Ghostly GladnessThe Spiritual Music of Richard Rolle, a 14th Century Mystic
A brief history of Richard Rolle and the Priory at Hampole, by WrightIn the reign of King Stephen, William de Clairfait was Lord of the Manor at Hampole. His wife was Avicia. About 1150 A.D. William and Avicia founded a convent at Hampole and endowed it with lands in the district. The Masses were said and sung for the nuns by Chaplains from Adwick, Marr and Melton. For this they were paid four pounds, thirteen shillings and fourpence a year. The income of the Priory was about eighty-five pounds a year from their possessions in the neighbourhood. In the reign of Henry VIII the Priory was dissolved. On the 19th November, 1539, the last prioress, Isabel Arthington, together with the sub-prioress and seventeen nuns were granted pensions. The prioress got ten pounds per year. The Priory buildings were destroyed. Through the years Hampole Priory has disappeared so completely that it is very difficult to find any traces today. There are, however, a few to be seen if we look carefully around the village. Some of the cottage gardens have very obvious little pieces of Church building stones. Miss J. Holling gave some from her rockery to Adwick Church when she left Hampole. Mrs. Scott has a little piece of the base of a church pillar in her rockery. In 1937 when Professor C. E. Whiting, Rector of Hickleton began to excavate to see what he could find of the Priory, he wrote that there were twenty round pillars which were used to support farm sheds on Manor Farm. On Priory Farm, he said there were twelve octagonal pillars with flat capitals. These, he said, appeared to be stronger than the usual ones needed for farm buildings. He said there were other traces. For example, the gateposts decorated with mediaeval masonry at Manor Farm. On the gable end of the old school house were a niche and a cross. Into a cottage wall he said was built part of a grave cover. In Abbey House the cellar had some mediaeval arches in 1925. Professor Whiting made most of his excavations in the long narrow field between the Hampole Priory Restaurant and Hampole beck. The excavation lasted two weeks. Quite a lot of foundations were unearthed, some of which were four feet thick. Traces of door steps, stone floors and even part of an arch, with dog tooth moulding, as well as roofing tiles were found. In the middle ages nunneries existed for the praise of God, and so the sisters spent a good deal of their time singing and praying in the Convent Church. Through the day there were at least seven services. The first was very early in the morning at 2 a.m. They all rose from bed when the bell rang and went down in the cold and dark to the church choir and said ‘Mattins’. It must have been icy cold, dark and cheerless in the winter, for in those days there was no central heating, nor electricity nor gas — only candles and wood burning fires. After ‘Mattins’ they went back to bed, but were up again in three hours for the service which was called ‘Prime’. There were other services throughout the day. The last was ‘Compline’ at 7 p.m. in Winter and 8 p.m. in Summer. After that they were supposed to go to bed. They had three meals a day, bread and beer in the morning, a good meal at mid-day during which one of them read to the others. Supper was about 5 p.m. These meals were to be eaten in the dining hall called the Refectory. Sometimes they did not keep this rule. When Archbishop Greenfield wrote to the Prioress of Hampole in 1311 he said that he had heard ‘from certain trustworthy persons that the nuns did not eat in common in the Refectory but separately in divers chambers’. He ordered them to have their meals in the proper places. During the afternoons they had some recreation. Perhaps they sewed or embroidered, or worked in the convent gardens. Sometimes little girls went to learn their letters. For a large part of the day, in some nunneries, the nuns were supposed to be silent. They were not to speak to each other except at certain times. They had to use signs. For example, a sister who wanted fish would ‘wag her hands displayed sidelings in manner of a fish tail’. If she wanted her neighbour to pass the salt she would ‘fillip with her right thumb and forefinger over the left thumb’. The nuns must sometimes have grown tired of these severe regulations. But the Bishops did their best to make them obey. For example, in 1411 Archbishop Bowett told the Prioress of Hampole to punish and chastise them ‘so that the punishment of one should be a continual fear of the other’.
What kind of people became nuns?They were often the unmarried daughters of rich men. Poor girls found it difficult to enter a Convent because a dowry was necessary and only rich people could afford one. Besides the dowry there was the expense of a feast when the nun entered, there was also the cost of new clothes and furniture. Nuns therefore, were usually ladies, born and bred. For example, one of the Prioresses of Hampole was Margaret de Banastre. Her father was one of the wealthiest landowners near Hampole and Skelbrooke. Again, Sir Geoffrey Luterel, who once lived in Hooton Pagnel and who had a very famous Psalter compiled, left in his will forty shillings to his two sisters Marjery and Lucy, ‘Nuns of the House of Hampole’. They liked to dress well. They sometimes disliked wearing the plain dresses of the priory and preferred the latest fashions. In 1315 an archbishop visited Hampole and made a complaint that the Priory was in debt. He asked them to be more economical, but he also gave the prioress strict instructions to stop the nuns wearing the new fashioned narrow cut tunics and rochets. He told the Prioress to chastise them if they did not wear the plain brown garments. Later on in the fourteenth century, this convent or Priory, became famous because the great writer and hermit, Richard Rolle, had settled near. He gave counsel and advice to the nuns. He wrote many of his famous works near here and he is believed to have been buried in the Priory Church. We have written these readings after having history lessons at school with Mrs. Scott and Mr. Chipp. Father Yould and Miss Davies helped, and we have found a lot of information in the Askern School History booklets compiled by Mr. L. R. Hutt in the 1940‘s.
