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As the word "Monk" is
derived from the Greek word "monos" which means "to be
alone", monks and nuns are people who are called to be apart from society.
Their most important duty is the seven daily services of the liturgy, known as
the Canonical Hours, the timing of which could vary depending on the time of
year. During March and September, when the length of the days and nights both
equal twelve hours, the monks rose for the first vigil at 2 am, after a seven
hour sleep. The hours were:
2 am Vigils (the night watch
office) - Meditation At First light: Lauds - Praises
6 am Prime, at sunrise 9 am
Terce, at the end of the third hour 12 noon Nones
4.30 pm Vespers (evening
service: Vesper is the evening star) 6 pm
Compline, at dusk (to complete the Hours).
Although there have been
monasteries in England since the earliest days of Christianity, they were in the
main run by secular priests who had chosen to live in a community, leading a
simple life and obeying the orders of their chosen Abbot. Before the invasion of
the Danes in 832, there were at least ten monasteries in Yorkshire. They were
very different from the monasteries set up at the time of the Norman Conquest by
the more powerful and highly sophisticated monastic orders of Western Europe,
who introduced numerous foreign ideas into England. It was not long before
colonies of Benedictine, Cistercian, Carthusian, Augustinian Canons, along with
many other orders were in every English county. Until 1852, Langcliffe was in
the parish of Giggleswick, as were Settle, Rathmell and Stainforth. Langcliffe
and Giggleswick are both mentioned in the Domesday Book and came under Finchale
Priory, which lies a few miles downstream from Durham, on the banks of the River
Wear. Shortly after coming to Durham, St. Godric, a native of Norfolk, founded
the Priory in 1115. Although there was no mention of Giggleswick Church in the
Domesday Book, the earliest mention of it was in a grant to Finchale Priory in
1205, the priory being a cell of the great Benedictine Priory of St. Cuthbert's
in Durham. The Prior and monks of
Finchale continued to hold the
parsonage and rectorial tithes
until the Dissolution of the
Monasteries by Henry VIII between 1536 and 1539.
In the 13th Century two
parishioners gave land in Giggleswick to the priory; Simon, son of Swain, gave
all his land called Biggeholme, and Thomas, son of Henry Couperman (of
Giggleswick), gave three bovates of land. The secular life of the district
received very little interference from the Benedictines of Finchale, farming at
their tithes for a fixed rate per annum, and living in houses and property
belonging to the church.
The parish of Giggleswick also
gave land to Sawley Abbey which was a Cistercian Order. The Cistercians were an
off-shoot of the Benedictines which had broken away in 1098 from the parent body
because of their dissatisfaction with the growing laxity in the observance of
the rules of the order. They led a much stricter life, the most visible sign
being their return to active field work which Saint Benedict had considered so
important. Their first community was established in a swamp at Citeaux, near
Dijon, and because they chose to establish their houses on waste lands by honest
labour, their efforts initially were in the main unsuccessful. Under their third
Abbot, Stephen Harding (1109-1134), an Englishman, the order soon established
houses at Furness Abbey (1123), Riveaulx (1128), Fountains (1132), Bylands
(1134), Jervaulx (1145) and Sawley (1147), all a great influence in this area in
their day.
In c.1160 Adam, son of Meldred,
granted to God and St. Mary and the Monks of Furness a carucate of land called
Stacus. The land carried the right to feed swine, cut timber from Giggleswick
Wood for building purposes, also to the common pasture of Giggleswick and
Stackhouse, for which a rent of ten shillings a year was paid, half at
Pentecost, half at the feast of St. Martin (12th November). Although there was
no mention of any houses or tenants being included in this first grant, within a
few years there were monks and their men living in the village of Stackhouse.
This growing prosperity brought Furness and many of the other monasteries into
dispute with one another.
Before 1194, Adams's grandson,
Elias, the then Lord of the Manors of Giggleswick and Langcliffe, was in dispute
with the monks of Furness over the monks' action in erecting a cornmill by the
river on his land, which was taking away the custom from Elias's own mill at
Giggleswick. The cornmill was one of the perks of being Lord of the Manor, and
whilst the monks paid him rent for the land, they had trespassed by building a
cornmill on his land in Langcliffe. The quarrel lingered on a long time,
resolved eventually by the Abbey appealing to Pandaff, the Pope's legate. The
judgement of 1221 gave Elias the mill built by the monks, he was also allowed to
rent the mill pond, but he had to pay the monks an annual acknowledgement of one
pound of cummin or two pence; he also had to release them from their payment of
rent of ten shillings for Stackhouse, thereby making the Abbot of Furness, lord
of that part of Giggleswick township. By the turn of the century (1200) it had
become a common practice for all classes of the parish to give gifts of land to
the monasteries; between 1200 to 1250, benefactions in abundance were showered
upon Sawley Abbey in what would appear to be a ceaseless stream. Elias of
Giggleswick granted to the monks all his land in the township of Langcliffe with
pasturage stretching from High Trenhouse, across Langcliffe to Forna Gill in
Stainforth as well as the cornmill by the Ribble which he had taken from Furness;
he also gave them his land in Rathmell. People gave land to the monks, and thus
were granted a charter in order that they might not be forgotten in the prayers
of the holy men, and for their names to be inscribed in the Abbey charters as
benefactors, also to gain immunity from excommunication by any bishop. It seems
significant that charters came in greater numbers after King John was excommunicated
in 1209. He like many of his family before and after, contrived a head‑on
collision with the Pope. On the death of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the monks
selected one of their number as successor. John indignantly overrode this and
nominated a reliable friend of his, John Grey, bishop of Norwich. Pope Innocent
III denied the validity of either choice and ordered John to accept Stephen
Langton, an English-born cardinal who had been educated in Paris and spent most
of his life in France. John refused. The Pope thereupon placed the whole of
England under an interdict in 1208. Celebration of Mass was prohibited, and the
dead had to be buried in unconsecrated ground. John himself was excommunicated
in 1209 but remained defiant until 1213, when the threat of a French invasion
with the Pope's blessing forced him to capitulate. He not only accepted Langton
but offered the Pope temporal as well as spiritual sovereignty over England.
