Studies in the redistribution of collegiate and chantry property in the diocese and county of York at the dissolution

Abstract

Although much work has been done on the disposal of monastic property, and of chantry property insofar as it affected education, and poor relief, this is the first regional attempt to probe the motives and means of those who bought chantry property. The area chosen for the study is rich in material for every aspect of the Dissolution: Chantry Certificates, and Ministers' and Receivers’ Accounts; Particulars for Sale and Lease, and corresponding Letters Patent; records of the Courts of Augmentations, Exchequer and Duchy of Lancaster. Through these and isolated provincial material, it has been possible to compile a reasonably complete picture of the Dissolution, over a wide area of northern England. The thesis surveys the process of sale and lease, central and local administration of the Dissolution, buyers and agents, lands concealed from the crown, and many cases arising in the courts. Its principal conclusion is that by no means all the property was sold, even by the end of the sixteenth century. Much was leased or farmed, especially in the Duchy of Lancaster and in the former collegiate holdings. Although there were some major agents, notably Augmentations officials, everything suggests that few major buyers were interested and that, at this distance from London, purchases were often confined to marginal extension of existing holdings, particularly in the towns, where the decay of much property becomes starkly apparent. Practically nothing was given to favourites. All the worth-while work of the chantries was continued by the crown under stricter control. Contemporary protest was negligible. Moreover, the feasibility of this study is itself testimony to the efficiency of the state under a much maligned government. Tentative explorations among the Ministers' Accounts for other regions suggest that the crown often continued to draw a steady income from the chantries even after 1553.