What was an Augustinian Grange? The Evidence from Bolton Priory’s Estates

Abstract

A pioneering article by T.A.M. Bishop outlined the characteristics of granges of Augustinian canons in Yorkshire. This article seeks to test Bishop’s criteria by examination of the granges of Bolton Priory. It first outlines the features of Cistercian granges – a novel form of land management in the twelfth century – then the contrasting ideals of the Augustinians. It points to the imprecise terminology used by the canons of Bolton Priory, which makes it difficult to distinguish between manors and granges on the priory’s estates. It then uses the Bolton evidence to challenge the defining criteria in Bishop’s argument. It concludes that Bishop’s criteria have only limited applicability to Bolton’s estates, and that it is ultimately questionable whether a typical Augustinian grange existed at all.

Keywords:

• Grange
• manor
• Augustinian
• Cistercian
• Bishop
• Robinson
• demesne
• home farm
• vaccaries
• bercaries
• appropriated churches
• toftholders

Bolton Priory, originally sited at Embsay just outside Skipton, was one of eleven houses of Augustinian Canons in Yorkshire. (The others, in order of their foundation date, were Nostell, Bridlington, Guisborough, Kirkham, Warter, Drax, Newburgh, Marton – all founded in the first half of the twelfth century – Healaugh Park (founded 1218), and Haltemprice (1326).¹ Though there were more houses of Augustinian canons in England than houses of any other order (173 in total), they were mainly small.² The average number of canons at an Augustinian foundation in England in the second half of the twelfth century was only 10, compared with 30 monks for Cistercian abbeys and 50 for Benedictine monasteries.³ Bolton Priory (alongside Bridlington, Guisborough, Kirkham, Newburgh and Nostell) ranked (just about) among the larger houses at the time of the Dissolution. Yet, from the information available between the thirteenth and sixteenth century, the monastic community at Bolton never comprised more than 19 canons and five lay-brothers (who were always few in number in Augustinian houses) and was usually, in fact, marginally smaller than this.⁴

The Augustinians owned much manorial property, and also granges. According to the wide-ranging survey by David Robinson, the average number of manors and granges owned by each house was very small – five to six manors and a mere two to three granges, though there were substantial variations. Many houses had no granges at all. Those with granges were mainly located in Shropshire, Staffordshire and Yorkshire. The numbers of manors and granges are largely derived from the era of the Dissolution, by which time the leasing of much of the property once in hand and directly cultivated had further complicated the terminology. The numbers cannot be regarded as a sure guide to the position in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.⁵

But what was the Augustinian grange? What were its central features, and how did it differ both from Cistercian granges and also from the manorial possessions of the Augustinians?

The monastic grange was an innovation of the Cistercians and firmly associated with the order.⁶ The first Cistercian houses in Yorkshire, Rievaulx and Fountains, were founded in 1132. By mid-century six other houses – Byland, Jervaulx, Kirkstall, Roche, Sawley and Meaux – had followed. Aiming to return to the original pure ideals of St. Benedict, as they saw them, the Cistercians emphasised austerity, simplicity and seclusion from society. When the order’s statutes were codified, between 1134 and about 1150, Cistercians were prohibited from owning churches and tithes, together with the trappings of manorial lordship such as ownership of villeins who owed labour services, along with revenue from rents and mills. Detached from the conventional manorial economy, a new basis of subsistence had therefore become necessary.

The drive for maximum self-sufficiency led to the creation of the grange.⁷ By the early-thirteenth century the Yorkshire Cistercians had established 83 granges.⁸ Derived from the Latin word for a barn, grangia, the grange came to denote both the building at its centre and the lands around. Much of the land granted to the Cistercians in the early years was uncultivated, and had to be reclaimed and cleared for cultivation. For benefactors, endowing the Cistercians with land which, unreclaimed, was of little value was a cost-effective way of helping to save their souls. At first, a grange had to be no more than a day’s journey from the monastery, though the popularity of the Cistercians resulted in such a flood of donations, some far from the house, that this regulation became impractical. As conceived by monks who sought to withdraw as far as possible from society, the grange was purely a unit of farming, detached from any manorial trappings. In the expansionist phase of the order, the grange was usually run by lay-brothers (conversi) who joined the Cistercians in great numbers in the early years.⁹ However, the ideal of seclusion from existing settlement proved unrealisable. Granges were sometimes built up through consolidation of land held alongside that of lay tenants. And beside the work of lay-brothers, use was also made of labour from peasant settlement (or resettlement) in the vicinity of a grange.¹⁰

Cistercian granges were not uniform in size or character. Their function varied in accordance with the terrain in which they were situated. As well as arable production, they could centre upon sheep- or cattle-farming. In areas more suited to pastoral farming, granges had attached bercaries (sheepfolds) or vaccaries (dairy-farms). Some granges exploited iron production. A number on the north-east coast engaged in fisheries and salt-panning.¹¹ Granges were often very large. The largest granges of Meaux Abbey in the East Riding of Yorkshire, Skerne and Wharram, had respectively 1,417 and 1,327 acres.¹² Even the smaller granges, of Meaux and other Cistercian houses, were impressive in size.

In contrast to the Cistercians, the Augustinians did not seek to withdraw from society. Their houses were established in or close to existing settlements, and they cultivated their demesnes in fields alongside the holdings of local inhabitants. And whereas the Cistercian rule prohibited the order from the possession of churches (a rule that came to be breached in practice), the Augustinians were explicitly regarded in the twelfth century as directly involved in the ‘care of souls’ in parish communities. Their founders and other patrons and benefactors donated the advowsons of churches or their full possession (appropriation) in considerable numbers. Tithes from appropriated churches formed from the beginning a substantial part of the economy of Augustinian houses and continued to do so down to the Dissolution in the sixteenth century. Even so, income from temporalities (mainly land and its appurtenances) generally far outweighed that from spiritualities.¹³

In a pioneering article, published in 1936, mainly devoted to Cistercian granges but extending, too, to those of the orders of regular canons (not just Augustinian), T.A.M. Bishop outlined what he saw as the four main characteristics of the Augustinian grange: the average size was in the region of 200 acres of land, which was sometimes partly or wholly enclosed, but in other instances held in strips or cultures in open fields; it was usually to be found in a well-populated village where in the thirteenth century there were ‘either manorial conditions or at least a considerable population of tenants of arable land who were not freeholders’; there were usually large numbers of landless or, at best, small-holding tenants (toftholders) who provided the main labour force of the grange (in the absence of lay-brothers in any number); and, finally, granges were ‘almost always situated in vills¹⁴ where the canons possessed the tithes and territorial endowments of impropriated churches’.¹⁵

If, according to Bishop, Augustinian granges in Yorkshire were normally situated in villages where ‘manorial conditions’ existed, what singled out a grange from those ‘manorial conditions’? In an earlier article, Bishop was explicit: ‘The land of a true monastic grange is not the same thing as manorial demesne.’¹⁶ But was it actually as clear as this implies? Did the Augustinians possess ‘true’ monastic granges? Janet Burton acknowledged ‘the lack of precision in the way in which the term “grange” was used by the Augustinians’.¹⁷ David Robinson (despite differentiating in his calculations), pointed to the difficulty in distinguishing ‘the basic differences between Augustinian “manors” and “granges”’.¹⁸ Were there any?

