Dispute between Darnhall and Vale Royal Abbey

The Cistercian Abbey of Vale Royal, in the Weaver Valley, was originally founded by the Lord Edward (later King Edward I) in 1274, in gratitude for his safe passage through a storm on the return from his crusade. Originally intended to be a grand structure with a complement of 100 monks, it soon fell victim to the financing of Edward I's Welsh wars.[1] The King's campaigns meant that both money and stonemasons were diverted from the construction of the abbey,[2] making not only its future expansion, but the current sustenance, precarious.[3][4]

The new institution was unpopular in its locale, as its existence and the grants of land required — locals claimed — impinged on villagers' customary liberties.[5] The abbey was, for example, granted the forestry rights and free warren of Darnhall.[6] Relations between the abbey and its tenantry had thus, since the arrival of the new monks, also been precarious. In 1275, only a year after the abbey's foundation, tenants of Darnhall attempted to withdraw from paying the abbot customs and services, a position from which they would not withdraw, but rather would push with increasing vigour for the next fifty years.[7] They complained directly to King Edward I, and brought with them their iron ploughshares.[note 1] The King refused to countenance their position, telling them that "villeins you have come, and as villeins you shall return."[3][note 2] They complained again in 1307, but again with no success;[7] an inquest into their situation held by the Justiciar of Chester merely confirmed their bondage for them.[16] In 1320, during the abbacy of Richard of Evesham, one of his monks was attacked (and a servant killed) while collecting tithes in Darnhall.[7]

Abbots were not just abbots; they were also feudal lords, and as such should not be assumed to be sympathetic landlords purely on account of their ecclesiastical position. After all, when their tenants appeared before the abbot's manorial court, they were not appearing before an abbot, but before a judge, and the usual strictures of common law would apply.[17] The dispute spread to the neighbouring village of Middlewich, with villagers demanding relief from the abbot of Darnhall's immunities, which were oppressive to them.[18]

Although the villeins of Vale Royal's estate actually owed no labour service to their land, the villagers of Darnhall and those that joined them were still angered by the principle of their situation. Paul Booth writes: "they were the victims of the ownership of their manorial estates from the crown to a desperately under-endowed religious corporation."[19] They were probably not alone; theirs was not the only dispute of its kind. Villagers from nearby Middlewich also complained that the abbey owed them restitution for the loss of two salt pits which had been part of the abbey's endowment.[16] Similar disputes had broken out between other abbeys and their tenants too. To the south of London, there was one such feud between the tenants of Tooting and Bec Abbey. This had also gone from litigation to outright violence and law-breaking, and again had lasted many years.[20] Likewise, Bec Abbey's tenants in Ogbourne St George launched a "thoroughly organised peasant's revolt" in 1309, which also found some support amongst local gentry.[21] In the east, there was a similar tenant's revolt against the Abbot of Bury St Edmunds Abbey in 1327 which were similar to the later struggles of Darnhall and Over.[17] That abbey's chronicler, Jocelin of Brakelond, railed against all tenants who rose up against their lords, claiming that they "waxed fat" against the abbeys.[22] The revolt of Darnhall and Over was thus one of many small villein uprisings before the Peasants' Revolt of June 1381.[21]

"The Darnhall custumal[note 3] reveals a harshness of exploitation unparalleled even on the old-established Benedictine houses of the south.[20]

— Richard Hilton

In 1327 the abbot drew up a custumal for the villages of Darnhall and Over, clearly with the intention of reinforcing claims upon those tenants' villeinage which had historically been belonged to his abbey, but which had not been enforced for some time.[24] The following year, a bitter struggle erupted in Darnhall. The village was a manor of the local Cistercian Abbey at Vale Royal,[note 4] and relations between the abbot and his tenants had broken down. Ever since King Edward II had granted the village to the abbey, the villagers (now the abbot's villeins) in historian Richard Hilton's words, "appear to have been fighting against a real social degradation".[20] It has been suggested that if the abbey was as poor as has been assumed, then this may account for the monks having to be extra harsh landlords.[3] Ultimately though, it is impossible to be certain as to whether the abbey was as locally tyrannous as the villagers claimed. It is possible that previous earls of Chester had been lax in their enforcement of serfdom, and that the two villages had got used to their relative freedoms. It is also possible that it was the monks who had been too lax in their enforcement, and that the villagers of Darnhall and surrounding areas saw an opportunity to take advantage of them.[18] There were at least four occasions of emancipatory manumission (without payment, unusually) taking place in the Vale Royal records between 1329 and 1340,[note 5] and one scholar has noted "an element of irony in the fact that the one corporate body which is known to have liberated any native is also the most distinguished for its rigid insistence on its legal rights over bondmen."[7] It would certainly appear the case that the monks approached the landlordly duties with zeal,[4] but also that the manumissions that did occur were insufficient to quell the villagers' ire.[16]

