of buildings in much the same condition as it is at present.

After the Colonel’s death, the priory and estate were bought in 1860 by the late Mr. W. F. Webb. Under Mr. Webb’s guidance “the work of restoration and beautifying was piously and intelligently continued; he made it one of the chief aims of his life to increase both the historical and Byronic interests of the place.” Since his death the greatest care and good taste have continued to be expended on the house, and more particularly on the gardens and grounds, by his daughters, Lady Chermside and Miss Webb.

Space entirely prohibits any attempt at a full or technical description of the ancient conventual church, and the buildings round the cloister garth which still retain, notwithstanding the frequent alterations, so many distinctive features of their original erection, at different periods for monastic purposes. The writer has had the advantage of making a fairly thorough survey of the priory in both the “seventies” and “eighties” of last century, and again during the twentieth century under the intelligent guidance of his late valued friend, the Rev. R. H. Whitworth, chaplain of Newstead, and for upwards of forty years vicar of the adjacent parish of Blidworth. To describe Newstead adequately would require at least the whole of this volume.

Mr. Whitworth loved every stone of Newstead and every detail of its story. Not long before his death he gave to the writer the accompanying plan (together with many memoranda) the work of his own pen, and though not entirely accurate in dimensions or lettering, it is of real interest, and it is a pleasure to reproduce it in facsimile.

All that can here be put on record are a few cursory remarks on certain remaining details, chiefly taken from Mr. Whitworth’s memoranda. The exceeding beauty of the west front of the church, with its delicacy of execution, of the best period of the reign of Edward I., is well known to all lovers of England’s ecclesiastical architecture. Sir John Byron, leaving the stately front as an ornament in line with the front of his reconstructed house, made so clean a sweep of the once stately church right up to the eastern end, that the smooth turf shows not a trace of even the foundations of the piers. It is characteristic of the semi-pagan character of the poet Byron that though he could vigorously upbraid the sacrilegious conduct of Henry VIII. and his myrmidons in ejecting the canons and in silencing all strains of worship “within these hallowed walls,” he did not apparently realise the unhappy inconsistency and gross irreverence of burying his favourite dog “Boatswain” on the holiest spot of this consecrated site and placing a monument over its body!

Grievous as was the uprooting of this once stately church, it is impossible not to feel grateful to Sir John Byron for the preservation of the exquisite chapter house of the priory with its beautiful groined roof supported by two pillars of clustered banded shafts. It is situated, according to the invariable monastic custom, on the eastern side of the cloisters, separated from the south transept of the church by a slype or passage; it is of similar date to the west front of the church. Tradition has it that the first Sir John Byron had this chapter house set apart for use as a domestic chapel, and for that purpose it is still used.

In common with other monks and canons, the inmates of Newstead Priory, when they knew the storm was about to break, endeavoured to conceal some of their ornaments and valuables ere they were inventoried. They flung into the water of the lake in front of their house a fine pair of great brass altar candlesticks, originally 4 feet 6½ inches high (they have been raised 10½ inches), together with the brass eagle which served as a Gospel lectern. These were accidentally found and recovered from the lake about 1780. Hoping perchance some day to reoccupy their old home, the canons packed tightly the cavity of the globe on which the eagle rested with a selection of their parchment title-deeds, dating from Edward III. down to Henry VIII. When fished up, in the days of that evil spendthrift, the fifth Lord Byron, the eagle and candlesticks were sold to a Nottingham dealer in old metals. They were repurchased by Sir Richard Kaye, rector of Kirkby; he was a canon of Southwell, and they are still in the honoured possession of that cathedral church. The eagle bore an inscription asking for prayers for the souls of Ralph Savage, the donor, and for all the faithful departed; he was the founder of a chantry in the year 1488, in the Derbyshire church of North Wingfield.

Like so many old residences formed out of ancient monasteries, Newstead has the reputation of being haunted, and that by more than one spectre. But the name and fate of the last of the Byrons has overclouded and obscured all previous tenants, mortal or otherwise, and flung the pall of poetic melancholy over the domains such as no spiritual imaginations can survive. The legends connected with Newstead are many, and descend from that mysterious maid of Saracen birth or residence, whose form and features are so frequently repeated in the ancient panel work of the priory’s interior, down to Lord Byron’s immediate predecessor in the title and estates. “Devil Byron,” as this man was called, among other wild tales connected with his name was said to be himself haunted by the spirit of a sister, to whom he refused to speak for years preceding her death in consequence of a family scandal, notwithstanding her heart-rending appeals. Ebenezer Elliot, in a ballad he wrote on this legend, introduces the apparitions of both Devil Byron and his sister as riding forth together in stormy weather, the lady still making passionate appeals to the immovable brother to speak to her[40]:--

“Well sleep the dead; in holy ground,
Well sleeps the heart of iron,
The worm that pares his sister’s cheek,
What cares it for Byron?