The consecutive series of accounts of Bolton Priory between 1286 and 1325 (generally known as the ‘Bolton Compotus’) allow some insight into the structure and workings of the priory’s estate, and underline the terminological difficulties of distinguishing the grange.

Manor and grange on the Bolton estates

Medieval documents, including those of Bolton Priory, are often less precise and consistent than we would like them to be. In the Bolton accounts, for instance, ‘manerium’ does not normally mean ‘manor’ as conventionally understood. In the classical image, a manor was co-terminous with a village, and belonged to a lord who drew income from the cultivation of a demesne, rents from a subordinate tenantry (also owing labour service), dues from a court, and revenue from other appurtenances such as a mill.¹⁹ This seldom, in fact, matched reality, certainly in the north of England, where lordship in villages was frequently divided and estates were built up piecemeal.²⁰

In the Bolton charters relating to the acquisition of Appletreewick in 1300 ‘manerium’ did indeed mean ‘manor’ in the sense of manorial rights over the village.²¹ This appears to have been the case, too, at Holmpton, an estate in the East Riding purchased in 1307. But elsewhere Bolton documents use the term ‘manor’ in differing ways. It could be synonymous with the main dwelling, ‘capital messuage’ or ‘manor-house’. But it usually refers to the demesne – the agricultural unit directly cultivated by the priory.

One section of the Bolton accounts, for instance, is headed ‘Clarum de Maneriis’ (‘net from the manors’). This has nothing to do with any manorial revenue such as rent or court perquisites; it is purely an attempt to calculate the agricultural profits of the priory’s demesne farms.²² But under the general rubric ‘de Maneriis’ a demesne could occasionally be designated a ‘grangia’, in such cases unequivocally it seems, meaning ‘grange’ and not tithe-barn. To add to the confusion of the terminology, the same demesne could be described as ‘grangia’, ‘manerium’, ‘mansura’, or just ‘locus’ (‘place’).²³

Perhaps the choice of nomenclature simply followed from the whim or idiosyncrasy of the individual scribe.²⁴ It is, of course, just possible that the terminology in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was clearer and more consistent than it had become by the early-fourteenth century. The absence of account-books and rentals for the early decades makes it impossible to know. But it would be a bold presumption. So the lack of precise terminology leaves open the question of how to define the Augustinian grange. If the canons themselves did not distinguish between ‘manor’ and ‘grange’, does the concept of the Augustinian grange have any clear meaning at all?

‘Grangia’ in the Bolton records might mean ‘grange’ – a purely agricultural unit, a farm in the modern sense of the word. But it more frequently means ‘barn’ or ‘tithe-barn’. The entries in the Bolton accounts of payments to servants ‘ad grangias’, for instance, refer those working at the two large barns at the hub of the home farm at Bolton itself, not to granges. There have sometimes been errors in identifying Augustinian granges, mistaking for a grange what was actually just a tithe-barn. What Bishop himself took to be granges on the Bolton estates in the account of 1298–9 were in fact tithe-barns. ²⁵ This was explicitly plain in the account of 1295–6, where the heading in the same place is expanded to ‘Compotus grangiarum decimarum’ (account of the tithe-barns).²⁶

Between 1301 and 1304, however, the granarer’s accounts do distinguish between ‘grangia’ (almost certainly here meaning grange) and ‘manerium’ on Bolton’s demesnes. In these years, the granarer lists the income in grain from each of the demesnes, writing in full, for example, ‘De exitu grangie de Boulton’ but ‘De exitu manerii de Halton’ (‘issue of the grange of Bolton’, ‘issue of the manor of Halton’).

The juxtaposition of ‘grangia’ with ‘manerium’ in these accounts seems to render unlikely the possible interpretation that the canons simply meant ‘barn’. And since there were two barns at Bolton, not one, it makes such an interpretation even less likely. The meaning is surely, therefore, that of an agricultural unit, a ‘grange’. The five demesnes thus described as granges – Bolton, Angrum (a sub-unit of the home farm), Riddings, Stead and How – were precisely those demesnes which were agricultural units pure and simple, unconnected with any type of manorial structure.²⁷ These were distinguished from the remaining demesnes (Halton, Kildwick, Ingthorpe, Malham, Appletreewick and Ryther) – Cononley was leased at the time, and the only other demesne, Holmpton (in the East Riding) was not acquired until 1307–8 – which were described as manors and were located in villages.

When, then, the canons did draw a clear distinction in their accounts between ‘grange’ and ‘manor’, they described as granges only the home farm at Bolton and its satellites in the immediate vicinity (Angrum, Riddings, Stead and How). This fits the pattern which Robinson points to at the time of the Dissolution.²⁸ It does not, however, accord with Bishop’s assertion that granges (of Augustinians and other regular canons) ‘must be clearly distinguished from the home farms of monasteries’.²⁹

We return at this point to the characteristics of the Bolton demesnes (whether referred to as ‘manors’ or ‘granges’) and the question of the extent to which they support the generalised features of the Augustinian grange outlined by Bishop.

Bolton’s demesnes and Bishop’s criteria

The fortunate survival of a number of important records of Bolton Priory – many early charters (brought together in Katrina Legg’s fine reconstruction of the lost cartulary), rentals and the account-book of 1286–1325 – offer the possibility of testing Bishop’s criteria against the evidence from the Bolton estates.

