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Rievaulx
Historical and geographical information
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Dates are in red.
Hyperlinks to other pages are in dark blue.
Headlines are in brown.
References and citations are in turquoise.
Contextual history is in purple.
This
webpage about the Rievaulx has the
following section headings:
- Farndale
family history and Rievaulx
- Rievaulx
Abbey, overview
- Timeline of
Rievaulx’s history
- The abbots of
Rievaulx
- Photographic
record
- Links, texts
and books
Farndale family history and Rievaulx
The name Farndale, first occurs in
history in the Rievaulx Abbey Chartulary. See FAR00002.
The relevant year for Farndale history is 1154 when a record appeared I the
Rievaulx Chartulary.
Gundreda, on behalf of her guardian, Roger de
Mowbray, gave land to Rievaulx abbey land which included a place called Midelhovet,
where Edmund the Hermit used to dwell, and another called Duvanesthuat,
together with the common pasture within the valley of Farndale.
The name Farndale, first occurs in history in the Rievaulx
Abbey Chartulary in a Charter granted by Roger de Mowbray to the Abbot
and the monks of Rievaulx Abbey in 1154. By it Roger bestowed upon the
Monastery, ‘….Midelhovet, that clearing in
Farndale where the hermit Edmund used to dwell; and another clearing which is
called ‘Duvanesthuat’ and common of pasture in the
same valley of Farndale….’
Rievaulx Abbey
The Victoria County History – Yorkshire, A History of the
County of York: Volume 3 Houses of Cistercian monks: Rievaulx, 1974: The monastery of Rievaulx, the earliest
Cistercian house in the county, was founded by Walter Espec in 1131. The abbey
is situated at the head of a deep valley formed by a bend of the River Rye
below Old Byland. It stands on a plateau, partly of natural and partly of
artificial origin, through being cut into the bank behind which slopes gently
down from the famous terrace above. Opposite to the abbey rise the wooded sides
of Ashberry Hill, and the valley is narrowed in at its lower end by another
wooded bank.
Rievaulx, 1857
Timeline of Rievaulx’s History
1098
Rievaulx was an abbey of the Cistercian
order, which was founded by St Bernard of Clairvaux at Cîteaux,
near Dijon, France, in 1098. The Cistercian order emerged in France in the late
11th century and spread rapidly across Europe.
It was to become one of the most
remarkable European monastic reform movements of the 12th century, placing an
emphasis on a return to an austere life and literal observance of the rules set
out for monastic life by St Benedict in the 6th century.
A major regional reason for the success
of the Cistercians was the rigour of their religious life. The order sought to
live according to the purest possible interpretation of the rule of Benedict.
Their services were dignified but simple, allowing more time for reading and
manual work. The Order’s art and architecture was austere.
1128
The Cistercians first appeared in
England at Waverley, Surrey, in 1128.
The Cistercian Order of ‘white monks’
(as they came to be called, after their dress which distinguished them from the
black-clad Benedictines) was founded in Citeaux, France, in 1098, upon the
initiative of a number of dissident Benedictine monks.
These Benedictines had grown dissatisfied with the extent to which their own
ancient Order had gradually departed from the austere manner of living which
had characterised the earliest forms of monasticism based upon the Rule of St
Benedict. Like the Desert Fathers includikng John the
Baptist the first monks sought to associate spiritual devotion with a strict
material asceticism; and this was one of the ideals to which the Cistercian
Order committed itself to return. Alongside this, the
Cistercians devoted themselves to the ideal of taking on manual labour as part
of their objective of self-sufficiency.
Like other Orders, they accepted gifts
of land on which to build their monastery, farm sheep for wool and grow food,
or from which to extract minerals, quarry stone and retrieve timber for
building and repairs. However, initially at least, they would accept only
undeveloped land. Land on which rent-paying tenants were already settled, mills
which took tolls from tenants obliged by feudal laws to use them, manors with
feudal rights which generated income or which bound tenants to give a certain
number of unpaid working days to the lord, and churches owning the right to
exact tithes from their lands, all these they (initially) declined to accept,
partly on the grounds that such assets conflicted with the ideology of
self-sufficiency, partly because their management would entail an inescapable
engagement with the secular world and the risk of a corrupting materialism
which monastic isolation was designed to avoid.
