Text Box: Lewes Priory: priors (3) © Graham Mayhew 2008 Text Box: Duties as senior English prior As the most senior prior in England, the prior of Lewes was expected to play a leading role in Cluniac affairs. In the 13th and early 14th centuries priors of Lewes were often amongst those senior priors chosen to act as definitors of the General-Chapter, with executive powers to ensure its decisions were carried out. Lewes priors served as definitors in 1266, 1273, 1274, 1306, 1314 and 1334. They might also be chosen as visitors of the abbey of Cluny itself, as in 1274, 1304, 1314 and 1334. More often they served as one of the two visitors of the Cluniac houses of the English province appointed annually by the General-Chapter. They also served as chamberlains of the English province, effectively acting as the abbot of Cluny’s deputy, as mentioned in the Cluny archives. Thus occasional references to the appointment of a Lewes prior as chamberlain (generally for life in the earlier period) can be found for 1274, 1306 and 1357. Priors of Lewes appear as one of the two visitors of the English province in most years for which records survive in the 13th century except 1274 when the prior was one of the definitors and visitors of Cluny itself. In the 14th century the system was severely disrupted by the Hundred Years War with only intermittent attendance and reporting to the General-Chapter, as for example in 1304-6, 1314 , 1334-5 and 1349. Appointment as a visitor could mean weeks away from the prior’s own monastery. The visitation of the English province in 1275-6, for example lasted from 13th December to 21st March, a period of over 13 weeks and 4 days, beginning at Monks Horton, Kent and from there to Bermondsey, Northampton, Montacute (Somerset), Monkton Farley (Wiltshire), Wenlock (Shropshire), Lenton (Nottinghamshire), Thetford, Castle Acre and Bromholm (all in Norfolk) and Prittlewell (Essex); that of 1279 lasted from 10th July to 26th September, a total of 10 weeks and 3 days and followed a similar route, although including several smaller houses en route such as Barnstaple, St James’s Exeter, Kerswell (Devon) and Clifford (Herefordshire), as well as Monk Bretton and Pontefract (Yorkshire) before ending at Lewes. On occasions when visitations also included Cluny’s two Scottish houses of Paisley Abbey and its daughter priory Crossraguel, as may have been the case in the 1490s when the province of England and Scotland was specified, the time Text Box: away from home may have been even longer. Taken together with attendance at the annual chapter at Cluny, which also afforded an opportunity to visit Lewes Priory’s two French possessions, Mortemer and Ettouteville, a prior of Lewes could easily be absent from his home monastery for half the year. From 1369 to 1391 the English were entirely absent from the General-Chapter. However from 1391, apart from 14 years for which there are no entries, there is an almost continual series of appointments of visitors to the English province until 1506. These appointments were apparently made in absentia. In fact by the beginning of the 15th century the combination of war with France and the Great Schism (1378-1417) had begun a process of separation of the English Cluniac houses from Cluny and the other French mother houses which by 1490 had become total. One consequence of this was that attendance at the General-Chapter appears largely to have ceased and there was no formal visitation of the English province initiated by Cluny for almost 60 years until the appointment of 3 visitors in 1458 (the prior of Vaucluse and the sacrist and archdeacon of Cluny) who, although they were given hospitality and treated with politeness, were kept waiting for permission by the king to carry out their visitation until their money ran out and they were forced to return to France without having achieved anything. In the absence of any supervision of its affairs from Cluny itself, the English province was left very much to its own devices and sought to create its own structures. Early evidence of this is the petition of the English monks of the Text Box: order of Cluny to the king and council almost certainly dating from Edward I’s reign (probably the 1290s). At a time of growing national sentiment and anti-French feeling it requests, amongst others, that they should be visited in future by English bishops or archbishops, should have the right to elect their own superiors rather than by foreigners who send money out of the country and that the prior of Lewes should be made an abbot with the authority to profess monks of the order in England, so they do not have to go abroad. Although on this occasion nothing was done, this was a clear pointer to the future. When in 1409 the end of the Great Schism was in sight the earl of Arundel wrote as patron of Lewes to the abbot of Cluny requesting that the prior be granted authority to act on behalf of the abbot and the priors of La Charité and St Martin-des-Champs in England with power to nominate the heads of the English houses. In 1411 the countess of Arundel added her request that the prior of Lewes be made abbot with power to profess monks of the order in England. Although the abbot of Cluny granted some of these powers and ratified all professions made by papal authority during the schism he declined to make the prior an abbot. He did, however, make him vicar-general with limited powers, including the right of visitation, and the power to profess monks although these powers did not automatically apply to those monasteries dependent on La Charité (Bermondsey, Pontefract, Northampton and Wenlock) or on St Martin-des-Champs (Barnstaple, St Clears and St James's Exeter) for which separate appointments as vicar-general were required. Thereafter successive priors of Lewes served as vicars-general throughout much of the fifteenth century. The relative importance of the prior of Lewes within the English province is further confirmed by the fact that of 102 years for which the records survive between 1391 and 1506 priors (or in one case the sub-prior) of Lewes were appointed by the Cluny Chapter-General as visitors in 72 of them. This compares to 28 appointments as visitor for the prior of Montacute, 21 for the prior of Lenton and 20 for the prior of Pontefract, 11 for the Abbot of Paisley (including two as the sole visitor in Scotland), 7 for the prior of Wenlock, 3 for the prior of Thetford and one each for the priors of Dudley, Derby and Longueville (Normandy).

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