In the middle of the 1530s, the English church was in a state of crisis. On the 15th of January 1535 King Henry VIII had declared himself the Supreme Head of the Church of England, creating a permanent rift with the Catholic faith. Whilst the debate around the reasons for this has centred on his desire for an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, one of the consequences was a land grab on a scale not seen in England since the Norman invasion of 1066.
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| Artist's impression of Merevale Abbey from the Henry Tudor Society website https://henrytudorsociety.com/2015/08/20/merevale-abbey/ |
Much land in the parish of Seale had, over the centuries, been given to the church, and to religious institutions, specifically in the form of land grants to the Abbey of Merevale in north Warwickshire. This institution had been founded by Robert, Earl Ferrers, in 1148 as a house of the Cistercian order. It is of significance, as will be seen below, that there was a close connection between the Cistercians and the Order of the Knights Templar and it may be that that connection was remembered long after the Templars were dissolved. When the Knights Templar were founded in 1119, they were unpopular in many quarters of the Church and it was only following support in the form of a letter from Bernard of Clairvaux in 1129 that they were granted recognition by Pope Honorious II. Bernard also founded the Cistercian Order and the link between the orders was strong, indeed the Templars were considered a branch of the Cistercian order.[1] The wearing of a white mantle by knights (the monks of the order, other ranks were lay people and not monks) was influenced by the white robes of Cistercian monks and represented purity and the casting out of darkness. The close connection between the orders was kept until the Knights Templar were suppressed following events in 1307. For example, it was not the norm for Knights Templar to leave the order, and if expelled they were expected to enter a monastery, often of the Cistercians, who followed a strict code of practice. It was possible for permission to enter a Cistercian house to be withheld and other houses of the Benedictine or Augustinian orders to be entered instead.[2]
Merevale Abbey was dissolved almost 400 years after its founding, when the article of surrender was signed by the Abbot, William Arnold, in 1538.[3] The Ferrers family had kept a connection and patronage with Merevale Abbey over the centuries and encouraged donations of land. Land ownership was as important then as it is now, and even seemingly minor transgressions or infringement of rights were often contested in law, in fact the earliest document held in the Derbyshire Record Office dates to the twelfth century and is for land transfer in the parish of Seale. By the sixteenth century, although having had financial difficulties over the years, Merevale Abbey owned considerable tracts of land in the Midlands, including in Seale. Seale Grange, to the west of Netherseal was an estate rented from Merevale, as were other fields in Netherseal alongside significant areas of Overseal. A large part of the Great Wood – Grange Wood – was owned by the abbey. One of Overseal’s three great fields was called Church Field and Overseal Farm (also known as Grange Farm) was also owned by the Abbey. The name grange indicates that the land was owned by the abbey and rented out to tenants.
Although he could not have known it when he was appointed, William Arnold would be the last Abbot of Merevale Abbey. The first surviving record of William Arnold dates to 1522, when he appears on a list drawn up by Thomas Cromwell in the February of that year, although he was probably appointed as abbot sometime after 1518 when records of the former abbot, John Baddesley, end. Positions of lay and secular authority were commonly appointed for a fee to the person who could afford to buy their way into them, bribery was considered normal in Tudor England, a perquisite of power. Arnold appears on a list drawn up for Cromwell by William Brabazon, in September of 1522 in which it was stated that: ‘the abbot of Merevale is very short of money, but at Christmas he will pay most part of his duty’ and for Cromwell’s trouble over his election he forwarded 53s. 4d. Further difficulties in paying his ‘duty’ to Cromwell are apparent in the records; Arnold sent 4d to Cromwell in 1532 due to a poor harvest that year and he again appears on a list with a payment to Cromwell in 1536. Arnold continued to fight to keep his position as Abbot of Merevale, although it was contested by others. It is difficult to judge Arnold’s abilities as abbot from the available evidence. His payment of bribes to Cromwell was considered normal in Tudor society, and considerable bribes were offered by rivals keen to assume the position, which Arnold managed to fight off. It is known that Merevale was a valuable abbey with considerable rents but also that Arnold took his duties very seriously: beer and loaves were doled out weekly to the poor at the monastery gates and from the churches owned by the abbey at Mancetter and Orton on the Hill, along with the hospices attached to those churches Fish was doled out on Maundy Thursday.[4] The abbot seems to have ministered to the poor well, enacting his duties to the best of his abilities, which must have been considerable, as evidenced by his fighting off other suitors to the position right to the very end. Inevitably, despite Arnold’s best efforts to fight it, the writing was on the wall and Merevale Abbey was surrendered in 1538, following Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries Act.
William Arnold may have provided an unusual and startling twist to the story, and there is a possibility that the connection to the Knights Templar was remembered more than 200 years after the order’s dissolution. This dramatic twist is hinted at by William Arnold in his final act of signing the surrender of the house and his choice of date to do so may be a darkly significant one. As a Cistercian abbot and an educated Christian and godly man, Arnold would certainly have known his own order’s history, and the history of what had been, in effect, the military wing of the order. On Friday 13th October 1307 Philip IV of France had ordered the arrest of the Templars, including the Order’s Grand Master, where many were tortured into admitting charges of heresy. These ‘confessions’ were used by Philip to bully the Pope, Clement V, into finally dissolving the order in 1312. In 1538, and facing the inevitable, William Arnold chose the same date, the 13th of October, to sign the letter of surrender of Merevale Abbey following the Dissolution of the Monasteries ordered by another bullying tyrant, Henry VIII of England. We will never know for certain that Arnold was signalling the suppression of a religious order by a tyrant by his choice of date, and we must also consider the possibility that it may be entirely coincidental. Alternatively, Arnold may be sending a signal to history. My feeling is that William Arnold was a brave and capable man who ministered to the poor and fought off rivals through his tenacity. In a final act of defiance to a tyrant and bully, insofar as he sensibly could, Arnold drew attention to the connection between one despot and another by highlighting a dark and significant date in the Cistercian order’s history.
William Arnold was pensioned off, avoiding the fate of other abbots, like Richard Whiting, who was hung, drawn and quartered for remaining loyal to the Catholic faith and refusing to hand over the Abbey of Glastonbury. Following the letter of surrender the Merevale lands were handed over to their patron, Lord Ferrers of Chartley, two days later on the 15th October. Lord Ferrers’ son sold the Seale manors to his cousin, Sir William Gresley, in 1563, and so began a new chapter for the parish.
In one final footnote, the Seale Parish Register begins in that same year, 1563, and it may be of significance that the surname Arnold figures strongly in the parish. It could be that the burial of one William Arnold on September the 8th, 1585 is another man entirely, but it could also be that the name points to a family connection with the parish. Perhaps future research may resolve the question of whether William Arnold was from the parish of Seale.
[1] https://www.worldhistory.org/Knights_Templar/ Accessed 11th December 2021
[2] Parker, T.W. The Knights Templar in England. Wipf & Stock Publishers. 2020 p:135
[3] https://historicengland.org.uk/services-skills/education/educational-images/remains-of-merevale-abbey-merevale-5317 Accessed 7th December 2021
[4] https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/warks/vol2/pp75-78 Accessed 12th December 2021