Initially, then, the Cistercian
monastery might be distinguished by the sight of the white
monks labouring in the fields, diverting streams through monastic
water-systems, hauling timber from the woodlands, and suchlike physical,
non-intellectual, non-scholarly activities, scheduled to alternate with the
appointed hours of formal religious devotions. But it was not long before
individual monasteries began to engage commercially with the secular world
beyond their boundaries.
1131
Walter Espec encouraged the founding of the
Cistercian abbey at Rievaulx in 1131. These austere monks sought
detachment from the world, in contrast to the Benedictines and the
Augustinians.
A breakaway group from St Mary’s Abbey
in York established Fountains Abbey and Kirkham Priory.
The
Victoria County History – Yorkshire, A History of
the County of York: Volume 3 Houses of Cistercian monks: Rievaulx, 1974:
The abbey of
Rievaulx, the earliest Cistercian monastery in the county, was founded in 1131
by Walter Espec, who gave to certain of the monks sent to England about 1128 by
St. Bernard from Citeaux land near Helmsley, in the valley of the Rye, on the
north side of which the monastery was built. From its position it received the
name of Ryedale, or Rievaulx.
Although the house was meagrely endowed
by the founder, it speedily received other donations of land of considerable
extent and value, so that within probably half a century from the foundation of
the abbey it had acquired possession of no less than 50 carucates of land
besides other property; all are fully described in alphabetical order by Burton.
… the number of monks who first came to Rievaulx must have
largely exceeded the number usually sent to form a new convent, and it implies
that Rievaulx was regarded as the source from which other Cistercian
monasteries might be peopled.
The Cistercians’ way of life was guided
by the rule of St Benedict.
The choir monks’ day was structured
around the celebration of eight daily services in the church which were
dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Reading was an important part of the monastic
day. Time was also set aside for manual work including copying manuscripts.
Lay brothers formed part of the monastic
community. Mostly literate, they had their own daily routine of short church
services and work on the Abbey estates. In the later Middle Ages servants
replaced the lay brothers.
Walter Espec (died 1154) was lord of
nearby Helmsley and a royal justiciar. He was an active supporter of
ecclesiastical reform and had founded Kirkham Priory for the reformist
Augustinian canons in about 1121.
The arrival of the reform-minded
Rievaulx community sent shockwaves through the older Benedictine houses of the
north. The foundation at Rievaulx was carefully planned by Bernard of Clairvaux
to spearhead the monastic colonisation of northern Britain.
1132
William was the founding Abbott from
1132 to 1145, with twelve monks. Rievaulx’s first abbot, William, dispatched
colonies to establish daughter houses at Warden in Bedfordshire and Melrose in
1136, Dundrennan in 1142 and Revesby in 1143.
The first buildings at Rievaulx were
temporary wooden structures.
The Victoria County History – Yorkshire, A History of the
County of York: Volume 3 Houses of Cistercian monks: Rievaulx, 1974: Quite early in the history of the house
a strange agreement was entered into between the monks of Rievaulx and the
canons of Kirkham, whereby the latter were to cede to Rievaulx the whole of
Kirkham, with its church and the canons' buildings, gardens, and mills, as well
as Whitwell and Westow, and 4 carucates of land in Thixendale,
and of their stock a wagon and 100 sheep, on condition that the patron would
give them the whole of Linton and ' Hwersletorp.'
Their prior and his assistants
(sui auxilarii) were to build them a church and other monastic offices. It seems that there must
have been a proposal that Kirkham should become Cistercian (a proposal which
caused a division in that house), and that it was intended that Rievaulx should
take over Kirkham as a Cistercian monastery, the dissentient canons having a
new house built for them elsewhere. It is clear that Walter
Espec was living when the agreement was drawn up, and his preference for
the Cistercian order as evidenced by his entry as a monk at Rievaulx, may have
made him wish that his three foundations, Kirkham, Rievaulx, and Warden should
be of the Cistercian order; the agreement, however, fell through.
1134
In 1134 Aelred, then a young man, became
a monk at Rievaulx. He came
to Rievaulx as a postulant in 1134, rising quickly to be elected abbot in 1147.
He enjoyed a reputation as a brilliant writer and England’s most revered
biblical scholar, Latin stylist and pastoral master.
