Westminster Abbey and its Parish Churches, c.1050-1216
By Emma Mason
Monastic Studies: The Continuity of Tradition, ed. J. Loades (1990)
Introduction: Westminster abbey was a rich monastery, thanks largely to the endowment of King Edward (1042-66), who intended that the church of St. Peter of Westminster should be his mausoleum. It possessed considerable property in London and of course in Westminster itself; estates in all the ‘home counties’, and outlying properties in the east and west Midlands, and in Sussex. Appurtenant to many of these properties were parish churches which were in themselves sources of income. They also afforded the means of financing the abbey’s expert secular clerks, and of offering an acceptable quid pro quo to those who mattered in high places.
This present survey of Westminster’s administration of its churches is confined to the century and a half between King Edward’s endowment of the abbey and the end of King John’s reign, a period which spanned developments in church history from the beginnings of the Gregorian reform movements down to the Fourth Lateran Council.
Westminster’s splendid collection of muniments includes more than 490 documents emanating from this period. Some 144 of these concern churches and/or tithes, and indication that considerable attention was paid to parochial sources of income, and their administration. Much the same problems in dealing with these were faced by ecclesiastical proprietors throughout England, and to a large extent they responded in similar ways, although local circumstances also gave rise to some divergences.
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Tags: Ecclesiastical History, England
