Yorkshire Almanac An expedition leaves Fountains Abbey to found Barnoldswick (WR/Lancs), predecessor of Kirkstall Abbey, as told by one of the colonists

19 May 1147: An expedition leaves Fountains Abbey to found Barnoldswick (WR/Lancs), predecessor of Kirkstall Abbey, as told by one of the colonists

E.K. Clark, Ed. 1895. The Foundation of Kirkstall Abbey. Publications of the Thoresby Society, Vol. 4. Leeds: Thoresby Society. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

In the year of the Incarnation of the Lord 1147, a certain man of noble rank, Henry, by name de Lacy, in the territory of York undertook the construction of a monastery of the Cistercian order. He accordingly assigned a spot, and erected a monastery; and there is sent to him a convent of monks under Abbot Alexander. This Alexander was one of our [of Fountains] first fathers, own brother of the Lord Richard, second Abbot of Fountains, who, as has been related, at Clairvaux rested in peace. Among these brethren, I, Serlo, was sent forth, a man now decrepit, as you see, and worn out with old age. The place of our habitation at first was called Bernolfwic (al. Barnolfswet), which we called by a changed name – The Mount of St. Mary. We remained there for several years, suffering many discomforts of cold and hunger, partly because of the inclemency of the air and the ceaseless trouble of rain, partly because, the kingdom being in a turmoil, many a time our possessions were wasted by brigands. The site of our habitation therefore displeased us, and the abbey was reduced to a grange. And through the advice of our patron we migrated to another place, which is now called Kirkstall. In the 15th year of the Foundation of the Monastery of Fountains, on May 19th, we were sent out under the Abbot Alexander, twelve monks and ten lay brethren.

Order the book:

Subscribe to the free daily email:

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

The Latin (Walbran 1863). See the above article for the Latin and English of the early 13th century chronicle of Hugh of Kirkstall. Re the date: the writer comments something to the effect that while one might believe that the Barnoldswick expedition set out on the 19th of May, there is no reason to suppose that the move to Kirkstall took place on the same day.

Something to say? Get in touch

Comment

Something to say? Get in touch

Similar

19 October 1816: Serenaded by the military, decorated barges leave Leeds for Liverpool to celebrate the completion, after almost 50 years, of the canal uniting east and west

23 January 1643: Thomas Fairfax, the Rider of the White Horse, captures Leeds from the Beast with the help of Psalm 68

25 June 1753: The Moravian Brethren of Fulneck, Pudsey, refuse to participate in the toll-bar riots

11 June 1681: A recent grainstorm near Leeds

20 January 1536: Thomas Cromwell’s dissolvers of monasteries, Richard Layton and Thomas Legh, report allegations of whoring and theft by William Thirsk, Abbot of Fountains

20 September 1819: Flags and fasces at a procession from Briggate to Hunslet Moor to protest the Peterloo Massacre

17 December 1688: Mass mobilisation in Leeds on rumours of an imminent Celtic counteroffensive against the Glorious Revolution

15 October 1838: Apologies from “imprisoned” Huddersfield workers are read to the great Chartist rally on Peep Green (Hartshead Moor), accusing middle-class radicals of betrayal

1 January 1151: Monks from Fountains move into the half-finished mud predecessor of Meaux Abbey (East Riding), built for them by Count William the Fat

27 December 1132: The foundation of Fountains Abbey by dissidents from St Mary’s, York, retold by a Victorian antiquary using Cistercian chronicles

Order the book:

Subscribe to the free daily email:

Comment

I don’t understand why, in the full original of this excerpt, Walbran gives the date as 26 December: his version of the MS specifies that it fell on the Feast of John the Evangelist AND the sixth day before the calends of January, both of which are 27 December.

I guess Espec refers to Walter Espec and some incident at the Battle of the Standard.

I haven’t checked out the elm tree story, but recall reading somewhere that, having survived the dissolution which closes the excerpt, an ancient one was felled in the 18th century.

A modern view of Walbran’s source:

Information on its foundation and early history derives mainly from a single record, the Narratio. Today, one pre-Dissolution version is extant, a copy made in the first half of the fifteenth century, probably at the abbey. Research has shown that this copy, and probably earlier versions, transmitted an institutional desire to ‘cistercianize’ the origins of the abbey, achieved through a redactive process of emphasizing some events, omitting others, and by introducing analogies with the origin of Cîteaux itself. Such writing formed part of a general policy promoted around the turn of the twelfth century, designed to counter criticism of the Cistercian movement, and the Fountains model partly emulated the earlier Historia Fundationis of Byland and Jervaulx Abbeys, and the chronicle of its own daughter house, Kirkstall; contemporary models have also been identified at Cistercian houses in Sweden and Denmark.

Making due allowance for the propaganda content of the Narratio, it is nevertheless possible to determine that an incipient monastic establishment was set up at the end of 1132 under the general protection of Archbishop Thurstan of York. The initial community was a group of dissident monks, who were ejected, or departed abruptly, from the Benedictine Abbey of St Mary’s York, without the time or foresight to secure for themselves the patronage of a substantial lay benefactor, which was by then the established procedure for the foundation of a new Cistercian house. In fact, due to its impromptu beginning, the community was not initially Cistercian, and it seems to have endured a precarious existence until autumn 1133, or even possibly 1134, when it was admitted to the Cistercian family.

Cistercian endorsement marked a turning point, after which benefactions began to be received from some of the Yorkshire magnate families, particularly the Mowbrays and the Percys, which permitted the colony to move out of subsistence, and then to grow steadily. By 1136, permanent buildings were being erected on the site and the community had grown to thirty-five monks from the initial group of thirteen.15 A continuing inflow of resources and recruits empowered the community’s spiritual aspirations, so that within a short time an ambitious expansion programme was initiated, and new monasteries were founded. In marked contrast to its own (pre-Cistercian) foundation, the expansion programme shows signs of careful preparation, implementation, and adaptation. From their Yorkshire base, the monastery contributed greatly to the spread of Cistercianism across the country, by establishing no fewer than seven daughter houses across England and three granddaughter houses in the twelve-year period between 1138 and 1150. Each new daughter house was colonized by thirteen monks, so over this period some ninety brethren departed from Fountains; among them were most of the original founders, who went as abbots…. It may be no coincidence that this remarkable expansion took place in the midst of a civil war, when baronial lands were liable to forfeiture and reallocation: in some circumstances, making a grant of lands to a religious house might be seen as a defensive measure.

(Spence 2020)

Something to say? Get in touch