Yet when her night of death comes round,
They ride and drive together,
And ever, when they ride or drive,
All wilful is the weather.

On mighty winds in spectre coach,
Fast speeds the heart of iron,
On spectre steed, the spectre dame,
Side by side with Byron.

Oh, ‘Night doth love her,’ O the clouds,
They do her form environ,
The lightning weeps--he hears her sob,
‘Speak to me! Lord Byron!’

On winds, on clouds, they ride, they drive,
Oh hark thou heart of iron,
The thunder whispers mournfully,
‘O speak to her, Lord Byron!’”

Another family apparition which is said to have haunted the old priory was “Sir John Byron the Little with the Big Beard.” An ancient portrait of this mysterious ancestor was some years since seen hanging over the door of the great saloon, and was sometimes at midnight said to descend from its sombre frame and promenade the state apartments. Indeed this ancient worthy’s visitations were not confined merely to nightfall; one young lady on a visit years ago positively asserted that in broad daylight, the door of his former chamber being opened, she saw Sir John the Little sitting by the fireplace and reading out of an old-fashioned book.

Several other apparitions have been seen from time to time about this ancient, time-honoured building. Washington Irving mentions that a young lady, a cousin of Lord Byron’s, on one occasion slept in the room next the clock, and when she was in bed she saw a lady in white come out of the wall on one side of the room, and go into the wall on the other side. Many curious noises and strange sights have been heard and seen by many visitors at Newstead; but the best known and most noted spectre connected with the place and immortalised by Byron’s verse is the “Goblin Friar.” The particular chamber that this spectre is supposed specially to frequent, and which is known _par excellence_ as the Haunted Chamber, adjoins Byron’s bedroom. During the poet’s residence this dismal-looking room was occupied by his page, who is said to have been a youth of striking beauty. Lord Byron and many others not only believed in the existence of the Black Friar, but asserted that they had really seen it. It did not confine its visitations to the Haunted Chamber, but, at night, walked into the cloisters, and other parts of the Priory.

“A monk arrayed
In cowl and beads and dusky garb appeared,
Now in the moonlight and now lapsed in shade,
With steps that trod as heavy, yet unheard.”

This apparition was the evil genius of the Byrons, and its appearance foreshadowed misfortune of some kind to the member of the family by whom it was seen. Lord Byron fully believed that he beheld this apparition a short time before the greatest misfortune of his life, his ill-starred union with Miss Milbanke. Alluding to his faith in these things, he said:--

“I merely mean to say, what Johnson said,
That in the course of some six thousand years,
All nations have believed that from the dead
A visitant at intervals appears;
And what is strangest upon this strange head
Is that whatever bar the reason rears
’Gainst such belief, there’s something stronger still
In its behalf, let those deny who will.”

And he thus introduces the presumed duties, as it were, of the Black Friar:--

“By the marriage bed of their lords, ’tis said,
He flies on the bridal eve,
And ’tis held as faith, to their bed of death
He comes, but not to grieve.

When an heir is born, he is bound to mourn,
And when aught is to befall
That ancient line, in the pale moonshine,
He walks from hall to hall.

His form you may trace, but not his face,
’Tis shadowed by his cowl,
But his eyes may be seen, from the folds between,
And they seem of a parted soul.”

However capable as a poet, Byron was clearly no student of monastic affairs. Otherwise he would have known that anything more unlikely than the residence of a Black or Dominican Friar within a house of Black Canons could hardly have taken place. But to him, as to many modern writers, including several of our leading novelists, monks, canons, and friars, though absolutely distinct, are of one and the same order.

The apartments occupied by Lord Byron, bedroom, dressing-room, and small haunted chamber--supposed to have been originally the prior’s lodgings--are carefully kept in the same state as when occupied by the poet. Other rooms over the cloisters, hung with suitable tapestry, are named after Edward III., Henry VII., and Charles II.; they are said to have been respectively occupied by these Kings when visiting the priory.

WOLLATON HALL

BY J. A. GOTCH, F.S.A.

Nottinghamshire is not rich in ancient houses; for although it can boast of many fine seats, they are either comparatively modern in date, or they have been so much altered as to have lost their ancient character. By far the most interesting architecturally is Wollaton Hall, close to Nottingham, the seat of Lord Middleton.

