Alien priories were religious establishments in England, such as monasteries and convents, which were under the control of another religious house outside England. Usually the mother-house was in France. [1]
Alien priories were religious establishments in England, such as monasteries and convents, which were under the control of another religious house outside England. Usually the mother-house was in France. [1]
Alien priories were small dependencies of foreign religious houses. [2] Specifically, this pertained to the English possessions of French religious houses.
The precedent went back at least as far as 912. Ælfthryth, daughter of Alfred the Great married Baldwin II, Count of Flanders. She received various properties under her father's will, and gave Lewisham Priory with its dependencies, Greenwich and Woolwich, to the abbey of St Peter at Ghent. [3] Edward the Confessor gave the parish church at Deerhurst, and its lands to the monastery of St Denis. [4]
The practice increased after the Norman Conquest. A number of Norman lords had founded monasteries on their lands in France, which in many cases sent monks to England to manage their property. William the Conqueror gave to the Abbey of Saint-Étienne in Caen, the manors of Frampton and Bincombe in Dorset. [5] During the reign of William Rufus, Hamelin de Balun, founded the Benedictine priory of St Mary, at Abergavenny under the jurisdiction of the Abbey of Saint Vincent at Le Mans. The designation "Alien Priory" included any property owned by the French houses, regardless of whether there was an actual priory, or religious house, constructed upon it.
Some priories enjoyed more autonomy than others. A distinction was drawn between those where the prior was appointed and served at the will of the abbot of the motherhouse, and those where the prior was elected by the monks. In the latter case, the land was vested in the priory and could not be sold by the abbot. The priories paid an apport, a nominal fixed sum, annually to the mother-house. [6]
A medieval abbey which held distant estates normally administered them by establishing a small cell or priory of two or three monks to manage a manor or group of manors and send the profits to the mother-house. King John compelled them to pay into the royal treasury the apport. During the reign of King Henry III (1216-1272), many alien priories were suppressed by Simon de Montfort's Parliament (the Parliament of Leicester, 1265), and their revenues were taken into the king's hands. The Crown, however, in most cases transferred the property to other monasteries.
In 1294, when King Edward I of England was at war with France, many of the alien priories were seized, [1] numbering about a hundred, and their revenues were used to help pay for the war. In order to prevent the foreign monks in southern coastal areas giving possible help to invaders, he deported many of them to other religious houses that were twenty or more miles from the coast.
King Edward II of England subsequently followed this example, taking the alien priories into his own hands, but he not infrequently appointed their priors custodians for a consideration, obliging them to pay to the Crown the apport due to their superiors.
When Edward III came to the throne, he restored many of the alien priories to their original owners and waived the arrears of payments due to the Crown. But ten years later, when war broke out again with France, he reverted to the policy of his predecessors, and again seized the property of these French aliens. For twenty-three years, these foreign houses remained in his hands; but with the peace of 1361 most of them were restored, only to be again sequestrated eight years later when the war was renewed. In the time of Richard II, the alien priories continued mostly in the hands of the Crown.
In 1378, all the monks in alien priories were expelled from England. [1] Most finally came to an end under Henry V in 1414, with a few exceptions surviving, for example Modbury Priory in Devon.
Deerhurst is a village and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England, about 2 miles (3 km) southwest of Tewkesbury. The village is on the east bank of the River Severn. The parish includes the village of Apperley and the hamlet of Deerhurst Walton. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 906, the majority of whom live in Apperley.
The dissolution of the monasteries, occasionally referred to as the suppression of the monasteries, was the set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541, by which Henry VIII disbanded monasteries, priories, convents, and friaries in England, Wales, and Ireland; expropriated their income; disposed of their assets; and provided for their former personnel and functions.
St Neots Priory was a Benedictine monastery beside the town of St Neots in the historic county of Huntingdonshire, now a non-metropolitan district in the English county of Cambridgeshire.
Cluny Abbey is a former Benedictine monastery in Cluny, Saône-et-Loire, France. It was dedicated to Saint Peter.
Mount Grace Priory is a monastery in the parish of East Harlsey, North Yorkshire, England. Set in woodlands within the North York Moors National Park, it is represented today by the best preserved and most accessible ruins among the nine houses of the Carthusian Order, which existed in England in the Middle Ages and were known as charterhouses.
Bermondsey Abbey was an English Benedictine monastery. Most widely known as being founded in the 11th century, it had a precursor mentioned in the early eighth century, and was centred on what is now Bermondsey Square, the site of Bermondsey Market, Bermondsey, in the London Borough of Southwark, southeast London, England.
St Mary's Priory Church, Deerhurst, is the Church of England parish church of Deerhurst, Gloucestershire, England. Much of the church is Anglo-Saxon. It was built in the 8th century, when Deerhurst was part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia. It is contemporary with the Carolingian Renaissance on mainland Europe, which may have influenced it.
Amesbury Abbey was a Benedictine abbey of women at Amesbury in Wiltshire, England, founded by Queen Ælfthryth in about the year 979 on what may have been the site of an earlier monastery. The abbey was dissolved in 1177 by Henry II, who founded in its place a house of the Order of Fontevraud, known as Amesbury Priory.
Tickford Priory was a medieval monastic house in Newport Pagnell in Buckinghamshire, England.
Modbury Priory was a Benedictine priory in the parish of Modbury, Devon, England, established before 1129 which was one of the longest surviving alien priories in England, most of which were suppressed in 1414. It was located close to the present parish church of St George in the town of Modbury, but its exact location is unclear.
Holme Priory, also known as East Holne Priory, was a priory in Dorset, England.
Loders Priory was a priory in Loders, Dorset, England.
Pamber Priory is a Church of England parish church and former priory, then known as West Sherborne Priory or Monk Sherborne Priory, at Monk Sherborne in the English county of Hampshire.
Lewisham Priory was a Benedictine monastic house in Lewisham, Kent, England.
Everdon Priory was a priory in Northamptonshire, England. The village of Everdon is located about 6 km south-east of the town of Daventry.
Blakenham Priory was an estate in monastic ownership in the late Middle Ages, located at Great Blakenham in Suffolk, England.
St. James Priory, also known as Derby Cluniac Priory, was a Benedictine monastery, formerly located in what is now Derby City Centre. It existed until the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Edith Weston Priory was a small alien house of Benedictine monks in Edith Weston, Rutland. The French parent house of Abbey of Saint-Georges, Boscherville was founded by Ralf de Tanquerville, chamberlain to William the Conqueror, about the year 1050. By 1114 his son William donated the church and manor at Edith Weston, and a small cell of monks was set up to collect the rents and intercede for the founder's soul.