The estates were acquired and consolidated piecemeal.³⁰ The earliest grants of what was an extremely modest initial endowment will be outlined presently. As regards the priory’s demesnes, they amounted, before the move to Bolton, mainly to the land at Embsay and Kildwick. In addition, while the priory was still at Embsay, a gift of 12 bovates³¹ of land in Malham formed the basis of what would become a demesne, whose importance was in serving the priory’s extensive sheep-farming interests there.³² The canons were gradually able significantly to expand their slender endowment in the late-twelfth and thirteenth century. They acquired clusters of property in the Harewood and Malham areas in addition to their holdings in Airedale, which brought in valuable rents though not developed as demesnes. Land granted at Cononley in the 1170s, and later extended, provided the core of a demesne here.³³ Important acquisitions in the late-twelfth and early-thirteenth century were a cultura of land at Ingthorpe, (evidently a block of land described as ‘in the fields’ of Marton), and 12 bovates of land in Halton (only a mile or so from the priory), both of which were substantially extended and consolidated, forming the basis of priory demesnes here.³⁴ A small demesne at Ryther, about 40 miles away from Bolton, probably to serve the prior when he was on business at York or in Holderness, was based on a grant made most probably in the early-thirteenth century.³⁵ The last two demesnes, Appletreewick (valuable especially in providing extensive pasture for the priory’s sheep on the fells above the village, and later for lead-mining) and Holmpton in Holderness (perhaps providing a base for the priory’s agents dealing with wool exports shipped from Hull, about 20 miles away) were expensively purchased property in the early-fourteenth century. By this time, the manorial settlement pattern was well established and the scope for creating new granges limited.³⁶

We will come shortly to the spiritualities owned by Bolton in connection with what Bishop saw as the most important feature of the Augustinian grange: its close connection with churches that were appropriated by Augustinian houses. Appropriation of a parish church, he argued, ‘was the chief factor in deciding where they [the canons] should acquire temporal property’, since the acquisition of tithes and a territorial endowment (the glebe), brought the canons power and influence in the locality and the ability to install ‘some of their own members as vicars’.³⁷

Early patrons of the Augustinian canons may well have presumed that the canons would themselves serve the parish churches in their neighbourhood. But if this was the ideal and the presumption, it was not put into practice on any scale. ³⁸ The tension between participation in the monastic routine and the demands of serving parish churches at some distance from the house was obvious. In any case, the small size of most Augustinian communities in relation to the number of churches granted itself ruled it out. Nevertheless, the fact remains: benefactors did make many grants of churches in the twelfth century, a good number of which were quickly appropriated. Leicester Abbey, unusual in size, wealth, and status (most Augustinian houses were priories) benefited from a highly generous endowment by the Earl of Leicester which included a grant of all the churches in the town. This was augmented by further grants of churches from other benefactors. Of 19 abbey demesnes, only three were unconnected with the glebes of appropriated churches.³⁹ Leicester was exceptional. But among Yorkshire Augustinian houses, Kirkham, Guisborough and Nostell priories (all founded in the first quarter of the twelfth century) were particularly well endowed with grants of churches.⁴⁰ Nostell Priory, for instance, was endowed with 17 parish churches in Yorkshire (and a moiety of an eighteenth), along with a further seven outside Yorkshire.⁴¹

Embsay Priory (founded in 1120-1, the home of the canons before the move to Bolton in 1155) had in contrast an extremely meagre endowment. The founders, William Meschin (Lord of Copeland, in Cumberland) and his wife Cecily de Rumilly (Lady of the Honour of Skipton),⁴² drew on the community of Huntingdon Priory to provide the first prior, Reginald, who was probably accompanied by only a handful of canons – described as ‘canons regular’ not specifically Augustinians – in establishing the priory at Embsay. The initial endowment consisted of no more than the church of Skipton (which had already been granted to Huntingdon Priory as a preliminary to the move), together with its chapel at Carleton, and the village of Embsay.⁴³ (Presumably around this time or relatively soon afterwards the manors of Stirton and Skibeden, close to Skipton, were also given to the priory, since they were exchanged in 1155 for the manor of Bolton.)⁴⁴

A rental from the year 1340 (partially transcribed by Roger Dodsworth) makes clear what is not stated in the foundation charter: that Embsay was granted to the canons as the glebe of Skipton church. In this regard, slender though the endowment was, Embsay fitted the pattern outlined by Bishop about the connection between Augustinian settlement and church land.⁴⁵ At 620 feet above sea level, one of the highest in the country for Augustinian houses,⁴⁶ the demesne at Embsay was, however, very exposed, and on relatively poor soil – undoubtedly the reason for the move to the more fertile, lower-lying and much more extensive estate of Bolton.⁴⁷

It would have been a great boon to the house when, between 1135 and 1140, Cecily de Rumilly augmented the original endowment through the grant of the church and village of Kildwick (followed by the right to mill profits in the district).⁴⁸ This must have practically doubled the priory’s income at the time. Tithes from the two large parishes of Skipton and Kildwick brought sizeable income in kind for little outlay. They continued to form a major part of the priory’s basis of subsistence in the accounts of the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries, and doubtless did so down to the Dissolution.⁴⁹

Between 1147 and 1153, Embsay Priory was also granted the advowson to the churches of Broughton and Long Preston, though was presumably unable to proceed to appropriation at that time. Appropriation followed only much later – in the early-fourteenth century (Long Preston) and fifteenth century (Broughton). A further appropriation, of the wealthy parish of Harewood, was undertaken in the mid-fourteenth century. In the late-twelfth and early-thirteenth centuries Bolton also acquired the right to present to the churches of Marton, Keighley and (a moiety of) Kettlewell, but in these cases no appropriation followed.⁵⁰

The relationship of church and grange on the Bolton estates does not fit neatly or easily with Bishop’s model. It was certainly the case that at Embsay and Kildwick the grant of the church led to the creation of demesnes and was the basis for further acquisition of land and tenants in the area. The demesne at Embsay appears invariably to have been described in Bolton records as a ‘manor’ and never as a ‘grange’, that at Kildwick occasionally as a ‘grange’, though more usually as a ‘manor’. In each case, the initial grant to Embsay Priory spoke of neither grange nor manor, but of the ‘vill’.

It is unlikely that the canons in fact used the term ‘grange’ for their demesnes at Embsay and Kildwick in the early years, since the concept was little if at all known before the 1140s. The Cistercians, generally acknowledged to have been the creators of the grange, had established hardly any in England before that decade.⁵¹

Bolton made no attempt to establish granges where it had rights to churches in Long Preston, Broughton and Harewood, though, as mentioned, appropriation there only took place at a much later stage. No substantial holdings were developed at Keighley or Kettlewell. At Marton, however, though only in possession of the advowson to the church, Bolton was able in the early-thirteenth century to exert its influence in the locality to acquire, extend and consolidate its holding of land which it cultivated as a demesne at Ingthorpe, just outside the villages of East and West Marton.⁵² The holding was usually termed a ‘manor’, not a ‘grange’. The name ‘Ingthorpe Grange’ is modern.⁵³ Conceivably, however, as with the modern name ‘Kildwick Grange’, it reflects ancient popular usage in referring to priory demesne land that was perhaps enclosed and at any rate detached from tenanted land.

