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942.23019 B788C 1315362
M.L
OENfiAUOGY COi-UECTION
3 1833 00730 7942
6a
I
THE
THE ABBEY, ROOD OF GRACE, AND ABBOTS; THE CLERGY; THE CHURCH, MONUMENTS AND REGISTERS;
INCLUDING AN ACCOUNT OF
THE WIAT FAMILY,'
AND OF THE
TRIAL ON PENENDEN HEATH IN 1076.
Wiith Jllluatrations.
J. CAVE-BROWNE, M.A.,
[VICAR OF DETLING, KENT.]
AUTHOR OF "LAMBETH PALACE AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS, "all saints' church, MAIDSTONE," ETC., ETC.
PRINTED FOE THE AUTHOR BY E. J. DICKINSON, HIGH STREET, jMAIDSTONE.
1892.
TOPOGRAPHICAL WORKS,
" ' By the same Author,
FKOM WHOM COPIES MAY BE OBTAINED.
LAM'BETH PALACE and its Associations : with Illustrations, and ■ art Introduction by the late Archbishop Tait, 8vo., 10s.
The History of the PARISH CHURCH of ALL SAINTS', MAIDSTOXE, with Illustrations, 8vo., 7s. 6d.
The History of BRASTED, its ilANOR, PARISH, and CHURCH, 3s 6d.
DETLIXG IN DAYS GONE BY : a History of the PARISH CHURCH, 3s. 6d.
The STORY OF HOLLINGBOURNE : its CHURCH and CLERGY, with Illustrations, 8vo., 3s. 6d.
1315362
TKODUCTION
THE attempt to resuscitate the "dead past" — to unroll the shroud with which for eight hundred years Time has enveloped a spot so historic as Penenden Heath — or to re-people with its former occupants an Abbey of which naught remains but ruined walls and vague tradition — will probably be denounced by some as a rash and presumptuous venture on the part of one with so few qualifications for such a task.
How far the attempt has been a partial success, or an utter failure, he must leave his readers to judge.
He will only say that it has been from no lack of laborious research, or of ready sympathising help from his many friends, if he has failed to bring out some incidents of history unknown or forgotten, and to present some that may be old and well known in fresh combina- tions and in a new light.
In this, as in former efforts to clothe local scenes with fresh interest, the Author has had the treasures of Lambeth Library, the Canterbury Chapter Archives, the British Museum, the Kecord Office, the College of Arms, and the Literary Department of Somerset House, all placed freely at his disposal, for which he desires to tender his very grateful acknowledgments. If he may presume to single out any of the Officials of these Institutions to whom he is indebted for valuable help, he would name Dr. J. Brigstocke Shepperd, the Curator of the Canterbury
IV. INTRODUCTION.
Chapter MSS. ; W. de Gray Bircli, Esq., F.S.A., of the MSS. Department of the British Museum, and C. T. Martin, Esq., F.S.A., of the Record Office.
To the Earl of Romney are his thanks especially due for permission to see and make use of the highly inter- esting Volume of the '' WIAT MSS.'' in his possession; (from whence he has been able to obtain much little known and unpublished matter for Chapter VII.) ; also, to the Hon. Robert Marsham, F.S.A., for valuable information respecting his family ; and to his artistic friend and neighbour, whose pen has contributed many of the Illustrations in this volume.
The principal printed authorities referred to, besides the more recent publications known as the " Rolls' Series," have of course been " Lambarde's Perambu- lations," " Philipott's Villare Cantianum," " Hasted's History of Kent" (8vo. Ed.), and the interesting little brochure entitled "Notes on Boxley," which emanated a few years ago from Boxley Vicarage.
All MS. and other sources of information he has endeavoured to acknowledge in their respective places, giving brief extracts in the footnotes, and, where desirable, fuller quotations in the Appendix.
The Arms of
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. Pages 1—13.
The Parish : Its Boundaries ; its Manors— Vinter's, "Wevering, Newnliam ; the Abbey, restored to the Wiats ; its successive owners ; Park House (Boxley), Park House (Maidstone), Boxley House.
CHAPTER II. Pages 24—26.
Penenden Heath, the scene of the great Trial between Archbishop Lan- franc and Odo, Bishop of Baieux ; the Members of the Court : the Manors recovered from the Bishop and his Knights ; Wat Tyler and Jack Cade rally their forces here, and Sir Thomas "Wiat.
CHAPTER III. Pages 27—67.
The Abbey : its foundation ; St. Andrew's Chapel ; the probable arrange- ment of the Abbey buildings, its Chapels, and its side Altars ; the bequests of land for its endowment ; the Seal of the Abbey ; the foundation of the Roberts-bridge Priory ; the Visit of Edward II., and of Cardinal Campeggio, and Archbishop Warham ; Hugo Cun- davena's complaint; the Abbey a "Retreat" and also a "Refor- matory" for Benedictines of Christ Church, Canterbury; the Rood of Grace — its introduction — Lambarde's account of it ; Alien Priories first dissolved ; the general Suppression under Henry VIII. ; the Exposure of the Rood of Grace ; the Romanist view of it.
CHAPTER IV. Pages 68—82.
The Abbots ; Abbot AValter buries Thomas a' Becket ; Abbot Robert sup- ports the King against the Canterbury Monks ; sent to discover the place of Richard I.'s imprisonment; Abbot John resigns the Abbey for the Vicarage ; his successor, Abbot John Dobbs, surrenders the Abbey, and declares his ignorance of any trickery in the Rood of Grace ; he is pensioned.
CHAPTER V. Pages 83—105.
The Clergy : The Rectors, and eventually the Vicars : the Endowments ; the Terriers ; Monastic lands become Tithe Free ; the Vicarage, its successive enlargements.
CHAPTER yi. Pages 106—132.
The Church : Its former Chapels ; its general character ; the Tower ; and Entrance Porch ; its Windows and Monuments.
CHAPTER VII. Pages 133—151.
The WiAT Family : Sir Henry comes to AUington Castle ; his adventure with the Cat ; Lady Wiat's treatment of the Abbot of Boxley ; Sir Thomas's trip to Rome, "the Maze and the Minotaur;" encounter with the young lion ; Sir Thomas the Younger ; his night adventure with the Earl of Surrey ; his Insurrection ; Sir John Finch, of Fordham ; George Sandys, the Poet, and his summer-house ; the Boxley Abbey property passes to the Marsham family.
CHAPTER VIII. Pages 152—187.
The Registers, from 1558 to 1809.
APPENDIX. Pages 189—215.
INDEX. Pages 217—225.
APPENDIX.
A. The "Boxley" entry in "Domesday Book," p. 189.
B. The AVill of Stephen ]\Iason, leaving Wevering Manor to the Vintners'
Conijiany, p. 190.
C. William the Conqueror's Summons to Penenden Heath, p. 191. C.a. Eadmer's Account of the Trial, p. 192.
D. Bp. Ernulph's full description of the Trial (Rochester Register), pp.
193-198.
E. Further particulars, in the Cottonian MS., p. 198.
F. Edward II. 's Grant to the City of London to choose their Mayor,
p. 200.
F.a. Stoke-at-Hoo granted to the Abbey by the Bishop of Rochester, p. 201.
G. Hugo Cundavena's complaint against the Abbot of Boxley, 202.
G.a. Licence granted by the Prior of Chr. Ch., Canterbury, to a Monk to retire to Robertsbridge, p. 203.
G.b. The Abbot of Boxley admits an apostate Monk from Chr. Ch., Canterbury, to stricter discipline at the Abbey, p. 204.
G.c. John Hoker's Letter about the Rood of Grace, p. 205.
PI. Thomas a' Becket's Burial by Abbot of Boxley ; the accounts given by Radulphus dc Diceto and Matthew Paris, p. 206.
I. Al)p. Warham's Reports to Wolsey on Boxley Abbey, p. 207.
K. The Boxley Vicarage and Parsonage Terrier, p. 208.
L. Pope Alexander III. enforces on Boxley Aljbey the payment of Tithes on all their lands ; suljse(|uently cancelled by Pope Hono- rius, &c., p. 212.
M. List of Rectors and Vicars, p. 21-1.
COEEIGENDA.
Page 5, Footnote 4. — For " Bratson" read " Bcatson."
Page 11, Footnote. — For "father" read "grandfather."
Page 22, Last line. — For " Maidstone" read "Wootton."
Page 65, Six lines from the bottom. — For " thaumatergic " read "thau- matwrgic."
Page 192, Seven lines from the bottom.— For "Regis" read "Reges."
To Face Page 1.
ARMS OF FAMILIES CONNECTED WITH BOXLEY.
Astley.
Champneys
THE
HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
CHAPTER I. THE PARISH.
THE Manor of Boxley holds in "Domesday Book" no insignificant place among those which the Conqueror had conferred on his half-brother Odo. The entry in that unique Record^ coming under the heading " The Lands of the Bishop of Baieux/^ may be thus rendered in English ; " Robert the Latin {Buberfus Latinus) holds Boseleu^ (or Boscleu) at farm. It was rated at seven sulings^ in the days of the Confessor ; now at five sulings. There is arable land of twenty teams. In demesne there are three teams and forty-seven villaui, with eleven hordarii, having sixteen servi. And twenty acres of pasture land : wood for fifty hogs. In the time of King Edward^ and afterwards, it was worth twenty-five pounds ; now thirty pounds ; and at present
^ There is clearly a mistake here in the spelling of the name, for elsewhere it is uniformly spelt with an X, thus Boxle or Boxele. The presence of the emblem, and of the very word " buxus," on the Seal of the Monastery (to be described in due course) supports the inference that from a very early period the name of the Parish was associated with the box trees so abundant on the neighbouring hill side.
- A siding is a Kentish land measure, about 160 acres. B
2 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
pays rent fifty-five pounds. Alnod Cilt lield it/^^ It must liave been a valuable Manor, for fifty-five pounds a year represented a liigli rental for a single manor f yet such was the sum wliicli Robert (evidently from his name a Norman) seems to have paid to Odo.
The next mention of this manor is its being granted by Eichard I. to the recently founded Abbey of Boxley, from which the inference is that it was one of those manors that on Odo^s disgrace and banishment from England had been confiscated, and had so reverted to the Crown.
It may be well to mention here that the term " Manor" was often used in Norman times in a looser sense, being applied also to any freehold estate on which the owner had a residence. This, from the Latin word nianendo (re- siding), was called a Manor .^ Over all such, however, the Paramount Manor would exercise a certain Lordship.
The Parish of Boxley may be thus traced. Its Northern extremity is found deep in the Chatham Woods, from whence, skirting Lidsing, with the hamlet of Dunn Street on the East, and touching the borders of Bredhurst, it runs southward, side by side with Detling, till at " the Hookers" it passes Thornham and
^ Domesday, f. 8, b. 2. Alnod is believed to be identical with Ulnoth, the 4th son of Earl Godwin, and younger brother of Harold. The title Cild indicates a member of the Royal family, a Prince. De'Gray Birch s Domesday Book, p. 104. See Appendix A.
^ This amount is confirmed by the return made by the Sheriff of Kent for 1155, (Pipe Roll, 2, Henry II.,) where the property of W. de Ypra, in Boxley, is given as £55. Furley's IVeald of Kent, i., 338.
^ Ordericus Vitalis, bk. iv., eh. 7. Spelman's Glossary 'in loco.' Furley's Weald of Kent, i., 273.
THE PARISH. 5
Bearsted, and finds its southern boundary at tlie river Len, including the "Turkey Mills."^ Separated by this little stream from the Parish of Maidstone, it travels a short distance westward, and then abruptly turns in a northerly direction till it reaches Penenden Heath ; there it strikes off nearly at right angles to the west to Thrott Wharf and Rodway,^ on the banks of the Medway, by which it is separated from Allington and its Castle. Still on westward it impinges upon Aylesford ; then turning back nearly due east for a short distance, it re- turns abruptly to the north, crosses the high road between Maidstone and Rochester, and loses itself in the Chatham Woods again.
The Manorial rights, as already stated, were con- ferred on the Abbey by Richard I., in the year 1189, " for the salvation of the soul of his father, King Henry, his own soul, and his mother's,"^ To these rights Henry III. added that of holding a market weekly (no slight privilege in those days) at a place to the west of the
^ These Mills were originally constructed for "fulling," or cleansing woollen stuffs, for which purpose the neighbouring vein of "Fuller's Earth" at Grove Green was so well suited. But when this industry was removed else- where, Mr. Whatman, on buying the i)roperty, converted them into the present Paper Mills, which he subsequently sold to Messrs. HoUingworth, in whose family they now are.
^ Here it includes Sandling Place, the property of S. Mercer, Esq., and Cobtree Hall, supposed to be the scene of the skating adventure so graphi- cally described by Dickens in The Pickwick Papers. "Thrott" is probably derived from the Saxon word Trod, a road or track ; and it, with the neighbouring " Rodway," clearly implies that at this point, or very near it, was the old ford or crossing, of which mention is made by Antoninus in his Itinerary.
^ Patent Rolls, i. Richard I. Dugdale's Monasterium, 1, 827, Harleian MSS., 6748, 26.
4 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
Abbey, still called " Fartliings/^ A further favour, that of free warren over this and other manors, and right to hold Courts, was granted by Edward III. in the year 1859.1
There existed also three lesser estates, called Manors, known as Yinter^s, Wevering, and Newenham, (or Newn- ham) ; each of which has its separate history.
Of these Vinter^s was the most ancient, and apparently the most important. The family which evidently gave to it its name (variously spelt Vineter, Vintier, Vyntier, and Vinter)- must have held a conspicuous position in the county early in the 14th century. Eoger de Vineter was one of the Conservators of the Peace in the 18th of Edward III. (1344.) ^ His son Robert, who died in 1373, endowed a Chantry Chapel in All Saints^ Maid- stone, in 1369.^ John Vineter, his son and heir, sold the manor in 1407 to John, the son of Sir Ralph de Fremingham, of Loose, through whose daughter it passed to the old Knightly family of Isley, of Sundridge,^ whose descendant. Sir Henry Isley, being involved in the conspiracy of Sir Thomas Wiat, forfeited the manor to the Crown.^ In the meanwhile, through all its trans- fers, it retained its original name of " Vinter^s", as it does to this day. Queen Mary having obtained possession of
1 Tanner's Notitia, p. 214.
2 Canterbury Chapter Record MSS. Abp. Whittlesey's Register (Lam- beth), f. 19 and f. 82, b. Abp. Langham's Reg. {Ibid.), f. 120.
* Philipott's Villare Gantiamim, p. 90.
* The Chantry Chapel is still known as "Vinter's," or " Gould's," Chapel, from the small manor with which he endowed it.
^ Philipott's Villare Cantianurn, p. 90. Hasted, vol. iv., 342.
" The Tithes of Vinter's originally belonged to Leeds Priory, but when appropriated by Henry VIII., on the suppression of this Priory, were granted by the King to Rochester Chapter. (Hasted iv., 344.)
THE PAEISH. 5
it^ conferred it on Dr. Jolm (Jutte. He was the younger brother of Sir Henry Cutte, of Binbiiry, in the Parish of Thornham.^ He seems to have soon sold it to Sir Cavaliero Maycott (or Mackworth)/ who parted with it to Wilham Covert, Esq., who had married Barbara, the widow of Sir Henry Cutte, Kt., John Cutte's brother. He again sold it to Sir William Tufton, Bt., in whose family it re- mained for two generations, until about 1660, Sir Charles Tufton sold it to Daniel White,^ Esq., of Winchelsea, in Sussex. He dying without issue, left it to his brother John's son, Daniel, who, in the beginning of the last Century sold it to Sir Samuel Ongley ; who also died with- out family, and the estate passed to his nephew, Samuel Ongley, Esq., and. after him to Robert Henley, Esq., who took the name of Ongley, and was created Baron Ongley,* of Old Warden, in the Peerage of Ireland. As he left no son, Vinters was sold, and found a purchaser in James Whatman, Esq., who had been Sheriff for the County in 1767. His grandson, the late James Whatman, Esq., for several years represented the borough of Maidstone, and for a short time the County, in Parliament. To him the present handsome mansion is indebted for its ornamental frontage, added on to the substantial house originally built by Roger de Vinter in 1343, of which the old gables are still visible, and which had been greatly enlarged by the elder Mr. Whatman on his becoming possessed of the property in 1783.
^ In Thornham Church is a transept still known as "Cutte's Chapel."
^ The double name is always given in the Church Register.
3 Hasted calls him " Whyte," but in his Will, (Preg. Court, East, 89) he is styled ' ' Daniel White, of Gray's Inn, and of Vinters, in the Parish of Boxley."
* Hasted's History of Kent, iv., 343. Bratson's Political Index, iii., 172.
6 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
Adjoining Vinters, on the east, and now merged into it, is wliat was formerly known as " Wevering Manoi-", but more recently as Vintners. The similarity of the two names being liable to lead to confusion, it is important to distinguish between them, and also to account for the change from Wevering to Yintners. The original residence, though now a comparatively insignificant farm house, in what is still called Wevering Street, once represented a goodly Manor.
Philipott has traced back its history into the " long long ago.'^^ He says in Edward III/s reign it was held by Knight's service by Waretius, son of John de Shelving, to whom it had come through his mother, Helen de Bourne. A branch Manor, which adjoined and really formed part of it, had fallen into the hands of the de Houghams. By marrying Benedicta, the daughter and co-heiress of Robert de Hougham, he united the two estates again, and transmitted them to his son William, through whose only daughter it passed by marriage to Edward Haut,- Esq., of Haut Place, in. Petham, in whose family it re- mained for three or four generations, until William Haut, dying without male issue, the estate passed by the mar- riage of his eldest daughter to Sir Thomas Wiat. It remained with him till the fatal year 1554, when all the Wiat property was confiscated by Queen Mary. Elizabeth, however, in the thirteenth year of her reign,^ restored to Dame Jane, the widow of her sister's victim, Allington, and part of the Abbey property, but apparently not the Wevering Manor, though that had been her own
^ Villare Cantianum, pp. 89, PO.
■■^ The name is also spelt Haute or Hawte.
^ Augmentation Office, Box A. 55.
THE PARISH. 7
by inheritance. This estate appears to have fallen into the hands of one Stephen Mason/ of Bearsted, " Citizen and Vintner of the Citye of London/' who dying in 1560, left it to his widow for life, with reversion to the "Vint- ner's Company." Hence it came that what had been hitherto called the " Wevering Manor" was thenceforth known as the "Vintners' Estate." The site of the old Manor House, and some of the original building, may still be recognized in the present farmhouse, but the armorial bearings" of the Company on the front wall and in the windows proclaim its present ownership. In the Will of Stephen Mason mention is made of a Chapel having been attached to the Manor House, but of that no trace — nor apparently any tradition — seems to remain. Part of this estate was eventually bought by Mr. Whatman and merged into that of Vinters. Although the Chapel alluded to as having been attached to Wevering Manor-House has wholly disappeared, Mr. Whatman more than supplied its place by building at Grrove Green, for the benefit of the inhabitants of this outlying hamlet of the Parish, a Schoolroom-Mission-Chapel and providing the salary for the Clergyman.
Another adjoining Manor, still retaining its original name of ISTewenham (or Newnham), was, according to Philipott,^ granted by the Conqueror to Odo, Bishop of Baieux, and probably, like Boxley itself, resumed by the Crown on his banishment. In Stephen's reign it had
^ S. Mason's Will, Consistory Court, Canterbury, xxviii. 53. — Appendix B.
2 A chevron, between 3 tuns. Herbert, in his " Livery Companies of London," says the name Vintners is a corruption of their original title Wine-Tonners."
^ In the body of his Villare Cantianum (p. 244) he by mistake identifies this with the Newenham near Faversham, but in the first page of his Addenda he corrects himself and describes it as being "a limbe of Boxley."
8 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
come into tlie possession of William d^Ypres, and was in- cluded in tlie lands with wliich lie endowed the Abbey. There it remained till the Suppression^ when Henry hav- ing appropriated it, conferred it, with the adjoining pro- perties, on Sir Thomas Wiat. His unfortunate son. Sir Thomas, forfeiting all by his rebellion under Mary, Newn- ham was conferred by Elizabeth on her Master of the Jewels, John Astley, Esq., who had already received Maid- stone Palace^ from the Queen. His son. Sir John Astley, having no son, left it to his son-in-law. Sir Norton Knatch- bull; who sold it to Sir John Banks, Bart., on whose death, in the year 1699, it passed, by the marriage of his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, to Heneage Finch, Esq., afterwards Lord Aylesford, who sold it to James Whatman, Esq.
Having thus traced the history of the three older Manors in the parish — Yinter's, Wevering, and Newnham — some account must be given of those estates formed out of the lands originally belonging to the Abbey, and lying in the central and more northern parts of the parish, i.e., those attached to the Abbey House, Park House (Boxley), Park House (Maidstone), and Boxley House.
When the various Abbeys of the Kingdom were dis- solved, and their lands appropriated by Henry VIII. , a general distribution of them took place among the Royal Courtiers, while the King took to himself all the plate and treasure which accrued from them. One can imagine the King, with many signs of premature age and decay coming upon him, surrounded by a swarm of hungry, impatient Courtiers, watching like Cornish wreckers the bursting storm, and eager to secure whatever flotsam or jetsam might drift up.
1 See Histjnj of All Saints' Church, Maidstone, p. 150.
THE PARISH. 9
It is said to liave been suggested to tlie King by- some Conrtier that he should " butter the rooks' nests well, and they would never return again/'^ meaning thereby that he should protect himself against Rome and the Monks by bestowing their lands among families of import- ance and influence. Henry seemed only too ready to act on this plan, always keeping an eye to his own interests.
Too often, as the result proved, the least worthy or desirable of those Palace hangers-on, — the spendthrifts and the gamblers about Court, — carried off the richest prizes, the most valuable estates, where, demolishing the old buildings and felling the timber, they turned all into money, to the sore neglect and sorrow of the old, often hei-editary, retainers. But with Boxley it fared less badly than with many of the condemned houses. On the other side of the Medway stood the historic feudal fortress of Allington Castle, then owned by one of the King's most loyal and faithful subjects, Sir Thomas Wiat, a man of wealth as well as honour, and he obtained by exchange the lands which lay so conveniently near to his own domain.- Thus, apparently in their entirety, the Abbey lands passed from the Crown to the Wiat family. Only, however, to remain with them for a single generation ; for the whole was forfeited to the Crown by Sir Thomas " the younger " raising the country against Queen Mary's Spanish alliance. Under Elizabeth it was distributed piecemeal among her favourites, never again to be reunited in one property. Out of that distribution came the several estates we have named, and will now proceed to describe.
Elizabeth, once firmly seated on the throne, seemed to
1 'Vf3l\\o\e,'s Miscellaneous Antiquities, Part ii., p. 19.
2 " Augmentat. Office, Box A. 55."
10 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
be bent on righting some of tbe wrongs her father and sister had perpetrated. In the tenth year of her reign she obtained from Parliament a cancelling the forfeiture of the Wiat family in the person of Sir Thomas's son George, and conferred on him a portion of the Boxley Estate, and three years after she restored to the widow (Dame Jane as she was called) the Abbey House, the Manor of Boxley, and the Upper Grange.^ On her death the two properties were united in the person of her son George. From him they passed to his eldest son, Francis, a man of some dis- tinction, having received the honour of Knighthood from Charles I., and been twice Governor of Virginia. The change in the spelling of the name from Wiat to Wyat seems to have taken place under him. He died in 1644, leaving the Boxley property to his eldest son, Henry. His only daughter, Elizabeth, was married to Thomas Bosville, Esq., and their daughter Frances carried the estate to her husband. Sir Thomas Selyard (or Sey- liard); but Edwin, the younger brother of Henry, a dis- tinguished lawyer (of whom more in a later Chapter), established his claim to a large portion of the estate against his niece. Lady Selyard, leaving her only the Abbey and the lands adjoining. However, on her death without a son to carry on the inheritance, the Abbey was bought by Edward Austen, Esq., of Sevenoaks, from whom it passed to his brother Robert, whose des- cendant sold it to Sir Heneage Finch, afterwards Lord Aylesford, by whom it was sold to Lord Eomney, and has been recently purchased by Major Mawdistley G. Best, of Park House.
