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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
In July 1565 Edmund Skeltpn, clerk, left to the curate of Egton to remain in the parish for ever a book called Postella Cassiodorus, a Catholicon, and a Latin Bible, works distincdy at odds with the Protestant ethos which the new generation of bishops was striving to introduce into the Elizabethan Church. This bequest in itself singles Skelton out from the usual run of priests serving in Yorkshire villages at this rime. In fact, until his prior surrendered the house on 31 August 1 1539 he had been a monk of Grosmont Priory, and then, at the Dissolution, at the age of thirty-six, with a pension of £36s. 8d, he had apparendy settled in the adjoining parish of Egton. In his will he also gave a gown, tippet, and hat to Nicholas Morley, almost certainly the former prior of Whitby Abbey, and 20d. and certain other unspecified books to a former fellow canon, Robert Holland. Both the books destined for Egton church and those intended for Robert Holland may once have formed part of Grosmont monastic library. Although the evidence can only be reassembled with difficulty, sufficient records have survived to suggest that a significant number of erstwhile monks and friars were similarly redistributing medieval books around Yorkshire in the generation after the Henrician Reformation. An examination of the religious known to have attended the two English universities in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII, a survey of monastic schools and, in particular, an assessment of monastic libraries and books can together provide at least an impression of the state of learning within Yorkshire monasteries and friaries, and of the contribution they may still have been making to northern intellectual life at the close of the Middle Ages.
1 Borthwick Intitute, York, Prob. Reg. 17, pt ii, fol. 474V (Skelton); LP, 15, p. 555; Miscellanea III, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series [hereafter YASRS], 80 (1931), pp. 106–7. The spelling in all quotations has been modernized.
2 This figure is compiled from a count of religious known to have been in the county at the Dissolution: it is likely to be an underestimate since the King’s commissioners failed to list the members of some monasteries and friaries.
3 Emden, A. B. A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford 1501–1540 (Oxford, 1974.), p. xxiGoogle Scholar; Wellbeloved, C., ‘The Compotus … of Thomas Synglecon, monk … of the Monastery of St Mary, York’, Proceedings of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, I (1855), p. 129Google Scholar.
4 Emden, Oxford 1501–1540, pp. 335, 567, 669; Bortbwick Archbp. Reg. 29 fols 73V-4r (Ketland); Prob. Reg. 13 fol. 683r (Clynte).
5 Emden, Oxford 1501–1540, pp. 467–8, 735.
6 Venn, J. and Venn, J.A., Alumni Cantabrigienses (Cambridge, 1922), pt 1, 2, p. 99Google Scholar; Dowling, M., Human ism in the Age of Henry VIII (London, 1986), p. 90Google Scholar; Cross, C., ‘York Clerical Piety and St Peter’s School on the Eve of the Reformation’, York Historian (1978), pp. 17—20Google Scholar.
7 Venn, Alumni Canubrigienses pt i, 2, p. 392; Dickens, A. G, Robert Holgate, Archbishop of York and President of the Council in the North Borthwick Publications, 8 (York, 1955Google Scholar); Emden, Oxford 1501–1540, pp. 202–3; LP., 13, pt i, nos 1195, 1518.
8 Emden, A. B, Biographical Dictionary of the University of Oxford to 1100 (Oxford, 1959), 3, p. 1843Google Scholar; York Minster Libary D and C Prob. Reg. 5 fols 6r-7r (Vavasour); Venn, , Alumni Cantabrigienses, pt i, 3, p. 359Google Scholar; Palmer, C. F. R., ‘The Friars Preachers or Black Friars of York’, Yorkshire Archaeologicalfoumat, 6, pp. 417–19Google Scholar.
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10 Emden, , Oxford 1501–1540, pp. 123, 236;Google Scholar LP, 16, no. 1308 (38); Minster Lib. D and C Prob. Reg. 2, fols 198v-9r (Godson).
11 Leach, A.F., Early Yorkshire Schools, 1, VASAS, 27 (1899), pp. xxvii–xxxi, 30–2Google Scholar; Leach, A. F., ‘Schools’, VCH, The County of York, 1, (1907), p. 421Google Scholar; Cross, C., ‘York Clerical Piety and St Peter’s School on the Eve of the Reformation’, York Historian (1978), pp. 17–20Google Scholar.
12 Moran, J. A. Hoeppner, The Growth of English Schooling 1340–1548; Learning, Literacy and Laicization in Pre-Reformation York Diocese (Princeton, 1985), esp. pp. 92–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Borthwick CPF 307; Purvis, J. S., Educational Records (York, 1959), pp. 10–11Google Scholar.
13 Emden, Oxford 1501–1540, p. 263;Borthwick CP G 1384/12.
14 LP, 13, pt ii, app. 25; Borthwick Chancery wills 1556 (Stockes); Prob. Reg. 14. fols 78v-9r (Cundall).
15 Walker, J. W., ed., Chartularìes of the Priory of Monk Bretton, YASRS, 66 (1924), pp. vi–vii, 5–9Google Scholar; Borthwick Prob. Reg. 15, pt iii, fols 1511–2r (Brown).
16 Borthwick Archbp Reg. 31 fob 8ov-1r (Scolaye).
17 Borthwick Prob. Reg. 15 pt iii, fol 59V (Heptonstall).
18 Bond, E.A., ed., Chronica Monasterii de Melsa, RS, 43, pt iii (1868), pp. lxxxii–5Google Scholar; Hoste, A., ed., Bibliotheca Aelrediana (Steenburg, 1962), pp. 149–76Google Scholar; Cheney, C. R., Medieval Texts and Studies (Oxford, 1973), pp. 328–45Google Scholar; Borthwick Peculiar wills, Driffield 1581 (Barker); cf., Cross, C., ‘A Medieval Yorkshire Library’, Northern History, 25 (1989)Google Scholar.
19 James, M. R., ‘The Catalogue of the Library of the Augusrinian Friars at York’, Fasciculus J. W. Clark dicatus (Cambridge, 1909), pp. 2–96Google Scholar.
20 Borthwick Prob. Reg. 11 fol. 640r (Barwike); Prob. Reg. 13 pt i, fol. 443V (Singleton); Chancery wills 1573 (Marse).
21 Borthwick Prob. Reg. 17, pt. iii, fols 538v-9r (Hall); Prob. Reg. 19 pei, fols 52V–3r (Watson).
22 Borthwick Prob. Reg. 13, pt i, fol 724r-v (Lynne); Prob. Reg. 13, pt ii, fols 951v-2r (Collinson); Prob. Reg. 15, pt i, fols 242V–3r (Clarkson); a Psalter from Guisborough Priory is now in the Bodleian Library, while Douai Abbey possesses a breviary and missal from the same house, Ker, N. R., Medieval Libraries of Great Britain (London, 1964), p. 94Google Scholar.
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