The relationship at Embsay, Kildwick and Ingthorpe was, then, less of grange, more of manorial demesne and church. At Halton, Malham, Appletreewick, Ryther and Holmpton there was no association between the manorial demesne and a church. Nor was any church (apart, of course, from the monastic church itself) connected with the five demesnes – Bolton, Angrum, Riddings, Stead and How – which, as noted in some accounts for the first years of the fourteenth century, were specifically labelled granges.

In fact, the coincidence of church and grange seems less pronounced than Bishop claimed also in the case of other Yorkshire Augustinian houses. They appear to have held at least as many manors (or granges) in places where they did not possess an appropriated church as where there was a coincidence of both (though evidence from chartularies sometimes makes it difficult to be certain, and that from rentals and accounts is relatively late; the coincidence of church and demesne was almost certainly greater in the era of the foundation of the houses).⁵⁴

The pattern nationally, according to Robinson’s conclusions, also lends only modified support to Bishop’s model. On Robinson’s calculations, only just over a third of the lands of Augustinian houses coincided with locations where they possessed churches.⁵⁵ Robinson’s data were drawn, however, in respect of churches from the Taxatio of 1291, with regard to temporalities largely from the period of the Dissolution, so the results underestimate the relationship of lands and churches in the early period of Augustinian settlement, since much land acquisition had taken place after that time.

Bishop suggested that the average size of an Augustinian grange ‘was perhaps two hundred acres’. This figure seems somewhat arbitrary since the examples he gives range from over 500 to about 120 arable acres.⁵⁶ The great variation in size of the Bolton demesnes also implies that the notion of an average size is best discarded. The large manor or grange of Bolton itself, the home farm, was around 1,300 acres in total according to the figures in the Ministers’ Accounts at the Dissolution. This included pasture, woodland and meadow as well as arable. In the early-fourteenth century, an estimated 800 or so acres were under the plough. This, however, included the ancillary grange of Angrum (by the sixteenth century figuring as no more than a field-name). Based on the number of ploughs, the relative size could be estimated at around 640 acres for Bolton proper and 160 acres for Angrum. The satellite granges of Riddings, Stead and How in the immediate vicinity of Bolton had in the region of 100 acres of arable. Each of them was also the location of a dairy-farm (vaccary). In this, and in other respects, if smaller in size they may have been modelled on Cistercian granges. They may even have been established on assarted land; the name ‘Riddings’, at least, is suggestive of land clearance.⁵⁷

Bolton’s estates were chiefly situated in Craven, a region which was generally unfavourable to arable production. Apart from the river valleys, much of the land was on high ground, with poor soils and heavy rainfall. Today there is hardly any arable farming to be seen. In the Middle Ages arable farming was a necessity for subsistence. But the only crop which much of Bolton’s farming land would tolerate was oats. At least three quarters of the produce from the demesnes and an even higher proportion from tithes comprised oats – the most inferior crop which when harvested produced only two to three times the seed sown, and even less in bad harvests. (Wheat would usually reproduce itself four- to five-fold. Barley had a similar yield and rye sometimes had a little higher ratio, though both of these crops were grown only in small quantities.) Oats rather than barley were overwhelmingly malted for brewing the large quantities of ale consumed at the priory.⁵⁸ The home farm at Bolton was especially valuable in that it produced the lion’s share of wheat, the best cereal. The corn grown here, and at nearby Halton, was largely consumed at the house, as was the extensive tithe produce from the parishes of Skipton and Kildwick, catering for the needs of a household complement of perhaps around 170 persons (of whom fewer than 20 belonged to the monastic community itself). Relatively little corn was sold, and such amounts were almost always far smaller than those purchased.

The function of the satellite granges differed from that of the home farm itself. The very purpose of the satellites was to support the livestock farming side of the priory’s economy. The corn grown at the small satellites and at manors like Malham or Ingthorpe was to provide food for the priory’s staff who were based on the sites – ploughmen, but also shepherds, cowherds, and other workers involved in the profitable pastoral concerns of the priory. Each of the vaccaries attached to the satellite granges had on average something like a hundred head of cattle – oxen for ploughing and dairy cows whose butter, cheese and milk were consumed at the house. Sheep-farming was the most profitable side of Bolton’s economy. The sheep-flock almost trebled in size in the early-fourteenth century, to nearly 3,500 sheep (before dramatic losses to murrain in the extraordinarily wet years of 1315–17), producing wool which was mainly sold to Italian merchants. In all, 13 bercaries were established, located at Malham (where prime pasture rights abutted those of Fountains Abbey, sometimes giving rise to disputes), on Appletreewick moor, and close to Kildwick, Cononley, Ingthorpe and Halton as well as on the home farm.

In their functions of producing corn for consumption at the priory and supporting sheep- and dairy-farming, the home farm and its satellites had similarities to Cistercian granges, and may well have been modelled on them. They were purely agricultural enterprises in the modern sense. Bolton’s other demesnes lay in or directly adjacent to manorialised villages. Based on estimates from the quantities of corn sown, and the number of ploughs used, Halton had a maximum of around 300 acres of arable, Kildwick 250, Cononley 150, Ingthorpe 80, Malham 60 to 80, Appletreewick 40, Ryther 40, Holmpton an indeterminate number.⁵⁹ It is perhaps better not to look for an average when demesnes range from 800 to 40 acres.

Most of the Bolton demesnes accord with Bishop’s criterion for Augustinian granges that they sometimes lay in open fields, alongside the strips of tenants, and sometimes in severalty (that is, in enclosed or separated units of cultivation). The demesnes at Kildwick and Ingthorpe were entirely or in good measure separate from tenanted land, those at Halton, Malham, Cononley, Appletreewick and Ryther lay alongside tenanted land in open fields, though with a substantial degree of consolidation, certainly at Halton and Cononley. The home farm and its satellites were again different. These were farms in the modern sense, not part of any village fields or community but enclosed holdings without any adjacent tenanted land.⁶⁰

The final criterion in Bishop’s definition of an Augustinian grange was its settlement in villages where the canons had large numbers of tenants who were ‘almost all toftholders’, that is, without any land other than a small-holding and so effectively compelled to serve as the canons’ labour-force on the grange. Using the 1301 lay subsidy, he pointed to a number of villages adjacent to Augustinian granges, notably those of Guisborough Priory in the north-east, with large numbers of toftholding peasants without arable land. ⁶¹ Two qualifications are necessary: the number of tenants paying less than a shilling in the subsidy (Bishop’s criterion of toftholder) varies greatly and seldom anywhere else reaches the level on the Guisborough estates; secondly, some of the manors of Whitby Abbey, also in the north-east but Benedictine, show a similar pattern, meaning that the large number of toftholders was no peculiarity of Augustinian (or other regular) canons.⁶² How far does Bishop’s generalisation apply to Bolton’s granges (or manors)?

