Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

It may please your mastership to be advertised, that here in Yorkshire we find great corruption amongst persons religious, even like as we did in the south, tam in capite quam in membris [both in head and members], and worse if worse may be in kinds of knavery, as, retrahere membrum virile in ipso punctu seminis emittendi, ne inde fieret prolis generatio [withdrawing the male member at the very point of emission of the seed, lest the generation of offspring should take place therefrom], and nuns to take potations ad prolem conceptum opprimendum [to suppress the child conceived], with such other kinds of offences lamentable to hear.

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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.

Abbreviations:

• ER: East Riding
• GM: Greater Manchester
• NR: North Riding
• NY: North Yorkshire
• SY: South Yorkshire
• WR: West Riding
• WY: West Yorkshire

Comment

Comment

“Poor priest” is “poire preste” in the original, “nimble pear” in French. This turns up several times here, but I think not elsewhere: a bilingual punning in-joke between Cromwell and his employees? The pun on member is common.

I’m guessing most of the claims were formulaic fabrication, so the whole thing may have been treated as something of a joke – except by those on the receiving end. But what goes around, comes around: if the dissolution of the monasteries was justified by lies, their founders often also sold a lie – see e.g. Noel Menuge on the use by entrepreneurial monks of a desolation myth to gain cheap control over valuable land (Menuge 2000).

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Original

It may please your mastership to be advertised, that here in Yorkshire we find great corruption amongst persons religious, even like as we did in the south, tam in capite quam in membris, and worse if worse may be in kinds of knavery, as, retrahere membrum virile in ipso punctu seminis emittendi, ne inde fieret prolis generatio, and nuns to take potations ad prolem conceptum opprimendum, with such other kinds of offences lamentable to hear.

This day, we begin with Saint Mary’s Abbey, whereas we suppose to find much evil disposition both in the abbot and the convent, whereof, God willing, I shall certify you in my next letters. The dean of York was never fully concluded with the treasurer here for the deanery. The dean would not resign unto him, unless he would leave him other possessions; for pension he would none have, fearing such like debatement thereof as was of pensions in the last Parliament. To have taken the treasureship for the lieu of a pension he was once content, whereunto the treasurer would not agree, unless he might have had his prebend also with his deanery, which the dean would not, and so they broke; the treasurer would have had the dean to have written unto you of such towardness in the premises at such time as the treasurer came up last to London, which the dean then refused to do, bycause thereof he persuade no great towardness of any conclusion.

This is the dean’s tale to me, and this I find true; wherefore I shall desire your mastership to continue your good mind towards me, and in the mean time ye shall be fast assured of my faithful service in all such affairs as ye commit unto me, and for no corruption or lucre from my loyalty to swerve in doing my prince’s commandment for your discharge, which hath put your trust and affiance unto me. From Yorke 13 January, by your assured poor priest.

343 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Abortifacient (2) ·
• Abortion (4) ·
• Anti-clericalism (7) ·
• Birth control (2) ·
• Catholic Church (57) ·
• Coitus interruptus (1) ·
• Cromwell, Thomas (by 1485-1540) (4), advocate of the English Reformation, chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1534 until his beheading ·
• Dissolution of the monasteries (9), the set of administrative and legal processes 1536-41 by which Henry VIII disbanded Catholic monasteries, priories, convents, and friaries, seized their wealth, disposed of their assets, and provided for their former personnel and functions ·
• English Reformation (12) ·
• Henry VIII (1491-1547) (16), ruled 1509 until his death, initiator of the English Reformation, separating the Church of England from papal authority and introducing the theory of the divine right of kings, dissolved convents and monasteries, invested heavily in the navy ·
• Layton, Richard (1500?–1544) (2), churchman, jurist and diplomat, dean of York and a principal agent of Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell in the Dissolution of the Monasteries ·
• Medieval contraception (1) ·
• Sexual intercourse (6) ·
• St Mary’s Abbey, York (5) ·
• 📌York (164) ·

All tags.

Similar

• 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
• 29 August 1570: On arriving in Yorkshire, Archbishop Grindal declares war on bloody-minded folk-Catholicism
• 25 October 1536: God stands between Henry VIII’s army at Doncaster and a superior force of Catholic rebels from the Pilgrimage of Grace, according to a Tudor chronicler
• 11 February 1448: Henry VI liberates York from Yorkshire
• 21 September 1549: The leaders of the Seamer Rebellion – egalitarian, republican and Catholic – against the Edwardian Reformation are hanged at York
• 23 March 1743: His monstrous penis today having terminated its earthly mission, Lancelot Blackburne, (absentee) Archbishop of York, bids his ladies farewell
• 27 December 1132: The foundation of Fountains Abbey by dissidents from St Mary’s, York, retold by a Victorian antiquary using Cistercian chronicles
• 2 August 1680: William Dolben, perhaps reluctantly, condemns Thomas Thwing to death at York for his part, without co-conspirators, in a fictitious conspiracy – the Popish Plot
• 15 November 1444: A survey of the boundaries of York
• 14 March 1573: Archbishop Grindal intercedes on behalf of the commoners of Sutton-on-the-Forest (north of York) against enclosure of part of the royal Forest of Galtres