Sir John de Sutton
The College of St James founded
The Black Death - Dedication of Sutton church
After-effects of Black Death - Troubles at Meaux
The Cellarer family - Drowning of Ravenserodd
Thomas Burton, author of The Chronicles
Changes in the Cistercian Order

Our Sutton villager was justly confident about the immediate future of Meaux. Perhaps the most important characteristic of the Middle Ages is that all western Europe had one common religion under the popes at Rome. After Sir John de Sutton the Younger returned victorious from the siege of Calais in 1346,¹ he granted the advowson, or right of nominating the priest, of Sutton chapel to his uncle, Thomas Sampson, Archdeacon of Cleveland and a Canon, and rector of Sutton. In accordance with the trend then in vogue, it was agreed to establish a church with a small college of priests consisting of the warden, Thomas Sampson, and five chaplains. The king duly issued a licence, and in November 1347 the Archbishop decreed that the new foundation could go ahead.

The building began apace, John de Sutton being responsible for the nave, and Thomas Sampson, or his college, the chancel. Bricks, recently introduced, were used particularly in the nave and its massive piers, but quantities of stone also had to be transported, probably by the new Antholme dike.²

A 'large and spacious' rectory house for the habitation of warden and chaplains was also erected, probably to the east of the church, with hall, chambers, kitchen, stables, and granges, all enclosed with a ditch. The villagers must have looked on with great interest at this impressive church, living as they did in simple cottages of wood, or wattle and daub structure, clustered round the village centre, and still surrounded by low-lying marshy ground.

But before the consecration of Sutton church could take place, tragedy was to strike. A few days before Easter 1349, an earthquake shook this quiet corner of Holderness.  Monks at Meaux, prayerfully at service, were suddenly thrown from their stalls just as they had reached the second verse of Psalm 60 - 'Thou hast made the earth to tremble; Thou hast broken it.'  Their medieval minds, superstitious as they were, dreaded lest the occurrence should be an ill omen. Sure enough, a few months later, in August, the scourge of the Black Death was raging here. In that month alone, 22 monks and six lay brothers perished, and when the plague had run its course, only ten monks survived.³

Possibly the monks' ministry to the sufferers rendered them even more vulnerable to disease than most. Abbot Hugh lay dead, buried near his own crucifix in the choir of the converts. The prior, cellarer, bursar - all were dead, wiped out before they could pass on knowledge of the affairs and possessions of the convent.  The monastery property was in complete confusion, most tenants were dead, rents were not paid, crops lay rotten on the ground, and stock had perished.  There was no one to gather in the harvest or care for the animals, and no one to begin the autumn ploughing.⁴

No longer did the great bell ring out over the fields. No mass or prayer was said for three months. (The abbey was later fined 40 pence for this breach of regulations). No spirit of comradeship prevailed, for all were fearful of gathering together.  It is now reckoned that nearly one half of the population of England perished in those two years, leaving just over one million inhabitants.⁵

Amidst this woe, the dedication of the collegiate church of St James in Sutton went ahead on Saturday 12 September, 1349. Rejoicing must have indeed mingled with sorrow, for all families must have been mourning loved ones. Nevertheless, crowds came from far and wide to witness the splendid new church, including John de Sutton himself, though not Thomas Sampson, who had died in July. Villagers such as John and Peter Dowson, William Spencer and son Peter, John Fyssher, Robert Stevenson .... all 'talked about the event as long as they lived.'⁶ For many years afterwards the dedication was marked by the presence of a banner, with a little bell attached, hung from a belfry window.  Villagers took a day's holiday.

The early years of Sutton church were typified by walls and piers of uncovered brick; the earth floor would be strewn with rushes, as in the former chapel. Parishioners would still stand or kneel during the Latin services. The east window, then of seven lights,⁷ consistent with the Decorated style of architecture, contained stained glass bearing the arms of the Suttons. Crosses and inscriptions were painted on the walls. A screen separated nave and chancel (part of the present screen at the entrance to the baptistry was re-constructed from a fine, Perpendicular screen of c.1450, shown here if you pass your mouse over the image).

The font was relocated from the early chapel, and probably, too, the piscina (drain for washing sacred vessels in the Mass) now in the south aisle. There would have been an altar here, and a corresponding one in the north aisle, where an aumbry or cupboard can be seen in the wall.

In the centre of the chancel stood the freestone monument of the founder and lord of the manor, Sir John de Sutton, born c.1309, (Blashill) or possibly 1319 (Frost). The effigy probably depicts the suit of armour he wore at the Battle of Crécy in 1346.⁸ Peter and John Dowson later averred that they were present when Sir John was 'publicly buried in the quire' in May 1357. The manor passed to his brother, Thomas, his son having pre-deceased him. John left to his wife, Alice, a large acreage and his castle of Branceholme.⁹

A fort had been established here before 1200, and it is recorded that Sir John was fined in 1353 for fortifying his castle on this mound.