Richard Rolle‘s early LifeRichard Rolle was born about the year 1300, the exact date is not known, and his father, who was poor, was called William Rolle. They lived in Thornton-le-Dale. He was taught by the village priest we think because priests in those days used to run schools perhaps in their church porches if there was no other place. He must have been a clever boy and well educated by the priest because when he was about 15 he was sent to Oxford University by Thomas de Neville, Archdeacon of Durham who saw that his expenses were paid. He met learned scholars from all over Europe at Oxford. When Rolle left 0xford some people think he went to the University in Paris for a time, before returning to Yorkshire. No record of his ordination has appeared and since there is no definite evidence either way it remains an open question. On his return home he must have disappointed his family by saying that he did not wish to become a priest. He had made up his mind that he would. become a hermit. There is an interesting legend about this. He took his sister into his confidence. He asked her to bring him some of her own clothes to a wood near their home so that he could dress like a hermit and live there alone. His sister took some of her long dresses and he made a hermit‘s cloak for himself out of them. His sister thought he had gone mad. He was next heard of praying in the special seat of the wife of the Squire in Topcliffe church. Her sons recognised him. They had met him at Oxford University. Next day they let him preach a sermon in the church and he was taken home to dinner by the Squire, John de Dalton. After dinner the family made him tell his story. He must have been a very sincere and determined young man. The Dalton Family helped him by providing him with suitable clothing and a hermitage in Topcliffe and supplied him with the necessaries of life. For more than two years he stayed in this hermitage, fasting, and meditating. Then it is said he began to see visions of which he wrote accounts. Next he began to move about from place to place. He did not wish to become too familiar with his neighbours, and this happened if he stayed too long in one place. Some hermits were impostors and people talked about them. Rolle was sincere and gossip hurt him. Finally he settled down at Hampole where there was the convent. Here, it is thought, he lived in a little hidden secluded spot near the Priory. He used to come and give holy counsel to the nuns and they in turn must have given him his meals and kept his clothes in repair and washed them. He wrote a lot and it is thought that the nuns may have hidden some of his manuscripts nearby to protect them. We know that one of his works, ‘The Commandment of the Love of God’ was written for one of the Hampole Sisters. He died at Hampole in about 1349 at the time when a plague called the Black Death was sweeping through England. He was buried in the Priory Church we think — Canon Whiting thinks his tomb is under the Old Smithy. A shrine was erected there and pilgrims from all over England visited it. Miracles are said to have happened there, a list of these was collected and they were described in the ‘Miracula’ written in the late fourteenth century. Manuscript copies of the late ‘Miracula’ are to be found today in Bodleian Library at Oxford and Lincoln. There are twenty-eight miracles set down in the ‘Miracula’. Of these the following are of local interest:
There is a way known as ‘Pilgrim‘s Way’ and ‘two Cross Way’. It extended from Strafford near Moxborough where the Don could be forded, to Barnborough and through Hickleton, down to where the road branches for Bilham and Hooton Pagnell. There used to be a cross on the triangular piece of land at the top of Bilham Row. The road continued past Bilham Row houses, and then up what is known locally as Rat Hall lane or Broadnick Halt. There was another cross there. The broken base of it was visible until recently. Miss Davies showed it to Reverend Raynor and Mrs. Scott two years ago. The road continued through Hampole Wood down to Hampole Priory. Our Pilgrimage today has taken this road. Rolle was a very famous man in the middle ages. Even today books about him are still being written. Our Bishop is very interested in him and has led today‘s Pilgrimage to Hampole. One reason for his fame is that he was one of the first Englishmen to write prose in the English language. He has been called:
Over 150 manuscripts survive. These were copied by hand at first. But one of Richard Rolle‘s works was among the first books to be printed in England after the printing press had been introduced by Caxton. The printer‘s name was Wynkyn de Worde, and the book was called Rychard Rolle Hermyte of Hample in His Contemplacyons of the Drede and Love of God. When John Wycliffe made his English translations of the Bible in the 14th century he was helped by Rolle‘s translations of the Psalms. His manuscripts can be found in the British Museum and in the Oxford and Cambridge libraries. Miss Davies and Mrs. Scott went to see some of them in Lincoln Cathedral library. This is an extract from the Commandment written by Richard Rolle for a Cistercian Nun of Hampole Priory:
Rolle contents page other sources of Rolle lore selected lyrics by Rolle |