Either way, the two villages not only must have conspired together ("maliciously," states the abbey's own manorial roll),[note 6] but pooled mutual resources, for their campaign would not have been cheap.[28] Both travel and litigation cost money, from the writing of the petition by clerks to their advisement on it by lawyers. There was no such thing after all, says Edward Powell, "as cheap litigation."[29][note 7]

What strikes one about this account, is not the lawlessness of the abbey's tenants but their touching faith in the legal process.[31]

— Richard Firth Green

The tenants' resistance included refusing to grind flour at the abbot's mill, a rejection of their own bondage, continuing efforts to prevent restrictions from the abbot on the leasing of their land,[20] and the concomitant right to lease it out for up to ten years.[4] This resistance in 1328 led only to punishment in the form of fines, imprisonment, and eventual submission.[20] The abbey's ledger book records how in 1329 — as they saw it — the rebellious tenantry "plotted maliciously" against the abbey's "liberty."[32] The Darnhall villagers had approached (on the first of many occasions) the Cheshire Justiciar, claiming to have been granted their freedom by an "aforetime" royal charter. Although the legal response is now unknown, it was presumably unsuccessful, as, on their return to the village, they were thrown in gaol until they swore an oath to cease their complaints.[31] Presumably this oath was under duress, for they did so, and were released, only to send a delegation to the King (at this time in the north)[31][note 8] on the same matter. It is unknown whether the party ever reached the King, but it is known to have at some point ended up in a Nottingham prison, for some reason only narrowly avoiding being executed there as thieves. This was followed by a petition before the King in parliament at Westminster, which resulted in a new Justiciar being sent to Cheshire to hear their petition. Before he did, however, he read — and had been immediately persuaded by — the abbey's royal charters. As a result, the villagers were again returned to the abbey for punishment.[31]

The abbey's recorder returned to logging similar complaints in 1337 when, again, the tenants of Darnhall and Over "conspired against their lords" and "endeavoured to gain their liberty." Recording how the people firstly complained to the Chester Justiciar, then petitioned parliament, and finally sent a deputation from among their own to present their case to the King at Windsor, the writer concluded they were behaving "like mad dogs."[32] This was because even though by now the abbey had asserted and reasserted its rights over them in court, and had always received favourable judgements, the villagers of Darnhall refused to accept their position, refused payment of their customary dues, and reignited the argument. Furthermore, when Abbot Peter attempted to collect the monies owed him by confiscating the villagers' goods, they merely decamped with them.[34]

In 1336, the abbot denied the villages of Over rights of admission of burgage in the newly chartered borough; this prompted the Over villagers to join with their neighbours from Darnhall against the abbey,[16] and the tenantry relaunched their campaign against the abbot. They attempted to utilise the law in their favour. As Hilton puts it: "They beset the Justiciar of Cheshire, the King himself, and even Queen Philippa in their search for redress of law."[32] Indeed, the latter may actually have supported them.[34] According to all accounts, the peasants plotted by night.[32] The extent to which the abbot was held personally responsible is indicated by the distances that the villagers were willing to travel to confront him.[7] They went to extreme lengths: on one occasion they travelled as far as Rutland to hunt the abbot down and ambush him.[28]

Despite its assertions of right, the abbey was never able to fully dominate its own estate, or to prove itself as the regional lord from which all other tenure relationships sprang.[4] Abbots of Vale Royal continued to face disruption from the populace almost up until the time of the abbey's dissolution by King Henry VIII in 1536. In 1351, they complained that they were "so wrongfully annoyed and harassed in many other ways."[36] The late fourteenth-century Edward the Black Prince wrote to the Justice of Chester that he believed the abbots to be "wrongfully annoyed and harassed in many...ways by the people of these parts...the Justice is therefore to restrain any persons who from malice are going about to molest or annoy them."[37] And as late as 1442, the abbot moaned that when he attempted to travel to Llanbadarn Fawr, Ceredigion, he was continually at risk of attack.[38]

• Vale Royal Abbey
• Darnhall Abbey