As Bishop suggested, the labour force on the lands of the Augustinian canons must, in the absence of lay brothers in any number, have come in good measure from the local small-holding peasantry. A late thirteenth-century rental of Guisborough Priory (the wealthiest Augustinian house in Yorkshire) indicates a good number of toftholders owing boonwork, which was possibly the remnant of earlier more onerous labour services.⁶³

A partial rental of Bolton’s estates of broadly the same date – probably from the 1280s – offers a snapshot of the tenantry in some of the villages held by the priory.⁶⁴ The entry for Embsay (the initial endowment of the priory) begins by stating: ‘The Prior of Boulton holds in Emmes[ay] in bondage 30 tofts, 34 bovates of land and 8 acres of forland’ (presumably assarted land). The reeve held one bovate ‘for his service’, while ‘the other bondmen (bondi) of the village hold 33 bovates with the tofts belonging to them’. Bondmen were not mentioned on any other Bolton manor except Eastby, next to Embsay. The land was in fact not distributed as evenly as this may suggest. The rental price per bovate was quoted as 6 shillings. But of 35 named tenants, only ten paid this or more in rent. Most of the remainder were small-holders, a number of them paying only pence as their annual rent. Several owed ‘8 works’ as part of their rent. Perhaps others did too, without this being mentioned. In most cases, anyway, the labour services had been commuted, since it was noted that ‘the tenants of the aforesaid 33 bovates of land pay each year at the Feast of St. Cuthbert [4 Sept.] 66 shillings for relaxation of works’.⁶⁵

A good number of toftholders also lived in the adjacent village of Eastby. These small-holders presumably supplied labour for the home farm as long as the canons remained at Embsay. But by the late-thirteenth century, the demesne at Embsay was leased out and was no longer directly cultivated by the priory.

The two largest demesnes (leaving aside the home farm) were Kildwick and Halton. In both villages, the demesne land was far greater in extent than the tenanted land, certainly before much demesne was leased in the later Middle Ages. The 1280s rental notes that the demesne at Kildwick comprised three carucates of land – a carucate was conventionally 120 acres,⁶⁶ though in practice the figure varied – and that the prior also held 15 tofts, 9 bovates and 39 acres of land and meadow as lord of the manor of Kildwick. Around half of the listed tenants were small-holders; the remainder had at least one bovate of land. At Halton the prior held ‘the entire manor and village’, amounting to six carucates and 30 tofts. Two carucates and three bovates formed the demesne. Only a few of the tenants appear to have been merely toftholders. The rest had some land alongside their tofts.

On the home farm at Bolton (with Angrum) and the satellites of Riddings, How and Stead there were no tenants at all. Riddings and How were located within the bounds of the manor of Bolton as laid down in the original grant of 1155. Stead lay just across the Wharfe, outside the Bolton boundaries, and had been granted to the canons by a prominent local landholder, Helto Mauleverer, in the 1130s⁶⁷ Shortly after the move to Bolton, Alice de Rumilly (daughter of Cecily) confirmed the possessions of the priory, including the grant of ‘the whole village of Bolton’ (totam villam de Boelton).⁶⁸ However, during the entire time of the priory’s existence there is not a single trace of a village, or inhabitants, of Bolton. In Domesday Book Bolton was in the King’s hand but had formerly been a principal residence of Edwin, son of the Earl of Mercia. The land later passed to Cecily de Rumilly as part of the Honour of Skipton.⁶⁹ Until the grant of the Honour of Skipton to Cecily’s father, Robert de Rumilly, what later became the town of Skipton had been no more than an insignificant village. Before the building of the castle and contemporaneous establishment of the church at Skipton, Bolton was evidently a much more important place.

It was described in the memorandum accompanying Bolton’s foundation charter of Alice de Rumilly as her ‘capital manor’. The name ‘Bolton’ is itself suggestive of a settlement. There were presumably at one time villagers living on the site, and quite possibly a church or chapel.⁷⁰ Unless Bolton had been completely laid waste during the ‘harrying of the North’ – the area around was described as ‘waste’ in Domesday Book, though without further detail – and had not recovered, there was presumably still a settlement of sorts there when the canons arrived. If so, it seems certain that the canons moved the villagers off the land and resettled them – a depopulation practice usually associated with the Cistercians.

Storiths, just across the Wharfe from the priory, would have been an obvious place of resettlement. Even as late as 1473 there were numerous small-holders living there who paid rents for what was commutation of boonworks and some form of carrying or transport services (outgang).⁷¹ The inhabitants of Storiths and other settlements in the vicinity, such as Hazlewood, Beamsley, Deerstone, Berwick, and possibly Halton (though the demesne there would presumably have had first call on the local tenantry), must have provided a main source of seasonal labour at the crucial mowing and reaping seasons.

During the period covered by the Compotus, boonworks – compensated by doles of food and drink, sometimes translated into tiny cash payments instead – were undertaken on demesnes by tenants, especially for reaping though also on occasion for ploughing, harrowing, weeding and mowing. These were no doubt irksome for the tenantry. But the heavy, weekly labour services demanded of peasants in much of central and southern England were not extracted on the Bolton estates and were not widespread in much of northern England.⁷² Perhaps heavier services had initially been demanded from the bondsmen at Embsay. But whatever they had originally comprised, labour services at Embsay and Eastby, which must have been carried out on the priory’s home farm before the move to Bolton, were, as mentioned, by the late-thirteenth century commuted to cash payments. The accounts contain no similar entries for commutation of labour services for the other manors.