It seems quite impossible now to assign any period for
1 "Augmentation Rolls, ii., n. 10 ; iii., n, 57, 58."
THE PARISH. 11
the special work of demolition wliicli has taken place here^ but it may fairly be divided between the Wiats and the Selyards^ while the present comparatively modern dwelling house must be of a much later date.
Mention has been made of the Lawsuit in which Edwin Wyat succeeded in obtaining from his aunt, Lady Selyard, that portion of the Abbey land which had come to her through her uncle, George Wyat, leaving her only the part which had been restored to her grandmother, the Dame Jane. Thus the land above the Church was formed into a separate property, and became known as the Boxley House estate. Edwin Wyat died in 1714, at the advanced age of 85, and' was succeeded by his eldest son, Francis, who dying without issue left it to his brother Richard ; he having no children bequeathed it to his relative Robert, Lord Romney,^ in whose family it re- mained until it was recently purchased by Albert F. Style, Esq., who is the great-grandson of the 2nd Lord Romney.
Another portion of the original Abbey lands lying between the Abbey House and that described as the BosLEY House estate, now called Park House, Boxley, has for the last century and a half belonged to the Best family. To whom it was granted by Elizabeth, or through what families it passed down to the commencement of the last century even Hasted, with his powers of indefatigable research and rare opportunities of acquiring information, has failed to trace. According to him, a Mrs. St. John sold it in 1730 to Mawdistley Best, Esq., who ten years after was High Sheriff for the County. His younger son, James,
^ His' father, Sir Robert Marsham, had married Elizabeth Bosville, the grand-daughter of Sir Francis Wiat.
12 HISTOEY OF BOXLEY.
who succeeded to it (the elder brother taking the Chilston estate), was also Sheriff in 1751, while his descendant, the present owner, Major Mawdistley Gr. Best, filled that oflBce in 1884. He has erected a spacious mansion, and largely increased the estate by purchasing adjacent land, and quite recently the Abbey House and property.
The fourth important Estate which was partly formed out of the distribution of the Abbey lands is that now known as Park House, Maidstone, belonging to the Lushington family. It bears this distinctive name because until about a century ago the house stood within the boundaries of the Parish of Maidstone, From what source, or when, the Maidstone portion of this estate came into private hands is somewhat doubtful. Hasted^ says it was originally part of the possessions of the See of Canterbury, and obtained by Henry VIII. from Abp. Cranmer either by purchase or exchange. It appears to have then come into the hands of Sir Anthony Knevett, but probably was resumed by the Crown when the Knevetts were involved in the " Wiat rebellion." In the early part of Elizabeth^s reign it was held by Alexander Parker, Esq., described as " Le Park," together with '' Park Wood, alias Boxley, and Mowlton Downe, in Boxley."^ This can only have been a temporary arrangement, for in the grants of Abbey lands made by Elizabeth we find the Nether Grange, or Lower Grange Farm and adjacent land granted to Serjeant Nicholas Barham.^ It subsequently came into possession
1 Hasted's History of Kent, iv., 302.
^ Abbey and Croivn Lands Leased Out, 5 Eliz., the mention of Boxley distinguishes this from "The Parke," which the Abj). leased to " Ry chard e Hely, in the Borough of Westrye," (now called "Lock Meadows") in 1519, and alluded to in Patent Roll, 11 Henry VIII.
^ Augmentation Rolls, vii. n. 22, viii. n, 51 — 53.
THE PARISH. 13
of the Brewer family (described in the earlier entries in the Church Eegisters as Bruers), by whom it was sold to Sir T. Taylor^ who appears to have owned it in the reign of Charles II. His son, Sir Thomas Taylor, dying without issue, it was sold to James Calder, Esq., in 1735, whose son, Sir Henry Calder, built the present imposing house on a far more commanding site than the old one, of Kentish rag quarried out of the adjacent field, thus removing it out of the Maidstone into the Boxley Parish, but retaining for it its old name of " Park House, Maidstone," to dis- tinguish it from the Boxley " Park House," the residence of Major M. Gl. Best. Early in the present Century it was purchased by E. H. Lushington, Esq., whose family still occupy it.
It appears that the same year in which the grant was made to George Wiat, a further grant of Abbey lands was made to his younger brother, Edward, comprising " Coptre, Styles Meade, Cowleblowes, &c.,"^ but these have long disappeared as a separate property, and have been absorbed into the different estates ; as also those which composed what Hasted calls the "Manor of Oven- helle (or Overhelle)," generally described in the old Charters as ''super montem."
Such is the Parish of Boxley, covering nearly 5,800 acres, with a population of 1,400 people, the Manorial rights remain in the hands of Earl Komney.
1 Patent Roll, 10 Elizabeth Pt. 3, m. 28. Augment. Rolls, v. n. 15.
CHAPTER II. PENENDEN HEATH.
MIDWAY between tiie extreme northern and southern limits of the parish of Boxley, and in the very centre of the county of Kent, lies the historic Penenden Heath, now in its reduced proportions no longer the harbour for gipsies and tramps, but converted into a pleasure-ground for the neighbouring town of Maidstone. To realise to the full the important place this Heath once held in English history, the mind must go back far beyond the times when it witnessed the frequent gather- ings of the Sheriff and his official retinue, to transact the business of the county, and the more exciting occasions of the election of Knights of the Shire, which for many generations always took place here ; or those sadder scenes of public executions, of which the record still remains in the name of the mound close by, to this day known as *' Gallows Hill," with the adjacent road as " Hangman's Lane." Long anterior to this runs the real history of Penenden Heath.
In the writings of the earliest monastic chroniclers men- tion is made of it, and that in connection with one of the most momentous events in English history. On this spot was held, in 1076, the memorable trial in which an Arch- bishop of Canterbury, and a brother of a King — and he ''the Conqueror" — were the contending parties. It should
THE PARISH. 15
be mentioned liere that very different dates have been assigned to this Meeting. Philipott^ is clearly wrong when he says it took place in the fourth year of William the Conqueror (that would make it 1070). Freeman,^ the great authority for that period, has suggested 1073, because the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle^ says it was in the third year after Lanfranc's consecration : but that very Record raises a doubt as to its own accuracy by adding that it was the year in which Peter was consecrated Bishop of Lichfield or Chester. Now Godwin and Le jSTeve^ agree in stating that the said Peter was consecrated Bishop of Lichfield in 1U67, and not transferred to Chester till
1075. Another argument for the later date arises out of Ernulph^s account of the Trial/ that Ernostus was at the time Bishop of Rochester, which did not occur till
1076. There, again, vEthelric is styled Bishop of Chiches- ter ; he really never was Bishop of Chichester, but Bishop of Selsey when deposed ; and the transfer of the See from Selsey to Chichester did not take place till 1U75. On all these grounds the writer has given 1076 as the probable date of the Trial.
The case may be thus stated. When William the Conqueror had removed Stigand from the Primacy, on the ground of uncanonical and schismatical consecration,
1 Villare Cantianum, p. 231.
^ Norman Conquest, vol. iv., p. 365.
^ MSS. Corpus Christi Coll., Cambridge, clxxii.
■* Godwin's De Presidibus, p. 312. Le Neve's Fasti.
5 Since the above was written, the author has had the opportunity of con- sulting the original MS. in the Diocesan Registry at Rochester, and finds that neither of the two great printed authorities, Wharton in his Anglia Sacra, nor Selden in his Notes to Eadmer's Uistoria, give the whole of the Record, but both stop short of the concluding paragraph, which gives the date thus, amio millesimo septuagesimo sexto. — See Appendix C.
16 HISTOEY OF BOXLEY.
and a delay occurred in tlie arrival of Lanfranc, whom he designed for the vacant post, the King brought over from Normandy his half-brother Odo, who was already Bishop of Baieux, and, probably to console him for not having the Primacy, had not only created him Earl of Kent and Warden of Dover Castle, but conferred on him no less than 184 manors in Kent and 250 in other parts of England.^ He had also the charge of the temporalities of the vacant see of Canterbury, and was constituted ^^Kegent"" of the Kingdom.
But when Lanfranc arrived, and assumed the Primacy, he found that Odo, not content with that wealth of lands which his Royal brother had lavished upon him, had grievously abused the power and authority entrusted to him, and had appropriated to himself, and conferred on his minions, many other valuable manors belonging to the See, and had also encroached upon the rights of the Primacy, and even of the Crown. Lanfranc appealed to the King for justice and restitution, whereupon William issued a Proclamation, explicit and stringent, its very language breathing earnestness and determination ; " A Schiregemot must be held. To it must be summoned, con- jointly by the Primate and the Justiciar, the leading magnates of the land, in the King's name ; and to it must come all parties affected, to answer and make restitution." '' Charge them from me," it ran, " that they restore to my episcopal and abbatial estates all the demesnes, &c., which
1 Some idea of the extent of the lands held by the Bishop of Baieux in Kent alone may be formed from the fact that of the 14 folios in Domesday referring to that County no less than 6, i.e., from 6 a. 1 to 11 b. 2, are wholly filled with descriptions of his Manors.
^ "William of Malmesbury calls him " Vicedominus," Gesta Regum (Hearne's Ei.) vol. ii., 46d.
PENENDEN HEATH. 17
my bishops and abbots through easiness, fear, or cupidity, have given up, and agreed to their having, or which they themselves have violently deprived them of ; . . . . and unless they make restitution, as you shall summon them from me, do thou compel them to do so, whether they will or no. If any other, or any of you on whom I have enjoined this mandate, have participated in this, let him make similar restitution of any episcopal or abbatial pro- perty which he may have, lest on account of what any of you may yourself possess, you be the less ready to enfore my command, etc."^
Such a summons could not fail to have effect. Penen- den Heath, which according to '^Domesda,y" was one of Odo's own manors, was to be the place of meeting, and thither these magnates of the land, Norman and Saxon, came together to hear and to make answer to the charges to be brought by Lanfranc against Odo, and against all involved in his misdeeds.
Well might the old Chronicler dwell with seeming delight on the picture he has drawn, in his nervous and graphic media3val Latin, of the scene here enacted. Though a Norman himself, and the rival claimants both Normans, while the Manors belonged to the English Church, yet — was he not a Churchman ? and so would naturally describe with ardour the contest between the two, sympathising with the one who was struggling to recover the revenues of the Church, of which the other had robbed her. Such a Courf of Justice, taking into account the position of those principally concerned, could never before have sat on English soil. Here were Norman and Saxon
^ The original Summons is given in Rymer's Fcedcra, vol. i., p. 3. See Appendix C. C
18 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
bishops, Norman barons and knights, Saxon earls and thanes, types of the two races, on whom, now that he was seated on his throne, the Conqueror desired to see justice administered, and whom he in his heart hoped, if it might be, to see welded into one people.
Of this remarkable trial, the best account that has come to us is that of Ernulph,^ who may be regarded as a con- temporary authority, for he had been a Benedictine monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, of which house he was ap- pointed the second Prior in 1096, promoted to be Abbot of Peterborough in 1107, and in 1114 raised to the bishopric of Eochester.^ To his pen we are indebted for the earliest history of that diocese, and for the fullest account of the Penenden trial. Even he, however, gives us little more than the bare names of those who were present. To contemporary readers what more would be necessary ? for to them the name and position of each would be familiar. But it is not so after a lapse of eight hundred years. A more detailed description is now necessary to make the import and grandeur of that scene intelligible. The very presence of those men on such an occasion shows that each must have had a conspicuous personality which alone would entitle him to be there ; and it is only by investing each one with his own individuality (so far as is possible
^ The original MS. is in the Rochester Registry, under the title of Undecimo quarterns Registr. Teniporalium Episcop., xL, p. 121. It is rather inaccurately given by Selden in his Notes to Eadmer's Historia, and still more imperfectly copied by Dugdale in his Monasticon Anglicanum, p. 827 ; by Wharton in Anglia Sacra, vol. i., p. 334 and in Thorpe's Registrum Roffense, p. 27 ; all of whom seem to have been content to copy from Selden, therefore all also omit the last paragi'aph, which gives the date of the meeting. See Appendix D.
2 Anglia Sacra, i., p. 136. Godwin, De Presulibus, p. 526.
PENENDEN HEATH. 19
after so long an interval) that the representative character of the assembly can be realised.
The King was fitly represented by Geoffrey de Mow- bray, Bishop of Coutance {Goisfridus Constantiensis) ,^ and now Justiciar of England, whom Eadmar describes as a man of great wealth- as well as of high authority. He had been an old vassal of William's in the days of his Norman dukedom, having in 1048 been appointed to the see of Coutance, and soon after the Conquest brought over to England, and in 1070 placed in his present office of " Legal Deputy," in which capacity he was fitly selected to preside at the impending trial, " to see justice admini- stered."
By his side, as the sage expounder of Saxon customs as well as joint arbiter^ with him, sat ^'Ethelric,'^ an old Saxon Bishop, whose had been a strangely chequered career. Originally a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury^ he had been raised, in the year 1047, to the South Saxon bishopric of Selsey, by Edward the Confessor; but soon after William's arrival he, with Stigand of Canterbury and -i:Ethelmar of Elmham, had been summarily deposed on the
^ So Erniilplius ; Eadmer (Uistoria, p. 9) calls him Ooffridus ; William of Malmesbury (Hearne's Ed., p. 487), Gaufridus ; wliile in a Charter from the Conqueror to St. Augustine's Abbey the name is spelt Golfrydus. In Domesday he is styled Episcoptis de Sancto Lcncdo, and de Seynt Loth, clearly now called St. Lo, in Lower Normandy.
^ " Vir ea tempestate prtedives in Anglia." Eadmer's Historia, p. 9.
^ Bishop Godwin {De Presulihus, p. 501) describes his position as "Arbiter honorarius constitutus una cum Godfrido Constantiensi. "
* It is remarkable that both Ernulph and Eadmer style JCthelric "Bishop of Chichester," whereas it was the Bishopric of Sehey from which ho was deposed, and the See was not transferred to Chichester till 1076, five years after his deposition. The name is frequently spelt uEgelric by mistake.
20 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
ostensible ground of irregular consecration, though more probably on the real ground of their Saxon origin, and also to make room for Norman successors, ^thelric, however, had fared the worst of the three, for not only did he lose his Bishopric, as the Chroniclers say, " unjustly and uncanonically",^ but was brought to trial (on what charge is not stated) before a synod held at Windsor, and sent to prison at Marlborough. His fame, however, had survived ; and now his high repute for learning, and his special knowledge of English laws and customs, marked him out for a place (and an important one) at this im- pending trial. So by the King's special mandate he was summoned to take his seat beside the Justiciar of Eng- land ; but so broken down had be become by age and trouble- that he was no longer able to bear the fatigue of riding on his palfrey, or even the jolting of an ordinary vehicle, and by the King's order he was brought in quadriga, in a car drawn by four horses.
With them sat Ernostus, the recently appointed Bishop of Rochester, a favourable type of a Norman churchman. The King had brought him over from the Monastery of Bee, and made him Prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, and in 1076 Lanfranc selected him-^ for the See of
1 Florence of Worcester (Hearne's Ed., ii., 6) says " Non canoniee degradatur, et sine cul^^a mox Rex in custodia posuit." Bishop Godwin {Be Presulibus, 501), on his testimony, puts it that he was " exauthoratus injuste."
2 "Vir antiquissimus, et legum terrte sapientissimus, qui exprfecepto Regis advectus fuit adipsas antiquas legum eonsuetudines discutiendas et edocendas, in una quadriga," Scldeni Notce ad Eadr.ieruin, p. 199. "Homo granda?vus jumenti concussionem non ferens vehiculo ad locum destinatum deportatus est (Pinenden Heath)." (Godwin's De Presulibus, p. 501.)
^ The nomination to the See of Rochester had from the time of Augustine lain with the Archbishops of Canterbury until the year 1147, when Arch- bishop Theobald waived the right, and conceded it to the monks of Roches- ter, who elected Walter, the Archbishop's brother, at the time Archdeacon of Canterbury. (Godwin, De Presul., p. 527; Le Neve's Fasti, p. 247.)
PENENDEN HEATH. 2l
Rochester^ '' to set in order tlie things that were wanting" ^ after seventeen years of misrule and neglect under Bishop Siward.
These three may be regarded as forming the judicial bench. Besides them, probably in the character of Asses- sors, were some of the county magnates, Richard Fitz- Gilbert, one of the Conqueror's special comrades, on whom he had conferred, with many other manors, that of Ton- bridge, which gave him his Kentish title, and subsequently that of Clare in Suffolk, from which he was more commonly known as Richard de Clare r Haimo de Crevequer, too, at the time Sheriff of Kent, in whom the King reposed so much confidence that he not only gave him the lordship of Leeds Castle, but also made him a joint-Conservator of Dover Castle, one of the highest posts of trust in his newly acquired kingdom.
The defendant before them was none other than Odo, as Earl of Kent, the King's half-brother, the second most powerful man in the kingdom, — if even second to the King himself, — of whom mention has been already made. He stood there to give account for his deeds of rapacity and injustice.^ With him, too, were many of the leading Normans who had benefitted by his illegal and unrighteous acts of spoliation. Here were Herbert Fitz-
' " Jlalis ut occurreret, et Ecclesite res in meliorem locum redigeret, Arnostum, Monachum Beccensem, cujus aninii virtutes satis habebat perspectas, Lanfrancus antistitem liic constituit. (Godwin, De PresuL, p. 525.)
- In Doyle's ^aronag^e he is styled "Lord of Timbridge" and "Earl of Clare," and is said, on the authority of Ordericus Vitalis, to have been appointed Chief Joint-Justiciar in 1074, in which capacity he may have been present at Penenden.
^ lugulph's Chronicle, p, 112. Dc Gray Birch's Domesday Book, p. 91.
22 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
Iyo, — probably Ivo Taillebois^ a nepliew of the Con- queror, wlio was noted for his haughtiness and rapacity ; the misshapen Turold of Rochester, " whose dAvarfish form still lives in the Tapestry of Bayeux";^ Hugh de Montfort, so highly esteemed and trusted by the King that, besides giving him 114 Manors in Kent,^ he made him, in conjunc- tion with Odo, one of the Constables of Dover Castle ; Ealf de Curva-Spina (or " Crooked Thorn ") ; William d' Acres, and other Norman chiefs who were parties to the wrongs that had been perpetrated under his auspices and his example.
Against this formidable array — the Earl of Kent and his satellites — there stood up, single-handed and alone, but strong in the justice of his cause, Lanfranc, the famed student, but still more famed Advocate, of his native Pavia, with his Italian face and lordly bearing,^ to vindicate the Church's claims and to recover her rights. For three days (says the chronicler) did he argue cause after cause, and establish claim after claim, with such profound learning and suble casuistry as to call forth the astonishment and admiration of the assembled nobles, Norman and Saxon alike.
The result is given in fuller detail by Eadmer. Some twenty-five manors^ or lordships, with the advowsons attached, did he recover for the See and the Priory of Canterbury. From Odo himself he rescued, in the county of Kent, Reculver, Sandwich, Detling, Maidstone, Lyminge,
1 Freeman's Norman Conquest, iv., p. 364.
* Nicolas's Historic Peerage, p. 331.
^ Hook's Lives of the Archbishops, ii., pp. 74, 79.
^ Lanfrancus maneria 25 per Odoneni Episcopum Baiocensem, fratrem Regis uterinum, erepta ecclesia restitueuda curavit. Godwin, De Presulibus i., p. 61.
PENENDEN HEATH. 23
Saltwood, Newenden, Preston (near Faversliam), Sandhurst^ Eritli, Orpington, Eynsford, and Hayes ;^ to wliicli may be added, from the Cott. MSS., Folkestone, Ricliborougli, StatenborougL., (in Eastry) Tilmanstone, and Witthersliam, Langport, Penshurst.^ Nor had Odo confined himself to archiepiscopal manors in Kent. There were, in Middlesex, Harrow ; in Surrey, Mortlake ; in Buckinghamshire, Monks' Risborough, and other lesser manors.
Other Sees also had suffered to satisfy the greed of his Norman hangers-on, and these Lanfranc claimed back. For the See of Rochester he recovered, and restored to Gundulph, who had, meanwhile, succeeded Ernulph, Stoke-at-Hoo, Denton, Fawkham. He also forced Hugh de Montfort to give up Rucking and Broke, besides other Manors he had received from Odo; and wrested from Ralph de Crookthorn some rich pastures in the proverbially fertile Isle of Grain.
In every case he restored to the spoliated Sees the manors of which they had been so unscrupulously robbed ; and, moreover, recovered many rights and dues which had for a time been wrested from the Church, and in some cases from the Crown itself. The proceedings of those memorable days were then submitted to the King, who at once approved of them, and required that they should be subsequently sanctioned by the General Council of the whole nation, thus securing for the verdict of the Schiregemot of Kent the endorsement of the Witenagemot of England.
^ Seldeni Notes ad Eadmeri Historiam, pp. 198, 200. See Appendix D.
^ Cott. MSS., Atigusttcs ii. , 36, recently brought to light by W. 'de Gray Birch, Esq., F.S.A., and introduced into his very valuable little work on Domesday Book, p. 295. See Appendix E.
24 HISTOEY OF BOXLEY.
Well did the Conqueror show on that day at least that however powerful^ or however near to himself, were the wrongdoers, he would carry out to the full the oath he had taken to administer true judgment and justice in his new kingdom.^
To Lanfranc's honour, be it remembered, he gave back, with open hand, to religious uses the wealth of which the Church had been robbed. On his own Cathedral, which he found in a dilapidated state from the recent confla- gration, he expended a vast sum, as the part known as Lanfranc's Church to this day bears witness ; while his munificence also extended to St. Alban's Abbey, over which he had placed his own kinsman and comiaonachus of Caen, Paul, as its first Norman Abbot.-
Thus ended the great trial which involved such moment- ous issues affecting the English Church and its rights.
After this Penenden Heath relapsed into its normal state of quietude for at least a couple of centuries.
It was on this Heath, so tradition has it, in the year 1381, Wat Tyler found a rallying point for his Kentish malcontents, gathering here the nucleus of that formidable body of some 10,000 men, with whom he for a time suc- ceeded in endangering the peace of the City of London, and the very person of the feeble Richard II.
Here, too, probably, was a similar scene enacted, on a smaller scale, when in 1450 Jack Cade, at the head of the self-styled " commons of England," gathered from the surrounding villages his " army,'' as Shakespeare con-
1 Freeman's Norman Conquest, iv., p. 364,
2 Mattheiv Paris (1644), p. 9.
PENENDEN HEATH. 25
temptuously calls them, describing them as being
' ' a ragged multitude Of hinds and peasants, naked and merciless,"
with which he made his second advance on London, in the vain hope of extorting from the scarcely less feeble Henry VI. a removal of the supposed grievances of an over-taxed country.
