Amesbury Priory

In 1177 Henry II resolved upon suppressing Queen Ælfthryth (Elfrida)'s Saxon foundation known as Amesbury Abbey,[3] a Benedictine nunnery then almost two centuries old. He founded in its place a house of the Order of Fontevraud,[4] a Benedictine reform. Henry's plan was confirmed by a bull of Pope Alexander III dated 15 September 1176, which ordered that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops of London, Exeter and Worcester formally notify in person the nuns of the intended change and offer them the possibility of remaining in the new institution. In the event, none did.[5]

The initiative to re-found at Amesbury was presented officially as part of a general movement to reform monasteries in England, and an inspection was carried out at the existing Abbey which claimed to have uncovered a situation of laxity and immoral conduct. The abbess was reported to have had three children.[6] Though it was said that some of the existing nuns were willing to mend their ways and so received the offer to remain, in fact the entire community of some 30 nuns vacated the house, including the last incumbent Abbess, Beatrice, who was dismissed with a pension.[7]

Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis), no admirer of Henry II, narrates that in 1174 the King had vowed to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem but three years later he successfully asked the Pope to be released from it, on condition that he instead found three monasteries. The takeover of Amesbury Abbey was, Gerald alleges, an inexpensive way of founding at least one. However, contrary to this accusation, the records show that in fact Henry spend heavily on his foundation,[8] even though the endowments of the existing monastery were carried over. The manor of Winterbourne was owned by the monastery according to the Domesday Book of 1086, and was still among its possessions at the Dissolution.[9]

Once the abbey had been liquidated, Henry II then had a new founding group come from Fontevraud, amounting to 21 or 24 nuns, led by a former subprioress. In addition some nuns were also brought from Westwood Priory in Worcestershire, likewise a Fontevraud house.[10] The ceremony on 22 May 1177 to install the new community could scarcely have been grander, being led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by several other bishops, and in the presence of the King.[11]

Henry subsequently spent some £880 on the monastery building over several years.[12] When the works were completed, another solemn ceremony was held on 30 November 1186 in the presence of the Abbess of Fontevraud and once again of the King.[13]

Robert of Arbrissel: his lost tomb effigy at Fontevraud Abbey in central France

This act of favour of Henry II towards the Order of Fontevraud was not an isolated one in the course of his long reign (1133–1189). Before revamping the foundation at Amesbury, Henry had already established, roughly between 1133 and 1164, three other Fontevraud houses in England:[14] Westwood Priory (Worcestershire),[15][16] Eaton or Nuneaton Priory (Warwickshire)[15][17] and Grovebury Priory (Bedfordshire),[18][19][20] Henry's actions at Amesbury, therefore, brought the total of Fontevraud houses in England to four, after which no others were ever established.

It is known that the Plantagenets were great benefactors of the mother abbey at Fontevraud in its early years and Henry's widow, Eleanor of Aquitaine, took up residence there. More generally, that monastery, founded in 1101,[21] became the chosen mausoleum of the Angevin dynasty and the centre of a new monastic Order, the Order of Fontevraud.

The Fontevraud monastic reform had two notable distinguishing features. Firstly, it followed in part the model established by the highly influential and prestigious Cluny Abbey, which by the 12th century numbered more than a thousand monasteries.[22]) in adopting a centralized form of government. While most Benedictine monasteries remained autonomous and associated with each other only loosely, Cluny created a federated order in which the superiors of subsidiary houses were deputies of the Abbot of Cluny, the Order's head. These subsidiary houses were hence usually styled priories, not abbeys, governed therefore not by abbots but by priors, or more technically obedientiary priors.[23] The head of the Order of Fontevraud was the Abbess of Fontevraud. At the death in about 1117 of the founder, Robert of Arbrissel, she already had under her rule 35 priories, and by the end of that century about 100, in France, Spain and England.[24]

The second characteristic feature of Fontevraud was that its houses were double monasteries, with separately housed convents of both men and women, under a common superior, a prioress. The men had their own male superior, but he was subject to the prioress. Local circumstances seem, however, to have modified this formula in some locations. For example, Grovebury Priory, a Fontevraud monastery in Bedfordshire, was a small house of men that never had any nuns.[20] In many locations there was in effect a house of women to which was attached a small house of chaplains that had little to distinguish it from many others that had no links with Fontevraud, such as the Augustinian canonesses house Campsey Priory in Suffolk. At Amesbury Priory the ordained men are referred to in the historical records as "canons" or "chaplains" not "monks". They should in theory have been monks.[14] This calls to mind the usages of an English reform movement, the Gilbertine Order, which also had double monasteries. In each of the latter, the key component was a nunnery run on almost Cistercian lines, and hence ultimately following the Rule of St Benedict, while the annexed male house were canons regular, living according to a variant of the Rule of St Augustine.[25] It would appear that at Fontevraud there was a degree of evolution of Rule and structures, even in the choice of Rule of the men,[26] which later became that of St Benedict.