In fact, for the most part, work on the priory’s demesnes at peak times in the agricultural year was carried out by paid labour – though, of course, the priory dictated terms since small-holders lacked any bargaining power before the drastic shortage of labour that followed the Black Death. Reapers were paid 2d or 3d a day. How many were involved in seasonal labour such as reaping at any one time cannot be known, since the payment for reaping was entered in the accounts as a total number of ‘man-days’ for men working ‘as if for one day’. Over 1,350 ‘man-days’ were paid each year in the early-fourteenth century on the home farm alone, along with more than 200 customary ‘boon-works’.⁷³ How long the reaping lasted would have been determined in good measure by the weather. Assuming it began no later than the traditional date of Lammas (1 August) and was over by the date of the priory’s big annual feast on the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (15 August), most likely over a hundred men, and probably women too, who traditionally helped out with reaping, would have been seen at work on the home farm each day.⁷⁴

The bulk of the regular work on the demesnes was actually carried out by the priory’s permanent estate staff (totalling over a hundred in the early-fourteenth century) of ploughmen, waggoners, shepherds, herdsmen and others – distinguished in the accounts from household servants and workers employed infra curiam (within the precinct).⁷⁵ They too must have been drawn from the villages and hamlets in the immediate vicinity of the priory and its demesnes. But unlike the seasonal labourers, the regular workers would have lived close to or at the place of their work. The ploughmen on the home farm (usually numbering 16 in the early-fourteenth century) seem to have shared their accommodation with oxen in the ‘Hind House’ (or oxen-house, Bovaria).⁷⁶ Ploughmen and other regular workers on the outlying demesnes, vaccaries and upland bercaries, as the accounts indicate, had accommodation on or close to the relevant site or sometimes had a tenement nearby.

What was an Augustinian grange?

Bishop’s ‘ideal-type’ definition of Augustinian granges does not fully accord with the evidence from the Bolton Priory estates.

There was no close correlation between the site of Bolton’s granges (or manors) and the existence of an appropriated church; the size of arable on the demesnes ranged so widely that there was no meaningful average; and there was no great predominance of landless toftholders in villages adjacent to demesnes. One of Bishop’s criteria was certainly matched on the Bolton estates: the demesnes located in villages could be held both in severalty and among tenanted land in open fields (where attempts were made to consolidate the holdings). But the same could most likely be said for the demesnes of major lay landholders and those of other religious orders.

Most of these demesnes were, in any case, more usually referred to as ‘manors’ rather than ‘granges’. Where the canons did draw a distinction, the granges (the home farm and its satellites) did not fit Bishop’s model at all. There was no connection with a church (other than the monastic church); the size did not match the purported average of around 200 acres; and they were completely held in severalty, with no tenanted land or population on the sites. Seasonal labour must have been provided from nearby villages and hamlets, but there were no heavy labour services, and the demesnes were chiefly served by the priory’s permanent labour force who lived at or near the site of their regular work.

Bolton Priory’s lands were situated in mainly pastoral country, unlike the estates of the large Augustinian houses of Guisborough, Bridlington, Kirkham, Newburgh and Nostell. This would account for some differences. It is also the case that there is only the limited evidence from charters for the early period of Bolton’s existence (as, indeed, for other Yorkshire Augustinian houses), and that the picture of the estate has to be mainly built up from the accounts and rentals of later centuries. Even so, the Bolton evidence does prompt the question of whether there was any definable, specifically Augustinian grange – not least since the canons themselves (as was the case with other houses) seemed to use ‘grange’ and ‘manor’ as interchangeable terms.

The Cistercian grange was in the twelfth century a novel way of organising agricultural production and management from an Order which from its earliest times was strictly regulated. Augustinian Canons, in contrast, followed the brief and fairly vague Rule of St. Augustine, which was ‘slight in volume and general in its terms’.⁷⁷ The Order had no organisational structure until the thirteenth century, when the institution of triennial provincial chapters formalised the association of their houses and provided some general regulations.⁷⁸ Subjected in the main, however, only to episcopal control exercised through periodic visitations, the houses were largely independent.

It befits this loosely structured Order that there was no closely defined grange economy. Augustinian houses operated pragmatically when building and exploiting their estates. Their possessions, both spiritual and temporal, were acquired when opportunity presented itself. Bolton’s estate, resting in the early decades on a slender endowment, was greatly expanded mainly in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Some of the other, more fortunate, Yorkshire Augustinian houses had a relatively rich endowment to start with and were situated in farming terrain more amenable to arable production. But they too extended their lands opportunistically where possibility arose, and were not bound by any such regulations and restrictions as those of the Cistercians.

In Yorkshire, there were most likely borrowings from the Cistercians – including the term ‘grange’ itself. Bolton Priory’s pastoral economy in particular, possibly too its centralised accounting system, may well have been modelled on, or benefited from, the practices of Cistercians. But most Augustinian demesnes were manorial in nature, situated, that is, in villages with some kind of manorial structure, and quite distinct in character from Cistercian-style granges.

The characteristic Cistercian grange is not hard to find. The Augustinian grange, however, is an elusive entity. If the Augustinian canons themselves made little distinction between demesnes which they called ‘manors’ and those which they termed ‘granges’, is it any wonder that the typical ‘Augustinian grange’ is so difficult to define?

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to Professor Edmund King and an anonymous reader for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ian Kershaw

Ian Kershaw until his retirement in 2008 was Professor of Modern History at the University of Sheffield. He had begun his career as a medievalist, completing his D.Phil. at Oxford in 1969 with a study of the unique Bolton Priory account-book (‘The Bolton Compotus’) of 1286–1325. In 1975, after lecturing in medieval history at the University of Manchester for six years, he jumped several centuries in his research interests to work on twentieth-century Germany, since when he has published extensively on German and wider European history.

Notes

1 Thompson, History and Architectural Description of Bolton Priory, 23–4.

2 Dickinson, Origins of the Austin Canons, 153; Robinson, The Geography of Augustinian Settlement, 23–4, gives a total of 251 houses, though this includes (see 55) affiliations to the Augustinian Order (Canons of St. Victor of Paris, St. Nicholas of Arrouaise, canons of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Premonstratensian Canons).

3 Knowles, Religious Orders, 258.

4 Kershaw, Bolton Priory. The Economy of a Northern Monastery, 11–12. Frost, ‘An Edition of the Nostell Priory Cartulary’, vol 1, 122, fn 282, points out that at the Poll Tax of 1381 only a minority of Yorkshire Augustinian houses had any lay-brothers at all; Nostell had none.

5 Robinson, The Geography of Augustinian Settlement, 313, 317. The leases of Bolton property in the sixteenth century had different nomenclature for what had been described as granges in the early-fourteenth century: Hoyle, ‘Monastic Leasing before the Dissolution’, 123–31.

6 Important early studies of Cistercian granges included Waites, ‘The Monastic Grange’; Donkin, ‘The Cistercian Grange’; and Platt, The Monastic Grange. Later research was incorporated in an excellent summary by Janet Burton, The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 216–18, 254–65.

