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{{Short description|Medieval English religious houses not under English control}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2019}}
[[File:Pamber_Priory_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1775223.jpg|thumb|[[Pamber Priory]] in [[Hampshire]], an example of an alien priory]]
'''Alien priories''' were religious establishments in [[England]], such as [[monasteries]] and [[convent]]s, which were under the control of another religious house outside England. Usually the [[Motherhouse|mother-house]] was in [[France]].<ref name=Dict10>Coredon ''Dictionary of Medieval Terms'' p. 10</ref>

==History==
Alien priories were small dependencies of foreign religious houses.<ref>McHardy, Alison and Orme, Nicholas. "The Defence of an Alien Priory: Modbury (Devon) in the 1450s", ''The Journal of Ecclesiastical History'', pp. 303-312. Cambridge University Press (1999)</ref> Specifically, this pertained to property situated in England but owned by French religious houses.

The precedent went back at least as far as 912. [[Ælfthryth, Countess of Flanders|Ælfthryth]], daughter of [[Alfred the Great]] married [[Baldwin II, Count of Flanders]]. She received various properties under her father's will, and gave [[Lewisham Priory]] with its dependencies, Greenwich and Woolwich, to the abbey of St Peter at Ghent.<ref>Hunt, William. "Ælfthryth (d.929)", ''Dictionary of National Biography'', Vol.I, Smith, Elder & Co., 1885</ref> [[Edward the Confessor]] gave [[St Mary's Priory Church, Deerhurst|the parish church]] at Deerhurst, and its lands to the monastery of [[Basilica of St Denis|St Denis]].<ref>[http://deerhurstfriends.co.uk/history/ "A Brief History of Deerhurst and its Anglo-Saxon Churches"], The Friends of Deerhurst Church ''deerhurstfriends.co.uk'', accessed 4 February 2021</ref>

The practice increased after the [[Norman Conquest]]. A number of Norman lords had founded monasteries on their lands in France, which in many cases sent monks to England to manage their property. [[William the Conqueror]] gave to the [[Abbey of Saint-Étienne, Caen|Abbey of Saint-Étienne]] in Caen, the manors of Frampton and Bincombe in Dorset.<ref>[http://www.british-history.ac.uk/rchme/dorset/vol1/pp114-117 "Frampton", ''An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Dorset''], Vol. 1, West. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1952. 114-117. British History Online, ''www.british-history.ac.uk''. 24 January 2015, accessed 4 February 2021</ref> During the reign of [[William Rufus]], [[Hamelin de Balun]], founded the Benedictine priory of [[Priory Church of St Mary, Abergavenny|St Mary]], at Abergavenny under the jurisdiction of the [[:fr:Abbaye Saint-Vincent du Mans|Abbey of Saint Vincent]] at Le Mans. The designation "Alien Priory" included any property owned by the French houses, regardless of whether there was an actual priory, or religious house, constructed upon it.

Some priories enjoyed more autonomy than others. A distinction was drawn between those where the prior was appointed and served at the will of the abbot of the motherhouse, and those where the prior was elected by the monks. In the latter case, the land was vested in the priory and could not be sold by the abbot. The priories paid an [[Tribute|apport]], a nominal fixed sum, annually to the mother-house.<ref name=Pearce>[http://monwales.tth7.co.uk/article/8 Pearce, Christopher. "The Cluniacs in Wales", ''Monastic Wales'']''monwales.tth7.co.uk'' {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150128132055/http://monwales.tth7.co.uk/article/8 |date=28 January 2015 }}</ref>

A medieval abbey which held distant estates normally administered them by establishing a small cell or priory of two or three monks to manage a manor or group of manors and send the profits to the mother-house. [[John, King of England|King John]] compelled them to pay into the royal treasury the apport. During the reign of King Henry III (1216-1272), many alien priories were suppressed by [[Simon de Montfort's Parliament]] (the Parliament of Leicester, 1265), and their revenues were taken into the king's hands. The Crown, however, in most cases transferred the property to other monasteries.

In 1294, when King [[Edward I of England]] was at war with France, many of the alien priories were seized,<ref name=Dict10/> numbering about a hundred, and their revenues were used to help pay for the war. In order to prevent the foreign monks in southern coastal areas giving possible help to invaders, he deported many of them to other religious houses that were twenty or more miles from the coast.

King [[Edward II of England]] subsequently followed this example, taking the alien priories into his own hands, but he not infrequently appointed their priors custodians for a consideration, obliging them to pay to the Crown the apport due to their superiors.