With the passing of the Plantagenet dynasty, Fontevraud and her dependencies began to fall upon hard times, and it was said that a moment came at Fontevraud when they had only the blackest of bread to eat on Fridays.[20] On the Continent the decline was worsened by the devastation of the 14th century Hundred Years War. In 1460 a canonical visitation of some fifty of the Order's priories revealed that most were barely occupied, if not totally abandoned.[27]

King Henry II, founder of Amesbury Priory

Although the later Amesbury monastery is popularly referred to as an "Abbey", this is not strictly speaking exact.[11] Presumably the mistaken usage is accounted for by the fading memory of historical facts after the Reformation, aided by the elimination of Catholicism, and later the inroads of Romanticism. Doubtless also the search for an elegant name for the later nearby mansion counted for something. The Saxon monastery appears to have truly been an abbey, but the Fontevraud daughter house was always technically a priory.

Amesbury Priory's relations with the mother house were only sporadically recorded. In 1203, under King John, the Prioress of Amesbury was made the channel for paying to the Abbess of Fontevraud a rent out of the Exchequer for the support of a chaplain who would pray for the soul of John's mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine,[11] who herself years before had given 20 marks to Amesbury for prayers for the soul of her late husband, John's father, Henry.[11] In 1221 the then Abbess of Fontevraud, Berthe, affixed her seal to confirm a gift made by Amesbury. Not many years later, Berthe was succeeded by Adela of Brittany, a member of the ducal house, who ruled in the years 1228–1244. Adela was said to have been brought up at Amesbury.[28][29]

A visit in January 1256 from John, the sacrist of Fontevraud, highlights some interesting details. Arrived at Amesbury, he summoned the prioress, prior, cellaress, chaplains, and lay brothers before him and inspected the prior's accounts. It emerged that income was £100 from rents and £40 from wool, while expenditure was £180, though the house was not in debt. It held 59 charters. There was a complement of a prioress and 76 nuns, a prior and 6 other chaplains, a clerk, and 16 lay brothers, some of whom lived at the priory's granges. Valuable items, largely confined to the chapels, were 4 chalices of silver gilt, 2 silver cups, 2 silver crosses, and 2 censers. In livestock, the priory possessed 4, 280 sheep, 200 oxen, 7 cows, 4 calves, 23 horses and 300 swine over a year old. Mention is made of a previous audit undertaken as recently as 21 September 1255. In 1256 the house was short of corn, which was perhaps a recurrent local problem since in 1189 Richard I had made a grant of £10 for corn.[11]

The Abbess of Fontevraud in 1265–1276, Joan de Dreux, faced various difficulties in the mother house. It seems that on the advice of Edward I she withdrew to Amesbury with her two nieces and another nun, and governed the Order from there.[30]

At the end of the century, in 1293, the office of prioress of Amesbury fell vacant and to fill it the nuns held an election. Princess Mary (acting for the abbess), supported by the prior, contested the election, on the grounds that the right to provide belonged to Fontevraud. When the quarrel reached the King, he appointed the Bishops of Durham and Bishop of Lincoln to take up the spiritual government of the house, choosing a nun as their intermediary, until the matter was resolved. The solution came when the king asked the abbess to send one of her own nuns to Amesbury as prioress, and in 1294 the capable Joan de Jennes arrived. The king, who had already visited Amesbury in person in August 1293, issued a royal confirmation of the new prioress's election. He visited the priory again to see the new prioress in action in August 1294.[31]

A 1341 letter of the king, Edward III, to Amesbury Priory during the Hundred Years' War disputed some of the rights of the abbess and restricted others. In the light of this, when the prioress died about 1349 the nuns played safe and sought the king's licence to elect. This created a precedent for the future that was followed in 1379 and 1391.[32]

While it does not seem completely certain, it is likely that sometime after 1403 the priory became "denizen", i.e. naturalised English,[14] and so immune to the further measures against alien priories that came in 1414. However, apparently in contradiction to this is the fact that when in 1486 Dame Alice Fisher was elected prioress, she sent a priest said to be her chaplain to the Abbess of Fontevraud with gifts in token of submission. In reply received a cordial letter, dated 16 May 1486, which confirmed her in the office, recalled the nature of the Order and the importance of observing the statutes and of keeping the obits of Robert d'Arbrissel, Henry II, Richard I, and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Admittedly, this is the last recorded contact of Amesbury with the mother house and it is not sure that under the Tudors an effective connection was maintained.[11]