This inference is supported by the names which appear in the Patent Roll of those who were subsequently par- doned by the King. So many having come from Maid- stone and the neighboui'ing villages, Hollingbourne, Bear- sted, Thornham, Boughton-Monchelsea, Barming, Ayles- ford, and Boxley itself,^ it is more than probable that Penenden Heath, the only open space suited for such a purpose, should have been the mustering-place for the contingents from these parts.
And here, once more, a centur}^ later, did the chivalrous yet rash Sir Thomas Wiat sound the tocsin of rebellion against Queen Mary's hateful Spanish alliance, only to forfeit his life, and for a time to rob his family of " the gray old Castle of Allington" and many a goodly manor besides.
Thus would it seem, in each of these cases, the insur- gent bands of Kent found a " Lanrick Mead" at Penenden Heath.
^ From Boxley there came, among the gentry, John Rowe ; of yeomen, John Gouell, Henry Asshby, Roger Man, Robert Man, Thomas Gulley, John Clynton, John Pastron, John "Welles, Richard Shymyng, Henry Dore, James Burbage, Robert Burbage, Richard Snelgorre, and many more ; of masons, Richard Sebris, John Joce ; and of husbandmen, Burbages, Farams, etc. (List of Pardons granted to the followers of Cade, given by W. D. Cooper, Esi[., F.S.A., in Archccologia Cantiana, vol. vii., pp. 233-69.)
26 HISTOEY OF BOXLEY.
Yet again, in 1828, after another interval of 250 years, was this Heath the scene of a gathering, more orderly no doubt, and more constitutional, but scarcely more success- ful, when not less than 50,000 men, as it was calculated, had assembled here to petition Parliament against what was commonly known as the (Roman) '' Catholic Emanci- pation Bill," that the Protestant Constitution of the United Kingdom might be preserved entire and inviolate. Notwithstanding this, and hundreds of other similar protests, the Bill was passed in the following Sessions of Parliament.
CHAPTER III. BOXLEY ABBEY.
THE traveller journeying over the range of hills known as the North Downs, which lie between Rochester and Maidstone, cannot fail to be struck with the sudden change in the general aspect of the country. Passing down the slope of Blue-bell Hill, and entering the parish of Boxley, he leaves behind him on his right the rude, prehistoric pile of massive blocks commonly called Kit's Cotty House, and the strange group of unhewn stones which crop up, without order and seemingly without num- ber\ in the neighbouring field, and on his left the barren chalk hillside, when his eye is arrested by the abrupt transition from the scant herbage, and low brushwood, and stunted yews, to the rich pasture-land, with its array of goodly elms, spread out before him. He sees farm- buildings, and a mill with its shapely lake, telling of active and well-requited husbandry. He traces out broken lines of wall, which erst enclosed a range of monastic buildings ; he sees in the midst of modern brickwork the piers of the old Abbey gateway, and a still substantial Granary, and his mind pictures to itself the day when all that spoliation and time have now left in ruin constituted the heart and home
^ So irregularly do they stand that it is said that no one has been known to count them over twice with the same result.
28 HISTOEY OF BOXLEY.
of a once busy Cistercian monastery, with its daily round of prayer, and labour, and almsdeeds.
The description of an Abbey, especially of one that has such a history as this at Boxley, may well be prefaced by a short account of Monasteries generally. The Monastic system, be it remembered, — which had its rise in Egypt, that cradle of asceticism, though now commonly, and per- haps not unnaturally, associated with traditions of super- stition and imposture, for which, alas, Boxley Abbey attained to so unhappy a notoriety— had its birth in a spirit of deep and earnest devotion. The belief that an ascetic life conduced to a higher spirituality — and was therefore more acceptable to God — that utter seclusion from the world and all its attractions and distractions was more conducive to meditation — that the exercise of self- denial, under absence of all means of self-indulgence, tended to form characters of deeper piety and greater usefulness — as well as being of higher mei*it — then, that life in a brotherhood, under a rule, was more beneficial to a man's own soul as well as to the souls of others — such thoughts, such hopes — shall we say such delusions ? sup- plied the motive to Monastic life. Such was no doubt the fons et origo of the Religious Orders.
On such a conception, erroneous as the purer faith and knowledge of the 19th Century may regard it, rose Abbies, and Priories, and Nunneries or Convents, in the Middle Ages. They had also a secondary object ; not only to promote and develop the spiritual life of the inmates, but also to meet the bodily and intellectual wants of the outer world. In those days of lawlessness or feudal oppression they were the "Cities of Refuge" for the weak and down-trodden ; in those days of ignorance they supplied the Schools for
THE ABBEY. 29
tlie young ; tliey were the Dispensaries and Hospitals for the sick; and the "Store Cities'^ in times of famine or want; in a literary point of view they were, as has been well said, " the Treasuries of the learning that was, and the Nurseries of that which was to be." Nor is it too much to say, with Dr. Hook, that " Christianity must have ceased to exist if it had not been for the Monasteries." ^
Of the four principal Orders, the Benedictine, the Cis- tercian, the Carthusian, and the Augustinian, that of the Benedictines was the earliest, dating from the seventh Centur}', and the first to find a footing in England in the 11th. So rapidly did they everywhere rise in favour that in spite of their vows of personal poverty, endowments and offerings poured in so freely upon them that they soon became wealthy communities, and with this influx of wealth came the temptations to self-indulgence and luxury, until in the 11th Century some of the more devout mem- bers of the Benedictine Order withdrew from the main body and formed themselves into a separate independent society, resolved to carry out with greater strictness and primitive simplicity the rules laid down by their founder St. Benedict. These made their new home at Citeaux (Cistercium), near Dijon, and were thence known as Cistercians, and from their dress, as " White Monks." -
It was of the Cistercian branch of the Benedictines that the Abbey at Boxley was formed. It was originally founded by William d'Ypres, a natural son of Philip, Viscount d'Ypres, who had accompanied his kinsman,
^ Lives of the Archbishops, vol. ii., p. 325.
^ Weever {Funereall Monuments, p. 289) says they were " White Monks of St. Bernard's Order," which was clearly an error, as St. Bernard was himself a Benedictine, of Clairvaux.
30 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
Stephen of Blois, on liis usurpation of the English throne^ and had been raised by him to what must have been regarded by the Anglo-Saxon nobles as the highest rank, the Earldom of Kent. Of this William d'Ypres it is said that, being anxious to relieve a conscience burdened with the remembrance of great barbarities perpetrated on the helpless inmates of the Nunnery of Wherwell, near South- ampton, and of other cruelties of which he had been guilty in the cause of his usurping kinsman Stephen, he desired to make some atonement for his past sins, and in that spirit resolved to found an Abbey in which prayers might be offered daily for his soul. Selecting Boxley as the site, he introduced, in 1146, a body of Cistercian monks^ from Clairvaux, in Burgundy,
It is of this old Abbey we would give some account. But before passing within its precincts, we must pause to say a few words regarding the little wayside Chapel of St, Andrew," still standing outside the walls, and long since converted into a cottage. It once had its own chaplain,^ and was no doubt designed for the use of the devout
1 Ipsius (Regis Stepliani) assensu fundatum est ccenobiuni de Boxeleia per Willelmum d'Ipres, et Cantuariensi Ecclesie concessit et confirmavit Berkeseres et feodum Gaufridi de Ros. Gervase {Rolls Scries), ii., p. 77. When Henry II. succeeded to his rightful inheritance he banished William d'Ypres, who himself assumed a monastic life at the Abbey of Laons, in Flanders, and died there about 1163.
* A legendary connection between this saint and the neighbouring Pilgrims' Road may perhaps be traced in the story which Hone (Every Day Book, i., 1537) gives from the "Golden Legend," of a Bishop who was a devout worshipper of St. Andrew being assailed by the devil in the shape of a very beautiful woman, and being rescued by the sudden appearance of his patron saint in the form of a pilgrim.
^ In the Will of John Parsons (Cant. Consist. Ct., iii., 253) is the clause, " Item lego Capelle Curato S'ti Andree Apostoli juxta portam exteriorem Monasterii, Cujus Parochianus sum, unum Banner Cloth de Ceriso,
THE ABBEY. 31
pilgrims, as, on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, they threaded their way along the narrow lane that runs hard by, and is to this day known as the Pilgrims' Road. In the process of adaptation for domestic use, partitions and staircases have done much to block up and conceal many details of interest within, yet externally enough remains to convey a very fair conception of its original character. Its western doorway is in good pre- servation, and, better still, the two side-doors on the north and south. In the western gable over the door, the space now hideously filled in with modern brick suggests the former presence of the square-headed, three-light window of the fourteenth century, now built into a recent south wall ; while at the east end are signs no less distinct of a large pointed window, the space, too, filled in with brick. There is also the little priest's door near the east end of the original south wall, and the frame work, now filled in, of two squints, or hagioscopes, for the use of casual passers-by at the elevation of the Host.
The entrance to the grounds of the Abbey itself is between the brick-faced piers of a stone gateway, into a walled enclosure of some 15 acres, in which, with the single exception of a goodly barn, to be mentioned presently, not a vestige of the original buildings remains. A comfortable modern house occupies a prominent position. But nothing is left by which the slightest clue can be obtained to the relative positions of the several parts, and such seems to have been its condition above a Centuiy ago.
In his account of a visit paid to the Abbey in 1774, which is preserved in his autograph MS. at the British Museum,^ Hasted says that the approach had originally 1 Cott. MSS. 5486, p. 83.
32 HISTOEY OF BOXLEY.
" been by a double arched Gateway, the arches of both which were then lying in ruins, having been recently demolished." In corroboration of this there is a very rare old print, without date or name, also preserved in the British Museum,^ in which the two Gateways are repre- sented. Of these the outer one, in the line of the outer walls, still stands with its brick jambs, but without the crown of the arch ; the inner Gateway, nearer the present house, has quite disappeared ; as given in the print, it must have been of very late Tudor period, with a bold horizontal label or weather-moulding, without ^^endants, and with a shield in each spandrel.
Standing within these now ruined and crumbling boundary walls — amid banks and terraces raised out of the scattered blocks of stone that erst had their places in the various parts of the ancient buildings, but in the construction of which all the old lines and land- marks have been wholly effaced — it is still pleasant, and not wholly unprofitable withal, to build anew in fancy the once noted, if eventually notorious, Abbey, though nothing now remains by which the sevei-al buildings can be traced out and identified. Still the Cistercian Monasteries were so closely built on the same plan that by analogy and comparison it is not impossible to sketch out the old lines of building and to present to the mind^s eye the Monastic pile as it once appeared.
Along the South side we might imagine the Church standing ; from it towards the Eastern and Western ends, branching off at right angles, and in parallel lines, the more secular buildings : the Chapter House, the Abbot's apartments, the Dormitories for the Monks, those
1 Additional MSS., No. 32354, p. 81.
THE ABBEY. 33
for Guests or Strangers, &c., all crossed, and closed in on the Nortli side, by tlie Refectory, or Dining Hall, Kitclien, Butlery, Cellar, &c. ; thus enclosing an open square, round which run the Cloisters, or covered arcade, supported by richly carved and moulded piers or arches of stone ; within the centre, lying open to the sunshine, yet screened from the wind, the little garden-plot, or Garth, Here in summer and winter the Monks, during intervals of work or prayer, passed their leisure time, reading, or teaching, or tending their flowers. Here nature and art combined to shed a charm over their " cloistered solitude."
But above all this gi'oup would inse the Church — with its graceful steeple^ towering over all, its high pitched roof, its Chancel, Nave, and Transepts standing up lofty and conspicuous — the most substantial portion of the whole range, and the most richly ornamented : the brethren, having bestowed on it the best of their labour and skill, having lavished all the art and taste they could command or purchase, to make it " very magnifical," — was it not their pride and delight, the very heart of their religious system, the shrine of their daily lives ? — its richly decorated windows too, filled Avith storied panes, telling of some mysterious incident in the legendary life of the Virgin Mary, to whom, like all Cistercian Chapels, this would be dedicated, completing the group.
But as to internal arrangements we are not left to draw so entirely on fancy. A few facts are forthcoming, drawn out of the recesses of the Will Department at Somerset House, or those of the Prerogative Court at Canterbury,
1 In the grant of the Abbey to Sir Thomas Wyat, by Henry VIII., distinct mention is made of a steeple. Augm. Office Records, Box A, 55.
34 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
to enable us to fill up the picture with some reliable and interesting details.
There was a Chapel of St. Stephen here, for a repre- sentative of the old Kentish family of Frenyngham appears to have endowed a Chantry, as also one at Lose, as the burial place of several members of his family.^
It is clear too that men of mark or wealth did covet for their bodies, after life's fitful fever had run its course, a resting-place within its walls, or precincts. Robert Vineter (or Yyntier), who had endowed the Chantry already alluded to, in All Saints Church, Maidstone, the owner of the Manor still bearing his name, " Vinters," ~ in his Will, dated July 5, 1369, expressed the desire to be buried at the Abbey, leaving it to the Abbot to assign a place.''' In 1385 (Sir) Robert de Bourne (or Burne), a member of a goodly family, himself the Rector of Frekenham in Suffolk, who seems to have made Boxley his home, expressly desired to be buried within the Abbey Chapel, and specified the very spot he chose— in the North side, between the altars of the Apostles and the Martyrs ; while in front of his own tomb he wished that a third altar should be erected in honour of the three Virgins, SS. Katherine, Margaret, and Agatha, and the three Confessors, SS. Michael, Martin,
^ His Will rims thus : that he will endow "duos capellanoa idoneos, scilicet, unum Monasterio de Boxele ad altare S'ti Stephani coram quo corpora Johannis Frenyngham de Lose, Alicie uxoris ejus, Radulphi Frenyngham militis, patris ejusdem Johannis, et Domine Katherine uxoris predicti Radulphi, &c. , &c., sepulta sunt ethumata." Addit. Chart., British Museum, 16474.
- See page 4.
* Abp. Langham's Register (Lambeth) f. 120, b, "In Monasterio Beate Marie de Boxole, ubi Abbas dicti loci sepulturam in Monasterio assignare voluerit."
THE ARBEY. 35
and Dunstan.^ In 1489 one Jolm Kember, who described himself as living within the Abbey-gate, and probably was a lay-brother of the Monastery, selected his burial-place within the Chapel, before the image of the Virgin.^ While in 1512 Sir Thomas Bourchier, Knight, a nephew of the Cardinal Archbishop, desired to be buried in the ''cemetery of the Abbey," and left a sum of money to " edify and make a Chapell and an aultar, and to found a Chapleyan to pray for his soul and the souls of his uncle" and other relatives.^ JL3JL5362
This Sir Thomas Bourchier has his record in English history. Being an object of suspicion with Richard III., he was placed under the command and eye of Sir Thomas Brackenbury, the ill-famed Lieutenant of the Tower, and was summoned to the King's camp, at Bosworth Field, but on the very eve of the Battle he justified Richard^s suspicion by escaping with several other Knights into that of Richmond, and placing himself under his banner.'*
But of all this nothing now remains save one single flat tombstone in the green sward, without a name or mark, beyond a foliated cross, to tell its tale ; while buried in the interior of a comparatively modern dwelling-house are the massive foundations of some portion of the main building ; or, inserted in some side-wall, as a relic or a curiosity, a fragment of stone carving, which erst formed part of a
' "Will of Robert de Bourne, clerk, " Infra ecclesiam Conventualem Monasterii de Boxle in medio inter altare Ajiostol' et altare Martyrum ex parte boreali, &c." Somerset House, Rous, i.
- Will of John Kember, ibid., Milles 43. The name long continued in the parish, which was indebted to one of the family for a charitable bequest in 1611.
^ Will of Sir Thomas Bourchier, Knight, Ibid., Fetiplace 15.
■* Gairdner's Richard III., p. 292. Speed's Historii, p. 932. Grafton's Chronicle p. 843.
36 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
jamb or spandrel ; or tracery of a long-since ruthlessly demolished doorway or window. The massive and spacious granary or barn^ alone stands in its entirety, retaining its original character and use; its spaciousness, so essential a feature of a Cistercian house, implying that it was designed to be something more than a mere garner for the use of the small staff of an Abbot and eight Monks, with a corresponding body of labourers to till the land, but rather as a storehouse, from which in time of need the wants of the neighbouring poor might be supplied. Thus much regarding the Abbey and its Church.
While probably the earliest of the Benedictine Monasteries in England was that of Christ Church, Canterbury, that of Boxley was one of the first of the Cistercian Order. And though virtually independent of each other in their internal administration, they had, as will be seen, many connecting links of fraternal intercourse, each the while adhering to its own rules and work. The Benedictines at Canterbury,^ cultivating learning, soon produced from among their Monks two of England's most valued Chroniclers, Eadmer and Gervase ; the Cistercians at Boxley rather applied themselves to the tillage of the soil, and with no little success, as the appearance of the neighbouring lands to this day testifies.^
^ Recently well restored by its present owner, Major Mawdistley Best, of Park House.
- It should be borne in mind that where in these pages mention is made of the Canterbury Monastery, the Benedictine priory of Christ Church con- nected with the Cathedral is meant, and not, unless specially named, the more famed St. Augustine's Abbey, which was also Benedictine.
^ It may not be generally known that at the present day there exists in the Charnwood Poorest, near Lutterworth, a Cistercian ]\Ionastery (almost on the site of the Garendon Abbey, which was dissolved by Henry VIII.) which, true to its character, has turned a wilderness into a garden.
THE ABBEY. 37
From its earliest days the Abbey found friends. Foremost among them came Richard I. In 1189 he conferred on it in " Franc-almoyne " the Manor of Boxley.^ Henry III., in 1253, confirmed the grant, and in addition granted to it the right of holding a weekly market (no slight privilege in those feudal days) at a place then and still known as " Farthings/' and now represented by a group of cottages near the Abbey walls. In the following century considerable accession of land was obtained either by gift, or bequest, or purchase. Neighbouring land- owners dedicated portions of their estates to its support. For instance the family of Burleghe were liberal benefactors. Margery, the daughter of Laurence Burleghe," in the year 1316, granted some in " a place called Burleghe,'' no doubt that now known as Boarley, the value of which would be greatly enhanced by its carrying the Abbey land up to, and above, the Pilgrims' Road and including the fountain head of the spring which flowing down from the hill side provided the water supply for the Abbey itself. Then the same year another member of the family, Richard, the son of Reginald Borleghe,'^ made a further grant of a place called Maylefelde. A still further grant of adjoining land was made by a married sister, Margery Loth,^ a few years later.
About this time appears the name of Alexander KumJia, as contributing a piece of land, comprising " a Mill and ten acres of Wareland."' There were added at different
1 Harleian MSS., 6748, 16.
2 Calendar of Ancient Deeds (Record Office), 10 Edw. II., B. 444.
3 Ibid, B. 446.
* Ibid, Ibid, B. 457. 5 Ibid. B. 646.
38 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
times those of Horpole (now Harple) and Weavering, with Tattelmel, and Burcheland.^
Passing beyond the bounds of the Parish itself, we find the Abbey so favourably regarded as to be made the recipient of important grants of land, tithes, and Advow- sons, even at a distance, especially in the fertile Isle of Sheppey, and that of Grain. Two at least of these testify to the esteem in which the Abbey was held. In the Isle of Sheppey is the Parish of East Church. The revenues of this Parish had been apjDropriated by the Abbey of St. Denys, in Flanders, and misused ; whereupon Abp. Hubert Walter, so early as the year 1200, had planned to confer them on Boxley Abbey, in recognition of their liberal exercise of hospitality towards all comers, especially Pilgrims. However, years passed on and the plan was not carried out, till in 1313 Henry de Estria, the energetic Prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, acting, seJe vacante, on the death of Abp. Winchelsea, gave effect to the wish of Abp. Hubert Walter, and the transfer of the Manor and the Advowson was completed,^ to meet the heavy calls on the Boxley hospitality. How often the Abbey exercised the right of patronage thus conferred is not known; the one single instance recorded in the Lambeth Registers was on a vacancy occurring in 1323 when they presented Galfridus (Geoffrey) de Freusthope " ad vicariam Ecclesie de Estchirche in Scapeya."'^
A Century later, in 1430, a member of the influential family of Cheyne, or Cheney, of Shurland, made a grant
1 Patent Eolls, 9 Henry V., p. i., m. 5. P. R., 9 Henry VI., p. ii., m. 4.
" Confirmed by Abp. Reynolds, and recited by " Inspeximus, " Abp. Warham's Register, f. 135.
3 Abp. Reynold's Register, f. 2.50, b., and Patent Rolls, 9 Henry VI., part ii. , ui. 4,
THE ABBEY. 39
of land to the Abbey on condition "that the Abbot and Convent should transfer the Church, which they hold to their own use, and which is nearly in ruins, on account of the poorness of the ground on which it is built, with the consent of Henry (Chichele), Archbishop of Canterbury, to the ground now granted to them, on which they shall construct anew the Parish Church of the said Parish."
Another grant was made to the Abbey on the neigh- bouring Isle of Grrain. The Manorial rights of the Parish of Stoke, at Hoo, had been conferred by Eadgar, King of Kent, in 762, on the Priory of St. Andrew, Rochester, and was among those recovered by Lanfranc in 1076, from the clutches of Odo, Bishop of Baieux. In the Parish lived a family named Malemayues, their property still known as Malman's Hall. A member of the family, Ralph Malemayne, became a Monk of St. Andrew's Priory, and granted to it the Tithes also of Stoke, in the reign of Henry I., with whom the Manor, Advowson and Tithes remained until the year 1244, when in acknowledgement of the exemplary character and hospitality of Boxley Abbey, Richard de Wendover, Bishop of Rochester,^ sanctioned the transfer to it of the Manor and Tithes of that Parish. Sixty years after, the Malemaynes, still retaining the ancient property, obtained from Abbot Robert of Boxley, exercising it would seem a power which rather belonged to the Diocesan, granted to Sir John Malemayne the privilege of constructing an Oratory attached to his Manor house for the use of himself and
1 " Ricardus Dei Gratia, Episcopus Roffensis, &c., &c., dedimus et con- cessimus Abbati et Conventui de Boxele ecclesiam Parochialem de Stokes, &c., quod domus de Boxele passim et sine delictu personaliter exhibit universis ad eandem domum coiifluentibus hospitalitatem, &c." Reg. Roff., p. 620.
40 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
family when prevented by illness or weather from attending the services of the Parish Church, from which they were so distant.^
From a much more humble source came yet another grant in the same tract, Geoffrey, the son of John, fabr (the Smith), with Edith his wife, gives to the Abbey a piece of land in Ellyottefelde, in the Yill of St. Wereburge, at Hoo.
At a very early period of the Abbey^s existence an official seal would seem to have been in use. The impression of a small one has been preserved in the British Museum, attached to a Charter of the loth Century,- in the form of a " vesica piscis,^' representing the Abbot in full pontificals, holding a pastoral staff in his right hand, a book in his left, with the inscription running round.
Attached to another Charter of the year 1336^ is a much finer and larger seal of very elaborate workman- ship, though unfortunately not quite perfect. Enough however remains, with the aid of other fragments of the same seal on other Charters, to admit of the whole design being traced out. On the obverse, under a three-arched canopy, or arcade of three pointed arches, trefoiled, pinnacled, and crocheted, supported by a column of tabernacle work on either side, each column having in the middle a small quatrefoiled opening containing the head of a Saint, probably SS. Benedict and Bernard; the Virgin sits on a richly carved throne, wearing a crown,
^ Registnim Eoffense, p. 623.
^ Additional Charters (British Museum), Ixv. 4.
