Text Box: Lewes Priory: Mortmain losses:Dewsbury and Wakefield © Graham Mayhew 2008 Text Box: One of the most bizarre incidents during the crisis years of the mid-1320s was the forced extraction of the advowsons of Dewsbury and Wakefield from Lewes Priory by Edward II’s powerful favourite, Hugh de Despencer, ostensibly as a result of a breach by an earlier prior of the Statute of Mortmain (1279). This act obliged monasteries amongst others to obtain a royal licence, at a fee, for the acquisition of any lands or other benefits in perpetuity on pain of forfeiture of the property to the crown. These were highly valuable parishes which Lewes Priory would otherwise have expected to appropriate in due course. In 1291 Dewsbury’s annual revenues had been valued at £80 and Wakefield’s at £33 6s 8d, from which the priory drew pensions of £3 and £2 13s 4d respectively. Both parishes were part of the Manor of Wakefield, part of the lands of John de Warenne. But in 1319 John had been forced to grant Wakefield Manor to Thomas earl of Lancaster, after whose execution in 1322 it was retained by the crown and only returned to John in 1326.. Possibly Hugh Despencer the younger, who was from 1318 Edward II’s Chamberlain and favourite, intended obtaining Wakefield Manor for himself and the move against Lewes Priory was part of the process. Alternatively the church of Melton Mowbray itself may have been his objective as he had only recently, in 1322, obtained the manor of Melton Mowbray itself for his son, Gilbert, after it had fallen into the king’s hands because of John de Mowbray’s rebellion. Whatever the precise intention, on 19th July 1325 Adam, prior of Lewes, was forced to enter into a recognizance in the court of chancery in the sum of £10,000 to the king, payable at the next Feast of the Assumption (15th August). This was an enormous sum which was clearly intended to be impossible to raise. The real purpose of this swingeing penalty became clear the next day, 20th July, when Edward II granted by patent roll “that the said recognizance shall be void if he [the prior] and the convent by charter sealed with the seal of their chapter grant to Hugh le Despencer, son of Hugh le Despencer, earl of Winchester, and Eleanor his wife the advowsons of the churches of Dewsbury and Wakefield … with remainder to Gilbert their son and his heirs, by the morrow of St Peter’s Chains [1st August] and pay to the king’s clerk, John de Wodeford 40 marks by that date, and cause him to have letters patent under the seal of their charters of a pension of £40 yearly out of their house until provided by them with a Text Box: benefice”. The same day, 20th July, in return, the king pardoned prior Adam and the convent of Lewes for the trespass of John “sometime prior” in acquiring the advowson of Melton Mowbray church in mortmain from Roger de Mowbray by a fine levied in the court of Edward I, held by him in chief, and afterwards appropriating the church without licence. The scene was set for the final stages of the drama. Less than a week later, on 26th July, in the chapter house at Lewes, Adam the prior and the monks duly granted the advowsons of Dewsbury and Wakefield by charter to Hugh de Despencer the younger and his wife for life, with remainder to Gilbert their son, witnessed by, amongst others, the lord chancellor Robert de Baldock, the chief justice Sir Geoffrey de Scrope and two justices of the common bench. The prior was then made to return to London to appear again in chancery on 31st July to acknowledge the deed and to grant that the pension to John de Wodeforde, if in arrears, should be levied from the priory’s lands in Sussex. Finally, on 11th August, the charter was formally inspected and enrolled. These proceedings only make sense if the prior had offered the two advowsons of Dewsbury and Wakefield in exchange for the crown not exercising its right of confiscating the church of Melton Mowbray under the Statute of Mortmain. But it is also not clear where the claim of Roger de Mowbray had come from since Lewes Priory had held the advowson of Melton Mowbray church since the church was presented to Text Box: them by Geoffrey de Stutteville at some date between 1093 and 1106. It had clearly been appropriated to Lewes before 1291 as the Taxatio entry refers to a vicarage having already been instituted, apparently by Pope Innocent IV in 1246. This appropriation had been subsequently recognized by the bishop of Lincoln, who in 1255 or 1256 had established the vicar’s portion at 13 marks. There is also a royal grant to Eleanor Despencer, Hugh’s wife, dated 29th May 1325, of a messuage and eight virgates of land in Melton Mowbray, which, it is stated, the prior of Lewes had acquired in mortmain without royal licence from Roger de Mowbray who, we are informed, had held them in chief from Edward I and which had therefore come into the present king’s hands as forfeit. But this was clearly false as was subsequently acknowledged by Edward III in September 1328, when an enquiry following the entry into it of the prior’s men, found that it had been glebe land since the church’s foundation, legitimately held by Lewes Priory. The two advowsons of Dewsbury and Wakefield, however, which had fallen into the king’s hands on the execution of Hugh Despencer and his father in 1326, were not returned to Lewes Priory and were eventually appropriated by Edward III to St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster. The most satisfactory explanation, since Lewes Priory’s continuous patronage of both of the rectories into which Melton Mowbray had been divided since the twelfth century can be easily demonstrated, is that Roger de Mowbray, as lord of the manor of Melton Mowbray put in a claim to the advowson and the disputed glebe lands for himself at some point during the 30 years between 1256 and 1285. Lawsuits of this type had been a common feature of relations between religious institutions and landholders in the decades either side of 1200. Often they ended in a compromise whereby the lay claimant was bought off in return for a substantial money payment and/or the promise of prayers and other spiritual benefits. An entry in the fine rolls for 1285 shows that Roger subsequently conceded the prior’s rights in the former and granted the right he claimed in the advowson, apparently dating back to the reign of King John, to the prior in return for 700 marks of silver. Presumably this was the basis for the subsequent claim in curia regis of Roger’s widow to one third of the advowson as dower, which she released to the prior in 1304. Presumably this provided the excuse for the legal action against the priory in July 1325 at a time when its alien status rendered it especially vulnerable to such attacks on its property.

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