At Amesbury there is no explicit mention of men until the charter of 1189,[33][34] whereas there is talk of a chaplain in 1180 and a prior in 1194. To this can be added the mention in 1256 of a prior, 6 other chaplains and a clerk, along with 16 lay brothers, In the next century, there were 12 chaplains, including the prior in 1315–1316 and two fresh clerks were ordained in 1315–1316, which presumably explains the total of 14 chaplains and clerks in 1317–1318. In that year there were also 6 lay brothers. In 1381, however, there was a drop to 8 brethren, only one of whom a priest, and one lay brother.[11] In general it looks as though there was in principle a fixed number of 12 chaplains in the 14th century, a figure confirmed in the investigations into the troubles of 1400, when the then prioress had apparently been attempting to reduce this to four chaplain-canons, replacing the others with secular priests.[35]

In the mid-14th century the Prior of Amesbury seems to emerge for a time as a more prominent figure. In 1355 the then prior paid a visit to the mother house and for the two years following was the abbesses's proctor in England. After the 1360 Treaty of Brétigny between England and France, the restrictions on the abbess's control of the English Fontevraud estates were lifted. At that point the Queen, Philippa of Hainault, wrote personally to Fontevraud asking the abbess to instruct the Prioress of Amesbury to appoint William of Amesbury as prior, singing her candidate's praises. The commissioner sent by the abbess to ensure this arrived in the summer of 1361 and duly installed William as prior and had him swear allegiance to the abbess. In 1365 the Prior of Amesbury conducted an inquiry on behalf of the abbess into alleged crimes committed at Amesbury's sister house Nuneaton Priory.[11]

Like the mother Abbey of Fontevraud, Amesbury, for all its royal connections and its institutional endowments, appears to have known real poverty at times, as did its sister houses at Westwood and Nuneaton. As to poverty, only at Grovebury among the Fontevraud English dependencies is there no mention of it.[20] This house was (unlike the others) regarded as an alien priory (i.e., a particular category of English dependency of a French mother-house) and would have suffered various types of more severe harassment whenever there were hostilities between France and England. Like others of similar status, it was to be suppressed in 1414.

While even in the absence of recorded specifics, we must suppose that the daily life at Amesbury Priory went on as in any monastery of its type, the relations with the royal house remained a constant at least till the end of the fifteenth century. It was undoubtedly the leading Fontevraud house in England and in this period it reflected the tendency already established at the mother house for its heads to be women of high rank.[36]

In the reigns of Richard I (1189–1199) and John (1199–1216) there was a gradual increase in the estates of Amesbury Priory, including the acquisition in 1197 of 78 acres nearby in Barford St Martin.[11]

In 1202 King John effectively cleared the prioress's debts.[37] He also gave her £18 in 1207.[11]

Henry II had made some grants in kind doubtlessly gratefully received, such as the provision which allowed of firewood the nuns to take five cartloads of wood daily from Chute, Grovely, Winterslow, Bentley and Wallop woods. These rights regarding Bentley and Grovely were certainly still being exercised in 1255, and in 1271–1272 in Winterslow and Bentley, though in the latter only 6 cartloads of wood a week were being drawn at that period.

Henry III maintained the Plantagenet interest in the Order of Fontevraud. He visited Amesbury in 1223, 1231, 1241, and 1256 and in 1270 he inspected and renewed Henry II's charter. He also granted various items of income and privileges. Hence, in 1231 firewood was granted out of Buckholt, Chute and Grovely woods and 6 quarters of nuts out of Clarendon Wood. The next year more firewood for the priory kiln was granted from Grovely next year and in 1256 from Chute.

The crown intervened also with materials to assist in the enlarging of the monastery buildings, so that grants of timber were made in 1226 to build the infirmary chapel, in 1231 to repair the cloister and the nuns' stalls, in 1234–1235 for work on the church, further grants e in 1241 and 1249. For roofing the canons’ church in 1246 there was a grant of lead. Edward I made a gift of timber in 1300, when his daughter Mary was a nun in the house.[11]

Amesbury Priory seems to have conformed to a general tendency in England as the Middle Ages waned for the proportion of aristocratic nuns in nunneries to decline. An example of this can be seen in the Abbey of the Minoresses of St. Clare without Aldgate in London, whose initial heavy royal connections seem to have imparted from the outset a certain cachet to the house[38] such that in the early days aspiring nuns had to be of noble birth,[39] whereas by the 14th century the daughters of wealthy merchants were also entering.[40] At Amesbury a similar trend became marked by the early 16th century,[41] the social recruitment pool there being the gentry families.[42]