It was built in the reign of Elizabeth by Sir Francis Willoughby, whose family had lived for several generations in a house near the church. Sir Francis left no son, but his eldest daughter and co-heir married her cousin Percival Willoughby, who succeeded in her right to the Wollaton property. He was among the earliest of the gentry knighted by King James I. on his accession to the English throne, receiving that honour at Worksop on April 20, 1603. He died about the beginning of the Civil War; his son, another Sir Francis, succeeded him, and was in turn followed by his only son, Francis, the celebrated traveller and naturalist. Francis Willoughby achieved a great reputation as a scientist, and was one of the first members of the Royal Society. He died in 1672 at the early age of thirty-seven. To him eventually succeeded his second son, Thomas, who was created Lord Middleton in 1711 by Queen Anne. He also left a daughter, Cassandra, who married the Duke of Chandos, and is interesting to us because of some notes concerning her ancestral home which she left behind her.

Wollaton Hall is sometimes quoted as a typical example of the work of the English Renaissance. Those who are in sympathy with that phase of domestic architecture point to it as a magnificent specimen of an Elizabethan palace. Those who are out of sympathy direct the finger of scorn to its extravagances and its pretentiousness. As a matter of fact it cannot be called a typical example. In its chief characteristics it stands by itself, namely, in its lofty central hall and its four corner pavilions. In its extreme regularity of treatment, and in the great care bestowed upon its detail, it exhibits far more of conscious effort in design than the majority of houses built at that period.

The interesting question is, Who was responsible for the design of Wollaton? So little is really known from actual records of the architectural designers of that period, or of their method of work, that the field of conjecture is a vast one, and offers scope for manœuvres on a large scale. But there are one or two facts connected with this house which help us to a certain extent. We know from the inscription over the garden door that it was built by Sir Francis Willoughby, constructed with uncommon art, and left as a precious possession to the Willoughbys. It was begun in 1580 and finished in 1588. The actual inscription runs thus, and consists of two hexameters--

“En has Francisci Willughbi militis ædes
Rara arte extructas Willughboeisq relictas.
Inchoatæ 1580 et finitæ 1588.”

We also know that in John Thorpe’s collection of drawings in the Soane Museum in London there is a ground-plan of the house and half the front elevation. We also find in Wollaton Church a monument to “Mr. Robert Smythson, gent. architector and surveyor unto the most worthy house of Wollaton and diverse others of great account,” who died in 1614 at the age of seventy-nine. There are also some drawings relating to Wollaton in the valuable collection belonging to Col. Coke of Brookhill, near Alfreton. These belonged to a John Smithson, architect, of Bolsover, and were largely his own handiwork. The drawings of Wollaton comprise a plan of the house with forecourts, an elevation of one of the corner pavilions, a plan of the “new orchard,” dated 1618, and some sketches of the stone screen in the great hall. Lastly, we learn from Cassandra Willoughby, Duchess of Chandos, who wrote an account of the house in 1702, that Sir Francis Willoughby sent for the master-workmen who built the house out of Italy, and also for most of the stone figures which adorn it.

Here, then, we have apparently a number of conflicting claims. No one, however, contests with Sir Francis Willoughby the honour of having built the house in the sense of having ordered and paid for it. Nor is its date in question. But there are three claimants to the honour of having designed it, namely, John Thorpe, Robert Smythson, and the master-workmen out of Italy. First, as to the latter. The idea has long been very prevalent that the houses of Elizabeth’s time owed their special characteristics to Italy and to Italian workmen; and so, in a way, they did, because Italy influenced more or less directly the work of the Renaissance in all other countries. But, as a matter of fact, it is extremely difficult to trace anything but a very small amount of English work to actual Italian hands. The whole tendency of recent inquiries goes to show that it was English hands which executed most of the work which has an Italian appearance. The tales of models having been sent for from Italy for English houses are probably apocryphal, because the plan of an English house differed widely from that of an Italian; and although it might be rash to assert that Cassandra the Duchess was wrong, still the master-workmen who were sent for out of Italy could have had very little to do with the designing of Wollaton. The chief credit for that performance ought to be given to John Thorpe, and it is possible to reconcile his claims with those of Robert Smythson by regarding the latter as the chief workman and clerk of the works, or surveyor. It must be remembered that although the same terms are used now as were used then, the meaning of them has changed. We find a number of men described as “architectus” or “architector,” who were what we should regard as master-masons, and that is probably what Mr. Robert Smythson was. But it must also be remembered that the relation of the master-mason to the architect was then very different from what it is to-day. The architect to-day designs everything himself; in those days he seems only to have given a general idea of what he wanted, leaving the detail to be developed by the master-mason. The latter might therefore well take credit to himself--or his sorrowing family for him--as being the “architector” to a house like Wollaton.

There is no established connection between Robert Smythson of Wollaton and John Smithson of Bolsover; but both men were occupied with building matters, and the dates would allow of Robert being the father of John. The relationship, if it existed, would account for John being employed to make drawings of Wollaton.