The Effigy of Sir John de Sutton in Sutton Church

Whether the Black Death halted the completion of the church because of shortage of labour, so prevalent at the time, or whether the tower naturally became a later addition, is not recorded; but the west end of the church, with engaged tower, appears to have been constructed c1400. The doorway and piers are in Perpendicular style, as is the great west window. Less exuberant, classical lines now took the place of the free-flowing tracery of the Decorated period.

The Plague caused many changes. So many deaths meant fewer villeins to till the fields, and the monks at Meaux, formerly the biggest landowners in the area, now sorely depleted in number themselves, suffered in consequence. All the lay brothers perished.  The monks, who had always been conscious of their own superiority, had to hire paid labourers instead.  But labour was scarce, and the peasants knew it, demanding high wages.  In 1351 the Statute of Labourers was passed in Parliament, making it a crime punishable by branding with a hot iron for any labourer to ask or receive more than threepence a day¹¹ - a kind of reversal of today's Minimum Wage. The monks of Meaux were soon caught up in their own wrangles.

Out of the ten monks remaining after 1349, it must have been difficult to find an able abbot. William de Dringhoe was elected, but he was soon accused of 'concealing a thief', one Richard, cellarer of Waghen. The latter had stolen a horse, which he had passed on to the abbot. Richard was, of course, a bondman, or villein, but he was very resourceful, and his and his cousins' determination to escape from thraldom shows enormous strength of character. He managed a grange and the lay brethren at Waghen, and when in trouble, was very elusive.

For 'receiving', the abbot was imprisoned in York Castle, and there conjured up more mischief, 'being a crafty man'.¹² He planned to rob the abbey, and when released, began to put his ideas into action - but was eventually deposed in 1353.

The next abbot was also charged with theft, but the abbey appears to have been rather generous with its miscreants, for when he resigned under pressure in 1356, John de Ryslay was granted a double portion of food, a servant and a horse.  However, he died, evidently, impenitens.¹³

During this troubled time, Richard Cellarer and his cousins John and Thomas, decided to make a stand against the abbey and maintain that they were not villeins of Meaux at all, but of the king.¹⁴ Possibly motivated by some hostility towards the abbey, the Cellarers drummed up a great deal of support; they were taken prisoners by the monks, but Richard - again - managed to escape.¹⁵ After some years of wrangling, the Cellarers lost their case in 1361 - but their resolute stand against the injustices of the system must have gone some way to weaken the power of the abbey lords.

At about this time, the ever-energetic Humber swept over the monks' holding at Ravenserodd again. This was a lively little fishing town in the parish of Easington.  This time it was utterly destroyed. It appears to have been built on a peninsula connected to the mainland by a causeway formed of sand and boulders.¹⁶  According to the monks, the hand of God was again in evidence; the 'predatory habits of its inhabitants'¹⁷ had provoked divine anger.

This religious, yet superstitious, community believed that God smiled upon them on another occasion. Between 1367 and 1372, a tailor who was working at the abbey was awakened by the sound of thunder. Catching sight of a fire on the roof of the church, he roused the monks (with some difficulty, so the Chronicler writes). The band of intrepid men eventually put out the fire. On reflection, the monks were astounded that they had trodden safely on a ceiling which was not normally strong enough for a child of seven years, and, moreover, they had carried large vessels full of water, which usually they would be unable to lift, even when empty.¹⁸

It is indeed fortunate that, having lost physical trace of the abbey, we do have records of its first 250 years - thanks to the literary skills of the nineteenth abbot, Thomas de Burton. He was born about 1365, possibly in Burton Pidsea, and entered Meaux Abbey as a young man. The Cistercians were not in favour of too much learning - the lay brothers were mostly unlettered, as has been stated - but Thomas Burton was described by a later monk as 'bene literatus', and he was chosen to study theology at the University of Oxford, founded, incidentally, very soon after Meaux. He was granted an annual sum of £15 for personal expenses, plus £15 for books and college charges. The Cistercian scholar was strictly forbidden any 'dalliance' or involvement in politics at University, so presumably Thomas returned to Meaux 'unscathed'!

In 1393 Burton was made bursar and secretary to the abbot. The appointment met with some opposition within the convent, but not nearly as much as when he was elected abbot in 1396, following bitter dissension. The monks who most opposed him hatched a plot to drive him from office. Fortunately, the plan came to the ears of Robert Burley, abbot of Fountains, and a friend of Burton. He at once despatched a strong body of armed men to guard Meaux. When the rebellious monks and their supporters appeared at the great gate, Burley's archers, standing on the precinct wall, threatened to shoot anyone who so much as touched the gate handle.The opposition departed in haste, and the two monks who had dissented most violently were left to 'skulk about the country in secular dress,'¹⁹ not daring to approach Meaux for fear of the abbot's anger.

Eventually, a compromise was reached, and Abbot Burton was chosen to represent all the Cistercian monasteries in northern England at a general chapter of the Order in Vienna. Further, when the delegates assembled, one of the four principal abbots was found to be absent. Thomas Burton was singled out to stand in for him - a tremendous honour for the abbot of a house from remote Yorkshire, and definitely the most illustrious incident in the social history of the abbey.