7 Burton, The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 216–17, 254.

8 Burton, The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 255.

9 Rievaulx Abbey had an estimated 140 monks, 240 lay-brothers, and about 260 hired servants in 1167: Powicke (ed.), The Life of Aelred of Rievaulx, 38 note 2.

10 Platt, The Monastic Grange, 84–7, 91–2.

11 Waite, ‘The Monastic Grange’, 629.

12 Platt, The Monastic Grange, 77.

13 Robinson, The Geography of Augustinian Settlement, 176–7, 273.

14 A ‘vill’ was an administrative and assessment unit in Domesday Book (Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 10–17). Though a vill was not invariably co-terminous with a village, sometimes including nearby hamlets, it does not seem misleading in the remainder of this article to use the modern word ‘village’ rather than ‘vill’.

15 Bishop, ‘Monastic Granges in Yorkshire’, 203–4. Waites, ‘The Monastic Grange’, 638–40, 655, also stresses the importance of possession of the church and tithes of a place in influencing the site of a grange.

16 Bishop, ‘The Distribution of Manorial Demesne’, 398.

17 Burton, The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 266.

18 Robinson, The Geography of Augustinian Settlement, 311. Frost, ‘An Edition of the Nostell Priory Cartulary’, vol 1, 134, also found it difficult on the Nostell estates ‘to distinguish a large grange from a demesne manor’.

19 Robinson, The Geography of Augustinian Settlement, 309.

20 See Bishop, ‘The Distribution of Manorial Demesne’, 386–406. Kosminsky, Studies in the Agrarian History of England, 132–7, outlines some of the differences in the manorial structure of northern England.

21 Legg (ed.), The Lost Cartulary of Bolton Priory, 92–5.

22 Kershaw and Smith (ed.), The Bolton Priory Compotus, 13–18.

23 For examples of inconsistent nomenclature, see Kershaw and Smith (ed.), The Bolton Priory Compotus, ‘manerium’ and ‘grangia’: (Kildwick), 87, 111,134–5; (Halton) 171, 173; (home farm at Bolton) 173, 237; ‘mansura’ (Malham, Riddings, Stead, Cononley) 63, 85; ‘manerium’ (Malham, Riddings, Stead, How) 110–11; ‘locus’ (Riddings, Stead) 542. At the time of the Dissolution, Halton (referred to in the Compotus as a ‘manerium’) was called a grange, Kildwick a ‘manor or grange’, both Riddings and How a ‘messuage’ with appurtenances and ‘certain closes’, Stead ‘a tenement with appurtenances’: Kershaw (ed.), Bolton Priory Rentals, 29–31, 43, 52.

24 The mixed terminology was not confined to Bolton’s estates. The demesne of Bridlington Priory at Burton Fleming was in the charge of a ‘Grangiarius’ but referred to as a ‘manerium’ in his account of 1356: Univ. of York, Borthwick Institute for Archives, MS R.H.69A.

25 Bishop, ‘Monastic Granges in Yorkshire’, 193 note 2 states that, although not situated in typical arable country, ‘all [Bolton’s] granges were growing corn’. Bishop drew on Thompson’s translation of the Bolton account of 1298–9 in Thompson, History and Architectural Description of Bolton Priory, 127. In so doing he followed Thompson’s identical mistake. Thompson had not consulted the manuscript of the Compotus but had translated the extracts in Whitaker, The History of Craven, 448–72. Platt, The Monastic Grange, 99 note 2, also followed Thompson’s error, as did Atkinson, ‘The Grange System’ appendix 3, p. 5.

26 Kershaw and Smith (ed.), The Bolton Priory Compotus, 63.

27 Kershaw and Smith (ed.), The Bolton Priory Compotus, 134–8, 152–6, 170–3. Kildwick was mentioned in the accounts of these years as a grange on a single occasion in 1301–2 (p.135), otherwise as a manor.

28 Robinson, The Geography of Augustinian Settlement, 320.

29 Bishop, ‘Monastic Granges in Yorkshire’, 195.

30 The benefactors are examined in Legg, Bolton Priory: its patrons and benefactors, 13–23.

31 A bovate (or ‘oxgang’) was one eighth of a carucate but had no fixed number of acres, often containing around 6–10, but with substantial local variations: Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 395–7.

32 Legg (ed.), The Lost Cartulary of Bolton Priory, 54 (Malham).

33 Legg (ed.), The Lost Cartulary of Bolton Priory, 153 (Cononley).

34 Legg (ed.), The Lost Cartulary of Bolton Priory, 23–32 (Ingthorpe), 11–19, 260–74 (Halton).

35 Legg (ed.), The Lost Cartulary of Bolton Priory, 254; Kershaw, Bolton Priory. 33–4.

36 Legg (ed.), The Lost Cartulary of Bolton Priory, 246-7; Kershaw, Bolton Priory. 87–8.

37 Bishop, ‘Monastic Granges in Yorkshire’, 204–5.

38 Dickinson, Origins of the Austin Canons, 224–41; Thompson, History and Architectural Description of Bolton Priory,16–19; Robinson, 174–6. When canons sometimes served as vicars of appropriated churches in the later Middle Ages, it was probably, as Hamilton Thompson put it, that they were ‘getting past work’ and being ‘turned out to graze in parochial benefices’: Thompson, History and Architectural Description of Bolton Priory,100.

39 Hilton, The Economic Development of some Leicestershire Estates 37–49; Robinson, The Geography of Augustinian Settlement, 232–3, 324.

40 Bishop, ‘Monastic Granges in Yorkshire’, 203–5.

41 Frost, ‘An Edition of the Nostell Priory Cartulary’, vol.1, 150.

42 See Clay (ed.), Early Yorkshire Charters, 1–14; Legg, Bolton Priory: its Patrons and Benefactors, 4–13.

43 Clay (ed.), Early Yorkshire Charters, 53–5; Legg (ed.), The Lost Cartulary of Bolton Priory, xvi, 1,283. Skipton must have been appropriated forthwith, but Carleton was, in fact, only appropriated in the late-thirteenth century: Kershaw, Bolton Priory, 61–2.

44 Clay (ed.), Early Yorkshire Charters, 64–8; Legg (ed.), The Lost Cartulary of Bolton Priory, 6–7; Thompson, History and Architectural Description of Bolton Priory, 50–1; Burton, The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 80–1.

45 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Dodsw. 92, fol.89d. See also Bolton Priory Rentals, 4. The demesne at Embsay was leased out during the entire period of the Compotus. It was again (or still) leased according to the single account of 1377–8 (Kershaw and Smith (ed.), The Bolton Priory Compotus, 553), and at the Dissolution (Kershaw (ed.), Bolton Priory Rentals, 39).

