Lapley Priory
Lapley Priory was a priory in Staffordshire, England. Founded at the very end of the Anglo-Saxon period, it was an alien priory, a satellite house of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Remi or Saint-Rémy at Reims in Northern France. After great fluctuations in fortune, resulting from changing relations between the rulers of England and France, it was finally dissolved in 1415 and its assets transferred to the collegiate church at Trong.
Origins
The origins of the priory lie in grants made in period just before the Norman Conquest. The foundation narrative is told in substantially identical form in several sources and accepted in the Victoria County History account of the priory.In 1061, Burchard, the son of Ælfgar, Earl of Mercia, accompanied Ealdred, Archbishop of York, on a diplomatic mission overseas. Presumably, this was on Ealdred's journey of that year to get his appointment to the archbishopric confirmed by the Pope, although he still held the see of Worcester in Mercia. The Shropshire historian Robert William Eyton also alleges the visit was at least partly intended to substitute for one promised by the king, Edward the Confessor, himself. They stayed at the great cathedral city and monastic centre of Reims, named after St Remigius, apostle of the Franks, who is buried there in a large Romanesque Basilica. Burchard fell mortally ill and requested burial in the Benedictine Abbey, in return for a donation of land on his behalf. To fulfil his son's desire, and to benefit his soul, Ælfgar gave to St. Rémy five pieces of land: at Lapley, Hamstall Ridware, Meaford, and Marston in Church Eaton, all in Staffordshire, and at Silvington in Shropshire. Eyton pointed out that there were doubts about precisely when Earl Ælfgar died, with some dating his death as early as 1059, but that later scholarship has tended towards 1063, which is consistent with Lapley's foundation story.
The abbey of St. Rémy at Reims preserved a Latin charter purporting to be Ælfgar's grant of Lapley itself.
The specific purpose of the grant was held to be the funding of two chaplains who were to celebrate Mass daily in the abbey of St. Rémy – a purpose acknowledged when the priory was dissolved.
So the abbey of St. Rémy at Reims already held these lands in the reign of Edward the Confessor, before William the Conqueror arrived, a fact that was recorded clearly in Domesday Book in 1086.
It is unclear when the Abbey decided to go further and establish a house to exploit its estates in Staffordshire and Shropshire. It is possible that there was a distinct priory at Lapley, with accommodation for communal life and a prior as head, early in the 12th century. However it is impossible to be certain that Lapley priory was in operation before Peter Cellensis was abbot of St. Rémy, between the years 1162 and 1181. Peter referred to the brothers at Lapley in a letter to the prior of Worcester Priory and there is an extant letter from Peter to the prior of Lapley.
Estates and finances
The greater part of St. Rémy's estates were already in its hands by 1086, when the Domesday Book, for reasons unknown, included the Lapley and Marston estates under Northamptonshire, although acknowledging that they were in Cuttlestone Hundred, which is part of Staffordshire. Domesday records that:This is clear recognition of Ælfgar's donation, but gives no clue about a priory. However, at Marston it says "Two of St. Rémy's men hold 1 hide. Land for 1 plough. Value 5s." So it seems that there was already a small delegation of monks from the abbey present in Staffordshire in 1086.
The land at Silvington was listed by Domesday, correctly, under Shropshire. It was a manor of a single hide, with land for two ploughs, and worth 10s. 8. The lands at Meaford and Hamstall Ridware were recorded under Staffordshire, with confirmation that they were donated by Earl Ælfgar. The Meaford estate was only half a hide but had four villein families and three bordars. The estate at Hamstall Ridware was even smaller, at a single virgate: it was held from the church by Godric and had two villeins and a mill.
Henry I confirmed St. Rémy's hide at Marston and its lands in Shropshire. He also exempted the abbey's monks from the requirement to attend hundred and shire courts. Another charter of this reign gives the name of a monk. Godric or Godwin, perhaps an early prior, went to petition the king at Tamworth because Robert, a royal chaplain, had laid claim to the church at Lapley. The king's response reads:
It seems that the church at Lapley had earlier belonged to the collegiate church at Penkridge and it is possible that Robert was a canon of Penkridge who had revived its historic claim. Henry found on the Abbey's behalf, but clearly the monks were concerned that further challenges might occur, and they appealed to the Pope to confirm their titles to land and property, which Pope Alexander III apparently did. The papal confirmation omitted the Meaford estate but there is no doubt that St. Rémy continued to hold it, as was recognised by the nearby Stone Priory and reaffirmed in 1367 when the tenant was sued after defaulting on his rent.
