The Abbey Church of St Mary the Virgin, Tewkesbury, commonly known as Tewkesbury Abbey, is located in the town of Tewkesbury in the ceremonial county of Gloucestershire, England. A former Benedictine monastery, it is now a parish church. Considered one of the finest examples of Norman architecture in Britain, it has the largest Romanesque crossing tower in Europe.
Bec Abbey, formally the Abbey of Our Lady of Bec, is a Benedictine monastic foundation in the Eure département, in the Bec valley midway between the cities of Rouen and Bernay. It is located in Le Bec Hellouin, Normandy, France, and was the most influential abbey of the 12th-century Anglo-Norman kingdom.
Hugh, sometimes called Hugh the Great or Hugh of Semur, was the Abbot of Cluny from 1049 until his death. He was one of the most influential leaders of the monastic orders from the Middle Ages.
Grandmontines were the monks of the Order of Grandmont, a religious order founded by Saint Stephen of Thiers, towards the end of the 11th century. The order was named after its motherhouse, Grandmont Abbey in the eponymous village, now part of the commune of Saint-Sylvestre, in the department of Haute-Vienne, in Limousin, France. They were also known as the Boni Homines or Bonshommes.
Hugh Despenser, 1st Baron Despenser, also referred to as "the Younger Despenser", was the son and heir of Hugh Despenser, Earl of Winchester, and his wife Isabel Beauchamp, daughter of William Beauchamp, 9th Earl of Warwick. He rose to national prominence as royal chamberlain and a favourite of Edward II of England. Despenser made many enemies amongst the nobility of England. After the overthrow of Edward, he was eventually charged with high treason and ultimately hanged, drawn and quartered.
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.
John Whethamstede was an English abbot and one of the leading literary figures in fifteenth-century England.
William of Wallingford was the 47th abbot of St Albans Abbey. He was a Benedictine monk at Holy Trinity Priory, Wallingford, Berkshire, England and like John of Wallingford and Richard of Wallingford, moved from this cell of St Albans Abbey to the abbey itself. He was a favourite of John Stoke, 44th abbot of St Albans, also from Wallingford. On his deathbed in 1451, Stoke was supposed to have given William and Thomas Wallingford, his senior chaplain, charge over 1000 marks but after his death they could only account for 250 marks. The abbot John Wheathampstead who succeeded Stoke suspected the two over the money. Nevertheless, William of Wallingford was later appointed abbot in 1476, after the death of William Albone, apparently for his financial acumen, at a time when the abbey was in debt. William of Wallingford managed to get rid of the debt whilst also spending on the abbey. He built the high altar known as the Wallingford Screen at a cost of £733 and completed the chapter house. The statues on it were destroyed during the Dissolution but were replaced in Victorian times.
Events from the 1530s in England.
John Flete was an English monk and ecclesiastical historian who documented the history and abbots of Westminster Abbey.
John Islip (1464–1532) was abbot of the monastery of Westminster, London, in Tudor times.
Geoffrey was a 12th-century Anglo-Norman Benedictine monk and abbot. Of Anglo-Norman origin, he became monastic head of the Benedictine priory at Canterbury, before moving to Scotland to be the first Abbot of Dunfermline. As abbot he presided over the construction of the new monastery building, the immigration of English monks and settlers, and the accumulation of enough wealth to make Dunfermline Abbey the richest Benedictine monastic house in the Kingdom of Scotland.
Hulton Abbey is a scheduled monument in the United Kingdom, a former monastery located in what is now Abbey Hulton, a suburb of Stoke-on-Trent. A daughter house of the Cistercian Combermere Abbey, the abbey was founded by Henry de Audley in the early 13th century. Throughout its life, the abbey was relatively small and poor, with one of the lowest incomes of all Staffordshire religious houses. The abbey was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1538, with its land and assets being sold.
Thomas Prestbury was an English medieval Benedictine abbot and university Chancellor.
St Augustine's Abbey was a Benedictine monastery in Canterbury, Kent, England. The abbey was founded in 598 and functioned as a monastery until its dissolution in 1538 during the English Reformation. After the abbey's dissolution, it underwent dismantlement until 1848.
The recorded abbots of Shrewsbury run from c 1087, four years after Shrewsbury Abbey's foundation, to 1540, its dissolution under Thomas Cromwell. The abbey was large and well-endowed and the abbots were often important political figures as well as ecclesiastical leaders. They varied greatly over the centuries in ethnic and social origins, intellectual attainments and holiness of life. The first two, Fulchred and Godfred, were imported from Normandy. The remainder seem to have been born in Britain and most, but not all, were elected, or at least selected, from the chapter of the abbey. As important territorial magnates, the abbots were always called to take part in the sessions of Parliament from its very beginnings as an institution in 1265. As important figures in the Western Catholic Church, abbots were permitted by the Pope to wear the pontifical ring from 1251 and the mitre from 1397.
Sir William Trussell was an English politician and leading rebel in Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March's rebellion against Edward II. William acted as Speaker of the House of Commons and renounced the allegiance of England to Edward II, forcing his abdication, and became King Edward III's Secretary.
Richard of Ware was the abbot of Westminster Abbey from 1258 to 1283.
William de Haseley was an English monastic writer. He was sub-prior of the Benedictine community at Westminster Abbey and master of the novices. He entered the monastery in about 1266 and compiled the Consuetudinarium Monachorum Westmonasteriensium for his abbot, Richard de la Ware.
The Litlyngton Missal, also called the Westminster Missal, is an illuminated manuscript commissioned by Abbot Nicholas Litlyngton in 1383–1384 and donated by him to his monastery, Westminster Abbey, where it has remained ever since. It is a Catholic missal with text in Latin.