46 Robinson, The Geography of Augustinian Settlement, 62.

47 Clay (ed.), Early Yorkshire Charters, 65; Legg (ed.), The Lost Cartulary of Bolton Priory, 6–7.

48 Clay (ed.), Early Yorkshire Charters, 58–60; Legg (ed.), The Lost Cartulary of Bolton Priory, 2–5.

49 Kershaw, Bolton Priory, 60–1, 64–5.

50 Legg (ed.), The Lost Cartulary of Bolton Priory, 5, 17, 22, 47–51, 78, 275; Thompson, History and Architectural Description of Bolton Priory, 100–3; Kershaw, Bolton Priory, 61–3, 68–70.

51 Burton, The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 255, 274–6, for the first recorded dates of Cistercian granges. Fountains had established two granges in 1135. Otherwise, the granges dated from the following decade at the earliest. Waite, ‘The Monastic Grange’, 629, unconvincingly plays down the part played by the Cistercians in the development of the grange system; his evidence relating to granges of other orders is mainly drawn from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century.

52 Legg (ed.), The Lost Cartulary of Bolton Priory, 22–32.

53 Smith (ed.), West Riding Place Names, 40.

54 This assessment is based on analysis of the concurrence of granges and churches in Lancaster (ed.), Abstracts of the Chartulary of Bridlington Priory; Brown (ed.), Guisborough Chartulary; Purvis (ed.), Healaugh Park Chartulary; Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. Top Yorks, c.73, Drax Chartulary; Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Fairfax, Kirkham Chartulary; Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. Fairfax 9, Warter Chartulary; Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Dodsw.9, Newburgh charters; Lancaster (ed.), Fifteenth-Century Rental of Nostell Priory; Frost, ‘An Edition of the Nostell Priory Cartulary’; Valor Ecclesiasticus, 5; Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, 6; Burton, Monasticon Eboracense.

55 Robinson, The Geography of Augustinian Settlement, 326.

56 Bishop, ‘Monastic Granges in Yorkshire’, 203.

57 Smith (ed.), West Riding Place Names, 63. Bolton’s grange was situated on the higher land of today’s Rack Riddings, not on the site of the current Riddings farm.

58 The exploitation of the demesnes, briefly outlined in the following paragraphs, is extensively explored in Kershaw, Bolton Priory, esp. here chapters 2–3, and household consumption of produce, including ale, at the priory in chapter 5 (esp. pp.146–7 for the large quantities of oats malted for ale).

59 Kershaw, Bolton Priory, 31–4, 44 (for the importance of pastoral farming on the demesnse; see also Kershaw and Smith (ed.). The Bolton Priory Compotus, 14–15).

60 Kershaw, Bolton Priory, 32–3.

61 Bishop, ‘Monastic Granges in Yorkshire’, 204, 206–7.

62 Brown (ed.), Yorkshire Lay Subsidy.

63 Brown (ed.), Guisborough Chartulary, vol.2, xxii–ix, 412–50.

64 Lancashire Record Office, Preston, DDGR-EST. The rental (parts of which are missing) was probably compiled early in the priorate of John of Laund, when Bolton was improving its estate management following strictures from Archbishop Wickwane at a visitation to the priory in 1280 (see Thompson, History and Architectural Description of Bolton Priory, 72). Mention in the rental of the prior holding land in Brandon and Wigdon of the Lady Countess Albemarle (Isabel de Forz), who died in 1293 (Clay (ed.), Early Yorkshire Charters, 22), provides a terminal date for its compilation. Perhaps a sign of how seriously the priory took the need to improve its estate was the acquisition, during the time of the notable prior, John of Laund, when the priory’s finances revenues were expanded and significant property purchases undertaken, of treatises on household and estate management: Oschinsky (ed.), Walter of Henley, 43.

65 In the first full account in the Compotus, for 1287–8, the sum entered for ‘works of Embsay relaxed at the Feast of St. Cuthbert’, was 77 shillings. There were marginal variations in the sum which, in 1310–11, had fallen to 68 shillings (presumably two shillings for each bovate, including now that of the reeve). The additional amount beyond that registered in the rental seems to have come from the commuted labour services of tenants in Eastby, which in 1323–4 were 10 shillings: Kershaw and Smith (ed.), The Bolton Priory Compotus, 36, 286. 524.

66 Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 396.

67 Clay (ed.), Early Yorkshire Charters, 125–7.

68 Clay (ed.), Early Yorkshire Charters, 67; Legg (ed.), The Lost Cartulary of Bolton Priory, 8.

69 Whitaker, The History of Craven, 294–5.

70 Whitaker, The History of Craven, 446. There was still talk, when Whitaker was writing at the end of the 18th century, of the ‘Saxon cure’ at Bolton. According to Speight, Upper Wharfedale, 287, this was even the case around a century later. There is no proof but it seems quite conceivable that there had once been a church or chapel on such a large and important manor. Once the priory was established at Bolton, it is highly likely that its tenants from nearby villages and hamlets worshipped in the nave of the monastic church, since the nearest church on the estate was otherwise at Skipton, about six miles away. Use of the nave of the monastic church for the tenantry was probably the reason for its survival after the Dissolution, when it became a chapel to Skipton.

71 Kershaw (ed.), Bolton Priory Rentals, 2–3. Unfortunately, an entry for Storiths and locality is missing in the fragmentary thirteenth-century rental.

72 Kershaw, Bolton Priory, 47–9. Kosminsky, Studies in the Agrarian History of England, 132, 182–4, indicates the relatively light labour services on estates in northern England. Smith, Land and Politics in the England of Henry VIII, points out the trend on West Riding estates towards commutation of labour services in the later Middle Ages.

73 Kershaw, Bolton Priory, 50; The Bolton Priory Compotus, 146.

74 Homans, English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century, 370–2.

75 Kershaw, Bolton Priory, 52–9. The demesnes, apart from the most distant demesne at Holmpton, in Holderness, formed part of a central accounting system. They were usually run by paid local officials (servientes), though one or two of the larger demesnes were managed by lay brothers.

76 Kershaw, Bolton Priory, 53.

77 Thompson, History and Architectural Description of Bolton Priory, 8; Dickinson, Origins of the Austin Canons, 70–1; Robinson, The Geography of Augustinian Settlement, 7, 9.

78 Thompson, History and Architectural Description of Bolton Priory, 9, 38–41; Salter (ed.)., Chapters of the Augustinian Canons.