A right established by Godric's appeal to Henry I was that of advowson, the right to nominate a priest, to the church at Lapley. This could be profitable, as incumbents generally paid to be installed, although this strictly forbidden as the sin of simony. The drawback was that the secular world, including the local ecclesiastical authorities, increasingly expected patrons of parishes to make sure they were well-supported and well-run. In 1266, the bishop made a visitation, found the vicarage poorly-financed and forced the priory to make a better provision for it. However the priory's advowson and appropriation of the church and of the dependent chapel at Wheaton Aston was recognised explicitly in April 1319 by Bishop Walter Langton, after a canonical visitation.
While Lapley and Marston continued to be managed by the monks themselves, with lay assistance, the more distant estates were leased out. Hamstall Ridware gave the priors considerable trouble, as they became involved in the disputes of the family who held it. In 1242, for example, the death of Walter of Ridware led to disputes about his wife, Matilda's, dower and the prior was called to appear in court as a witness. It transpired that he had allowed the lord of the manor, Henry Mauvesyn, to take the disputed land into wardship. This turned out to be a serious mistake, as Matilda's claim was allowed, and the prior was forced to compensate Henry. Ridware was held by serjeanty - an arrangement by which the lessee had to perform certain services for his lord. In this case the tenant was expected to act as marshal at the priory over the Christmas period, from Christmas Eve to Saint Stephen's Day and to leave 5s. 4d. when he left after breakfast on 27 December. This was established around 1286,when the tenant Thomas, apparently disdaining such a humble service, claimed unsuccessfully that his father Walter had actually been seneschal of the priory lands and he had a socage, not serjeanty, tenure.
Silvington was let during the time of Abbot Azmar or Azenarius to a cleric named Aluric under an unusual lease. Aluric paid 40 shillings as a lump sum for the entire lease, with no annual rent. His wife, Edith, and their children were to render homage to St. Rémy sicut liberi homines, as free people, not villeins. The abbey apparently took for granted that a cleric would be married. If Alured were to die first, Edith would pay the monks 20 shillings: if he survived his wife, he would have to surrender a third of the goods on his vill on her death. By the mid-13th century Silvington was in the hands of the Beysyns, a wealthy landowning family. As he was a tenant-in-chief an inquisition post mortem was held on Adam de Beysin, under a writ dated 4 May 1261. This showed that, among his minor estates, he was paying 24 shillings annually to St. Rémy for Silvington. A further inquisition in 1263, on the succession of his son Robert, shows that he also held the Edgeland estate, part of Lapley manor, for four shillings. In 1338, after the agrarian crisis and famine, an inquisition showed that Thomas de Beysyn had been rendering a service of only half a mark for Silvington, although he was enjoying revenues totalling five marks from his own tenants on the manor. A fine of lands of 1347 shows that by that time it had passed into the hands of Richard and Agnes Haukiston.
In 1332 the Abbey requested an inspeximus to ensure its holdings were on record. A selection of confirmations by Henry I and Stephen, King of England was vetted and confirmed. This was just before Lapley Priory ran into serious internal difficulties and a series of confiscations that were to threaten its existence.
The priory was liable to pay certain taxes and dues on its temporal possessions. The prior was assessed to pay 3 marks toward King John's tallage of 1199, compared with 20 marks for Burton Abbey. The two are tabulated together and the contribution of these churches is termed a donum, an attempt to extend the tax base to ecclesiastical institutions without appearing to make them subject to secular taxation. However, in 1200-1 the prior was recorded as having paid 30 shillings, with ten still owing. Only a year later did he make a final payment. For Henry III's aid of 1235–6, the prior was assessed at four marks and for that of 1242–3 at 40 shillings.
The revenues seem never to have been large. In theory, the priory was supposed to remit a considerable sum each year to Reims. In 1367 it did manage to send a bond for 120 marks, a remarkable sum in the troubled circumstances then prevailing: although in a time of peace, the monastery had been much impoverished by its vicissitudes in the Hundred Years' War and the Black Death had devastated the region. However, the priory generally struggled financially, mainly because, as an "alien house", a monastery belonging to an abbey in a foreign country, it was constantly subject to seizures, impositions and pressure in time of war or international tension. In 1379 the annual value of all the estates from demesne cultivation, rents and dues was given as £26 17s. 8d.