A History–After Domesday

Whilst our parishioners were struggling to make some sense of their lives after the harrying of the north by William after 1069 he was away in Normandy for much of the time fighting family squabbles with brother Earl Robert. Back home he had trouble with the church. In York Thomas of Bayeux (appointed by William) wouldn’t accept downgrading to be subservient to Canterbury, and with the help of the Pope York’s 400 year old status as Archbishopric of the north was preserved. William’s cruelty didn’t cease back in England, but he was elsewhere and Thomas could set about his heavy workload in Yorkshire rebuilding his land holdings, and his income. William’s sheriff was doing the same for civil society. William died in 1087 to be succeeded by an even ‘nastier Norman’, William II (Rufus).

Contemporary accounts describe him as ‘all that was loathsome to God and his people’, and, though he was rich and rebuilt Canterbury Cathedral soon after his accession, his death by ‘friendly fire’ whilst hunting in the New Forest was not unwelcomed. In 1100 Rufus’s brother Henry became king, and his reign of 35 years was a ‘good one’ and the twelfth century saw so much of the growth in society and law that was necessary to recover from the previous forty years misery under the two Williams.

It was not just the unrest from the royal level to be endured–this would never have been felt in Rowley, whose parishioners had to recover from the harrying–but also the vagaries of nature, earthquakes, storms, harsh winters, famine, failure of crops, murain in cattle, disease, reported with alarm and fear at the time throughout the country. Archbishop Thomas of Bayeux had his work cut out, and he was successful–his death in 1100 would be a sad one in Yorkshire. His successor for 8 years, Gerard, appears not to have made his mark in history but almost certainly followed Thomas’s work under king Henry’s welcome rule. A second Thomas became Archbishop in 1108 until 1114 when Thurstan who lived until 1140 gave vigorous continuity to the diocese and its work in these years.

Under Henry and Thurstan a new wave of Norman nobles, rich and adventurous arrived. Co-operation between the civil and ecclesiastical interests of these newcomers brought gains to Yorkshire quadrupling the values pre-William I. The probability is that the church gained most, its clergy being more literate (and therefore powerful) than most of the lords, knight and thegns comprising civil society’s upper class.

Thomas and his successors deputed restoration to their clerks who tackled it, with Henry’s and French money by founding monasteries, e.g. Kirkham, Fountains, Rievaulx, and spreading wide their ecclesiastical order from these and from cathedrals and minsters; Beverley in our case. This programme of church land development fed down to parishes in the form of local church buildings. Though Domesday Book tells of a church in Little Weighton the structure, if any, would be crude, probably wood, surrounded by a small graveyard. Masons from France, possibly using stone from France, enabled churches ‘to spring up like mushrooms’ in Yorkshire.

The most influence came, and continued for many centuries, from the Archbishop. His land was virtually owned in his own office’s right. His Ecclesiastical Courts were separate from the King’s Civil Courts, and his laws enforced separately in his lands, although most were those of the King. It must have been confusing in Rowley; in Risby and Bentley Archbishop of York had jurisdiction via St. John’s of Beverley over a portion of the land, whilst the Count of Mortain and Gamall had the rest. In Hunsley the land was split between the Bishop of Durham and Hugh fitzBaldric and Gamall–tricky indeed!

Despite this separation, Civil and Ecclesiastical, settlements developed a form and social structure that held in rural parishes almost until the Enclosure Acts 700 years later so our history as a rural parish originating in the time of Henry I has persisted, perhaps, with fluctuations between civil and ecclesiastical control until a century or so ago. There is much to explore–it wasn’t quite as straightforward as I make it sound–but that is for future items.


Big Thank You to Barrie Heaton for his historical articles.

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