^ Additional Charters, 20,008, refeiring to a lease of land in Hollingborne, granted by the Prior and Chapter of Canterbury to the Abbot and Convent of Boxley.
THE ABBEY. 41
and holding in her right hand a cinquefoiled rose, while on her left knee, supported by her left arm, is seated the child Jesus, his head surrounded by a nii)thi(s, his right hand raised up as in the act of benediction, his left hand holding an orb. At the base, under a wide trefoiled arch, are the faces of three Monks, in profile, as though raised in prayer, while on either side of the field, outside the columns of the canopy, is a branch of a box-tree, as though referring to the origin of the name of the village. The legend runs round in two rings ; the outer one is —
'* ^xgillum [Commjunc (BaV WU ^atit be
the inner one —
"^xt limta [Oirata]tibt (lax[hi WirQa iMta."]
On the reverse appear two Abbots, (SS. Benedict and Bernard) each standing in a trefoiled niche or recess of a double canopy, holding in one hand a pastoral staff curved outwards, and in the other a book, the canopy supported by panelled buttresses on either side, and by a light column in the centre separating the two figures, with a branch of a box-tree on the field on each side, as in the obverse. The legends here are less perfect, also run in two circles, and are thus conjectured : on the outer —
["CSui lautrant lie €t]Mmht S:uos lntU]ti[t]cti>,"
and on the inner —
''^ropinam |Fadt0 1B£r[narti^] ^ariam/'^
Nor was the Abbey all this time only the favoured
^ The author is indebted to W. de Gray Birch's Catalogue of Seals, p. 453, for these su<,'gested inscriptions, and to him and to the principal Librarian of the British Museum for permission to use the seals.
42 HISTOEY OF BOXLEY.
recipient of benefactions and endowments to be expended on their own estate. As tlieir coffers filled and their influence increased, they adopted the course not uncommon among the more wealthy Eeligious Houses, of founding a daughter Priory out of the superfluity of their revenues. In a remote corner of the Parish of Salehurst, in Sussex, where a bridge crossed the river Rother, from whence the little Hamlet took the name of Eotherbridge, they selected a spot for their new Priory. It needed but the change of three letters to alter the old name into that which would supply a permanent association with one so highly vene- rated by the whole of the Cistercian Order, as St. Robert, the first Abbot of St. Michael de Tonnerre, and the real founder of the brotherhood at Citeaux. So Eotherbridge became Uohertl Pons, or Robertsbridge.^
In other quarters too we find them giving of tlieir abundance to promote what in that day was ignorantly regarded as most acceptable to God, and beneficial to the souls of their fellow men. They endowed with six marks yearly a Chantry at the neighbouring Church of Hailing, and with a similar sum one at Horsmunden.-
Once, at least, was the Abbey honoured by the presence of Royalty, an event which demands special notice, bott because a writer on Kentish history has called it in question,-' and also because it explains an important
^ Horsfield's Sussex, p. 582. ^ Registrum Roffense, pp. 400, 429.
^ Brayley, in his Beauties of England and Wales (Kent, p. 1236), says that Pliilipott, Hasted, and Harris are all in error in supposing that Edward II. issued any such Charter, and that the only Charter the King issued to the City at this time was one exempting the citizens from all future levies for carrying on war out of the City, and that that Charter was dated from Aldermanston. ISTow, the Aldermanston Charter was dated on December 12, whereas the one conferring the right to elect their own Mayor was dated from Boxley on October 25 preceding {Historical Charters of the City of London, ed. Birch, 1887, p. 51). See Appendix F.
THE ABBEY. 43
change in the ciyic government of London. When, in 1321, Edward II. was marching on Leeds Castle to inflict condign punishment on the seneschal (a Colepeper) for refusing to admit Queen Isabel into her own Castle for a night's lodging, on her pilgrimage to Canterbury, he halted here, and from hence issued a most important Charter to the City of London. The Charter granted by King John had allowed the substitution of the title " Mayor" for the previous one of " Bailiff" to its chief officer j but the appointment to the office, though nominally placed in the hands of the citizens, practically lay with the Crown, and was held at the King's pleasure, being often retained for life, the first mayor, Henry Fitz-Alwyn, holding it for about twenty-four years. Now, Edward II., moved with special gratitude to the City for their ready aid in sending him levies in his attack on Leeds Castle, conferred on them a Charter, giving them the free choice of their Mayor from their own body, subject only to the king's approval ; and this charter^ was dated from Boxley, presumably from the Abbey, as being the only house capable of giving fitting reception to the King.
This visit belongs to the earlier history of the Abbey : again, when its days were nearly numbered, it received within its walls another visitor of scarcely less dignity and importance, one of the " Princes of the Roman Church," Cardinal Campeggio, whom the Pope had sent over to England, as Legate a latere, to endeavour to adjudicate with Archbishop Warham on the momentous question of the King's divorce. He arrived in England in 1518, and having taken part in a gorgeous ceremonial at Canterbury, on his way to London, halted for one night at the Abbey
' Patent Rolls, 15 Edw. II., part i., m. 2.
44 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
at Boxley, to liave an interview with the Primate^ who was staying there. ^ But Cardinal and Primate combined were powerless before the imperious Henry.
One incident in the history of the Abbey, (if the state- ment of one of the parties cencerned is to be accepted), would seem hardly to redound to the credit of the Abbey." Juvenal has said, " Crescit amor nummi quantum ipsa pecunia crescit ; " and perhaps the acquisition of land may have produced what is now-a-days called " land- hunger/' and have made them the less scrupulous in their mode of obtaining it. In Reglstrum Roffenne it appears as a formal complaint made by Hugo, Count of St. Paul, or St. Pol, that his Bailiff had been negociating with the Canons of the Lesnes Abbey, near Erith, for the purchase of a piece of land [e.ssartum) near Dartford, and a messenger had been sent to apprise him of the sale ; but the Monks of Boxley, also desiring the land, had inter- cepted, and b}^ bribes, delayed the messenger, and came direct to him in Normandy with an offer for the land, and he, in utter ignorance of the Bailiff's action, had accepted their offer. But, directly he discovered the trick that had been played upon him, he indignantly repudiated the sale and cancelled it. Charity may suggest that this account given by the Count was one-sided and perhaps exaggerated, and simply a case of two parties trying to outbid each other. It were sad indeed if a ''Religious House" descended to a course which even a Pagan Satirist
1 Patent Rolls, 11 Henry VIII., pt. 2, m. 21. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, vol. ii. p. 1336 (No. 4333).
2 With this qualification the author feels justified in giving in Appendix G the full text of the entry in the Register, Tenqwral. Episcop. Rogensuim., quoted in Registrum Roffcnse, p. 316, and very inaccurately translated by Lambarde, Perambul. 235.
THE ABBEY. 45
denounces as that wliicli a corrupt minded unprincipled man mig'lit justify :
" Kecte si possis ; si non, quocunque modo rem."
The connection of Boxley Abbey with its daughter Priory of Robertsbridg-Cj and that of Chi'ist Church, Canterbury, already alluded to, would seem to have pro- duced strangely opposite results. The Chapter Records divulge the tale that the more rigid discipline of the Cistercians here enforced was from time to time taken advantage of by the Canterbury Benedictines for a twofold purpose. When, for instance, a Monk at Canterbury found the greater laxness of the rule there detrimental to the well-being of his soul, he would himself apply to be transferred to Boxley, or Robertsbridge ; ^ while, on the other hand, a troublesome, intractable brother would now and again be sent from Canterbury to Boxley, in the hope that the sterner discipline might subdue his spirit. A striking illustration of the latter process is given in the case of one William Powns, a Monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, who had been guilty of fragrant irregularity and insubordination, and who, but for the intervention of influential friends, would have been subjected to fai severer punishment, had at their pleading his sentence coinmuted to a transference from the more lax and easy- going fraternity of the Benedictines to the more strict and laborious regime of the Cistercians. In the one case Boxley Abbey would serve as a " Retreat ; " in the other as a "Reformatory.""
It is from these points of view, and in its earlier days,
1 Canterbury Chapter Rccorch. G. 123, &c.
2 (Sedc Facante Records of the Canterbury Chapter, N. 177, 179. Litteroe Cantuarienses {&\\^)]}a,vA) 111, 172, et seq.
46 HISTORy OF BOXLEY.
that both as a religious house and as a political influence, Boxley Abbey appears at its brightest and best.
Another side to this picture of Boxley Abbey, and a far less pleasing one to contemplate, is presented in the pages of later Chroniclers, and it, too, if indirectly, may to some extent be traced to its proximity and connection with Canterbury during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Pilgrimages had come to be the order of the day, the rage of the times. Some saintly relic, however small, was everywhere eagerly sought for to supply an attraction for the piety and liberality of the devout. Now Canterbury eclipsed all other '^holy places" in England in the possession of the very body of the martyred Becket, '^ St. Thomas of Canterbury," as he was reverently styled. To his shrine thronged crowds of votaries — royal, noble, and plebeian, " earl and churl " alike ; into the Canterbury coffers flowed streams of costly offerings, to the great gain, as well as the glory, of the Monastery. All that Boxley could offer at first appears to have been only " the little finger of St. Andrew encased in silver," until a strange mysterious chance brought a double attraction — nothing less than that miraculous touch-stone of purity, the image of St. Rumwald, sometimes called St. Grrumbald, and more wondrous still, — what was itself a standing miracle, — the crucifix, seemingly instinct with life and knowledge, com- monly known as "The Rood of Grace."^
Before these the finger of St. Andrew became quite a secondary object of worship ; ~ indeed, so much did the
1 In the will of Rest Redfyn, widow of Nicholas Redfyn, of Queenborough (Canterbury Registry), a bequest is made to the " Roode of Grace," which is termed a "woman of wax," i.e., a waxen figure of the Virgin. {Arch. Cantiana, xi., 62).
* It was eventually paivned for £40.
THE ABBEY. 47
fame and importance of the Abbey centre in this Crucifix that the original style of the dedication '' to St. Mary the Virgin" was soon — so early at least as 1412 — absorbed into that of "the Abbey of the Rood of Grace" {Ahhatia Sande Grucis de (rratiis)} And even the glory of the shrine of St. Thomas began to pale into insignificance in the eyes of the devout pilgrims, whose journey towards Canterbury was doubtless often arrested by the greater attraction of Boxley. Thus did the spirit of greed creep into that poverty-vowed community, and find in success, acting on the prevalent ignorance and superstition, an excuse for, and justification of, the adoption of a " pious fraud."
At what exact time these images made their appearance in the Abbey Chapel is not recorded. Indeed, the origin and history of St. Rumbald is a perfect blank ; not so that of "the Rood of Grace." To old William Lambarde we are indebted for an account of the circumstances under which it arrived here. And lest the very strangeness of his recital should lay him open to the charge of invention, he prefaces his narrative with the declaration that he " set it downe in such sorte onely as the same was sometime by themselves published in print for their estimation and credite, and yet remaineth deeply imprinted in the mindes and memories of many on live (alive) to their everlasting reproche, shame, and confusion." Thus Lambarde's account, now so vehemently repudiated by modern Romanists, comes to us on the testimony of the monks themsslves — a testimony to which, at any rate according to him, they had set their own hand and seal.
The story as told by him in his quaint yet graphic
1 Close Roll, 10 Henry VI., m. 5.
48 HISTOEY OF BOXLEY.
language, under the marginal title " The ungratious Roode of Grace'^ runs tlius/
'^It cliaunced (as tlie tale is) that upon a time a cunning Carpenter of our countrie was taken prisoner in the warres between us and Fraunce, who (wanting otherwise to satisfy for his ransome, and having good leysure to devise for his deliverance) thought it best to attempt some curious enterprise, within the compass of his owne art and skill, to make himself some money withal ; and therefore getting together fit matter for his purpose he compacted of wood, wyer, paste, and paper, a Roode of such exquisite arte and excellencie that it not onely matched in comelyness and due proportion of the partes the best of the common sort, but in straunger motion, varietie of gesture, and nimble- ness of joints, passed all other that before were seen ; the same being able to bow down and lift up itselfe, to shake and stirre the handes and feete, to nod the head, to rolle the eies, to wag the chaps, to bend the browes, and finally to represent to the eie, both the proper motion of each member of the body, and also a lively, expresse, and signiSt;ant shew of a well contented or displeased minde, by ting the lip and gathering a frowning fro ward and disdainful face, when it would pretend oft'ence, and shewing a most milde, amyable and .smyling cheere and countenance when it would seeme to be well pleased. This carpenter having obtained his liberty, came over into the Realme of purpose to better his merchandise, and layde the image upon the backe of a jade that he drave before him. Now when he was come so farre as to Rochester on his way, he waxed drie by reason of travaile, and called at an ale house for drinke to refreshe him, suifering his
1 Perambulations of Kent (1576), p. 227.
THE ABBEY. 49
liorse nevertheless to go forwarde alone along tlie Citie.
" This jade was no sooner out of site, but he missed the streight western way that his master intended to have gone, and turning Southe, made a great pace toward Boxley, and being driven, as it were, by some divine furie, never ceased jogging till he came at the Abbay Church door, where he so beat and bounced with his heeles, that divers of the Menkes heard the noise, came to the place to knowe the cause, and (marvelling at the straungeness of the thing) called the Abbat and the Convent to beholde it.
" These good men seeing the liorse so earnest, and discerning what he had on his backe, for doubt of deadly impietie, opened the doore ; which they had no sooner done, but the horse rushed in and ranne m great haste to a piller (which was the verie place where this image was afterwarde advaunced) and there stopped himself and stoode still.
" Now while the Menkes were busie to take off the lode, in cometh the carpenter (that by great inquisition had followed) and he challenged his owne ; the Monke., loth to lose so beneficial a stray, at the first make some deniall but afterward, being assured by all signes that he was the verie Proprietarie, they graunt him to take it with him. The carpenter then taketh the liorse by the head, and first assayeth to leade him out of the Church ; but he would not stirrre for him. Then beateth he and striketh him, but the jade was so restie and fast nailed, that he woulde not once remove his foote from the piller. At the last he taketh off the image, thinking to have carried it out by itselfe, and then to have led the horse after, but that also cleaved so fast to the place that notwithstanding all that
E
50 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
ever lie (and tlie Monkes also, which at the length were contented for pities sake to help him) coiilde doe, it would not be moved one inche from it, so that in the ende, partly of weariness in wrestling, and partly by persuasion of the Monkes, which were in love with the Picture, and made him beleeve is was by God himselfe destinate to their house, the carpenter was contented for a pieece of money to go his way and leave the Hoode behinde him. Thus you see the generation of this the gr^at GrOD of Boxley."
Of the time or circumstances under which the companion image of St. Rumwald was introduced into the Abbey even Lambarde tells nothing, beyond the tradition respecting this " wonderful saint ; " this is briefly told : a Pagan King of Northumbria named Alfred, early in the seventh century, had married Cyneburga, the daughter of Penda, the Christian King of Mercia, who had converted her husband, and bore him a son whose birth was attended by a strange miracle. As soon as he was born (says Lambarde) " he repeatedly cried with a lowde voice, ' Ghristianus sum — Ghristianus sum.' I am a Christian — I am a Christian. And not ceassing thus, made forthwith plaine profession of his faith, desired to be baptized, chose his Godfathers, named himselfe Eumwald, and with his finger directed the standers by to fetch him a great hollow stone that hee would have to be used for the Fonte.
" Hereupon sundry of the King's servants assaied to have brought the stone, but it was so far above all their strengthe that they could not once move it. When the Childe perceaved that, he commaunded the two Priestes (his appointed Godfathers) to goe and bring it, which they did forthwith most easily. This done, he was baptized, and within three dales after (having in the meanewhile
THE ABBEY. 51
discoursed cunningly on sundry matters of religion, and explained his wishes regarding the disposal of his body) his spirit departed, and was, by the handes of Aungels, conveied into heaven." ^
Thus far Lambarde tells the tale of the arrival of the Eoode of Grace, and of the origin of the " pretty boy Sainte" Rumwald. Now of the uses to which these two images were put; "howe lewdly these Monkes, to their owne enriching and the spoil of God's people,' abused this wooden God," he goes on to explain " on the authority of a good sort yet on live (alive) that saw the fraud openly detected at Paules Crosse." "
" If you minded to have benefit of the Roode of Grace, you ought first to bee shriven of one of the Monkes ; then by lifting at this other image (which was of the common sort called St. Grumbald) you shoulde make proof e whether you were in cleane life or no, and if you so found yourselfe then was your way prepared, and your oifering acceptable before the Roode ; if not, then it behoved you to be confessed anew, for it was to be thought that you had concealed somewhat from your ghostly dad, and therefore not worthie to be admitted Ad Sacra EJeusina.
" Now that you may knowe how this examination was to be made, you must understande that this Saint Rumwald was of stone, of itselfe short, and not seeming to be heavie ; but forasmuch as it was wrought out of a great and weightie stone, it was hardly to be lifted by the handes of the strongest man. Neverthelesse (such was the conveighance) by the helpe of an engine fixed to the backe thereof, it was easily prised up by the foote of him that was the keeper; and therefore of no moment at
^ Peramhulations of Kent, p. 234. - Ibid, 230.
52 HISTOEY OF BOXLEY.
all in tlie liaiides of sucli as liad offered frankly ; and contrariwise by the meane of a pinne, running into a poste (wliicli that religious impostor, standing out of sight, could put in and pull out at his pleasure), it was to such as offered faintly, so fast and unmoveable, that no force of hande might once stirre it.
'^But marke here, I beseech you, their policie in picking plaine men's purses. It was in vaine, as they persuaded, to presume to the Roode without shrifte, yea and money lost there also if you offered before you were in cleane life, and therefore the matter was so handled that without treble oblation, that is to say, first to the Confessor, then to Saint Rumwald, and lastly to the Gracious Roode, the poore Pilgrimes could not assure themselves of any good gained by all their labour." ^
Thus was the superstition of the age being fed : thus were the coffers of the Abbey filled.
Even the astute and penurious Henry VII. appears among those who sent offerings to Boxley," and his queen, too, Elizabeth of York in 1502.3
Strange as it may seem, so deep-rooted was the spirit of superstitious veneration even in high places and among the learned of that day, that they could not see the advancing shadows of the approaching cloud — the loud mutterings of the gathering storm that was to burst upon them, and sweep away the whole system out of the country.
Even in the 12th Century the immoralities and dis- honesties of the Monasteries had furnished marks for the shaft of the Satirist. Nigellus, himself a Monk, and
^ Perambulation, p. 233. ^ Excerpta Historia, p. 91. ^ Privy Purse Expenses.
THE ABBEY. 53
Precentor of Canterbury^ in high favour too with William de Longchamp^ Bishop of Ely, to whom he dedicated his poems, launches out in no measured terms against the prevailing iniquity, ''Whether followers of Bernard or ''Benedict (he says), or oven the more lax rule of " Augustine, all alike were thieves, neither their fair " words or white robes were to be trusted." ^
To pass over two centuries, we find William Longland, also a Monk, attached to Malvern Abbey, denouncing with no less severity the state of Monasteries in his day. In his "Vision of Piers Ploughman" he describes the immorality and dishonesty of the Clerics as compared with even the laity :
"Lewed men (laymen),
And of litel knowyng,
Seldom falle thei so foule
And so fer in synne
As Clerkes of holy Chirche."
And with almost prophetic eye he forsees the time when
" There shall come a kynge And confesse you Religiouses, And bete you as the bible telleth, For brekynge of youre rule, And amende Monyals (Nuns), Menkes and Chanons."
1 Hare is a specimen of the keenness of his satire :
" Qui duce Bernardo gradiuntnr, vel Benedicto, " Aut Augustino, sub leviore jngo,
" Omnes sunt fares, quocunque charactere sancto " Signati veniant magnificantque Deum :
" Ne credas verbis, ne credas vestibus albis : " Vix etenim factis est adhibenda fides."
Nigclli Speculum Stultorum, Rolls Series, vol. i., p. 109.
54 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
Every day was witnessing in one form or another the spreading feeling of discontent and abhorrence of the Eomish practices and their palpable frauds. In 1521 it had reached the very doors of Boxley itself. The walls of the Abbey were to bear their testimony to the reforming zeal which was becoming so prevalent. Here had been posted up with all the sanctity which it was possible to impart to it a formal document emanating from the Pope^ supported by the authority of the lord cardinal (Wolsey, at that time Legate a latere), and sealed with the seal of the Archbishop — a document denouncing the " yl (ill) opinions of Martine Luther." Yet was this document torn off the Abbey wall by a priest^ (Sir) Adam Bradshaw/ at the peril of his life ; for it and other like deeds of insubordination, he was imprisoned at Maidstone, tried as a heretic, and consigned to the flames.
From other quarters, too, dangers were threatening the Religious Houses, and this Abbey among them, in spite of the great accession of wealth from the offerings made to the "Rood of Grace /' for Henry VIII. had laid heavy burdens upon the Monasteries, of which Boxley Abbey had to bear its share. Again, in 1522, to defray the expenses of his mad invasion of France, he levied a subsidy on the nation, on the laity generally one tenth, and on the clergy one fourth of their incomes, while Boxley Abbey was also called on to produce £50 under the plausible term of a Loan.
This subsidy and other dues had apparently fallen heavily into arrears, and in 1524 Archbishop Warham received instructions to institute an inquiry into the
1 Stafx P(xpcrs of Henry VIII. ( Foreign and Domestic), Brewer, vol. iii., part i., p. 541 ; vol. iv., p. 299.
THE ABBEY. 55
financial condition of tlie Abbey. He reports tbe result to Wolsey^ as Legate a latere, and says tliat tlie Abbot " offers the security of his house for the payment of the money due to the king ;" meanwhile^ he declares he " would not have interfered, as the place is exempt, had he not been forced by the Act of Convocation authorizing him and the Bishop of London^ to proceed against such as pay not their collect.^' He pleads, too, for both Abbey and Abbot. "As the place is much sought for from all parts of the realm visiting the ' Roode of Glrace,' he wovtld be sorry to put it under an interdict." The Abbot also, he urges, " is inclined to live precisely, and bring the place out of debt, or else it were a pity that he should live much longer there to the hurt of so holy a place, where so many miracles be showed." ^
It is not impossible that the knowledge of this state of things in the Abbey exchequer may have emboldened the over-zealous Bradshaw to defy the authorities by his daring act, in the hope, perhaps, of expediting an exposure ; and that, on the other hand, the consciousness of the real condition of the Abbey may have maddened the powers that were to persecute him to the bitter end.
To Bradshaw the consequences were fatal. To Warham — so learned and devout, yet so plastic in the hands of men of stronger will, and so deeply imbued with the credulity of the age as to be induced to avow a belief in the claims to inspiration of that impostor, Elizabeth Barton, of Aldington, commonly known as " the Holy Maid of Kent" — to him the eventual exposure would indeed have been
1 Cuthbert Tunstall.
" Letters and Papers {Foreign and Domestic) of Menry VIII., (Brewer,) vol, iv., part i., p. 299 (Rolls series).
56 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
humiliating' liad lie lived to witness it, and to see the fate of the Abbey for which he had pleaded so earnestly, and the dissolution of all the Monasteries in England. This, at least, he was spared by his death in 1533.
Before describing the last days of Boxley Abbey and the fate of " the Eood of Grace," it may not be out of place to trace briefly the stages through which this crusade against religious houses passed. Their endowments, like those of Churches, were composed of grants of lands or tithes made by individuals, whether kings, or nobles, or wealthy gentry, for the purposes of religion. Sometimes the grant would be made of land in England to a Monastery abroad, chiefly in Normandy, in which case the parent house, if it may be so called, would plant a daughter Priory on the manor thus given, and supply it with a body of their own monks. This would be called a cell {" cella") of the Monastery to which it belonged.
