BHO
  1. Victoria County History - Rutland
  2. A History of the County of Rutland: Volume 1
  3. Religious Houses: Introduction

Religious Houses: Introduction

Page 159

A History of the County of Rutland: Volume 1. Originally published by Victoria County History, London, 1908.

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Citation:

THE RELIGIOUS HOUSES OF RUTLAND

The religious houses of Rutland were few and of small importance. There was indeed no independent monastery built in this county after the Conquest: the small priory of Brooke, for Austin canons, being only a cell to the priory of Kenilworth. The Benedictine monks of St. Georges de Boscherville had a cell at Edith Weston from the 12th century till the end of the 14th. Only three hospitals, at Tolethorpe, Great Casterton, and Oakham, can be traced, though there are doubtless others of which no record remains. A college at Manton, founded by Sir William Wade in 1356, completes the number of religious foundations, the short-lived college at Tolethorpe being treated as a refoundation of the hospital.

The manors of Manton and Tixover were given by King Henry I to the abbey of Cluny about 1130; but they were always held directly by the abbot, and leased by him to seculars until the time of their confiscation by Henry V in 1414. (fn. 1) No priory was ever built in connexion with either of them.

Footnotes

  • 1. The history of these manors may be clearly traced through Sir George Duckett's Charters and Records of Cluni. With the manors of Letcombe Regis, Berks., and Offord Cluney, Hunts., they were reckoned as de mensa abbatis Cluniacensis, after the priories of the order in England. Richard II issued letters patent to the abbot's tenant in 1397 to hold them in the same way that they had hitherto been held; but in 1401 they were seized by Henry IV, with other property of aliens, and never restored. Negotiations and letters passed for several years between the abbot and the king, in the hope that a sale might be effected: but no terms could be arranged agreeable to both parties, and the manors were finally confiscated in 1414. The Cluny records are supported by Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), ii, 49, which states that the manors were the gift of Henry I to Cluny, and were held in 1276 by Humbert de Montferaud from the abbot.