On his return, however, more domestic strife ensued, and Burton resigned in 1399. A pile of stone slabs in St Peter's Church, Wawne, purport to be the remains of the monumental effigy of Thomas Burton.The figure holds a broken crozier, to indicate his retirement from office of abbot before his death.

Effigy of Thomas Burton, Wawne Church, after Poulson

More than 40 years later a monk wrote that the best thing Burton ever did was to resign - but this, of course, is vastly undervaluing the enormous resource that Burton left, in respect of his Chronicles of Meaux from 1151 to 1396, ending on the eve of his own election as abbot. He spent the last decades of his life hunting up old rent rolls, tenancy lists, estate documents, charters, etc, and set down an account of the affairs of the monastery. He wrote of the abbots and their skills; of their mistakes, and worst of all, of those who actually sold land. He described the many lawsuits of the monks over land tenure or fishing rights. He drew up a balance sheet of each abbacy, noting acreage, livestock and so on.

Only occasionally does Thomas Burton stray from the business management, to allow the reader a glimpse of everyday life. One such story refers to a lay brother who managed the grange at Croo, near Cranswick. He had long been annoyed by the raucous sound of crows nesting in a small wood nearby. He asked Abbot Michael if he could get rid of the crows. Permission granted, the brother went home and cut down every tree on the estate.The abbot was furious - especially when he found out that all the timber had been sold and the proceeds drunk.

Thomas Burton died in 1437, blind in his later years, but leaving an invaluable record of monastic life in the Middle Ages, and of the monks' relationships with their neighbours. By the time he died, the way of life of his colleagues bore little resemblance to that of the founder and his little band of followers who slept on straw, lived in primitive conditions, prayed through most of the night and laboured silently nearly all day. At first, the life of the Cistercians was a protest against luxury of any kind. In the abbey church, no tower or bell, nor stained glass window was permitted. A simple linen cloth, quite plain, covered the altar, and above it stood a single iron candlestick and a crucifix of painted wood. The monks ate one meal a day, abstaining from meat and fish, and also eggs, butter, milk and cheese except on high festivals. Their only food was coarse bread and vegetables.

The Cistercian monk of 1400 would have been appalled to think of living the primitive life of Adam and the first monks. These were men of affairs, sophisticated and prosperous. They had parishes to run, farms to manage, property to maintain, rents to collect, accounts to keep, Abbey and manor courts to hold, litigation to pursue.²⁰ They now owned or leased more than 20,000 acres, with a magnificent church, spacious cloisters, a beautiful chapter-house, library, infirmary, bakehouse and brewery, and many stables. A guest house provided good accommodation for visitors. The abbot had his own house and servants. A regular visitor to dinner was the barber from Beverley. He came every fortnight to shave the monks and for 'blood-letting as required'.  This was a common remedy for fever; toothache; 'affections of the brain, the eyes, the throat, the spleen, the liver, and pains in divers parts of the body'²¹ - in short, a medieval cure-all.  The menu on these occasions would undoubtedly have reflected high quality cuisine - meat, perhaps venison, and fish, cheese and eggs, vegetables and herbs, home-made bread, all washed down with home-brewed ale.

The most eminent in the list of servants in 1393 was the abbot's squire, whose salary was twenty shillings a year with several 'perks'. The abbot had his own chamberlain, page, cook, groom, stable-boy and gardener.  There were also a forester, a slater, a tailor, a baker, a brewer, two faggot-makers who supplied 20,000 faggots a year for the brewery and bakehouse, a keeper of pigs and a blind man who worked in the dairy at Felsa (north of Meaux). Dogs appear next on the list, and last of all was noted the washerwoman of clothes, sheets and towels.

No wonder that Chaucer, beginning his Canterbury Tales in 1388, took such delight in his descriptions of the motley band of pilgrims on their way to that religious shrine.

. . . next                   

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CHAPTERS

Chapter 1 ~ Chapter 2 ~ Chapter 3 ~ Chapter 4

Chapter 5 ~ Chapter 6 ~ Chapter 7 ~ Chapter 8

Chapter 9 ~ Chapter 10 ~ Chapter 11 ~ Chapter 12

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Notes

1     Blashill, p.89

2     Ibid, p.93

3     Poulson: History & Antiquities, p.301

4     Revd A Earle: Essays upon the History of Meaux Abbey

5     BBC 'That's History - the Black Death'

6     Blashill, p.97

7     Sheahan & Whellan: p.379

8     Blashill, p.88

9      Poulson suggests that the site of the castle of Branceholme is now known as Castle Hill, lying between Sutton and Swine  (p.331)

10     Charles Frost: Notices Relating to the Early History of the Town and Port of Hull, p.99

11     Balleine, p.60

12     Poulson, p.301

13     Thomas Burton:  Chronicles of Meaux

14     Marjorie Kennedy: Resourceful Villeins - the Cellarer Family of Wawne - YAJ Vol.48

15     C Cox, p.45

16     Levien: On Unpublished Mss Relating to Meaux Abbey

17     Burton, xvii

18     Ibid. xxiv

19     Vincent Orange, NZ Broadcasting

20     Stephen Hebron: Life in a Monastery

21     Ibid, p.17

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