Lewes Priory : recruitment

Text Box: The various stages of a monastic career Although there are no surviving admission registers for Lewes Priory it has been possible to identify over 300 monks from the late 13th century using a variety of other sources, including ordination records in bishops’ registers, lists of resident monks from clerical taxation records and the obedientiaries’ accounts. Such lists are particularly useful as they list monks in order of seniority. Office-holders are often named in deeds, accounts and in the records of some of Lewes’s manorial estates, usually when they visited to audit the accounts. Overall these records make it possible to form a broad impression of the processes involved in recruitment, the approximate ages at which monks are promoted to particular offices and, once priors were appointed internally rather than being sent from France, from the end of the 14th century onwards, the normal progression pattern from senior obedientiary to the office of prior. Recruitment By papal dispensation monks of the Cluniac Order could become deacons at 18 and priests at 20, one or two years younger than monks of English Benedictine monasteries such as Durham and Westminster respectively. They could also enter as novices at 14 and become subdeacons at 15 as did St Hugh, the abbot who sent Lanzo with the first monks to Lewes. As at Durham, novices were generally recruited in batches, at Lewes usually of two or three either each year or every couple of years. They were probably selected by the same committee of senior monks that audited the obedientiaries’ accounts, from boys at the Priory grammar school or candidates recommended to the prior, many coming from the Priory’s manors, as can be identified by

Text Box: their surnames, as at Westminster, and sometimes from the localities of other Cluniac houses. Thus in 1278 the Lewes monks included a John de Acres (probably Castle Acre) as well as a John de Monte Acute and a Ralph de Farley, both Cluniac houses, whilst John de Cunningsburgh came from a Priory appropriated parish, probably recommended by the vicar. Similarly at the time of the dissolution in 1537 there was a monk called John Halifax. Others at various times bore the surnames of Heacham and Walpole, both Norfolk possessions; Horton, a Lewes cell; Southwark, where the Prior had a house and the priory held the advowson of the parish church of St Olave; and, nearer to home, such Sussex possessions of Lewes Priory as Balsdean, Langley, Grinstead, Cuckfield, Barcombe and Ditchling. Inevitably most Lewes monks came from the immediate area, although a few from further afield such as Canterbury, Faversham, Glastonbury, Norwich, Oxford and Reading can be identified, all significantly places with large Benedictine monasteries. There were also various others from Kent. Amongst the surnames of Lewes monks 27 Sussex place-names can be identified, of which all but three (Amberley, Arundel and Shoreham) lay within Eastern Sussex, including four each from Lewes and Malling. Altogether over 40 Lewes monks bore the surnames of Sussex localities while another dozen bore such local topographical names as At Hide, Atwell, Brooke, Hamme, Wood, typical surnames of small yeomen farmers, from whom, together with urban traders and craftsmen, most Lewes monks seem to have been drawn, certainly from the late 13th century onwards. Few were from the aristocracy, exceptions being William de Warenne, bastard son of the last earl, monk of Lewes, who successively became prior of Monks Horton in 1339 and of Castle Acre 1347, as a result of his father’s patronage, and possibly Robert Arundel, chamberlain in 1381-2. Amongst the gentry only John Burgherssh, Prior of Lewes from 1409-14 and Thomas Lewknor, one of the boys listed in 1534, can be identified. Christian de Dychening was a choir boy from the school in

Text Box: 1534, indicating that locally, at least, a common route to admission was as a boy chorister attending lessons at the Lewes Grammar School. There were 8 such boys in 1480-1 and 5 in 1534-5, tonsured and wearing the monastic habit. They participated fully in the life of the monastery, heading processions immediately behind the cross, singing in the choir and reading aloud the entries in the martyrology in chapter as well as eating in the refectory and sleeping within the monastery, supervised by two monks who acted as their masters. Examples of small groups of entrants include in May 1485 Richard Southwark and John Ashdown, the future prior, who became subdeacons. In September, together with John Marchall they became deacons and in December, John Ashdown and John Marchall became priests. A similar group a century earlier consisted of Walter Peyntor, William Pykeden, Richard Neel and Peter Grynsted who became deacons in February 1401. All except Richard Neel progressed to priest in September of the same year. Occasionally there were lengthy delays between ordination to the minor orders and to those of deacon and priest, probably as a result of the age limits. The future chamberlain Thomas Gates had to wait 5 years from his ordination as an acolyte in February 1402 until he became a deacon in September 1407 and John Benet had to wait over three years between his ordination as subdeacon in April 1489 until he became a deacon in September 1492 and priest in December 1493. Both of these examples are consistent with ordination to minor orders from the age of 15, but to deacon and priest only at 18 and 20 respectively.

Top Left: Prior Albert’s tomb, West Walton showing two cowled Lewes monks on either side of his head 1244

Top Right: detail of cowled monk from Prior Albert’s tomb