1138
In the late 1130s Abbot William began
the construction of stone buildings around the present cloister. The northern
part of his west range, which housed the abbey’s lay brothers, still survives,
as does a fragment of the south range.
Rievaulx received grants of land
totalling 6,000 acres. The Yorkshire Archaeological
Journal, Vol 40, Page 636: Although arable granges would require
access to pasture land this would be more important to
pastoral granges in which movement of animals, sometimes over great distances,
was an economic necessity. Most grants of common pasture to the monasteries
were made early. Rievaulx had common in Welburn (1138 to 1143); Wombleton (1145 to 1152); Farndale (pre 1155), for
example, and sometimes the privilege was purchased, eg
Arden Hesketh (pre 1159) 1 ½
marks, Morton (1158 to 1160) 1 mark... Some specific grants of
sheep pasture were very large... and undoubtedly induced the monasteries to set
up their granges nearby.
1143
The Victoria
County History – Yorkshire, A History of the County of York: Volume 3 Houses of
Cistercian monks: Rievaulx, 1974: In 1143 Roger de Mowbray granted
Old Byland to the convent of monks who had left Calder, intending that they
should build their monastery on the south side of the River Rye, but the site
was too near Rievaulx, and each house heard the bells of the other.
1147
Aelred
was Abbot between 1147 and 1167. He was a Northumbrian of old English descent
raised at the court in Scotland. He wrote several quite extensively:
Our food is scanty, our garments rough,
or drink is from the stream and our sleep is often upon our books. Under old tired limbs there is but a hard mat. When sleep is
sweetest, we must rise at the bell’s bidding. Self will
has no scope. There is no moment for idleness or
dissipation. Everywhere peace, everywhere serenity, and marvellous freedom
from the tumult of the world. To put all in brief, no perfection expressed
in the words of the gospel or of the apostles or in the writings of the
fathers, or in the sayings of the monks of old is wanting to our order and our
way of life.
The monk Daniel Walter Daniel, a
contemporary of Aelred, wrote a biography of his Abbot. This describes how
under Aelred’s compassionate leadership Rievaulx became “the home of party
and peace, the abode of perfect love of God and neighbour.” Aelred’s vision
of monasticism was founded on a spiritual love for his fellow monks.
At its height in the mid twelfth century
Rievaulx was home to 140 monks and 500 lay brothers and servants. Cistercian
monasticism evolved considerably during the Middle Ages. The Abbey 's
magnificent buildings provide evidence of these changes. Spiritually and
architecturally Rievaulx was the most important Cistercian Abbey in England.
This increase in numbers required much
larger buildings. Many of the standing buildings today date from Aelred’s rule.
A monumental church was begun in the late 1140s, one of the earliest great
mid-12th-century Cistercian churches in Europe.
Rievaulx attracted the support of
important benefactors, many of whom were buried here. They believed that burial
at the Abbey and prayers of the monks would hasten the passage of their souls
through purgatory to heaven.
The abbey lies in a wooded dale by the
River Rye, sheltered by hills. The monks diverted part of the river several
yards to the west in order to have enough flat land to build on. They altered
the course of the river twice more during the 12th century. The old course is
visible in the grounds of the abbey. This is an illustration of the technical
ingenuity of the monks, who over time built up a profitable business mining
lead and iron ore, rearing sheep and selling wool to buyers from all over
Europe.
Rievaulx was the hub of a trade network
but extended as far as Italy. Fleeces from the Abbey’s flocks were highly
prized and Rievaulx became wealthy.
Abbot Aelred's monastery at Rievaulx in
the mid Twelfth Century.
Monastic
Farming
The Cistercian way of life was simple.
The Cistercian abbots accepted donations of land but generally avoided settled areas, or cleared them (as at Hoveton
and Welburn near Kirkbymoorside).
Significant
land grants were given to the monasteries. Rievaulx soon had a great swathe of properties,
throughout Ryedale and stretching to Teesmouth and Filey. At
its peak it had 140 monks and 400 lay brothers. They
tended to site their granges away from villages. Monastic farms were a separate
economic force. The sheep grange was dominant in Yorkshire with many examples,
including at Farndale, of donations of rights to pasture a fixed number of
sheep.
