Lewes Priory: Crisis years 1294 - 1351 (2)

Text Box: An alien priory (continued) The uneasy truce with France, which lasted until June 1346 provided only temporary respite for Lewes Priory. By December 1344 negotiations at Avignon had irrevocably broken down and the apparent alliance of a French pope, Clement VI and the king of France, Philip VI led to renewed suspicions of hostile foreign influences on the English church. Lewes Priory, the wealthiest alien monastery in England, situated in a strategically sensitive position on an inlet on the Sussex coast was an inevitable target of royal suspicions. The death of the prior, Peter de Jocellis, whilst abroad on Cluniac business in the spring of 1344 (he was buried at la Baume), created a vacancy at Lewes which the king was determined should be filled only by a trustworthy candidate. In September he addressed letters to John de Warenne, who, as patron had the final choice between the two candidates nominated by the Prior of Cluny, under the terms of the 1201 agreement, expressing concern that “the Priory of Lewes, founded by his progenitors and amply endowed has, by the negligence of the alien priors of past times who have transmitted a great part of the money that they could collect overseas and the priory being now void, the Abbot of Cluny proposes presenting certain alien persons suspect to the King and diffamed for dilapidation in other places where they have presided”. An upturn in the priory’s fortunes 1344-51 However, when the candidates, John de Jaucourt and Hugh de Chintriaco, monks of Cluny, arrived they must have satisfied the King as to their suitability as on 21st October they were granted royal protection and assigned a royal sergeant at arms to attend them “that they may attend to [their] … business more securely” as “they are now threatened by their enemies with great damage to their persons, goods and to their men and things …” The candidates evidently also satisfied the earl, as on 8th December 1344 William Horton’s copy of the priory annals records the ceremonial entry into the Priory and installation as prior of John de Jaucourt, who remained prior until his death during the Black Death in 1349 when he was succeeded by Hugh de Chintriaco.

Text Box: In March 1345, when the newly installed prior was granted a safe conduct to travel back to Cluny to attend the annual General Chapter, the royal mandate referred to him as one “whom the King has thought good to charge with the prosecution of some business for him in divers parts”. The newly improved relationship between crown and prior brought about immediate benefits to the priory’s fortunes when in late April the king ordered his escheator in Cambridgeshire to restore the manor of Carlton, which had been seized as alien lands “as the King considers the cause of taking … [them] insufficient”. The manor was subsequently, in August 1346, leased for 20 years at an annual rent of 2 grains of wheat to Sir Walter de Crek and his brother, with the right of purchase at the end of the term for £200, presumably as part of the process of clearing the priory’s debts. Nevertheless, despite the new signs of royal favour, there were still problems, as in June 1345 when the prior was ordered, as part of the prohibition on sending money abroad in time of war, to cease an annual payment of £20 to the prior of Ettouteville, one of Lewes’s two cells in Normandy, upon which it depended for its financial solvency. The renewal of actual hostilities led, in October 1346, to a royal order to John de Warenne once again to take custody of the priory “as the King is informed that the goods and emoluments of the priory have been wasted, alienated and dissipated by the carelessness of the prior who has sent all the profits and emoluments that he could collect to France,

Text Box: contrary to the prohibition thereupon”. This order may well have been issued by mistake as barely a month later, on 26th November 1346 Edward III ordered de Warenne not to meddle with the priory but to deliver its property to the prior “releasing the men and serjeants about to set out with him in the King’s service from the prisons where they are detained as by divers writs under the privy and secret seals the King has ordered the prior to hasten to him at Calais and the King wishes to protect the prior from such injuries while he is in his service.” Similar orders were sent to the earl’s officers and to Ralph Bygot, keeper of the priory’s properties in Norfolk. Five days later the king sent a royal sergeant-at-arms to Lewes with the prior to ensure compliance. At the end of March 1347 de Jaucourt was back at Calais and received the first of a series of royal favours when Edward granted him the restoration of the priory’s advowsons, currently in the hands of John de Warenne on account of the war with France, in the event of the earl pre-deceasing the prior. Two weeks later the king pardoned £64 outstanding arrears owed by the prior for the third year of the clerical tenth granted in 1344 for 3 years and also his portion of the first year of the last tenth for 2 years “in recompense of his great charges in going as envoy of the King to Burgundy without receiving anything from him”. Yet despite obvious royal favour the alien status of Lewes Priory remained. In May 1347 the prior was amongst the heads of alien monasteries summoned to Westminster by the Council in the King’s absence and in July the Council granted custody of the schools at Melton Mowbray to one Robert Porter of Codyngton, “the temporalities of the priory of Lewes being in the King’s hands due to war with France” for the duration of the wars. The king himself, however, continued to show favour to the prior, on 5th July ordering the royal collectors of the wool subsidy granted in April to suspend any demand on the prior’s lands until after Michaelmas “as the King wishes to show him favour for his good service in parts beyond the seas.” Similarly in November the king restored 120 acres of land to the parsonage of Gatton, leased from the prior for 16s a year, taken by the royal escheator of Surrey under the Statute of Mortmain as it had been acquired long before the Act was passed, the royal favour shown on this occasion contrasting starkly with the priory’s treatment over a similar case two decades earlier. The scene was now set for the negotiations which led, in 1351, to the removal of Lewes Priory’s alien status altogether.

Top: West Walton church, one of the rectories held by Lewes Priory, the right to patronage of which was temporarily lost to the crown in 1327 due to the priory’s alien status.

Right: Langney Manor