When [[Edward III of England|Edward III]] came to the throne, he restored many of the alien priories to their original owners and waived the arrears of payments due to the Crown. But ten years later, when war broke out again with France, he reverted to the policy of his predecessors, and again seized the property of these French aliens. For twenty-three years, these foreign houses remained in his hands; but with the peace of 1361 most of them were restored, only to be again sequestrated eight years later when the war was renewed. In the time of [[Richard II of England|Richard II]], the alien priories continued mostly in the hands of the Crown.

[[File:StogurseyPriory.JPG|thumb|upright=1.4|left|[[Stogursey Priory]] in Somerset. An alien priory dissolved in 1414 and granted to [[Eton College]]]]
After 1378, French monasteries (and alien priories dependent on them) maintained allegiance to the [[Avignon Papacy]]. Their suppression was supported by the rival [[Western Schism|Roman Popes]], conditional on all confiscated monastic property being redirected into other religious uses. The king's officers first sequestrated the assets of the alien priories in 1295–1303 under [[Edward I]], and the pattern repeated for long periods over the course of the 14th century, most particularly in the reign of [[Edward III]].{{citation needed|date= October 2019}}

In 1378, all the monks in alien priories were expelled from England.<ref name=Dict10/> Most finally came to an end under [[Henry V of England|Henry V]] in 1414, with a few exceptions surviving, for example [[Modbury Priory]] in [[Devon]].

Owing to frequent wars between England and France in the late [[Middle Ages]], successive English governments objected to money going overseas to France. They also objected to foreign prelates having jurisdiction over English monasteries.{{citation needed|date=October 2019}}

==15th century==
Alien priories with functioning communities were forced to pay large sums to the king, while mere estates were confiscated and run by royal officers, the proceeds going to the king's pocket. Such estates were a valuable source of income for the Crown in its French wars. Most of the larger alien priories became naturalised (for instance [[Castle Acre Priory]]), on payment of heavy fines and bribes, but for around 90 smaller houses, their fates were sealed when [[Henry V of England|Henry V]] dissolved them by act of Parliament in 1414.{{citation needed|date=October 2019}}

The properties were taken over by the Crown; some were kept, some were given or sold to Henry's supporters, others were assigned to his new monasteries of [[Syon Abbey]] and the Carthusians at [[Sheen Priory]]; others were used for educational purposes. All these suppressions enjoyed papal approval but successive 15th-century popes continued to press for assurances that the confiscated monastic income would revert to religious uses.{{citation needed|date=October 2019}}

The medieval understanding of religious houses as institutions associated monasteries and nunneries with their property: their endowments of land and income, and not their current personnel of monks and nuns. If the property with which a house had been endowed by its founder were to be confiscated or surrendered, then the house ceased to exist, whether its members continued in the religious life or not. The founder and their heirs had a legally enforceable interest in certain aspects of the house; their nomination was required at the election of an abbot or prior, they could claim hospitality within the house when needed, and they could be buried within the house when they died. In addition, though this scarcely ever happened, the endowments of the house would revert to the founder's heirs if the community failed or dissolved. The status of 'founder' was considered in [[Civil law (common law)|civil law]] to be [[real property]], and could consequently be bought and sold, in which case the purchaser would be called the [[patron]]. Like any other real property, in [[intestacy]] and some other circumstances the status of 'founder' would revert to the Crown—a procedure that many houses actively sought, as it might be advantageous in their legal dealings in the King's courts.{{citation needed|date= October 2019}}

The founders of the alien priories had been foreign monasteries refusing allegiance to the English Crown. These property rights were therefore automatically forfeited to the Crown when their English dependencies were dissolved, but their example prompted questions as to what action might be taken should English houses cease to exist. Much would depend on who, at the time the house ended, held the status of founder or patron; as with other such disputes in real property, the standard procedure was to empanel a jury to decide between disputing claimants. In practice, the Crown claimed the status of 'founder' in all such cases that occurred. Consequently, when a monastic community failed (e.g., through the death of most of its members, or through insolvency), the bishop would seek to obtain papal approval for alternative use of the house's endowments in [[canon law]]. This, with royal agreement claiming 'foundership', would be presented to an 'empanelled jury' for consent to use of the property of the house in civil law.{{citation needed|date=October 2019}}