An interesting example relates to the
market in wool. Traders in wool outside the monasteries were interested in
buying up any surpluses the monks produced from their sheep-farming. Cistercian
houses such as Byland Abbey (North Yorkshire) began to deal in the market, and built ‘woolhouses’
where not only was wool stored but facilities were provided for merchants to
come and inspect the monks’ surplus produce and negotiate their price. Byland Abbey, distinguished for its wool
production, for a time maintained a woolhouse in
York, a city which had mercantile links by the Ouse and Humber rivers to
continental markets.
Likewise, the Cistercian abbey of
Rievaulx established ‘granges’ - farms they owned and managed themselves -
where they grew food and raised sheep, cattle and horses, as well as producing
various raw materials. Beyond supplying the monastic community at the mother
house with its needs, they were expected to produce a surplus which could then
be marketed to yield an income.
1154
The Victoria
County History – Yorkshire, A History of the County of York: Volume 3 Houses of
Cistercian monks: Rievaulx, 1974: … the monks
of Byland moved further off, but the lands of the two houses were coterminous,
and to avoid possible disputes an agreement was entered into between Aelred,
Abbot of Rievaulx, and Roger, Abbot of Byland, about 1154. This agreement began
by a mutual engagement of masses and prayers for deceased brothers of the two
houses and a combined action against oppression or misfortune by fire or
otherwise, and then defined the relations of the two houses as to their
adjoining lands, both the homeland of the two houses and their properties at a
distance, where they adjoined each other. As to the homelands, the Byland monks
conceded to their brethren of Rievaulx that they should have their bridge so
constructed that it should hold back the wood they conveyed by the River Rye,
and also a road from the bridge through the wood and field of Byland to a place
called Hestelsceit, 18 ft. in width, which the monks of
Byland were to keep in repair. They were to have mutual rights on each others' banks of the river.
The name Farndale, first occurs in history in the Rievaulx Abbey Chartulary
in a Charter granted by Roger de Mowbray to the Abbot and the monks of Rievaulx
Abbey in 1154. By it Roger bestowed upon the Monastery, ‘….Midelhovet,
that clearing in Farndale where the hermit Edmund used to dwell; and another
clearing which is called ‘Duvanesthuat’ and common of
pasture in the same valley of Farndale….’
1159
The Victoria
County History – Yorkshire, A History of the County of York: Volume 3 Houses of
Cistercian monks: Rievaulx, 1974: Another
incident in the early history of the house is also difficult to understand. It
is revealed in a rescript from Pope Alexander III (1159-81) to the Bishop of
Exeter, the Abbot of St. Mary, York, and the Dean of York directing them to see
that amends were made for the spoliation of the property of the abbey of
Rievaulx by certain persons named, and the strange thing is that the offenders
were some of the chief benefactors of the abbey. Robert and William de
Stuteville had been guilty of various acts of depredation, and the pope ordered
that within thirty days they were to make restitution, under pain of
excommunication. Seven other offenders are named, including Roger de Mowbray
and his son Nigel.
1160
By 1160 the
Abbey was home to 640 men.
1167
1170
The Yorkshire
Archaeological Journal, Vol 40, Page 481. The Monastic Settlement of North East Yorkshire: … After
the foundation, sometimes a very large grant as at Guisborough and Whitby, or a
very niggardly ones as at Rievaulx, the accumulation of lands and rights was
rapid, alarmingly so. At Rievaulx, for example, the greater parts
of the lands were acquired and a very large number of granges
established by the end of the twelfth century. Even by 1170 the
monks had required all Bilsdale, Pickering Marshes, parts
of Farndale and Bransdale, the Vills of Griff, Tileson,
Stainton, Welburn, Hoveton, and the lands of Hummanby, Crosby, Morton, Wedbury,
Allerston, Heslerton, Folkton, Willerby, Reighton...
Some donors had apparently not bargained for such a rapid increase in monastic
possessions. It came as a shock to find that the monks were not “all that was
simple and submissive; No greed, no self-interest …” The result was that men
like Roger de Mowbray, Robert de Stuteville, Everard de Ros and other great
Lords, formerly great donors and foundations, began unsuccessfully, to evict
the monks from certain lands, but monastic expansion continued...
The
Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, Vol 40, Page 636:
… The monks had a larger area given to them at Skiplam
by Gundreda de Mowbray (1138 to 1143).
