Except for Henry VIII there would still be a monk praying for the immortal souls of Boyntons at St. Andrew in the village of Boynton. John de Boynton set up the prayer vigil in 1324. That act was a far cry from religion as it was practiced when William the Conqueror crossed the channel declaring the land his own. And it was an equally far cry from the puritan inspiration for the civil war in the seventeenth century.

Religion played a central, if changing role, in medieval life. How it was lived, how it became institutionalized, how it changed through time are the themes explored here.

Establishing Religious Houses in Yorkshire

The best we know is that there were no religious houses -- no monasteries, no abbeys, no priorys --  in Yorkshire in 1066 (Burton, 1999). But the twelfth century saw a flowering of religion; between 60 and 70 religious houses were established in Yorkshire between the Conqueror's arrival and 1215. The earliest were houses of the Benedictines -- the black monks -- at Selby, Whitby and York. They were established between 1068 and 1088, and they became among the richest of the Yorkshire religious houses.

Half way through the period, Watton Priory, a Gilbertine house, was established. Gilbert was an Englishman who had started establishing religious houses only fifteen years earlier. He had been inspired by women in his own church (Golding, 1995), and Watton Priory evidenced that concern. It was a double house, a religious house for both women and men. Eustace Fitz John and his wife Agnes provided the funds to establish the house. It was begun with the gift of the vill of Watton and three bovates of land.

None of the religious houses, and certainly not Watton, could survive on only the founding grant. If they survived they did so on the basis of a steady stream of gifts. About fifteen years after Watton Priory was founded Walter Boynton's two daughters joined the priory as nuns, and Walter made a gift of four bovates of land [A Boynton Story: You Want to Go Where?].

This is the standard story: religious person and rich person get together and a religious house is founded -- sixty-plus times. A rich person has daughters [or sons] who want to make the religious life their own, and the house becomes wealthier. That happened many more than sixty times.

What the standard story leaves out is the sociality of these gift/events. We know about the gifts because of documents that have survived from the twelfth century. And one of the most common features of those documents is the list of witnesses. You did not do anything, for God or mammon, without a document and you did not do documents without witnesses. The gift of the Fitz Johns, for example, required six documents (charters 1107, 1108, 1109, 1110, 1111, 1895, Farrer, 1915); and each was witnessed by more than ten persons. [A Boynton Story: Witnessing for God] And that made the growth of religion in Yorkshire a very social process. The individualism of the standard story is more appropriate to our age than to the twelfth century.

Religion was social in the twelfth century; it was also big business. St. Mary's Abbey, York and most of the other religious houses were acquiring many pieces of land. They became land holders, and they needed people to handle the business. They needed a chief financial officer. Walter de Boynton was the CFO for St. Mary's for more than two decades [A Boynton Story: Walter de Boynton, CFO].

The big push to establish religious houses was over by the fourteenth century, but the need to raise funds continued. The continuing social character of the fund raising is the story of Thomas de Boynton celebrating a holy day at Alnwick Abbey [A Boynton Story: Dining Out in the Fourteenth Century].

Kings stayed involved with the church. Selection of abbots and other church officials were agreed to by the kings. The king's escheator held the land of the religious institutions when the abbots changed. When there were problems the kings sent their men to bring order. One example of this involvement is the [A Boynton Story: controversy at Whitby Abbey].

Holy days were holidays and holidays were holy days. Thomas could ride 100 miles to celebrate a holy-holiday. The people of York celebrated Corpus Christi with play and processional [A Boynton Story: Everybody Who Was Anybody and the Guild of Corpus Christi]. When the Corpus Christi pageants were over, in the 17th century, they were said to have been important for educating the masses who could not read the Bible, but those were puritans who could not imagine putting piety and merriment together. The Corpus Christi players had no such hangup.

The Dissolution

With the dissolution monasteries became ruins; lovely, but ruins nevertheless. In wonderfully nineteenth century prose W. C. Lefroy articulates a version of their importance.

The monastic ruins of England are the witnesses to an historic fact which is too apt to be forgotten or neglected. We all know there was monasticism in England before the Reformation; for were there not monasteries to be suppressed by the providential rapacity of Henry VIII? But we are inclined to relegate their history to the regions of ecclesiology and others equally dusty and obscure; forgetting, if we ever knew, that they were interwoven with the fibre of our national life -- bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. And yet our hotels, our workhouses, our refuges, and probably a dozen other familiar modern institutions, have been built out of their ruins. In them our parliaments met, our annals were composed, our classics copied and preseved; and, what is even more important, in them the very humanity which we inherit once found fit utterance for its superhuman aspirations, and, how blindly and wrongly soever, poured out its soul through hundreds of dark and troubled years -- confessing and leaving on record that after all it had a soul and sought a country. [Lefroy, 1981, pp. 3-5.]

Burton, Janet (1999) The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 1069-1215, Cambridge University Press.

Golding, Brian  (1995) Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertine Order c. 1130-c. 1300, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

William Farrer (1915), Early Yorkshire Charters, vol. II, Edinburgh.

Lefroy, William Chambers (1891) The Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire, London, Seeley and Co. Limited.

......

[the following are the subjects I expect to cover; undoubtedly more will be added]

Religious Houses

Agnes gave a multi-volume book to the nunnery at Marrick

Lord of Manor and

Thomas is on floor at Roxby

Matthew's wives are buried at Roxby

Christopher [second] helped found church at South Cowton

A Boynton is buried at Acklam

Boyntons and the Barmston church and de la See buried there

Burton vicar at Boynton trading land -- or something like that

Supporting Churches

Henry [of Sedbury] contributed to church at West Gilling and made it onto the wall.

Joan gave money in will

Thomas [1402] gave money in will

Thomas contributed to Yarm [along with lots of others]

Vocation

Thomas' [1402] brother John was in church

other Boyntons [Richard, for example] in church

Celebrations

Agnes attended a Guild of Corpus Christi celebration

Henry [of Sedbury] attended Guild of Corpus Christi celebration

Margaret attended Guild of Corpus Christi celebration

Thomas in 1376 had dinner at Alnwick abbey celebrating the assumption of Mary

Persecution

Matthew went to Holland because of religion

Other

Agnes took veil

Margaret took veil

John [of Boynton] was excommunicated and resurrected

John [of Boynton] set up prayer vigil

Henry set up prayer vigil

Joan had permission to have services in manor

The Secular Church

Christopher [first] working with bishop of Durham

Henry [headless] and archbishop Scrope

...

Janet Burton (1999) The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 1069-1215, Cambridge.