So frequently did this occur, that at one time there were about one hundred and fifty of these cells, or " Alien Priories," in England ; and their Priors, like the mitred Abbots of the large Monasteries, would claim immunity from all control of English authorities, temporal and spiritual alike ; and were therefore called " Exempt."
Now, in the reigns of the first three Edwards and that of Richard IL, the king, when engaged in a war with France, would seize the revenues of these alien Priories towards covering his war expenses, instead of allowing them to go, as they otherwise would, to help the French king. Edward I. did so in 1285, Edward II. in 1322, Edward III. in 1337, and Richard II. in 1380 ; but in each case the revenues were restored when peace was pro-
THE ABBEY. 57
claimed. Henry Y., liowever, dealt far more summarily with tliem^ appropriating no less than one hundred and ten of them to his own use, and making no restitution.
But the historic onslaught on the English Monasteries was in the days of Henry VIII., and then, be it remembered, under Papal sanction. In 1524, while as yet there were no signs of the coming rupture with Rome, Cardinal Wolsey had obtained from Clement VII. a Bull for the dissolution of certain Monasteries, and the transfer of their endowments for the foundation of his two Colleges at Oxford and Ipswich; and four years after a further number were similarly dealt with for the creation of six additional Bishoprics. Thus was the principle of appropriating Monastic property for other purposes sanctioned, and it supplied the King with a precedent for carrying still further, and for less laudable and excusable objects, his system of Monastic spoliation. But another motive seems to have underlain even that of greed in the King's mind ; in every Monastery he detected an outpost of the Pope's spiritual army for the recovery of England.^
In the year 1536, Wolsey no longer controlling the King and Parliament, and the facile Cranmer having become Archbishop of Canterbury, an Act was passed sweeping away all lesser Monasteries, with incomes under £200 a year, on the ground that they were useless, and moreover, harbours of vice. Thus fell 376 houses, with revenues estimated at about £32,000 a year, and above £100,000 worth of plate and other valuables.
This was but the beginning. In the quaint language of the far-seeing ones of that day, " as yet the shrubs and underwoods were but touched, but the end would soon be
^ Stowe's Annals, i., 89. Dugdale's JVarwickshirc.
58 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
tlie fall of the lofty oaks."^ JSTor was that end long in coming. A few months sufficed to bring it. The King and his courtiers, having tasted the sweets of the con- j&scated lands, greedily demanded more. Before the year 1537 had closed, the order had gone forth which doomed every Monastery and Nunnery in the kingdom to appro- priation ; and to give a specious air of legality to the proceedings, the " Court of Augmentations" was formed to receive and take charge of the proceeds as the King^s revenues.^
In the general downfall, Boxley Abbey was doomed, and, as was afterwards proved, deservedly so.
It is sometimes said that the jugglery of " the Eood of Grrace" sealed its fate. But this is not strictly correct. The Abbey was involved in the general dissolution because it was an Abbey. And it was not until the commissioners had arrived here and taken possession that the '^ pious fraud" was fully exposed, even though the pretended miracles may have long before been the subject of doubt, and occasionally of ridicule. An examination of the dates, as well as the statement of Jeffery Chambers him-
^ Godwin's Annals of Henry VIII., p. S4.
" A letter from Thomas (Lord) Wriothesley, written at the time the Dissolution of the Monasteries was impending, is not without interest hei'e, as containing an allusion to Boxley. It is addressed by him to the King from Brussels : "On Saterday night supped with us the Marques of Barrowe, (Anthony, Margrave of Berghen, of Zoom), who semeth wel affected towardes your Highness, who also declared unto us what was thought in those parts of many, that all religion was extinct in Englande ; and when we came to the woorde of religion he expounded it, that it was reaported that with us we had no masse, that Sainctes were burned, and all that was taken for holye clerely subverted. We declared in such wise the religion of your Majestie, the abuses of Canterbury, Boxley, and other places ; that he semed moche to rejoyse of th' one, ' and to detest th' other. Dated from Bruxelles the 20th November,— Thomas Wriothesley."— State Papers, Henry VIII. (Rolls Series), vol. v., p. 95.
THE ABBEY. 59
self, tlie Commissioner, will show tliat whatever there might previously have been of rumour and suspicion, the real detection of the imposture followed, and did not itself cause, the surrender.
In November, 1537, Crumweli had noted down in an autograph volume of " Remembrances," still pi-eserved among- the Cottonian MSS. in the British Museum, " Must send for the Abbots of Boxley and Robertsbridge with speed." ^ Clearly he acted promptly on his resolve. The Abbot was evidently sent for at once. Feeling he had fallen on evil days, and that his Abbey was doomed, but seeing that it had fared better with those who had surrendered with a good grace, and been pensioned, than with those who had resisted and been executed, he quickly entered into nogociations for surrender and pensions for himself and his brother Monks : for on the 3rd of the following January the liberal pension of £50 was assigned to him, and smaller ones to the Monks.
On the 29th of that month (January, 1537-8) the Com- missioners arrived to receive the formal surrender and to take possession of the Abbey. Then it was the Abbot subscribed to the Supremacy, and then — and ostensibly not till then — the real character of the "Rood of Grace" was discovered.
Is there not a veil of irony thrown by Chambers over the statement he makes to Crumweli that the Abbot and some of the old Monks of whom he asked an explanation pleaded utter ignorance of the existence of the mechanical trickery he had brought to light ?
It will be interesting to follow the wanderings of this
1 Cott. MSS. , Titus B. i. , f. 437. Letters and Papers of Henry VIII Rolls Series), vol. xii., part ii., p. 409.
60 HISTOEY OF BOXLEY.
'^ ungracious Eood/' as Lambarde calls it. Its detection is thus described by Jeffery Chambers : who reports what he had himself seem. He writes thus to Crumwell early in February, 1538 :
" Upon the defacing of the late Monastery of Boxley and plucking down of the images of the same, I found in the Image of the Roode of Grace, which heretofore hath been had in great veneration of people, certain engines and old wire with old rotten stykes (sticks) in the back of the same, that did cause the eyes of the same to move and stare (stir) in the head thereof like unto a living thing, and also the nether lip likewise to move, as though it would speak, which so found wires were not a little strange to me and others that were present at the plucking down of the same.
" Whereupon the Abbot, hearing this, did thither resort, whom, to my little wit (understanding) and cunning (skill), with others of the old Monks, I did examine of their knowledge of the premises, who do declare themselves to be ignorant of the same. So remitting the further (examination) unto your good lordship, when they shall repair unto London. Nevertheless, the said Abbot is sore sick that as yet he is not able to come.
" Further, when I had seen this strange subject, and considering that the inhabitants of the county of Kent had in time past a devotion to the same, and use to (make) continual pilgrimage thither, by the advice of others that were here with me, did convey the said image unto Mayston (Maidstone) this present Thursday, then being the market-day, did show it openly unto all the people there being present to see the false, craft}', and subtle handlincr thereof to the dishonour of God and the delusion
THE ABBEY. 61
of the said people, who, I dare say, in case the said Monastery were to be defaced again (the King^s grace not offended), they would either pluck it down to the ground, or else burn it, for they have the said matter in wondi^ous detestation and hatred, as at my repair unto your good lordship, and bringing the same image with me, where- upon I do somewhat tarry, and for the further defacing of
the said late Monastery I shall declare unto you
At Maydeston the vii. day of Feb.
" Your most bounden,
"■Jeffray Chambers."^
A letter of a month^s later date, from another of Crum- welFs Commissioners, Robert Southwell," describes the state of the Abbey and the assignment of the pensions :
" Sir, — Theis pore men have not spared to confesse the treweth .... whereby in my pore mynde they deserve the more favour, and I dare saie in their hartes thinke them selffes rather to have meryted perdon by their ignorance than prayse or lawde for their forme of lyvinge. Whether ther was cawse why that Boxley shulde recog- nyce as moche or more, it may please you to judge, whom it also pleased to shewe me the Idolle that stode there, in myne opynyon a very monstruows sight. Here was also of late in this monastery a pece of Saint Andrew^s fynger, covered with an unce of sylver or there aboughte, a very precyows juell in the estimation of many, and now leyde to pledge by the monastery to one of the towne XL. li., whiche ^Ye intende nat to redeme of the pryce, exeept we be
^ Record Office, Crumwdl CoiTCspondeJice, vol. v., f. 210, also printed in Ellis's Original Letters, 3rd series, iii., 168.
- Afterwards Master of the Rolls in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI.
62 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
commaunded so to do/^ Tlien speaking of the falling off of the income from 700 to 400 marcs, lie continues, " There have growne no decay by this priour that we can learn, but surely his predecessours plesured moche in odoryferous savours, as it should seeme by their converting the rentes of their monastery, that were wonte to be paide in
coyne and grayne, into gelofer flowers and roses
Sir, we have practysed with the pore men for their pencions as easely to the Kynges charges and as moche to his graces honour as we could devyse ... 3 of Merche.
" Robert Southwell." ^
Another account from a Maidstone man, who signs himself '' Johannes Hokerus, Maidestonieusis," and whom Burnet erroneously calls a " Minister of Maidstone," will carry the Rood a step further. It runs thus :
" There was lately discovered a wooden god of Kentish folk, a hanging Christ, who might have vied with Proteus himself, for he most cunningly knew how to nod with his head, to scowl with his eyes, to wag his beard, to bend his body, to reject or receive the prayers of pilgrims. This (image), when the Monks lost their craft, was found in their church begirded with many a votice offering {plurimo anathemate), enriched with gifts of linen and wax, from
town and country, and from foreign parts
Throughout his hollowed body were hidden pipes, in which the master of the mysteries had introduced through little apertures a flexible wire, the passages being nevertheless concealed by thin plates. By such contrivances he had demented the people of Kent — aye, the whole of England
^ Wright's Letters on the Suppression of the Mojiasterics (Camden Society), p. 172 ; Cott. MSS., Cleop., E. IV., f. 218.
THE ABBEY. 63
— for ages, with niucli gain. Being laid open, lae afforded
a sportive sight, first to all my Maidstonians
From thence he was taken to London. He paid a visit to the Royal Court. This new guest salutes the King himself after a novel fashion. . . . (Here follows a highly graphic and palpably sensational detail.) The matter was referred to the Council. After a few days a sermon was
preached by the Bishop of Rochester Hilsey)
Then, Avhen the preacher began to wax warm, and the Word of God to work secretly in the hearts of the hearers, the wooden trunk was hurled among the most crowded of the audience. And now was heard a tremendous clamour. He is snatched, torn, broken in pieces, bit by bit, split up into a thousand fragments, and at last thrown into the fire : and thus was an end of him."^
Such was Hoker's tale ; and he claims to have been an eye-witness of what took place in his own town of Maid- stone.
The volume of Zurich Letters, published by the Parker Society, contains several other accounts, one from a William Peterson, another from one John Finch, a third from Nicholas Partridge f but all these are at second- hand, for these men only retail to their friends accounts which came to them on the Continent through a certain German merchant, and each would seem to vie with the others in the strength and extravagant bitterness of what may be admitted to be exaggerations. Yet, what more natural than that the very fact and circumstances of their
1 Burnet gives this letter in its original Latin, and adds what he calls a translation, really a loose paraphrase, of it. — History of the Reformation (Collection of Records), Part vi., book iii., p. 180. Appendix G.
'•^ Zinich Letters (Parker Society, 1847), pp. 604, 606, 609.
64 HISTOEY OF BOXLEY.
exile, as they believed for tlie truth's sake, should stimulate their powers of imagination, and move them to pour an additional infusion of gall into their ink ?
It will not be out of place to ask here what view the E-omanist of to-day takes of the whole proceedings.
He will urge, considering the source from whence they come, that these are only " Protestant inventions, or at best, gross exaggerations " — lies he may courteously call them. But how can he reconcile this with the language of Erasmus,^ — no bigotted " Protestant " he, but one who lived and died in communion with the Church of Home, — when he charges the Monks with " tyrannizing over the consciences of the deluded laity with fopperies, juggleries, and impostures ? " - or with the Articles of Enquiry for the Monastery of Walsingham, when one is to the following effect, " What is the greatest miracle and moste undoubted whiche is said to have bene doon by our Ladye here, or by any of the said reliques ?" And again, "Whether our Ladye hathe doon so many miracles nowe of late as it was said she did when there was more offering made unto her ? "
Now be it admitted that Foxe, and Hoker, and Peterson, and Finch, Avere extreme and bitter anti-Romanists, revelling, as it would seem, and not unnaturally, in the freshness of their freedom from Romish superstition, and therefore not unlikely to paint in over-glaring colours the exposure of deceptions and illusions of which they may themselves for years have been among the victims.
1 Erasmus' Morice Encomium, Bp. Kennett's Translation, p. 123. - Harl. MSS., 791, p. 27.
THE ABBEY. 65
But wliat has tlie Romanist himself to say in defence or justification of these practices ? The latest champion of the cause is the author of a Avork entitled " Blunders and Forgeries/ in a chapter which appeai'ed originally in the Dublin Review, under the heading " The Rood of Grrace, or How a Lie Grows/^ He does not attempt to deny the existence of such a figure, or that it had such a remarkable mechanism. Nay, he admits that such mechanical figures were not uncommon, illustrating his argument by the jointed figures of the Saviour, which were so constructed to admit of their being wrapped in a shroud on Good Friday, and laid in a Sepulchre, and then robed anew on Easter Morning. But does he not forget the difference between the devotional effect which such a representation, like that of a beautiful stained glass window, might have on a susceptible emotional mind, and the claim which is put forward on behalf of this miracle-working ^' Rood of Grace," or its more northern rival, " St. Mary of Walsingham."" He candidly avows his opinion, which he says is maintained by " Catholics, or at least by himself," that " the miracles wrought, or supposed to have been wrought, or graces obtained, before this crucifix had nothing whatever to do with the movements" so suggestively made. Surely such a denial, or minimizing, of the claims of relics to thaumatergic power would be a conceding the soundness of one of the main positions taken by the English Reformers, and a virtual stultifying one of the most attractive and effective pretentions of the Church of Rome.
The author of " Blunders and Forgeries," after quibbles
1 ByT. E. Bridgett, F.S.S.R.
2 See Harleian MSS., 791, p. 27. Pilgrimage of Erasmus (J. G. NichoUs), App., p. 204.
F
66 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
and querks and cavils at tlie language of Lambarde, wlio, as we have seen, made Ms statement on the authority of printed accounts of the Monks themselves — of Burnet, who always gives his authority — of Hume, whose scepticism would keep him clear of hasty judgment — of Froude, and Hook, — seems as if he were acting on the instructions said to have been once given on a Barrister's brief, ''No defence. Abuse the Prosecutor's witnesses;" for he summons them one by one before him, placing them — not in the witness-box for cross-examination — but in the pillory, to be pelted with the choicest selection of epithets he can command — there are " the arch-knave Thomas Crumwell," the " perjured Archbishop Cranmer," the "time-serving Hilsey," the ''debauched and bloodthirsty Henry," &c. Does he need to be reminded that abuse is not argument, that strength of language and soundness of reasoning often go in inverse ratio the one to the other ?
Far more seemly is the language of the charitable and philosophic Hook, who recognises that under the then state of society " the service rendered to the Christian cause by the Monastic institutions was great," but in speaking of their deterioration and downfall, he says : " We live in an age when the spirit-wrapper finds believers among those who think it a mark of superior intelligence to discredit Revelation. It is not, therefore, for us to attempt to distinguish between the wilful deceivers, the self-deceived, and the dupes of a bygone age. We can only say that when there was a demand for the miraculous, the demand was met. So long as it was met, those who were at the head of aifairs did not trouble themselves to investigate the means by which the end was obtained, A
THE ABBEY. 67
wonder-working slirine was a mine of wealth
If money was required to rebuild or restore a sacred edifice, a relic was purchased, or the canonization of a local hero was procured. His slirine was visited by- enthusiasts, who felt, or declared, that their bodily infir- mities were relieved ; and when this kind of enthusiasm died away, or was confined to a few localities, the iniquitous system of Indulgences was introduced. By offering alms and prayers at a shrine richly endowed with Indulgences the misled people expected a relaxation from the pains of purgatory for themselves, or for their friends. When with the revival of learning a spirit of free enquiry was awakened in Europe, from these superstitions the mind revolted." ^
To sum up all, can it be denied, or gainsaid, that here a once goodly shrine was prostituted to its own shame, into a scene of flagrant imposture, — call it "pious fraud" if you will ! — and into a source of unholy gain ?
1 Lives of the Archhisho]os, vol. ii., p. 16, &c.
CHAPTER IV. THE ABBOTS.
THE Abbey of Boxley, as has been shown in the preceding- Chapter/ was among the earliest of the religious houses of the Cistercian Order established in England, having been founded in 1146. While the Benedictine Abbey of Christ Church, Canterbury, was of a much earlier date, — so early indeed that no historic record exists of its original foundation, unless we associate it with Augustine himself, — and naturally, from its con- nection with the Primacy, held a more conspicuous place in the annals of the English Church : yet that of Boxley was not without its history ; and it is in the pages of the early chroniclers of Canterbury, Gervase and Eadmer, that that history may be first traced. For no Abbot of Boxley could be recognised as such until he had received confirmation, or, as it was termed, ''benediction," at the hands of the Primate. This would imply, that not like the majority of English Abbeys, which were "exempt" from Diocesan control, Boxley, by the tenor of its foundation, was under the recognition and jurisdiction of the Primacy. Though it will be seen that subsequently, for instance, when Abp. Warham reported its condition to Wolsey as
1 Paee 29.
THE ABBOTS. 69
Papal Legate/ it had. come to be regarded as one of the ^"^ exempt" Monasteries. It is therefore to the Actus roniificum Cantuariensium, preserved by Gervase in his Chronicles^ we are indebted for the names of the first of these Abbots, and from this source we learn that Arch- bishop Theobald, who held the Primacy from 1139 to 1161, confirmed three Abbots, Lambekt, Thomas, and. Walter.^ Unfortunately only the Christian names are given, without any distinguishing designation or title, so that their pre- vious or subsequent careers cannot be traced with any certainty, and it is only possible, by reference to dates, to connect any of them with any of those events in which Abbots of Boxley are said to have taken part.
As the Abbey was only founded in 1146, and Gervase gives March 1152-3 as the date of the confirmation of Abbot Thomas, it may be reasonably inferred that Lambert was the first to sit in the abbatial chair, and that it was he who in the year 1151, with his brother Abbot of Faversham, attended Archbishop Theobald when he, under papal compulsion, confirmed Sylvester as Abbot of St. Augustine's Monastery. The story runs thus :
On the vacancy occurring, the monks chose Sylvester, one of their own body ; but the Archbishop having received very vinfavourable reports of his life, refused to
1 See page 55.
- Gervase gives the following from the Actus Pontificum, " c?e Theobaldo: Abbates istos benedixit Theobaldus, Lambertum scilicet de Boxeleia- Thomara de Boxeleia, Walterum de Boxeleia. '^ De Ricardo, 3o\\3.i\neva. benedixit Abbatem de Boxeleia." . . . . '^ De Baldivino, Dionysium quoque benedixit Abbatem de Boxeleia." In his Chronicon he gives the date of the confirmation of Thomas thus: " a.d. 1152 Hoc anno Theobaldus Cantuariensis, totius Anglise Primas et Apostolicse sedis Legatus, benedixit Thomam Abbatem de Boxeleia ad altare Christi Cantuarise, vi Non. Martii." Gervase, Rolls Serins (Stubbs), vol. ii., pp. 385, 398, 405.
70 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
admit him^ until, on Ins appealing to Rome, a mandate came from Pope Eugenius III." to which Theobald was compelled to bow. The ceremonial of the confirmation could not fail to be an imposing one. St. Augustine^s was clearly facile 'princepa among the English Abbeys of that day. In addition to the goodly retinue which befitted his own dignity, and that of the Abbot elect, the function required the presence of two other Abbots as attendants on the Primate, for which honour Theobald seems to have selected those of Boxley and Faversham.
Of Lambert's successor, Thomas, there is apparently nothing on record.
Walter, whom Gervase places third on the list, would seem to have had a noteworthy career ; but before enter- ing upon it, notice should be taken of the list which Somner gives,'^ as with him three more intervene between Thomas and Walter. He gives the order thus : Lambert, Thomas, John, William, Dionysius, and then Walter. He does not state from what source he obtained the names, whereas the list given by Gervase is clearly taken from the official records of the See, and he expressly says that John was confirmed by Archbishop Richard (1174-84), and
1 Bisliop Godwin {De Presidibus, p. 70) thus describes the controversy: "Silvester quidam, variorum criminum infamia notatus, Monachorum tamen suffragiis ccenobii Augiistiniani Abbas designatus est. Hunc ille, quod tanto munere indignum judicaret, admittere (aut ut usitato more loquar) benedicere renuit. Sed iste, qualitercunque moratus, bene certe nummatus, Pontificem potiiit habere patronum ; cujus Uteris iterum internmque perscriptis, interpellatus, vel potius dixerim minis et mandatis coactus, Archiepiscopus Silvestrum tandem (neque enim aliter poterat) voti fecit compotem,"
2 Or Adrian III. See Batteley's Somner s Canterbury. Part II. App. No. xxxiv., p. 61.
3 Ibid., Part I. App. p. 51.
THE ABBOTS. 71
Dionjsiiis by Baldwin (1185-92). It, tlierefore, seems quite justifiable to place Walter as the direct successor of Thomas.
In this case he was no insignificant representative of the Abbey of Boxley, for he it must have been on whom devolved the honour of oflBciating on no less historical an occasion than at the burial of Thomas a Becket. He, with the Prior of Dover, had been summoned to Canterbury by the Archbishop, to consult with him as to the selection of one of the monks to fill the vacant post of Prior,^ and was there on that memorable Christmastide when Becket fell a victim to the ruthless savagery of the four knights. In the utter consternation and bewilderment of the poor monks, it fell on him to perform the last sad office of consigning hurriedly to its first resting-place in the crypt before the altars of S. John and S. Augustine, the blood- stained corpse of the martyr-Primate, an office which, as the shirt of hair betrayed him to be a Cistercian, was most fitting at the hands of a Cistercian Abbot.-
The next event in English history in which an Abbot of Boxley has a place, is the Synod of Westminster,^ convened in 1175, by Henry II., at the solicitation of Archbishop Eichard (Becket's successor), commonly known as Eichard of Dover, he having been Prior there,
^ " Affuit illi obsequio Abbas de Boxeleia et Prior de Dovra, vocati prius ab Archiepiscopo quia eorum consilio Priorem, qui in Cantnariensi non erat ecclesia, unum de Monachis voluit facere." (Viia S. Thome, auctore Willelmo filio Stephani, s. 151, quoted by Craigie Robertson, Materials for the Life of Becket, (Rolls Series), iii, 148. One old Chronicler after another describes the scene, with slight variation of language. See Appendix H.
■' Becket had been admitted to that Order at Pontigny, during his exile, in 1164. Craigie Robertson's Becket, a Biography, p. 163.
^ Oesta Henrici II. & Ricardi I., Rolls Edition, i., 85.
72 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
At this Synod tlie King himself was present, and several Canons were promulgated bearing on the celibacy, dress, and general demeanour of the clergy.