This allowed for expansion since the grant included Farndale Head and
Bransdale, about 18 square miles of dale pasture land.
It must not be imagined that the monks were beginning colonisation in an area
entirely unused. Although the extent of settlement and cultivation
was small it had existed. Griff and Stiltons, for
example, were vills before 1069 but in 1086 were
waste. Presumably the monks grant here was of land which had gone out of
cultivation. Their task would be one of reestablishment rather than
the colonisation of new land. It was a decided advantage to have such a
tried starting point. At Skiplam, too,
although the greater part of the area had never been settled for or tilled,
there is evidence to show that the monks began the efforts from land already
or recently cultivated. Gundreda’s
grant, for instance cover included “de culta
terra” (“of cultivated land”), as well as a grant “ubi culta
terra deficit versus aquilonem” (“where the
cultivated land declines towards the north”). Of course
the subsequent work of the monks in all these places did result in a very
great extension of the cultivated land. But it is worthwhile to point out
that the Cistercians, so-called solitaries, did in fact owe something to
previous lay efforts. In fact, it was largely the success or failure of lay
farmers in a particular area which helped the monks to see the potentialities
it offered them. …. The granges had easy access to two types of pasture -
moorland and valeland. Skiplam,
for instance, had extensive pasture in the moorland dales, only a few miles
north. There was the rough pasture (saltum) of Farndale Head and common pasture
in Farmdale and Bransdale. It had, too, the meadow of
the clayland at its disposal. This was even nearer,
being no more than three miles to the south. The plough teams from Skiplam could easily pasture at Welburn, where the monks
had common pasture rights, or at Rook Barugh, Muscoates,
and several other places, just as the animals from Griff went to Newton grange
for pasture. The limestone hills had then a great deal to recommend them for
the observant eyes of the monks.
1220
In
the early 13th century Rievaulx’s library contained 225 books mainly
theological and monastic texts.
1270
1279
The Victoria
County History – Yorkshire, A History of the County of York: Volume 3 Houses of
Cistercian monks: Rievaulx, 1974: Rievaulx being a Cistercian abbey
and so exempt from episcopal visitation, very little is known of its internal
affairs or history. One incident of interest is recorded in 1279. William de
Aketon, a monk of Rievaulx, evidently wishing to abandon monastic life, came to
the prior, Nicholas of York, and said that he was a leper and could no longer
dwell with the brethren, and therefore begged leave to depart.
1322
The
Victoria County History – Yorkshire, A History of
the County of York: Volume 3 Houses of Cistercian monks: Rievaulx, 1974:
What is generally known as the battle of Byland took place in October 1322,
and must have greatly affected the two abbeys of Rievaulx and Byland, but
nothing certainly is known as to what happened to Rievaulx in consequence of
it. The encounter between the English and the Scots took place on the high
ground between the two houses and near Byland, but according to the most
trustworthy accounts the English king was at Rievaulx and not Byland Abbey when
he received news of the defeat of his army. He fled at once to York for safety,
leaving, according to the chronicler of Lanercost,
his silver plate and a great treasure behind him at Rievaulx. This fell into
the hands of the Scots, and we are left to realize the sinister significance of
the words et monasterium spoliaverunt
without being told any details of the spoliation.
The Rievaulx Abbey Woolhouse (Ryedale Historian, 1988, Vol 14)
1348
The Black
Death in the middle of the 14th century also took a heavy toll.
1380
In
1380 there were only 15 monks and 3 lay brothers at Rievaulx.
1406
The Victoria County History – Yorkshire, A History of the
County of York: Volume 3 Houses of Cistercian monks: Rievaulx, 1974: In 1406 a glimpse of the inside life of
the abbey is afforded, with one of those little touches which give life to a
picture, by a mandate of Pope Innocent VII, which states that each monk in
priest's orders was bound in turn for a week at a time to sing mass solemnly (alta voce ad notam) at the high altar, and to say the
invitatory, such monks being called ebdomadarii, but
that Thomas Beverley had an impediment of tongue, on account of which he could
not do this becomingly, so he was granted a dispensation from performing the
office.
