Seal of Abbot John Sarum. [1] A pointed oval seal attached to a charter dated 1304, the impression is very fine but imperfect. It represents the abbot standing on a carved corbel under a trefoiled canopy supported on either side by a slender shaft, in his right hand a pastoral staff, in his left hand a book. Legend : ... i ... BVTLESDENE.
Only a fragment remains of the seal at- tached to the Deed of Surrender.[2]
HOUSES OF AUSTIN CANONS
9. THE ABBEY OF MISSENDEN
The abbey of Missenden was founded in or about the year 1133 by a certain William of Missenden, [3] for Austin Canons following the customs of the abbey of St. Nicholas at Arrou- aise in Artois. This date is well established by a concurrence of charters of confirmation ; from Pope Innocent II. in 1137 and Euge- nius III. in 1145, and from Henry I. in 1133, Stephen, and Henry II., [4] and the connection with Arrouaise is equally well attested.[5] The charters of Henry I. and Alexander of Lincoln expressly state that there were at first but seven canons in the house, and that they came originally from the church of St. Mary ' de Bosco (or de Nemore) de pago Terresino.' [6]
The Arrouasian reform of the Augustinian order originated independently of that which is connected with the name of St. Peter Damian ; it was begun in 1090 by three her- mits, but not ruled by an abbot until 1124. [7] During the time of Gervase, the first abbot, the order seems to have increased, and several houses were founded in England and Ireland, amongst which we find Missenden and Nutley in this county, Harrold in Bedfordshire, Bourne in Lincolnshire. It was the Arrou- asian custom to place new houses under an abbot at once, [8] and not to keep them in the position of cells to the parent abbey : with the natural result that the Arrouasian Canons tended to approximate more and more to others who kept the rule of St. Augustine, and after a while ceased to be distinguished from them in any way. They never seem to have been really an independent order with special privileges, like the Premonstratensians :
- ↑ Harl. Chart. 84 E, 36.
- ↑ P.R.O. Deed of Surrender, No. 22.
- ↑ Harl. MS. 3688, f. 18. Hugh, the heir of William, is always styled Hugh de Nuiers (Noers) in the Harleian Chartulary. His name occurs in the Carta of Earl Walter Giffard (i 1 66), Red Book of the Exch. (Rolls Ser.), p. 312.
- ↑ Harl. MS. 3688, ff. 178, I79d, 187-8.
- ↑ Ibid. 178-l79d. These privileges are at the end of the chartulary (which is dated 1330) and in a different hand. They are of all the more value if they were copied at a time when the Arrouasian tradition was almost forgotten : especially as the earliest, that of Pope Innocent II., dated 1137, has the correct but unusual form ' Aridagamancia ' (see Round, Cal. of Doc. France, i. 479, 480). The privilege of 1181 speaks of the Rule of St. Augus- tine ' et institutionem arroesi fratrum.' The copyist was so ignorant as to write ' Ambrosius ' for Alexander III. and ' Eusebius ' for Eugenius III. (perhaps there was nothing but the initial letter in his original) : but the privilege of Innocent III. dated 1253, which alludes to those of Innocent II. and Eugenius III., is found again in Cal. of Pap. Letters, v. 433-5, confirmed by Boniface IX., in 1401, when it was ' beginning to be consumed with age.' These details are given because the genuine- ness of the chartulary or at any rate of the founda- tion charter, has been questioned in a paper in Records of Sucks, vi. 374, etc. It may be added that the boundaries of land and names given in the foundation charter are the same as those in Cal. of Pap. Letters, v. 433-5, which also names William of Missenden : and that it would require an almost impossible combination of cunning and simplicity for monks who could not find out the correct names of popes of the twelfth century, and called Mal- colm IV. of Scotland ' Manasser,' to invent a num- ber of charters of comparatively obscure benefactors who can (like Turstin Mantel) be proved from other sources to have lived at the required time. The charters of the twelfth century must stand or fall together in a case where we have only a single chartulary to deal with : we cannot condemn one and approve others without more definite evidence than mere probability. It is certainly strange that an inquisition taken in 1332 should have dated the foundation of the house as late as 1293 : but even if Harl. MS. 3688 had not survived, the date could have been proved from many sources to have been of the twelfth century, and even fixed between 1130 and 1150, by the charter relating to the her- mitage of Muswell in Dugdale, Man. vi. (i) 549.
- ↑ Harl. MS. 3688, ff. 187-189. S. Maria de Nemore probably Ruisseauville, a daughter-house of St. Nicholas of Arrouaise, situated in the modern department of the Pas de Calais 55 kilometres from Arras. Gallia Christiana (ed. 1751), p. 1607, and map before p. 1,147. Joanne, Diet. Geog. de La France, p. 1994. Note also a ratification by the Abbot of St. Nicholas supported by his brethren of St. Mary in the Wood and two Boulogne Houses. Harl. MS. 3688, f. 163.
- ↑ Helyot and Bullot, Hist, des Ordres Mon. ii. 107.
- ↑ See foundation charter of Bourne Abbey.
369