Whether it was Abbot Walter or his successor John (whom Archbishop Richard had confirmed), is doubtful, as the date of Walter's death and of Abbot John's confirm- ation is not recorded, but it is probable that the latter was the one who, aboRt 1180, again in conjunction with him of Faversham^ was selected by Pope Alexander III.^ to arbitrate between Sir Nathaniel de Leveland and the monks of St. Bertin, at St. Omer's, concerning the right to the Leveland Chapel in the alien Priory of Throwley,^ which was a cell attached to the Cluniac Abbey of St. Bertin. The decision was given in favour of the monks.
Abbot John was followed by Dionysius, who was con- firmed by Archbishop Baldwin 1185. He ajDpears to have been at once^ selected by Pope Urban III. to take part in a commission, with his brother Abbot of Faversham, under the distinguished Prelate, Hugo de Grenoble, Bishop of Lincoln.* The circumstances were these. Baldwin had, within the first year of his attaining to the Primacy, appropriated to his own use the revenues of the two parishes of Eastrye and Monkton, which had been expressly assigned " for the use of the poor." The mem- bers of this Commission were specially required to use
1 Chartulary of the Abbey of St. Bertin, vol. i., 412, quoted in Arch. Cant, iv., 215.
" The Church of Throwley had been granted to the Abbey of St. Bertin by William d'Ypres, who had been the original founder of Boxley Abbey.
^ Archbishop Baldwin was only promoted to the Primacy early in the year 1185, and Pope Urban only wore the tiara for a few months in that and the following year.
■* He is also variously styled Bishop of Avalon, or Ascalon.
THE ABBOTS. 73
their influence with the Archbishop to restore these funds to their original use ; in which it seems they succeeded.
But the most important controversy in which, during the same Primacy, an Abbot of Boxley was concerned, was when Archbishop Baklwin and the Monks of the Christ Church Monastery had their bitter contest. Here comes an incident of English Church history of no little import- ance. From the days when Lanfranc carried out his plan of changing the relation between the Primacy and the Christ-Church Monastery, detaching the one from the other, and dividing the hitherto common property, at every vacancy of the See a struggle for the right of electing the successor had arisen between the Monks, (who claimed the right on the ground that they had previously elected him as their Abbot), and the Bishops of the Southern Province (whose claim was based on the fact of his being their Metropolitan). Sometimes this struggle became so intense as to require the intervention of the King, or the Pope, coming down as a Deus 'ex machind, and solving the difficulty by appointing a nominee of his own. Now Baldwin had originally been the choice of the Bishops in opposition to the nominee of the Monks ; but on the entreaty of the King they withdrew their claim to elect, and accepted the Episcopal choice. Still they set them- selves persistently to thwart him at everj- turn, and instead of being, as the Chapter was originally destined to be, a council of helpers and advisers, they set them- selves to counteract him in every branch of his adminis- tration. To escape from their interference Baldwin resolved to establish a Chapter of Seculars at a little distance from the Metropolitical city, and thus be free of them ; but his attempt was frustrated by the intrigues of
74 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
tlie Monks, and neither at St. Stephen's, near Canterbury, nor at Maidstone, nor even at Lambeth,^ could lie fully carry Ms point ; and lie died with his object unattained.
Meanwhile Richard had come to the throne, and found the struggle still going on, or rather renewed by Hubert Walter, who had become Archbishop. A change, too, had taken place in the Abbey of Boxley. Robert^ had succeeded Dionysius, and he was destined to occupy a conspicuous position in the struggle and in other events which were passing. Richard selected him, in conjunction with the Abbot of Rievaulx, to mediate between the contending parties, and to bring to an end, if possible, a struggle which had now been going on for ten years, by persuading the Convent to give way ; but they defiantly refused to yield.^ Gervase says they remained " more obdurate than adamant, and more stiff than steel." The end was not to be yet. They had sent emissaries to Rome to obtain the Pope's favour ; and the King despatched thither Abbot Robert and the Prior of the daughter house of Robertsbridge, as delegates to plead the cause of the Archbishop.
On this, as on other occasions, the special province of the peaceful and peace-loving Cistercians seems to have been to play the part of mediators, while another reason for their selection in this case probably was that Baldwin
^ Here lie succeeded only so far as to establish an official residence, but not a Chapter.
^ Robert is mentioned as being Abbot in 1197 {Pedes Finium, xi. ; Arch. Cant., i.. 240) ; and again in 1201 {Ibid., Ixxv. ; Arch. Cant., ii., 262).
** " Missi sunt ad Conventum Abbates duo, viz., de Boxeleia at de Ponte- Roberti, ut ipsi aliquid temptarent efficere, verum Conventus, adamante durior et ferro fortior, non adquieverit eis." (Gervase, Opera Hist., i., 560.)
THE ABBOTS. 75
liimself liad, during the period of liis Monastic ardour, been admitted into tliat Order in tlie Monastery of Ford.^
Again, in the year 1200, Abbot Robert was called upon by the Pope, Innocent III., to adjudicate on a question which had arisen in the Northern Province.^ The point in dispute was the appointment to the Archdeaconry of Richmond. Geoffrey Plantagenet, the Archbishop of York, an illegitimate son of Henry II., had nominated Honorius, while King Richard had selected for the vacant post Roger de St. Edmund ; but the Archbishop refused to institute him. To settle this. Pope Innocent com- missioned Gilbert de Granvill, the Bishop of Rochester, with the Abbot of Boxley and the Prior of Leeds, to investigate and decide their respective claims ; this they did in favour of Honorius, by a compromise, and Roger de St. Edmund succeeded him two years after.
One more connection between Hubert Walter and Boxley Abbey must not be omitted. The Archbishop, enfeebled as he was by illness and old age;, was called on to settle a dispute between the Bishop of Rochester and his Monks, and had selected Boxley Abbey as the place at which he would hold his court ; but while he was on his way there from Canterbury, the disease from which he was suffering {anthrax, carbuncle) had become so acute, he was obliged to turn aside to his Palace at Tenham, and there he died, a few hours after, in 1190.^
But the event which carries with it the most historic interest in connection with Boxley Abbey has yet to be mentioned. When Richard I., having made his truce with
^ Hook's Lives of the ArcJibishops, ii., 544.
2 Hoveden's Chronica (Rolls Series), iv., 184, n.
^ Radulplms de Coggleshall, Chronica Anglicana (Rolls Series), p. 156.
76 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
Saladin^ was hurrying home to counteract the intrigues and treachery of his brother John^ in 1193^ as he was passing through Austria, he fell into the hands of his bitter enemy, Leopold, who sold him to his scarcely less bitter enemy, the Emperor, by whom he was thrown into prison ; but so secret was the place of his confinement it could not be traced, till the Chief Justiciar of England (Walter, Archbishop of Coutance) selected, as specially suited for so delicate a purpose. Abbot Robert of Boxley and Prior John of Robertsbridge.
The active part thus assigned to them may perhaps be accounted for by the gratitude the Cistercians were known to entertain towards Richard in consequence of his liberality to that Order. ^
While Romance has immortalised the mythical adven- ture of the minstrel Blondel, and his discovery of the King's prison, history has remained silent, or said but very little, about the bold enterprise of the two Cistercian Monks, who really made the discovery and effected the ransom of their captive King.^
^ Ricardus Rex Moiiacliis Cisterciensibiis ad Capitulum Generale conveni- entibus singulis annis C. marcas argenti contulit, &c. Chronica Johannis de Oxend en {Rolls Series), p. 65.
* "Audita Regis captione, Walterus Rothomageiisis Archiepiscopus, et Ofeteri domini Regis Justiciarii, miserunt Abbatem de Boxeleia et Abbatem de Ponte-Roberti Alemanniam ad quaercudum Regom Anglise qui cum totam Alemanniam peragrassent, et Regem non invenissent, Bavariam ingressi sunt, et obviaverunt Regi in villa quaj dicitur Oxefer, ubi ducebatur ad Iniperatovem, habiturus cum eo colloquium in die Palmarum." (Hoveden's C/i.ro?U(;« (Rolls Series), vol. ii., p. 198.) "Interim prtedicti Abbates...quos Justiciarii Anglife ad quaerendum Regem miserant, redierunt in Angliam post Pascha, narrantes pacem factam esse inter Imperatorem et Regem Angliee, in hunc modum, quod Rex Anglife dabit Imperatori Romanorum centum millia marcarum argenti de redemptions, " etc. {Jbid. iii. 205.) Dr. Stubbs suggests that "Oxefer" is probably Ochsenfurt, on the Mayne, near Wurtzburg.
THE ABROTS. 77
Abbot Robert's eventful and stirring life came to a close in 1214/ wben lie was succeeded by Mm wlio bad been bis companion on many commissions, and in his journey in searcb for Cceur-de-Leou, John, the Prior of Robertsbridge. Of tliis Abbot Jolin comparatively little is recorded. An event, however, which occurred in 1232 presents him in a somewhat unfavourable light. Grave complaints had been made to Pope Gregory IX. that great irregularities existed among the Religious Houses of the " exempt" Monks in Kent, and he issued a commission to Abbot John of Boxley and the Abbot of Bekeham (? Bayham) to investigate the charges made against tliem.~ It may have been unfortunate, considering the jealousy which existed between the two great divisions of Monks, the Black and the White, that two of the one class should have been selected to inquire into the doings of the other. The result not unnaturally was that the Visitors acted with what was considered by the victims undue severity [veliementius). They complain of being treated very unjustly, especially by the Boxley Abbot, and entreat that other Visitors may be sent.'' This, however, did not lose
' '"A.D. 1214. Obiit Robertus Abbas de Boxle." Annales de JFaverleia {A. Monastici, Luard). Rolls Series, vol. ii., p. 282.
2 Annales Dunstiiplia (KoWa S^Yins), p. 133. Matt. Paris, Historia Major, iii., 288.
^ "Gregorius Episcopus, Serviis servonmi Dei, dilectis filiis de Boxle Cisterciensis, et de Bekeham {'{ Bayham). Premonstratensis Ordinis, Abbatibus, ...et Prsecaturi ecclesife Christi Cantuariensis, salutem.. Intelligi- mus si quidem quod nonnuUa monasteria exempta Cantuariensis Diocesis in spiritualibus deformata et in temporalibus sint graviter diminuta, dum Monachi et Moniales eorum, diabolica suggestione seducti, immemores pacti Domini sui, quo non solum sua sed seipsos professione ordinis abnegarunt... non sine furti uota et noxia Monasteriorum bona improprie sibi approprient et retentant," etc. (Matthew Paris, Chron. Maj. Rolls Series, iii., 238.)
" Alandati igitur hujus executores veliementius et secus quam deceret, &;c. ; primo, in Abbatiam Sancti Augustini Cantuarice ingerentes, seque super se incomposite atFerentes, prpeeipue Abbas de Boxle, adeo Monachos perterrue- runt, qui Romam profecti consumpto labore, et etiusa pecunia, alios visitatores impetrarunt." Ibid., p. 239.
78 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
Mm favour at Court, for in 1222 Henry III. sent him to negotiate a peace with. Philip Augustus of France/ and some years later he had a still higher honour conferred on him, being chosen by his brother Cistercians to be the second English Abbot of Citreaux itself."
After this, for nearly 200 years, the succession of Abbots becomes more difficult to trace. The Abbey seemed to be subsiding into comparative insignificance, and its Abbots only at rare intervals apjDcaring on the public scene. Few incidents of note in the lives of any of them were deemed worthy of record. For instance, in the Kentish Pedes Flniiim, the name of one Simon occurs incidentally in 1243; then, five years after, that of an Alexander.^ Gervase mentions a John, as being Abbot in 1289,* and it was probably this Abbot John to whom Edward I. assigned the delicate commission of trying to negociate with Philip IV. for the restoration of that much disputed and troublesome appanage of the English Crown, Gascony, having signally failed to enforce his claim by arms.^ Ten years after, how- ever, his successor, Egbert, appears among those who were to take part in the solemn obsequies of Philip^s Queen, Johanna.^
Then in 1356 incidental mention is made of an Abbot John in the Annals of Melsa,'' and again another of the
1 Patent Rolls, 7 Henry III., m. 7 d.
2 Rymer's Fve^era, vol. i., p. 168.
^ Pedes Finium, in Codex de Kent (Maidstone Museum). ■* Gervase, Gesta Regum, i., 291.
* Patent Rolls, 22 Edward I., m. 7 d, and Rymer's Fcedera, vol. i., " De facto Vasconise fraudulenter obtentse a Rege Francise et nequiter detentae." « Close Rolls, 33 Edward I., m. 16 d. Rymer's Fcedera, vol. i., p. 971. ^ Okronica Monasterii de Melsa (Rolls Series).
THE ABBOTS. 79
same name in 1395.^ In Arclibisliop Cliiclieley's Register at Lambeth- appears the name of Richard Sheppey as Abbot in 1415. Then comes a long interval, in which only the name of another Abbot John occurs, in 1443, in connection with the apostate Monk William Pounds.'^
However, towards the close of the fifteenth century light breaks in from another source. Among the municipal records of Maidstone are preserved the accounts of the long extinct " Fraternity of Corpus Christi,^' in which, on the lists of those who had been contributors to the funds of this institution are the names of two Boxley Abbots — JoHjf WoRMSBLL, from 1474 to 1481, and from the following year to 1490 that of Thomas Essex. ^
This brings us again into touch with the political life of the country. In 1489 Henry VII. had demanded a clerical subsidy, and the Archbishop of Canterbury cer- tified the Treasury and Barons of the Exchequer that he had appointed the Abbot and Convent of Boxley to collect all the dues within his diocese and jurisdiction," a mark, no doubt, of confidence and favour.
But Thomas' successor, John, had apparently allowed the collection of the subsidy and the Abbey's own quota to fall into arrears. To escape from the trouble and the debt, he got himself transferred from the Abbey to the Vicarage ! The Lambeth Register tells us that iu the year 1524 Abbot John was appointed to be Vicar of Boxley ; on the presentation, too, of a layman, one
1 Harleian MSS., 55 B. Addl. MSS., 1648.
^ Abp. Chichele's Register, i., f. 9, b.
^ Litterce Cantuarienses (Rolls Series), iii., 175. See above, p. 45.
* This distinctive name we gather from the Pedes Finium, and also from Harleian MSS., cc 16.
^ Materials illustrative of the Rei'jii of Ilciiry VII., ii., 426.
80 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
Thomas Penglose.^ The change seems a strange one ; a Cistercian Monk into a parish Priest, and that in the same parish ; 3-et an insight into the surrounding circum- stances will help to supply motives for such a step.
Two years before the Abbey had been charged with the sum of £50 as its share towards a further subsidy (or loan as it was called) which the King demanded towards defraying the expences of an invasion of France which Henry threatened; and the money was not forthcoming.^ Again, in the same year, the presumptuous act of (Sir) Adam Bradshawe (who was supposed to have been himself connected with the Abbey)/ was perpetrated, being no less than the tearing down from the Abbey Chapel door a document emanating from the Pope himself, and bearing the seal of the Archbishop, in Avhich certain doctrines that were promulgated by Martin Luther had been denounced. For this act Adam Bradshawe had been im- prisoned ; but that failed to purge his crime, or to wipe out the suspicion and odium which attached to the Abbey. Indeed the Abbey seemed altogether in a bad way; and the poor Abbot may only have exemplified the proverbial rat by swimming away from the sinking ship. Whatever his motives, he left the Abbey for the Yicarage.
^ Quarto die meiisis Julii Anno Domini predicto apud Lamhith Dominus admisit Dominum Johaunem, Monachiim Abbatein Monasterii de Boxley, cum quo ad int'rascripta per sedem apostolicam sufficienter et legitime extitit dispensatum, ad Vicariam perpetuam Ecclesie Parocliialis de Boxley sue Cantuariensis Diocesis, per liberara Resignacionem Magistri Thome Peerson, Clerici, ultimi incumbeutis ibidem, &c., vacantem : ad quam per discretum virum Magistrum Jacobum Penulase (or Penglose) Arcium Magistrum ipsius Vicarie hac vice pa.tronura, &e. , &c., extitit presentatus. Archbishop War- ham's Register, f. 395. How the Presentation now fell into lay hands it seems difficult to explain.
- Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of Henry VIIL (Brewer), vol.iii., Part ii., p. 1047.
3 Ibid., vol. ii., Part i., p. 541. See a full account at page 51.
THE ABBOTS. 81
His successor Abbot was also a John.^ His name was Dobbes or Dobbs, as it is variously spelt. This worthy was evidently in high, favour with his neighbour laymen, for the stream of pious benefactions were still flowing in to the enrichment of the Abbey^ though already doomed ; for even in 1530 grants of land were being made to it." He was destined, however, to be the " last of his race/' and, as it were, its scapegoat. They who had gone before had been sowing to the wind ; it was for him to reap the whirl- wind. It still is incredible that he, as Abbot, should have been, as he represented to the Commissioners, utterlj^ ignorant of the trickeries of the " Rood of Grace."
Some high in power pleaded for him. Warham, in a letter to (Jardinal Wolsey, says, " The Abbot, as far as I can perceive and learn, is utterly disposed to live hardly and precisely (strictly and honestly) to bring the place out of debt."^ Then Robert Southwell, the King's Commissioner, while pointing out the grievous neglect and waste that had marked the administration of the Abbey, by which a rental that once produced 700 marcs, now barely reached 400, thinks " there hath grown no decay by this Prior," but the blame lay with his predecessors.* Yet on him was to
^ Harleian MSS. , R. 3. His name also appears on the list of those sum- moned to Convocation in the year 1529. (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vol. iv., p. 2701.)
- For instance, " Johannes Fyssher, de Maidstan, in Comitatu Cantie, generosus, Petrus Goldesraythe, de Parochia S'ti Andree Apostoli infra limites Monasterii Beate Marie de Boxele, in Com. predic', et Ricardus Austyn, at Astell, de parochia de Boxele, yeoman," gave and conceded to Abbot John 6 messuages, 7 Gardinn, 48 acres, and 1 virgate . . . lying on the north of the main road, for the Abbot and Convent to hold in perpetuity. "Datum vicesimo quarto die Sept. anno regni dom. Henrici octavi, Dei gratia, &c., &c., vicesimo primo." (Harleian Roll, R. 3.)
^ State Papers of Henry VIII. (Record Office), vol: ii., Part ii. No. 1353. Arch. Cant., iii., 150. Appendix I.
* Sujjpression of Monasteries (Camden Society), p. 172. See above page 62.
G
82 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
fall tlie doom wliicli tliey who had gone before had the rather merited.
Shnple-minded as John Dobbs may have been^ or repre- sented himself as being/ he was clearly far-seeing enough to mark the set of the tide, and to make timely provision against it. To him " Surrender with a good grace," and a probable " Pension," were preferable to resistance and '' a short shrift." So, to escape such a fate as befell the recalcitrant Abbots John Whiting, of Glastonbury, Hugh Farringdon, of Eeading, and John Beche, of Colchester, and to secure by surrender the compensation of retirement with a pension, as had been granted to Robert Pentecost, of Abingdon, and others, he did not wait to be summoned, but offered to surrender ; and so retiring with the honours of war, obtained a goodly pension of £50 a year for himself, and smaller ones for each of the Monks. Thomas Goldweil, the last of the Priors of Canterbury, fared even better ; he received a pension of £80 a year, and having " conformed," was oifered a Prebendary Stall. This, however, he declined, and lived in retirement," while Walter Philips, his neighbour Prior of Eochester, a few years after, glided from the extinct Priory into the newly formed Deanery, which he enjoyed for thirty years.^
With John Dobbs and his Pension ends the tale of the Abbots of Boxley.
1 He declared to the Commissioners, when they came to take over possession, that he was as much surprised as they at the mechanism of the Rood. See page 60.
2 Bsittevley's So7nne7-'s Antiquities of Ccmter bury, Partiii., p. 116. ^ Le Neve's Fasti, page 252.
CHAPTER V. THE CLERGY.
BOXLEY was at first a Rectory; and not until the latter part of tlie 14tli Century was tlie Vicarial office introduced in its place, the Rectorial endowments being absorbed into the revenues of the Priory of St. Andrew, at Rochester, to whom Henry I., on the occasion of a visit to that city, had granted the Advowson.^ To the pious liberality of the " Scholar King,^^ as exhibited in this and many similar instances, may doubtless be traced the terms of praise in which contemporary monastic writers speak of him as being " the most noble King/'
The patronage of Boxley Church, with two or three exceptions, remained with the Rochester Priory, and has continued with the Dean and Chapter ever since the Refor- mation. The first interruption in the line of patronage occurred in the troubled reign of Stephen, when " Robert
1 Carta Henrici I. Super advocatione ecclesie de Boxle, &c. " Henrious Rex Anglorum Anfrido Vicecomiti et omnibus baronibus Francigenis et Anglis de Ghent, salutem. Sciatis me dedisse ecclesie Sancti Andrea de Rovecestra in dedicatione ipsius ecclesie, ubi presens affui, ecclesiam de Boxle, et quiquid ad earn pertinet in terris, et in decimis, et in oblacionibus, cum omnibus consuetudinibus, et libertatibus, et rectitudinibus, sicut unquam habuit capellanus meus Galfridus et Ansfridus clericus ante ilium," — Cott. MSS., A.X. 9. Registrum Roffensc, p. 177.
84 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
tlie Archdeacon"^ seems to liave claimed it for himself, until Ascellinus, tlie then Bishop of Rochester, obtained a mandate from Pope Celestinus II. denouncing the claim as "contrary to justice and canonical authority," and calling on the Archdeacon to restore it to the Priory. Then, twice in the reign of Henry VIII. the presentation to the Vicarage, according to the Lambeth Registers, passed through the hands of laymen.
Of the Rectorial period traces may still be discovered in the names of fields which formerly belonged to the "Parsonage"- as it was then called, the Rector then being the only "persona" of the Parish. One other more substantial evidence still stands in the form of a very capacious barn, sometimes called a Refectory, now turned into two cottages, and recently purchased by the present Vicar from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and attached to the Vicarial property.
Of the earlier Rectors, most of whom were foreigners — for here, as elsewhere, he who claimed to be successor of St. Peter was in the habit of provisioning his hungry sheep of Rome on the more fertile pastures of the English Church'' — the first name that can be traced is that of
^ Cotton. MSS. Domitian, A.X. 9., quoted in Registrum Roff., p. 40. AVho tins Archdeacon Robert could be does not seem very clear, for neither at Rochester or Canterbury was there an Archdeacon of that name, according to Le Neve.
^ A "Terrier" of these lands is preserved in the Diocesan Registry at Canterbury. See Appendix K.
* The Popes not only claimed for themselves the right of nominating to any vacant benefices in England, but on the pretext of guarding against the possibility of any parish being left without a Pastor, went so far as to antici- pate any vacancy in a valuable living, by providing, as they termed it, for such vacancy by assigning it to some hanger-on, these appointments being called provisiones.
THE CLERGY. 85
Ansfridus, of whom nothing seems to be on record. After liim came Galfeidus, a Chaplain of Henry 1., who was holding- the Rectory when the King granted the advowson to the Priory of St. Andrew, at Rochester.^ Nothing certain is known of his future, but it is not unreasonable to conjecture that this Roj^al favourite was in time raised to the Episcopal Bench, and was the Galfridus Rufus whom Henry made his High Chancellor in 1107, and Bishop of Durham in 1129."
Now follows a blank of a century and more, daring which no name occurs of a Rector of Boxley among the Monastic writers. In the "Annals of Edmund de Hadden- hani," himself a Monk of the Rochester Priory, is an entry of the presentation in the year 1240 of Gregorius de Romanic to the Rectory, but evidently it was disputed, for with the consent of the Legate (Cardinal Ottoboni), it was referred to the Chancellor of St. Paul's (Henry de Cornhull), who decided in his favour.^ Of his previous or after life it seems impossible to glean any particulars.