It also seems that by the 15th century the close link between the royal family and Amesbury Priory that formerly existed had faded, so that when Henry VI visited the priory in 1435 it was a great rarety. On 2 October 1501 Princess Catherine of Aragon landed at Plymouth and proceeded by road via Exeter to her wedding to Arthur, Prince of Wales in Saint Paul's Cathedral on 14 November. At one of her halts she was brought to spend the night of 2 November at Amesbury Priory.[43]

The Amesbury Psalter

Page from the Amesbury Psalter (English, c. 1249)

A 13th-century illuminated Psalter of English workmanship (All Souls College, Oxford, Ms. 6) is known as the Amesbury Psalter. Dated around c. 1250, it is one of a group of five illuminated manuscripts (comprising another psalter, a Missal, a Bible, and an Apocalypse). All were produced c. 1245–1255 and illuminated in that timeframe by an unknown artist. A consensus regards them as representing the attainment of maturity by the English early Gothic style. The Amesbury Psalter is regarded as the finest of them all and has been described as "the purest gem of English medieval painting".[44] It contains two mentions of the feasts of St Melor, the Amesbury patron Saint, but in other respects does not seem to follow exactly the Amesbury calendar and is likely to have been owned not by a nun but by a wealthy laywoman. It contains four full-page miniatures, as well as various illuminated initials.[45]

The list that follows[46][11] is incomplete.

• Joan d'Osmont (late in reign of Henry II, who died 1189)
• Emeline (1208, 1215, 1221)
• Felicia (1227, 1237–1238)
• Ida (1256, 1272–1273)
• Alice (1290)
• Margaret (1293, mentioned as former prioress 10 June 1294)
• Joan de Jenes, Genes or Gennes (1294, 1306, 1309)
• Isabel de Geinville, Geyville, or Jeonville (1309,[47] 1337)
• Isabel of Lancaster (mentioned as nun 1340; as prioress 1343, 1347; died before 4 February 1349)
• Margery of Purbrook (1349; Royal assent to election. died before 28 October 1379)
• Eleanor St. Manifee (1379;Royal assent to election. died before 20 November 1391)
• Sibyl Montague (1391; Royal assent to election. died before 10 September 1420)
• Mary Gore (election prioress 28 November 420; died 13 January 1437)
• Joan Benfeld (1437, 1466; died before 4 April 1467)
• Joan or Juliana Arnold (1467, 1474; died before 6 December 1480)
• Alice Fisher (1480, 1486,[48] 1491; 1497)
• Katherine Dicker (1502, 1504, 1507)
• Christine Fountleroy (1509, 1519)
• Florence Bonnewe (1523, 1524, 1527, 1535, resigned 10 August 1539)
• Joan Darrell (1536, 1537, 1538; surrendered 4 December 1539)

There is also mention in the documents of surrender of a Joan Howell "former high prioress".[15][11] There is no confirmation elsewhere of this information but it remains perhaps a possibility that she was indeed prioress after Dame Fisher, Dame Dicker or Dame Founterloy.

The list that follows[49][11] is incomplete.

• John (1194)
• Robert (1198)
• John de Vinci (about 1215, 1221–1222, 1229)
• Thomas (1255)
• Peter (1293)
• John of Figheldean (before 1315–1316)
• Richard of Greenborough (1316–1319)
• John of Holt (1356, 1357)
• William of Amesbury (1361)
• John Winterbourne (1381)
• Robert Dawbeney (before 1399)

After Robert Dawbeney we find no further mention of priors and it seems likely in view of the drama of his destitution that the system changed so that the former parallel male community was reduced to merely a group of secular priests appointed as chaplains.

Eleanor, Fair Maid of Brittany

Eleanor of Brittany, known as the Fair Maid of Brittany (died 1241), was the eldest daughter of Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany, the fourth son of King Henry II of England, and hence was the latter's granddaughter. Having lost her father at the age of two, she and was brought up by her uncle Richard I, King of England and grandmother Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine.[75] With the presumed death in 1203 of her brother, Arthur, she became heiress to vast lands including England, Anjou, and Aquitaine as well as Brittany. In none of them did the Salic Law barring the accession of females apply. Given that she was heir to her father, who was Henry II's fourth son, while John, King of England, was only Henry's fifth son, she posed a strong threat to the claims of her uncle, and of his successor, her cousin, Henry III.[76] The brutal solution was to keep her a prisoner for the rest of her days, and so she was detained in various locations in England from 1202 until her death in 1241. Having been initially buried at St James' Priory, Bristol, she was then reburied only a month or so later at Amesbury Abbey, which Henry III announced was her chosen resting place.[77] Neither burial place has a memorial for her remains.[78] Henry also granted the priory the rich manor of Melksham in suffrage for her soul and that of her brother Arthur (who was widely believed to have been murdered by King John of England) in 1268, ordering both to be mourned along with kings and queens; and eventually for the souls of his own and that of his queen.[79]