The subsidiary grants to
freeholders was not common in Langcliffe where Elias of Giggleswick probably
owned most of the land, but it was more numerous in Stainforth and Rathmell.
Some like Robert of Settle granted his land to Sawley in order that he could be
buried in the Abbey, as did Elias de Giggleswick and his wife, Alice.
Later, in return for moneys
paid, the monks agreed to take anyone as an inmate and pensioner in his old age.
Not being versed in actuarial skills, the monks frequently lost out financially
by the bargain because the corrodier, (which these pensioners were called), were
within the Abbey walls but not bound by any stern self-disciplining rules; the
effect on the discipline within the community was disastrous. By the time of the
dissolution of the monasteries there had been an incredible growth in the power
of the religious orders, but a decline in moral standards.
By the 14th century the monastic
zeal of the two previous centuries was on the decline, new buildings were built,
recruits were found, but they were reduced to a trickle. The situation was made
worse by the Black Death in the middle of the 14th century. Most of the great
monastic houses were half-empty, and by and large enthusiasm for the religious
life had waned. The daily cycle of prayer was maintained, particularly in the
smaller houses, where life continued in much the same way as it always had, but
the larger monastic houses were now landowners on a very large scale; they were
now ensnared by the toils of property ownership. Senior monks were involved in
management and administration, supervising tenants, engaged in litigation in
defence of the Abbey's rights and privileges. This made them secular-wise,
virtually no different from the country gentry around them. Certainly the abbots
from the more prestigious houses found themselves, like their more important
gentry counterparts, obliged to serve the crown in a variety of capacities such
as land drainage schemes, or making provisions for the storage of foodstuffs in
times of scarcity. Thirty of the most important abbots sat in the upper house of
parliament, no longer sharing the common life of the monks. About two-thirds of
the religious houses were small with no vast estates, housing only a handful of
monks or nuns, no large staff; most have been forgotten. The standards of
spirituality were not very high and vows of chastity were often broken.
It is impossible to exaggerate
the influence the monks had on the parish of Giggleswick, but at the time of the
Dissolution of the Monasteries, many of the English monks and nuns slipped into
the secular life so easily that it would appear they had no fervent love for
life of the cloister; the only resistance was a series of risings in
Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and other counties in the north of England, known as the
Pilgrimage of Grace. This northern insurrection was against parliamentary
changes, the suppression of monastic orders, and the introduction of new ideas
in the church. These changes were invoked by Henry VIII who needed to increase
his income, having squandered a very substantial inheritance from his father.
Henry's chief adviser in 1534 was Thomas Cromwell who had been a mercenary in
Italy, a cloth merchant, a money lender and had learnt statecraft under Cardinal
Wolsey. The dissolution of the monasteries, which Cromwell handled with cold-blooded
efficiency brought income to the Crown worth £100,000 a year, the smaller
monasteries such as Whalley and Sawley being among the first to be pulled down
and their inmates driven out. These changes were highly unpopular among all the
classes throughout the North of England and Lincolnshire, who swore to resist
the taxes and maintain the old order of the church.
In Lincolnshire, a rising in
October 1536 had easily been suppressed. Yorkshire, on the other hand, was
different; the High Sheriff of the county, Robert Aske, raised a force of 30,000
men on the 24th of October at Doncaster under the insurgents' banner and marched
on York.
Eventually, a truce was obtained
through the mediations of the Duke of Norfolk who promised to present their
demands to parliament. These included parliamentary reform, and the punishment
of Thomas Cromwell.
A full pardon was offered to the
rebels and as a result, on the 6th of December, Aske succeeded in persuading his
followers to disperse. Further outbreaks in January the following year gave
Henry the necessary excuses for him to break any promises that had been given,
and as a result more than 200 insurgents were executed.
On the 23rd of April 1537,
Nicholas Tempest from Broughton was sent for trial at York. He admitted that he
had taken part in the rising before the armistice and general pardon, though
under duress. He denied he had taken part afterwards, except out of charity. He
had, as his neighbours had done, given food to the starving inmates of Sawley
Abbey. Despite his plea, all was in vain. The government were out for his blood
together with Sir Stephen Hammerton of Wigglesworth and the abbots of Sawley and
Whalley. They all suffered death in defence of their religious beliefs. Nicholas
Tempest, was taken to London where he was hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on
25th of May.
In Broughton church, on the
north wall of the Tempest chapel, is a roughly incised stone on its side beneath
two Tempest memorials; it is considered to be the headstone of a communal grave
to commemorate those who were executed following the Pilgrimage of Grace in
1537. Upon the stone, roughly incised, is a cross with four small crosses on it,
three on the horizontal, the fourth on the vertical. They represent the five
wounds of Christ which were adopted by the insurgents as their banner.
Bibliography:
Church Life in Medieval England:
The Monasteries by Lawren Goulder
Medieval Monasteries in Great
Britain by Lionel Butler and Gwen Wilson
A History of Sawley Abbey in
Craven by J.Harland
A History of the Ancient Parish of Giggleswick by Thomas Brayshaw and Ralph M.Robinson.