The Registers at Lambeth now come to our aid.'* In 1283 one Alliotti, of whom, too, nothing is known, save
^ See foot note on page 83.
- Godwin's Dc Prcsulibus, p. 734. Le l^eve's Fudi, p. 3S7.
^ "Anno MCCXL. Data est sententia a Domino Caucellario S. Pauli, Loudon, per consensum Domini Legati, pro Domino Gregorio de Romanio prresentato a Priore et Conventu Roffa? ad Ecclesiam de Boxle, xv. Martii, ct sic prsesentatiis obtinuit ecclesiam illam." Edmund de Hadenham's Annales Eccl. Roff. Anglia Sacra, i., 349. Flores Historiariun (Rolls Series), p. 243.
•* All the Registers prior to Peckham's time are lost, His predecessor in the See, Abp. Kilwardy, on being made a Cardinal, retired to Rome, and carried off with him all the Registers and much of the plate from
Lambeth ; and all efforts to recover them ha\ e been in vain.
86 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
that lie was a Canon of SS. Jolin and Paul^ of Rome, and was instituted by Abp. Peckliam.^
After him we welcome an Englishman, and judging by his name, a member of an old Kentish family, Thomas de Cobeham.- The only clue to his connection with Boxley occurs in an entry in the Archbishop Reynold's Register,'^ at Lambeth, where he is mentioned as being Rector of Boxley, and being party to a claim made on the Abbey for Tithes withheld from him. This was in 1303, when his career was already giving promise of distinction. In 1299 he had received from Edward I. a Prebendary Stall at Hereford, two years after the Archdeaconry of Lewes, and at the time must have held the sinecure Rectory of Hollingbourne, as well as the Rectory of Boxley, and was promoted in 1311 to the Sub-deanery of Salisbury, and subsequently to a Prebendary Stall at St. Paul's, and to the Precentorship of York, and eventually to the Bishopric of Worcester."^ But a still higher honour was before him, that of being elected by the Canterbury Chapter for the Primacy. Though of this honour he was deprived by the intriguing intervention of the King, Edward II., who obtained that office for Walter Re3molds, of whom Hook says that " Of all the Primates who have occupied the See of Canterbury, few have been less qualified to discharge the duties than Walter Reynolds.^ Still an honour of which neither King nor Pope could deprive him was one which was accorded to him by the general voice of the
1 Abp. Teckham's Register, f. 20, li. - Ibid., f. 36, b.
•^ Abp. Reynold's Register.
* Anglia Sacra, i., p. 532. ; Godwin, De Presulibus, p. 46 ; Le Neve's lasti, p. 296 ; Newcourt's Repertorius.
•' Lices of the ArrMisInqis, vol. ill , p. 455.
THE CLERGY. 87
people, that he was commonly known as " The Grood Parson."^
The next name in the succession of Rectors, aad the one with which it would seem to have closed, is that of Johannes Borbach, who was presented in 1350."
With the year 1387 commences the new arrangement of the VICARS ; for in that year Adam Smith, Capellanus, was admitted to the Perpetual Vicarage of Boxley {de novo creatam et nvilrnatam) , on the presentation, not of the Convent, but of the Bishop of Rochester. The change was effected under the brief Primacy of Simon de Sudbury, the victim of Wat Tyler's insurrection. The step was quite in accordance with this Archbishop's rule, for the Lambeth Registers constantly show his determination, if possible, to enforce the residence of Clergy. The primary object of the change, no doubt, was to secure a resident Priest, whereas the Rector's duties were probably generally per- formed by some deputy, in the absence of the Rector, whose multifarious duties would compel him to be an absentee. It would seem, however, that this object was imperfectly realised by the first Vicar, for Abp. Courtenay, in 1383, within two years of his coming to the Primacy, found it necessar}- to sequestrate the Living on account of the Vicar's non-residence. About this period the name of Robert Maeke occurs in a dispute between the Rochester and the Boxley authorities, where he is described as
^ " Vir tanta eruditionis fama, tarn egregia insuper vitse sanctimonia, illustris, ut vix alio quam Boni sen Prohi Clerici titulo innotesceret, et ad suramam Ecclesia Auglicanse dignitatem omnium votis jampridem desig- naretur." {Historia de Episcopis Wigornensihus.) Anglia Sacra, i., 532.
- Islip's Register, f. 203. This is recorded as being the joint presentation of the Bishop and the Prior and Chapter of Rochester.
88 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
"persona de Boxle/' but notliing more seems to be recorded or known about him.^
A vacancy in tlie Vicarage again occurring in 1890,^ the Bishop of Rochester appointed Nicholaus Julian, and on his diriiissio, in 1406, the Prior and Chapter presented Peter Beech (or Beck, or Bbuk, as it is variously spelt). After an incumbency of above 40 years he died in 1449, and was succeeded by Gulielmus Snell. The inscrip- tion on his tombstone tells that he was of All Souls' College, Oxford, and that he died in 1451, tAvo years after his appointment. '^
The next name that occurs is that of John Munden, who is incidentally mentioned in the Records of the "Fraternity of Corpus Christi"* at Maidstone, but of him nothing seems to be known save that he was Vicar of Boxley about the year 1479, and died in 1489, when the Prior and Convent presented one of their Chaplains- John Fletcher, to the vacant Vicarage. He appears as ; witness to the Will of one James Neale^' in 1501. After him came Chrystopher Danyell, Avliose name also is found as witness to one Will and executor under another^ in the
* Robertas Marre, persona Ecclesie de Boxle." — Cott. MSS. Faustina, G v., f. 22, b. Rcgistrum Roffeiise, p. 181.
- Abp. Coiivteiiay's Register, f. 39.
•' A coloured print, preserved in the Clement T. Sniytlie's Collection in the Maidstone Museum, shows that the now lost brass, which was then in the Chancel, but has since been removed into the middle of the Nave, of which only the incised stone and the inscription now remains, did exist a hundred years ago. The inscription may be still deciphered ; it runs thus: " Decimo die Marcii anno Graciae MCCCCLL, Magister Gullielmns Snell, quondam de Collegio Animarum, Oxon, istius {sic.) ecclesise. Vicarius, ecclesiastics traditur sepulturae, Cujus anima in pace requiescat."
•* Maidstone Municipal Records.
5 James Nea^e's Will, Canterbury Consistory Court, vii., 18.
" Will of Thomas Boor, Ihid. vii., 9. Will of Johanna Busshe, Ibid, v.. ri9, li. (Jccasionally a personal be(picst is made to a man's "Confessor," or
I
THE CLERGY. 89
beginning of the Century. On his death, in 1514, Thomas Pereson, or Pearson, was inducted by Abp. Warham/ and died in 1528, when, as ah-eady noticed,^ he was succeeded by Abbot John, from the neighbouring Abbey, Avho held the Vicarage till he was promoted to the Abbey of Citeaux. He was probably followed by Robert Jonson, whose name is given in " Valor Ecclesiasticus " as being Vicar in 1538. Then follow two names, for which we are indebted to the Canterbui-y Records : John Puyzant, and Richard Adamson,^ of whom, as to the circumstances of their appointments, nothing is said, save that the one succeeded the other in 1554. That date points out to a time of trouble and confusion between Cranmer's deposition and Pole's appointment.
Next comes Roger Jones, of whose appointment there seems to be no record ; and yet doctrinal changes were taking place in his incumbency, (for his was that troubled period of transition during the reign of Philip and Mary,) of which some very interesting signs may be detected in the Wills of that period, in which his name appears as witness, and apparently often as draughts- man also ; Margerie Brampton,^ in 1557, commends her
to the Vicar of the Parish : among these is one of a singular character, made hy Richard Seebyrde, in 1477, "I will that the Vycar have iiid. when that he come home to my place and feche me to Chirche of Boxle. " Archdeacon's Court, Canterbury, iii., 8.
^ Abp. Warham's Register, f. 354, b.
- See page 79.
•' "A.D. 1554. Dominus admisit Ricardum Adamson, Presbiterum ad Vicariam perpetnam ecclesie parochialis de Boxley . . . per resignationem Johannis Puyzant, ultimi incumbentis ejusdem, vacantem, ad quam per Robertum Ballarde et Annam ejus uxorem, nuper relictam Henrici Cooke defuncti, dicte Vicarie veros et indubitatos patronos (ut dicitur) presentatus extitit." — Canterbury Chapter Records, N. f. 79.
■* Margerie Brampton's AVill, Archdeacon's Court, Canterbury, xxx., 7.
90 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
soul "to the Holye Trinitie/^ breaking away from the old recognised form of commending it to "Almighty God^ the Blessed Virgin Mary and all Saints." While in the same year Stephen Mason,^ while making the stereotyped bequest of "Conscience money" to the High Altar for tithes neglected or intentionally withheld, commends his to Almighty God " my Savyour and Redeemer, trusting to be saved by the shedding of hys preciouse blond and passyon, and to our blessed lady the Vyrgyn, and all the holy Companie of heaven." Then in 1556, Richard Brice, and in 1562, William Dobbes" commend their souls to "Almighty God the onlye Redeemer." In each of these Wills Roger Jones (or Johns, as sometimes spelt) is a witness, and in that of Stephen Mason, he receives a legacy for the relief of the poor."
The year 1566 saw the appointment of Philip Hilles, Roger Jones's successor. It was made, not by the Dean and Chapter of Rochester, but by a Layman, as the Lambeth Register'^ says, one John Woltou, of Smerden. But who he was, or how the patronage came to him, does not appear.
On Hilles's death, in 1589, there comes on the scene one who has left his mark on Boxley in a manner and to an extent none of those who had gone before him had done. It is no injustice to his predecessors to assign the post of honour among the Vicars of Boxley to GEORGE CASE,^ who with great modesty records his
1 Mason's Will, Consist. Court, Canterbury, xxviii., .53, &:c. Page 7, Appendix B.
2 Brice's Will, Arelid. Court, xxx., 7. Dobbes' Will, Cons. Court, xxx., 7.
* Abp. Parker's Register, August 2.5, 1566. This is probably a mistake for Wotton, of Smarden.
* Abp. Whitgift's Register. Part I., f. 484, b.
THE CLEEGY. 91
entry on the duties of tlie parish in succession to Hilles as being " multum inutilis Ghristi i^ervus" The very surroundings — the genitis loci — could hardly fail to affect a man of so classical a turn of mind^ and so poetic a tempera- ment. Coming into the Parish in the year 1589, he would find still fresh the traditions of the Poet of Allington Castle and Boxley Abbey, Sir Thomas Wiat, the elder, (as he was always called for distinction), Avho Anthony a' Wood says was " the delight of the Muses and Mankind," Case would move amid scenes associated with the frequent visits of Wiat's friend and companion, the still greater Poet, the chivalrous Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey ; again he would feel himself in close touch with the spirit of Sir Thomas Wiat the Younger, the martyr to his devotion to the injunction of his old master, Henry VIIL, in resisting the alliance of Mary with Philip of Spain. Yet again he would revel in the personal friendship of George Sandys, a kinsman of the Wiats, who died at Boxley, and whom, in recording his funeral, Case calls " the greatest Poet of the age." What Avonder then, if, like the floating microbes of infection, the spirit of poesy should have travelled from the Abbey to the Vicarage, and finding there congenial soil, should on every death connected with the house of Wiat have developed into a poetic offering to the memory of a lost parishioner and friend at the ex pence of pages of the Parish Register.
Yet these very Parish Registers not only bear witness to his zeal in those outbursts of poetic fire, but also to his industry, in a far more practical and substantial form, for it appears that to his pen Boxley is indebted for the earliest of these Church Records of the Parish. In its opening page we learn that it was he who rescued from
92 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
oblivion^ perhaps from destruction, all the previous entries, comprising- a period of above 30 years, wliicli were no doubt scribbled down on loose sheets of paper, but which he collected and with his own hand transcribed into this more permanent volume, the leading entries of which will be given in a subsequent Chapter.
On Case's death, in 1632,^ he was succeeded in the Vicarage by a member of the Wiat family. Sir Thomas the Younger, who had been beheaded by Queen Mary, had married a daughter of Sir William Haut (or Hawte), of Bourn, and his son George, to whom Elizabeth restored a portion of the confiscated Boxley inheritance, had a son, to whom he gave his maternal name of Hawte- and in due time obtained for him from the Dean and Chapter of Rochester the Vicarage of Boxley.^ Hawte Wiat, how- ever, only held it for a few years, dying in 1638.
After him come in rapid succession two Vicars of the name of Balcanqual. Of the former, John Balcanqual, there seems to be but little on record. Anthony a' Wood only says that he was a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford,
^ His son, Thomas Case, is sometimes mentioned as having been Vicar, or Curate to his father ; but this seems to be an error. Neither in poetic fire or in orthodoxy did he inherit his father's gifts, though a man of undoubted talent. He was appointed one of the "Assembly of Divines," and held a Cure in the Diocese of Norwich, from which he was forced by Bishop Wren, and became Minister of St. Mary Magdalen, Milk Street, London, but was driven out of it for refusing " the engagement." He then became Lecturer at Aldermanbury, and St. Giles, Cripjilegate, and eventually Rector of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. In 1660 he was one of those who waited on the King, at the Hague, with congratulations, and the following year was one of the Com- missioners at the Savoy Conference. He died in 1682. Calamy describes him as being "of quick and warm spirit, a hearty Lover of God, goodness, and good men." Calamy's Life of Baxter, p. 191. Nealc's Puritans, ii., 732.
2 In the " Register" the name is frequently spelt " Hault."
^ Abp. Whitgift's Register. Tart II., f. 198, b.
THE CLEEGY. 93
and also held the Rectory of Tattenhill/ in Staffordshire. He only held this living for two years, when (in 1640) Walter Balcanqual was presented to it. Of him some particulars may be gleaned. The son of a Presbyterian Minister, who was a bitter opponent of Episcopacy, he became a staunch Royalist, and rose in high favour with Charles I. A Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1611, he was in 1617 made a King's Chaplain, and soon after appointed Master of the Savoy. In the following year he was sent to the Synod of Dort to represent the Church of Scotland. In 1624 he was appointed Dean of Rochester, and in 1639 transferred to that of Durham. ~ On vacating the Mastership of Savoy, he was succeeded there for a short time by that convicted impostor and Popish spy, Antonio de Domini, Archbishop of Spalatro. From Boxley and the Deanery of Durham the too loyal Balcanqual was expelled in 1644, when he found refuge in Chirke Castle, in Denbighshire,'^ the house of Sir Thomas Middleton, where he died in the following year ; and a Monument in the Church marks his burial place, while an inscription from a pen no less honourable and illustrious than that of Bishop Pearson^' testifies to his worth as having " adorned all the offices he held by his conspicuous virtues."-'
1 John Balcanqual had a dispensation in 163S to hold the Rectory of Tattenhill, in Staffordshire, with the Vicarage of Boxley. State Pai^ers (Domestic Series), 1637, viii., p. ISS.
- Athence Oxonienses, iii. ISO. F/'s(i, i. 383. ^Melville's Memoirs. Walker's Sufferings of the Ctcr;ni.
^ At one time a pronounced Pai-lianientarian, he lived (to use the words of Clai'endon) "to wipe out the memory of the ill footsteps of his youth" by becoming a staunch Royalist. History of the llflirllion, Bk. 8 (1644).
* The Author of the Exposition of the Creed.
^ " Omnia hicc ofRcia, sive dignitates, magnis virtutibus ornavit."
94 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
Into his place was intruded^ in 1644^ Thomas Heynes (or Haymes)^ a creature of the Puritan party,^ who must have so far managed to adapt himself to the shifting winds of religious opinion during the next twenty years that he " conformed/^ and so remain undisturbed in his Vicarage at Boxley ; for it was not till his death^ in 1678, that Humphrey Lynde was appointed to succeed him. The preceding year Lynde had been placed by Abp. Juxon in the Curacy of All Saints', Maidstone, and retained both Cures till his death in 1690. It is generally supposed that he was the son of the Humphrey Lynde whose Treatise against Rome had been condemned by Archbishop Laud's Chaplain, and who afterwards, and perhaps in consequence^ became a most bitter Puritan pamphleteer.- The son furnished an instance of the tolerant and conciliatory spirit of Abp. Sancroft, who repaid the father's hatred of Episcopacy by recognising the worth of his son, and showing him marked favour.^ A still more marked instance
1 At the end of the Church Register occurs the following entry, referring to this period, and bearing date 1646 : "The second Sabb'.in March, after three years preparation (by ye preaching of ye glorious gospel of Jesus Christ), we whose names are here under written, entered into Church fellow- shipp under ye ministry of Tho' Haymes, set (apart by) God, and sent by ye State of ye Kingdom to ye same work :
The Lady Mary Wiat, vid. (widow of Sir Francis),
Hen. Barrow et uxor ejus,
Steven Geery et uxor ejus,
Tho'. ToUhurst, et ejus uxor,
Tho'. Allen Cal,
Edward Couchman,
Jerimiah Harpe et ejus uxor,
Margret Cultup,
Caterina "Woolet, virgo,
George Charlton,
Steven Leigle." ^ Athence Oxonienses, ii., 601. Prynne's Canterburie's Doome, p. 185. ^ Abp. Bancroft's Register, f. 376.
THE CLERGY. 95
of that tolerant and conciliatory spirit which existed in the Church after the Restoration was evinced in the appoint- ment to the Archbishopric of Glasgow of Robert Leighton, the son of the noted Puritan, Alexander Leighton, for whose rabid work against Prelacy, " Zion's Plea/' the Star Chamber had condemned him to have his ears cut off.
On Lynde's death the Dean and Chapter of Rochester gave the Vicarage to one of their Prebendaries, John Wyvell/ who had been a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He also held the Rectory of Frindsbury, to which he had been presented by the Bishop of Rochester (Dr. Spratt). He died in 1704, and the vacancy was filled up by one of those Chapter arrangements which were not uncommon in those days.
The Archdeaconry of Rochester was in the gift of the Bishop, and had fallen vacant in that year, and being in the Bishop's gift, had been conferred on his son, Thomas, who had only taken his degree at Christ Church, Oxford, three years before. Being now Archdeacon, he, as one of the Rochester Chapter, elected, and was presented to, the valuable Living of Boxley, which the death of Wyvell had vacated.- As Archdeacon and Canon, residence at Boxley was of course impossible, so Dr. Spratt appointed a Curate in the person of John Gyles, B.D., a Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford. But he clearly recognized the claims of the Vicarage, though not occupying it, for he obtained permission-^ to pull down the old house and built the present one. He also, as he has placed on record in the Parish Register, made substantial addition to the Vicarage
^ Abp. Tillotson's Register, 51.
^ Abp. Teuison's Register, i., f. 220.
* Abp. Tenison's Register, ii., 289.
96 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
grounds and presented to the Churcli the large gilt Cup for the Holy Communion.^
On his deaths in 1720, he was succeeded by Edmund Barrell/ of Brazenose College, Oxford, one of whose first acts as Yicar was to alter an arrangement forced on the Parish by his predecessor in the last year of his life, by which he raised the scale of tithes on hops from 10s. an acre to 18s. This Mr. Barrell reduced to 10s. 6d. To him, too, the Parish is largely indebted for important additions to the Parish Notes in the small MS. Vol. from which much of this information is derived.
He seems, however, to have resided very little in the Vicarage, for his name does not occur among the '' Domestic Events," or in the Registers during the 45 years of his incumbency.
He was succeeded in 1765 by a far more distinguished man — Dr. William Maekham, but with him and his immediate successors the non-resident Vicar is the rule rather than the exception, the penalty the Parish paid for having the honour of Royal nominees for the Vicarage.
Dr. William Markham was from the commencement of his University career a man singled out for high pre- ferment. From Westminster he had gone up as a King^s Scholar to Christ Church, where he rose to be eventually Dean, having meanwhile been Head Master of his old School, in 1753; then Prebendary of Durham in 1759; Dean of Rochester in 1765, and, like his predecessor. Archdeacon Spratt, in the same year he became Vicar of Boxley. He was appointed Chaplain to George II. and
1 This cup has long since disappeared, and is supposed to have been given in exchange for the existing Cup, Flagon and Patin, which, according to the Hall Marks, are of the year 1788, '89. — Arckccologia Cantiana, xvii., 299.
- Abp. Wake's Register, i., f. 313. b.
THE CLERGY. 97
III., and Bishop of Chester in 1771, and the year after was selected as Preceptor to the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, and in 177G was raised to the Archbishopric of York. All this while Boxley saw but little, if anything, of him, though he retained the Vicarage in commendam till he was made Archbishop. He died in 1807, at the advanced age of 89.^
On his resigning Boxley the right of presentation lay again with the Crown, and the Honble. Beownlow North, the younger son of the Earl of Guildford, and brother of Lord North, the Prime Minister, was selected for the Vicarage. He had been of Trinity College, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1762, was elected Fellow of All Souls' four years after, and in 1770 was appointed to a Canonry at Christ Church. The same year he was made Dean of Canterbury, and the next year, being only just 30 years old. Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry ; then, in 1774, Bishop of Worcester, and of Winchester in 1784. He retained the Boxley Vicarage, and also the still more valuable Rectory of Lydd, in Romney Marsh, m com- mendiim, till he became Bishop of Worcester." His resignation, in 1774, again threw the next presentation of Boxley into the hands of the Crown.
To fill the vacancy thus created, William Nance, of Peter House, Cambridge, was appointed. With him there seems to have been a break in the line of absentee Vicars for a few years. In 1780 he eifected an exchange with Dr. John Benson, who was Rector of G-reat Chart and Harbledown, and also Prebendary of Canterbury. He died in 1804, and was succeeded by Dr. Samuel Goodenough.
^ 'Nichols' Literary Anecdotes of the ISth Century, vii., 36. - Ibid, vol. ix., p. 668. H
98 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
Before entering on the succession of Vicars of the 19th Century, it may lie well to notice how the ministrations of the Parish were carried on during the Pluralist non- resident period we have been traversing. From the Lambeth Registers and those of the Parish we are able to give the names of the Curates in the following order : — Henry Burvill, probably a member of the family of that name then living at the Boxley House, was Curate from 1705 to 1709 ; he was followed by John Gyles, B.D., a Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, from 1709 to 1726 after him, for a few months only, by Thomas Fades, LL.B of St. Edmund's Hall, and then for some two years, by John Marriott, of St. John's College, Cambridge ; by Peter Alston, of New College, Oxford, from 1730 to 1735; by Christopher Thomas, from 1741 to 1756; and George Burville from 1757 to 1775.
In 1781 Robert Parsons was appointed Curate, and remained till 1787 ; then John Lloyd till 1802 ; John Say, and then Henry Morgan Say, of St. Mary Hall, till 1805, and Joseph Sharpe till 1809, when he exchanged for that of Detling, of which Parish he became Vicar in 1822.
To return to the Vicars, the 19th Century found Dr. Benson at the Vicarage, but on his death in 1804, he was succeeded by Dr. Samuel Goodenough, a distinguished Student of Christ Church, Oxford, where he took his Degree in 1764, and D.C.L. in 1772. He was promoted to the Deanery of Rochester in 1802, and two years after was presented by the Chapter to the Vicarage of Boxley, which he only held for four years, being appointed to the Bishopric of Carlisle in 1808.^
The presentation to the Vicarage, thus vacated, again
^ Nichols' Literary Anecdotes of the ISth Century, vol. ix., p. 759.