The seal of the Priory at some periods at least seems to have depicted the Coronation of the Virgin Mary, which is not a particularly common motif in medieval English nunneries.[80]

In other seals of the Priory, as for example one datable to 1337–1345, the image depicted is of the prioress standing.[81]

In the early months of 1539 John Tregonwell,[82] William Petre,[83] and John Smyth visited over 40 houses on behalf of the government to solicit their surrender.[84] On 29 March 1539 they reached Amesbury Priory, after two other nunneries, Shaftesbury Abbey and Wilton Abbey, in both of which the abbess had declined initially to surrender. At Amesbury, too, they failed to persuade Dame Florence Bonnewe to surrender. On 30 March 1539 the three signed a letter to Thomas Cromwell reporting "we have used as many wayes with her as o[ur] pore witte cowed atteyne yet in theende we cowed not by any p[er]suasions bringe her to any conformitye but at all tymes she rested and soo remayneth in theis termes: yf the kinge’s highness commande me to goo from thys howse I will gladlye goo though I begge my breade". She refused talk of a pension and only asked to be left in peace.[85] In August other commissioners tried and succeeded, persuading Dame Florence to resign her office "at the king’s bidding".[86]

On 4 December her successor, Joan Darrell, surrendered the priory without resistance. It has been noted that there is a difficulty in knowing whether Dame Florence had been prioress continuously since or before the date when her name is first mentioned as such in 1523 and whether and when Joan Darrell had already served as prioress. The facts are that Florence Bonnewe appears as prioress in 1523, 1524, 1527, 1535 and 1539 but Joan Darrell as prioress in 1536, 1537, 1538 and 1539.[87][15]

The annual gross income of the monastery in 1535 was £558 10s. 2d, net £482 1s. 10d. This made it the fifth wealthiest among nunneries in England. Its net value at the surrender was £525 9s. 3+1⁄2d,[88][89] equivalent to £362,445 in 2021.

A patent of 4 February 1540 granted a total of £258 6s. 8d. in pensions to Prioress Darrell (£100) and to 33 nuns (an average of a little less than £5 each), of these 21 nuns were still receiving pensions in 1555–1556, with Cecily Eyre still a beneficiary as late as 1605. Dame Florence Bonnewe had asked for a pension "during the litle tyme that it shall pleas God to graunte me to lyve" but what the amount was (or if there was any grant at all) is not known. Four priests are mentioned as receiving a payment of some kind, possible back wages.[15]

The Church of St Mary and St Melor, Amesbury

Some think that Amesbury's parish church, the Church of St Mary and St Melor, is the former priory church or perhaps the men's church, but this is debated.[11] The present church has a 12th-century nave and is a Grade I listed building.[90]

The Amesbury Priory buildings were subsequently obtained from the Crown before 22 April 1540 by Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford,[91] a nephew to Jane Seymour, Queen consort of Henry VIII, and the eldest son of her brother, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, Lord Protector of England during the minority of King Edward VI, the Earl's cousin, with whom he had been educated in infancy.[92]

Sir Thomas Malory’s long poem Le Morte d'Arthur reworked old folk tales of the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin, and the Knights of the Round Table, drawing on existing French and English stories. Malory (c. 1415–1471) was familiar with the Fontevraud daughter house of Nuneaton Priory,[93] and given the royal connections of its sister house at Amesbury he chose Amesbury as the monastery to which Guinevere retires as "abbas and rular",[94] to find her salvation in a life of penance.[95] The work was first printed in 1485 by William Caxton.

Apart from the importance of the Priory among English monastic houses and a revival of focus on its parent Order of Fontevraud, the fact of its being, like its parent Order, a foundation in which men were ruled by women lends Amesbury Priory a certain freshness of interest in our time.[96]

• List of monasteries dissolved by Henry VIII of England

• Chettle, H. F. (1942). "The English Houses of the Order of Fontevraud". Downside Review. 60: 33–55. doi:10.1177/001258064206000103. S2CID 188238011.
• Auch (1913). Histoire de l'Ordre de Fontevrault (1100–1908). Vol. II.