1533
The
Victoria County History – Yorkshire, A History of
the County of York: Volume 3 Houses of Cistercian monks: Rievaulx, 1974:
The concluding years of Rievaulx were stormy, and it is
clear that the abbot, Edward Kirkby, was ill affected towards the
impending religious charges. It was desirable, therefore, to get him out of the
way. On 1 September 1533 (fn. 20) the king's commissioners complained that
Abbot Kirkby had written a letter ' to the slaundare
of the kinges heygnes, and
after the kynges lettars receivyed, dyd imprison and otharways punyche divers of hys brethren whyche ware ayenst him and hys dissolute liwing; also dyd
take from one of the same, being a very agyd man, all
hys money.' Further they complained that 'all the cuntre makythe exclamations of
this Abbot of Rywax, uppon hys abhomynable liwing and extortions by hym commyttyd, also many wronges to
divers myserable persens
don, whyche evidently duthe
apere by bylles corroboratt to be trwe with ther othes corporal, in the presens of the commissionars and
the said abbott takyn, and opon the same xvi witnessys examynyd, affermyng ther exclamations to be trwe.'
The commissioners concluded by stating that they had ' remowyed
hym from the rewlle of hys abbacie and admynistration of the same.'
1538
Rievaulx
was closed during the suppression of the monasteries in 1538 leaving only
shattered remains. Rievaulx Abbey was shut down on 3
December 1538, as part of the Suppression of the Monasteries that took place
under Henry VIII in 1536–40. By this time Rievaulx’s community had shrunk to
just 23 monks. It was sold to Thomas Manners (d.1543), 1st Earl of Rutland, who
was closely associated with the royal court.
Rutland
dismantled the buildings, reserving the roof leads and the bells for the king.
His steward at nearby Helmsley, Ralf Bawde, recorded
the process of dismantling, leaving remarkably detailed accounts of the process
and the form and contents of individual buildings.
1545
One
of the buildings within the abbey precinct was called ‘the Yron
Smiths’. Abbey records show that this was a water-powered forge used for making
the many objects of iron required by a monastery, from nails to tools and
cutlery.
Under
Rutland the ironworks grew in scale. By 1545 enough iron ore was being smelted
to keep four furnaces busy. The vaulted undercroft of
the refectory was used as a dry place to store the charcoal used to heat up the
ore to the temperature required to extract molten iron.
1577
The
ironworks continued to grow throughout the later 16th century, with the
addition of a blast furnace in 1577, possibly the first in the north of
England.
1600
A
new forge was built at the south end of the old monastic precinct, which was
re-equipped between 1600 and 1612.
1640
By
the 1640s, local supplies of timber for charcoal were all but exhausted, and
the ironworks was closed.
The Abbots of Rievaulx
|
William I, 1131, died 1145 Maurice, 1145 Waltheof Aelred, 1147, 1160, 1164, died 1167 Sylvanus, occurs 1170 Ernald, 1192, resigned 1199 |
William Punchard, occurs 1201-2, died
1203 Geoffrey (or perhaps Godfrey), 1204 Warin, occurs 1208, died 1211 Helyas, resigned 1215 (Abbot of Melrose
1216) Henry, 1215, died 1216 William III, 1216, died 1223 Roger, 1224 to 1235, resigned 1239 Leonias, 1239, died 1240 Adam de Tilletai,
1240-60. Thomas Stangrief,
occurs 1268 William IV (de Ellerbeck), 1268-75 William Daneby,
1275-85 Thomas I, 1286-91 |
Henry II, 1301 Robert, 1303 Peter, 1307 Henry, occurs 1307 Thomas II, 1315 Richard, occurs 3 June 1317 William VI, 1318 William de Inggleby,
occurs 1322 John I, 1327 William VIII (de Langton), 1332-4 Richard, 1349 John II, occurs 1363 William IX, 1369-80 John III, occurs 1380 |
William X, 1409 John IV, occurs 1417 William (XI) Brymley,
1419 Henry (III) Burton, 1423-29 William (XII) Spenser, 1436-49 John (V) Inkeley,
1449 William (XIII) Spenser, 1471, 1487 John (VI) Burton, 1489-1510 |
William (XIV) Helmesley,
1513-28 Edward Kirkby, 1530-1533 Rowland Blyton 1533-8 |
|
(The Victoria
County History – Yorkshire, A History of the County of York: Volume 3 Houses of
Cistercian monks: Rievaulx, 1974)
Photographic Record
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