The royal transfer of alien monastic estates to educational foundations inspired bishops and, as the 15th century waned, this practice was common. The subjects of these dissolutions were usually small, poor, and indebted [[Benedictine]] or [[Augustinians|Augustinian]] communities (especially those of women) with few powerful friends; the great abbeys and orders exempt from diocesan supervision such as the [[Cistercians]] were unaffected.{{citation needed|date=October 2019}}

[[File:Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge - geograph.org.uk - 168873.jpg|thumb|upright=1.55|[[St Radegund's Priory, Cambridge]]; dissolved in 1496 and converted into [[Jesus College, Cambridge]]]]
The resources were transferred often to [[Oxford University]] and [[Cambridge University]] colleges: instances of this include [[John Alcock (bishop)|John Alcock]], [[Bishop of Ely]] dissolving the Benedictine [[St Radegund's Priory, Cambridge]] to found [[Jesus College, Cambridge]] (1496), and [[William Waynflete]], [[Bishop of Winchester]] acquiring [[Selborne Priory]] in Hampshire in 1484 for [[Magdalen College, Oxford]].[[File:Wall of the ruins, st marys abbey York 8714.jpg|thumb|upright=1.4|left|A portion of the ruins of [[St Mary's Abbey, York]], founded in 1155 and destroyed {{circa|1539}}]]

Abolitions often faced strong resistance in practice. Members of religious houses proposed for dissolution might resist relocation; the houses invited to receive them might refuse to co-operate; and local notables might resist the disruption in their networks of influence. Reforming bishops found they faced opposition when urging the heads of religious houses to enforce their monastic rules, especially those requiring monks and nuns to remain within their cloisters. Monks and nuns in almost all late medieval English religious communities, although theoretically living in religious poverty, were paid an annual cash wage ({{lang|la|peculium}}) and received other regular cash rewards and [[pittance]]s, which softened [[Cloister|claustral]] rules for those who disliked them. Religious superiors met their bishops' pressure with the response that the cloistered ideal was only acceptable to a tiny minority of regular clergy, and that any attempt to enforce their order's stricter rules could be overturned in counter-actions in the secular courts, if aggrieved monks and nuns obtained a writ of [[praemunire]].{{citation needed|date=October 2019}}

==16th century==

By the time Henry VIII turned to monastery reform, royal action to suppress religious houses had a history of more than 200 years; his innovation was in scale. The first case was that of the so-called '[[Alien priory|alien priories]]'. As a result of the [[Norman Conquest]] of 1066, some French religious orders held substantial property through their daughter monasteries in England.

Some of these were [[Monastic grange|granges]], agricultural estates with a single foreign monk in residence to supervise; others were rich foundations in their own right (e.g., [[Lewes Priory]] was a daughter of [[Cluny Abbey|Cluny]] and answered to the abbot of the French house).

In the following century, [[Lady Margaret Beaufort]] obtained the property of [[Creake Abbey]] (whose religious had all died of [[sweating sickness]] in 1506) to fund her works at Oxford and Cambridge. She was advised in this action by the staunch traditionalist [[John Fisher]], [[Bishop of Rochester]].{{citation needed|date=October 2019}}

In 1522, Fisher himself dissolved the women's monasteries of [[Bromhall Priory|Bromhall]] and [[Higham, Kent|Higham]] to aid [[St John's College, Cambridge]]. That same year, Cardinal Wolsey dissolved [[St Frideswide's Priory]] (now [[Oxford Cathedral]]) to form the basis of his [[Christ Church, Oxford]]; in 1524, he secured a [[papal bull]] to dissolve 20 other monasteries to provide an endowment for his new college. The remaining friars, monks and nuns were absorbed into other houses of their respective orders. Juries found the property of the houses to have reverted to the Crown as founder.{{citation needed|date=October 2019}}

==See also==
* [[Valor Ecclesiasticus]]
* [[Suppression of Religious Houses Act 1535]]
* [[Suppression of Religious Houses Act 1539]]
* [[Dissolution of the Monasteries]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Sources==
* {{cite book |title= A Dictionary of Medieval Terms & Phrases |last=Coredon |first= Christopher |year= 2007 |edition= Reprint|publisher=D. S. Brewer |location=Woodbridge |isbn=978-1-84384-138-8 }}
* {{DNB Cite|wstitle=Ælfthryth (d.929)}}

==External links==
*[https://books.google.com/books?id=WXpPAAAAcAAJ&dq=alien+priory&pg=PA1840 ''Monasticon Anglicanum'']
[[Category:Roman Catholic monasteries in England|*]]
[[Category:Alien priories in England| ]]

Alien priory - Revision history

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