THE CLEKGY. 99
falling to the Crown, Dr. Richard Cockburn was then appointed. Of him little is known save that he was a Canon of Winchester, and also befriended the living of Boxley by the addition of a considerable piece of Augmentation land. He held the Vicarage till his death in 1832, when he was succeeded by Dr. John Griffith. He had been a Fellow of Emanuel College, Cambridge, and came under the favourable notice of Lord Lyndhurst, who made him one of his Chaplains; in 1827 he obtained for him a Canonry at Rochester. In 1831 he was pre- sented to the Chapter living of Aylesford, and the following year vacated that for the Vicarage of Boxley, which he held till 1853. After leaving Boxley, his interest and that of Mrs. Griffith would seem to have specially centered in the Parish of Strood, adjoining Rochester, where, mainly through their munificence, the new Church dedicated to St. Mary, was erected. It was consecrated in 1869.
On his resignation of Boxley, in 1853, the Rev. Frederick Jonathan Richards, the present Vicar, was appointed.
The large increase in the size of the Parish during the present Century rendered the help of Curates, even under resident Vicars, an absolute necessity. Without giving the names of the many who have been thus connected with the Parish, one demands special notice. Under Dr. Griffith for several years the Curacy was held by one who rose to eminence in the Ecclesiastical word : James Craigie Robertson, who was for many years a Canon of Canterbury, and also filled the distinguished post of Professor of Ecclesiastical History in King's College, London. He is still more widely remembered as the author of a very able and valuable "History of the English Church."
100 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
From the list of the Vicars we pass on, as a matter of course, to the sources of the income. It has been said that it was originally a Rectory,^ and subsequently a Yicarage. Each had its separate endowment of land. The Terriers of both the Rectorial (or Parsonage) lands and those of the Vicarage are still preserved in the Diocesan Registry at Canterbury/ and in many instances the names by which they were described three hundred years ago are still attached to sevei-al of the plots.
From the Church Register, and a Church Memorandum Book, we learn some interesting facts ; for instance, that flax^ was one of the products of the Parish, and was titheable, and also that one farm on the hillside (the Warren) was charged with a specified number of rabbits to be supplied yearly, or their equivalent.*
To the Vicarage is also attached a Pension of £8 a year. The actual assignment of it is obscure, but its existence is recognized in Pope Boniface's " Taxatio" of 1299,^ and it would seem to have been a perpetual charge on the Abbey, for when a lease of Rectorial land was granted to the Abbey in 1513, an express stipulation was made that the rent of such land was to be quite independent of this
^ See page 83.
^ They will be found in Appendix J.
' In 1703 there were 20 acres of flax grown in the Parish.
* In the small Volume of Parish Memoranda already mentioned is an entry as follows, respecting Tithes paid by Robert Week, of Boxley Warren, in 1721 : " More, 12 young well-grown rabbits, 8 in Summer and 4 at Christmas;" and so in subsequent years, the entry varying, "all had in kind," or "had, or allowed for."
^ Taxatio, &c., &u., " de Boxele, xxxii., li. ; preter portionem Vicarii ejusdein Ecclesice, vL.: viii. li."
THE CLERGY. 101
Pension.^ Nor did it cease with the Dissolution of the Abbey, but was transferred as a charge on the Exchequer, from whence it was long paid to successive Yicars, and is now received through the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.^
In Boxley, as in other Parishes where Cistercian Monasteries existed, it was enacted at an early date that all lands under culture by the Monks themselves, or at their expense, should be tithe-free.
But such was not always the case here. There clearly wsa a time when this Abbey was as liable to the payment of tithes as other lands. Ecclesia non solvit ecclesice, " the Church does not pay to the Church," is undoubtedly a very ancient maxim in English law ; yet the claim of the Religious Houses to be independent of the Church, and only amenable to Rome, would seem to have removed them from its general application ; and they paid, until some special enactment gave them exemption. Such exemption can be traced in the case of Boxley.
Early in the 12th Century Pope Pascal II. issued an Edict that all Religious Houses should be free of tithes, but Adrian IV. restricted this privilege to the Templars, Hospitalers and Cistercians ; probably, in this exemption,
1 Firma Rectorias de Boxley sic dimissa Abbati de Boxley, ut ille Abbas debet solvere ex suis propriis denariis, ultra didam firmam quolibet anno Vicario Ecclesice ibidem, viii., li. (Dated 1513.)
- In the M3S. Book at the Vicarage, already referred to, is an amusing entry made by Mr. Wyvell, the Vicar in 1703, respecting this Pension : "There is Belonging to The Vicaridge of Boxly one Pencion of £8, payd yearly at Michaelmas, out of the Exchequer ; if the Minister goes himeselfe he pays 8s. to the Receiver, 4s. to the Auditour, and so receives clear £7 8s., but Mr. Line(? Lynde), my Immediate Predecessour, notgoeingup himeselfe, Imployed one Mr. Morgan, near the West end of Westminster, who generally solicited that being well for him, & he received the 8s., soe he Received but clear £7." So it appears did Mr. Wy veil's successor, Archdeacon Spratt : but Mr. Barrell, who followed him, appends a note : "I, E. B., received the Pension myeself."
102 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
adapting himself to the Crusading ardour of the times in the first two, and recognising the value of the agricultural labours of the third. However, in the Lateran Council (1215) this exemption was restricted to such lands as the Monks '^were holding in their own hands." But the Cistercians made a vigorous effort to have this restriction cancelled, and would seem to have assumed that it would be, and that they might so act on it, for a complaint had been made by the Parochial Clergy of Boxley that the Abbey withheld and refused to pay them tithes. In conse- quence. Pope Alexander III., in a letter^ addressed to Thomas a Becket, insists on the duty of the Monastery to pay tithes in full for all lands in their hands.
This, however, was soon changed when Innocent III. came to the Papacy. In his desire to fortif}^ these outposts of the ecclesiastical army of Rome, this ambitioas and haughty " Servant of servants of God," as he styled himself, to secure the more willing allegiance of the English Monasteries in his struggle with the Crown, relieved all Cistercian Abbeys of the obligation to pay Tithes. Honorius III., the successor of Innocent, con- firmed this privilege, and Richard of Wendover, at the time Bishop of Rochester, by express mandate, applied this privilege to Boxley.- It remained unquestioned from that time (1222) till the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when Henry VIII., in the grants of the various Manors to his courtiers, continued the same exemption, that so long as they held the lands '^'in their own hands" they should
^ The letter is undated, but must have been written between 1160, when Alexander became Pope, and 1170, when Becket Mas murdered. — See Appendix K.
- See Appendix L.
THE CLERGY. 103
'' enjoy them discharged and acquitted of payment of Tithes as freely and in as large and ample a manner as the former Abbots, &c., ever held them." This privilege, under the same conditions, holds good to this day at Boxley.
From the list of the Vicars and the sources of the Yicarial income, the transition to the Vicarage house is natural. Here the value of a Parish Register appears in a new light. It is not only the Chronicle of "■ Domestic Events" of a Parish, but often contains on its fly-pages chance notes and Memoranda of considerable interest, inserted by successive Vicars in days when elaborate "Minutes of Vestries" were not yet known. Thus have been often rescued from oblivion particular details of the past history of a Parish which would otherwise have been inevitably lost. Such is happily the case here.
By the help of such Memoranda we can trace the various changes which have passed over the Vicarage House, illustrating, as they do, in a most interesting manner the changes which have come over the domestic and social life of the Clergy. Here we have some idea of what the original building was, — when it was pulled down and a new one, the nucleus of the present one, erected, — and then the several stages of its growth into its modernized form.
It has been already said that it ceased to be a Eectory about the year 1377, and was then constituted a Vicarage- But there was clearly no house for the Vicar till 1394, nearly 20 years after, when the Prior and Convent of St. Andrew's, Rochester, as the patrons ■ of the living, built one, which we are told consisted of " a Hall, Chamber,
104 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
Cellar, Kitclien, and Stable," with a small garden- plot. It was, however, stipulated that the future repairs of this humble domicile should be borne by successive Yicars.^
Whatever the changes were made during the next three centuries do not seem to be recorded. When, however, Mr. Wyvill came to the Vicarage, in 1690, he has entered a note that he found the house consisting of '' a good parlour, and a place to set the strong beer in, one kitchin and another little room for small beer, a closet, a very good wash-house, and brewhouse ; above stairs one good lodging room, with two little rooms within, one great room and closet, and another large room," — by no means exces- sive accommodation for a married man, with, as the Eegister discloses, a rapidly increasing family.
When Archdeacon Spratt succeeded Mr. Wyvill, in 1705, he, though apparently non-resident, recognised the duty of providing for the comforts of his Curate, and in 1710 "pulled down all the old buildings, which he rebuilt of brick, with two wings," and what with " wainscotting, painting, marble inside," and ornamental w-ork too, outside, introducing into the grounds " canals, cascades, and basin," on land which he had himself added to the garden, he claims the credit of having expended out of his own pocket not less than £1,500.
Still his successor found something left for him to do, for he added " a wash-house and barn." Then came Dr. Markham, in 1765, and he built "the Hall and the rooms over, and made the bow-window to the Great Parlour." The next Vicar, Mr. Nance, "built the brewhouse, the Coal place and small Cellar, and put up the marble Chimney
1 Cott. MSS. Faustina, C. 5, f, 90.
THE CLERGY. 105
Pieces in tlie Great Parlour^ and the Drawing'-room," at a cost of £500.
So tlie Vicarage would seem to have remained during the incumbencies of the next two, also non-resident, Vicars, Benson and Goodenough, from 1789 to 1808.
When Dr. Cockburn came into residence he at once added " bay-windows to the Dining-room and Drawing- room over it,^' besides making considerable additions to the Glebe. After him Dr. Griffith pulled down the old stables and built new ones, and also the Coach-house, on land he purchased of Sir William Geary, who then owned the adjoining estate, called " Court Lodge," now added by Major Best to the Park House property.
To his successor, the Rev. Frederick Jonathan Richards, the present Vicar, the Vicarage is indebted for still further improvements in the house itself, besides an important addition of land. By throwing together two small rooms on the ground floor he has made a bright cheery drawing-room, and purchased from the Eccle- siastical Commissioners an adjoining piece of land, formerly belonging to the Rectory, with a building traditionally called the Refectory, but more probably the old Tithe- barn; and adjoining it, the Farm-house of the Rectorial lands, now converted into two comfortable cottages.
Thus has grown by degrees, out of the humble two- roomed domicile of the medieval celibate priest, the commonious dwelling-house of the modern family-man Vicar, the type of an English home, the centre of the energizing activity of an English Parish.
CHAPTER YI. THE CHURCH.
THE absence of all mention of a Cliurcli at Boxley in " Domesday " does not necessarily imply that none then existed, for, as de Gray Birch^ says, this book " is not a Survey of the condition or statistics of Church property or edifices, but only of those places to which the Crown had to look for a payment of some kind, either in services, rents, or produce, therefore those Churches only find a place which incidentally fall into this category."^ Boxley clearly did not, and therefore only that which belonged to or affected the Manor was recorded ;. and the Church, which was evidently at that time in the hands of the Crown, was passed over in silence, as being distinct from the Manor, which was in those of Odo.
Its value, as given in '^ Domesday," i.e. £55, is presump- tive evidence that one so important must have contained a
^ "Domesday Book," p. 255.
* Matthew Paris (Watts), p. 10, thus explains the object and system of this unique record ; " Rex Willielmus misit justitiarios per omnes Angliae Comitatus, et inquirere fecit quot agri vel jugera terras uni aratro sufEcerent per annum in singulis villis, et quot animalia possent sufEcere ad unius hydae culturam. Fecit etiam inquiri quem censum urbes, castella, villse, vici, flumina, pahides, sylvse, redderent per annum, et quot milites essent, in uni- quoque Comitatu regni. Quae omnia in scriptum redacta, et ad "West- monasterium delata, in thesauris Regum usque hodie reservantur."
THE CHURCH. 107
Church in the days of the Conqueror, Of any such building as may have then existed not a vestige now remains. Nor can any part of the present fabric claim to date back within 150 years of that time.
The first mention of a Church here occurs in the Grant of the Tithes made to it by Henry I.^
Could we carry back our minds even to the days of the Plantagenets, the Church that would present itself to our imagination would be in its internal arrangements very diiferent from that we now have to describe. Its highly picturesque situation was probably always the same ; for ground once consecrated to religious use, whether by Saxon or Norman, was in those days very rarely, and only then for some good and weighty reason, deprived of its sacred character and use. Here no such reason was likely to have arisen, and therefore the site has doubtless remained the same.
But it is within, that the change has taken place. And
by the aid of the Wills of devout and liberal parishioners
of the 15th and 16th Centui'ies we are able, to some
extent, to revive the scene. Their legacies, deluded and
misguided as we now regard them, give us glimpses of
the leading features of the building, and show how, in
accordance with the superstition of the times, they sought
to add to the embellishment of the Church they loved so
dearly. ~
^ Nobilissimus Rex Henrieus Primus multa bona contulit, scilicet ecclesias de Boxele, k.c.," E. Eegistro Temp. Episcop. Roffcnslum, quoted in Thorpe's Kegistrum Roffcnsi, p. 2.
^-Tho Will of "Johanna Bushe, widow of Johannes Bushe, of Boxley " (Consistory Court, Canterbury, v., 59, b ), dated 1499, may be taken as a typical one: "In primis do ot lego animam meam DeO Omnipotenti, S'te Marie, et omnibus Sanctis cell ; corpusque mourn sepeliendum in cimiterio ecclesie parochialis omnium S'torum de Boxle, Item lego summo altari ibidem
108 HISTORY OF BOXLET.
At the East end then would have stood the High Altar, always the first to be remembered in each Will with the stereotyped form of " Conscience Money/' for Tithes neglected or wilfully withheld. The next to be honoured would be the " Summa Crux/' the Rood over the Chancel Screen, for which lights were always bequeathed ; then lights for the " Image of the Virgin Mary/' probably in her own Chapel/ now forming the East end of the South Aisle, where the piscina is still visible in the South wall ; lights also for the "Images" of St. James, St. Laurence, and St. Christoper;- then towards the later part of the 15th Century other claimants for illumination appeared. In 1474 and 1480 lights were bequeathed to the "Vision of Pope Gregory,'^ and in 1489 to the "Image of the Passion."'* But where these several objects had their places it is now impossible to conjecture ; nor is it possible to say whose Chapel occupied the East end of the North Aisle, where is also a piscina now let into the East wall.
It is however with the present Church that we are con- cerned, and with the building as it now appears, for High Altar, Rood-screen, side Altars, and Images have happily disappeared, to give place to a more simple style of adorn- ment, better suited to the simpler and less sensuous — the
pro decimis et oblacionibus negligenter oblitis et subtractis XII. d. Item
lego lumen beate Marie Virgiui Item lumen S'to. Cruci ibidem,
Item lego lumen S'to Jacobo ibidem Item S'to Johanni Baptists
ibidem. Item S'to Laurencio, &c.
^ The Chapel of St. Maiy is expressly mentioned by John Beche (1462), Archd. Court, Cant., i., 5., by John Clynton (1473), Ibid., ii., 13, by Robert Burbage (1479). Ibid., iii., 15.
^ "A lightto St. Christopher,"by Thomas Doore (1464), Archd. Court, i., 8. ^ " Visioni S'ti Gregorii," bequeathed by Robert Jay (1474), Archdeac. Court, Cant., ii., 14, by Joanna Baker (1480). Ibid., iii., 21.
* "Passionis Imagini," bequeathed by Thomas Boor (1489). Ibid., vii., 9.
THE CHURCH. 109
more real and devout — form of worship of the English Liturgy.
On entering the Church by the West door, and passing through a singular porch or chamber outside the Tower (of which fuller notice will be given presently) the eye is greeted by a spacious, light, Avell-proportioned building, of the early part of the 13th Century. The pillars of the Nave are of the graceful Early-English character, con- stituting the oldest portion of the Church,^ while the windows of the West end, and those of the South Aisle, would seem to have been insertions of a hundred years later, those of the North Aisle belonging rather to the middle of the 15th Century, at which period the battle- mented parapets of both Aisles must have been added, while the gables of both Nave and Aisles clearly date from the early part of the preceding Century.
The only relics of the past are the two pixcince already mentioned, and the hjcli)ioscupe, the aperture cut through the South pier of the Chancel arch, to allow the attendant to see if the lights on the High Altar were burning ; but even this has under modern ''restorations " been partially closed up, to complete the round of the pillar ! There is also a very early narrow doorway in the eastern end of the North wall, which must have led by a spiral stair to the Rood-loft, spanning that Aisle : and a plain capacious stoup for holy water on the right hand inside the South door.
Of the Tower, so conspicuous an object in the landscape,
^ In the course of a " Restoration" some years since, the foundations of an outer wall were found in the line of these pillars, showing that an earlier Church existed here, and that it comprised what now forms the Nave. — Notes about Boxlcj.
110 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
its battlemented parapet, like that of tlie Aisles, indicates 15tli Century work, but a careful examination of the lower stage reveals marks of being at least a hundred years older. The entrance doorway on the West, now somewhat blocked up by a heavy bulkhead, as a barrier against the draught, is a striking specimen of decorated w^ork, with its graceful mouldings and carved corbel ends — the heads of a King and a Bishop. The Crown of four large and four small strawberrry leaves, as represented in the effigy of Edward II. at Gloucester, seems to suggest the possibility of this ornament having been introduced to commemorate the visit of that Monarch to Boxley in 1321,^ the corre- sponding figure being that of the Bishop of Rochester of that day (Haimo de Hitha, or de Heath), who was, con- jointly with the Prior and Convent of St. Andrew's, the Patron of the Boxley Vicarage. This would tally with the probable date of this lower portion of the Tower, The door itself, too, is a fine piece of early wood-work, and has been well preserved. -
But what constitutes perhaps the most remarkable feature of the Church is the Western Porch, sometimes erroneously called the " Gralilee " Chamber, through which ingress is gained to the Western door. Its object and use have long perplexed Antiquaries. It was evidently an adjunct to the Church of much later date than the Tower itself, probably added on for some secular parochial purpose — a room, it may be, for parish meetings or guilds.^
1 See page 43.
- For the architectural details of the building the Author is mainly in- debted to his friend, G. P. Loftus Brock, Esq., F.S. A.
^ An interesting Paper entitled "Church Ales," by E. Peacock, F.S. A., in the Archaeological Journal for 1883 (vol. xl.), contains an account of Church Houses, as buildings for Parochial uses.
THE CHURCH. Ill
On walking up the Cliurch-yarcl from tlie Lytch-gate, tlie eye at once detects that neither door, nor window above, in this Porch, is in the centre of the gable ; nor is the gable itself true to the lines of the Nave. The chamber has been evidently enlarged on the South side, the wall having been built some three feet outside its original line, and then carried inwards at an oblique angle to adjust it to the buttress on the South-west corner of the Tower. A small doorway and a few stone steps of a spiral stair in the North wall would perhaps suggest that there may have been an upper room. There are traces also of windows, now blocked up, in the two side walls. This building has long been regarded as distinct from, and independent of the Church, and is claimed as a mortuary Chapel belonging to Vinter's estate, and as such the vault beneath it has been used for burials by the Whatman family.
The connection of this Porch with Vinter's is thus explained in an Inscription on a large slate tablet fixed on the South wall :
" This part of Boxley Church appears to have been built, and from time to time repaired and freely used by the owners of Vinter's, in this parish, viz. :
" Roger Vinter, Cons(ervator) Pacis, 1343, who founded and endowed with the estates of Gould's and Shepway Court ^ the Chantry, afterwards called Gould's Chantry, Maidstone.
'^John Vinter, 1380.
" Sir John de Fremyngham, 1409.
'^Sir Roger Isley, 1411.
" Sir Henry Isley, who forfeited his estates for High
^ Shepway Court was not included in tho grant.
112 HISTOEY OF BOXLEY.
Treason and was executed after Sir Thomas
Wyatt's Rebellion. " Sir Cavaliero Maycott, aVs Mackworth^ 1580. " William Covert, Esq., 1610, who married Lady Barbara
Cutts, and rebuilt a part of Vinters in 1582. " Sir William Tufton, Bart., 1626. " Sir Charles Tufton, Bart., 1660. " Daniel Whyte, Esq., 1689. "Sir Samuel Ongley, 1711. Mr. Champnies, of Boxley,
was his tenant. " James Whatman, Esq., by Act of Parliament in 1783. He
was Sheriff of Kent in 1767, and used this vault
in 1789 for the burial of Edward Stanley, Esq.,
D.C.L., Comm(issione)r of the Customs in London. "In 1836 his son, with the Vicar of Boxley, had the opinion of Counsel on the free use of it, and the ancient Inscriptions to its earlier possessors having been effaced from it, this stone is intended to preserve its history. 1848."!
Mention must now be made of the WINDOWS.
The three-light East window, dedicated to the memory of Colonel James Best, represents, in the centre the Crucifixion, on one side the Baptism of Our Lord in the River Jordan, and on the other the two Maries and the Angel at the sepulchre.
The two-light window on the North side of the Chancel represents " the Holy Family " in the stable, and the presentation of the child Jesus in the Temple, with this Inscription : "In Memoriam, Gulielmi Parry Richards, M.A. Nat. 1789 ; mort. 1860. Viri boni, patris optimi,
^ See pages 4 aud 5.
THE CHUECH. 113
hoc monumentum Filius amaiis posuit/' While that in the opposite window contains in its two lights Our Lord showing himself to Mary, and to Thomas, with a similar Inscription, with only the addition of the fact that his son Frederick J. Richards was at the time the Vicar of the Parish.
In the second two-light window on the North side of the Chancel are represented the Annunciation, and the Salutation of Elizabeth, with the following Inscription : "In Memoriam Franciscte Elizee, nat. 1789; mort. 1851, Gulielmi Parry Richards Uxoris dilectissise Hoc Monu- mentum Filia amans Posuit."
In the small single-light window on the South side of the Chancel, dedicated to the Praise and Glory of God, in memory of Tatton Brockman, M.A., of Beach- borough, Clerk in Holy Orders, born Dec. 7, 1792, died June 25, 1869, is a representation of the Ascension.
In the Vestry, behind the organ, is a small two-light window with the figures of S. Gabriel and S. Michael, symbolizing Peace and War, presented by Major Mawdistly G. Best, on his safe return from the Crimean and Indian- Mutiny Campaigns ; with the inscription on a small brass plate, " In Memoriam, Cawnpore, Lucknow, 1857-8, M. G. Best, 34th Regt.''
At the East end of the North Aisle is one "To the Memory of Madeline Frances, the beloved wife of Richard Mercer, Esq., " who departed into everlasting life 30th January, 1862.'' It represents the Transfiguration scene, in the centre light Our Lord in a Vesica Piscis, radiant with glory, on either side Moses and Elijah emblematized, the one by the two tables, the other by a raven. I
114 HISTORY OF BOXLEY.
In the North Aisle is a representation of Our Lord raising the daughter of Jairus, with the following Inscrip- tion : " To the Glory of God, and in memory of her beloved Mother, Dame Anna Brockman, born October 1, 1817, died May 14th, 1881 : and of her two sisters, Louisa Tatton Brockman, born Jan. 24, 1842, died June 17, 1850; and Maria KnatchbuU-Hugessen, born June 27, 1846, died Holy Innocents' Day, 1881. This window is dedicated by Katherine A. Best."
The East window of the South Aisle is to the memory of several members of the