Vale Royal Abbey
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Vale Royal Abbey is a Cistercian abbey, and later country house, located in Whitegate, between Northwich and Winsford in Cheshire, England.
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[edit] Foundation
The abbey we now know as Vale Royal was founded by Prince Edward, the future Edward I, prior to his accession to the throne. In 1263 the prince was undertaking a sea voyage from France when his ship was caught in a terrible storm. He then made a vow that if he came safe to land he would found an abbey of unprecedented size and grandeur as a thanksgiving to God for saving him. Political problems and civil war meant that the vow could not be fulfilled immediately, but by 1266 negotiations were in hand for the establishment of a monastery of Cistercian monks in the secluded location of Darnhall in Cheshire. In 1270, Edward granted a charter to his new abbey along with a moderate endowment of lands. As so often in the history of the abbey things did not go smoothly; preparing the site took considerable time and the first monks, led by Abbot Walter, did not arrive at Darnhall from Dore Abbey until 1274. The foundation of the new abbey provoked anger, resentlment and strong resistance from the people of the area and the Darnhall site itself was found to be unsuitable for the great buildings planned. By 1276 Edward, by now king, agreed to move the abbey to a better site in nearby Over, which was henceforth known as Vale Royal. In 1277 the King and Queen arrived at Over to lay the foundation stones of the new abbey.
[edit] Building the abbey
King Edward had vast ambitions for Vale Royal. It was intended to be an abbey of the first importance, to surpass all the other houses of its order in Britain in scale and beauty and provide a fitting symbol of the wealth and power of the English monarchy and Edward's personal greatness. The plans for the buildings relected this. Royal masons started work on a huge and elaborate high gothic church the size of a cathedral. It was to be 128m long and cruciform in shape with a central tower and further towers at the west end. The east end was semi-circular with a chevet of 13 radiating chapels; each of the transepts also had a row of three chapels on its eastern side. South of the church stood a cloister, 42m square, surrounded by the domestic buildings of the house, which were to be of a scale and grandeur to match the church.
At first matters went well. The king expanded greatly expanded the initial endowment and made large donations of cash and materials for the work. Soon, however, things began to go seriously wrong. As the 1280s progressed the royal finance first got into arrears then dried up. The King needed money to pay for his wars in Wales and workmen to build the great castles such as Harlech he put up to cement his conquest. He took not only the money had been set aside for the abbey but eventually conscripted the masons and other labourers to build his Welsh fortifications and in 1290 announced that he was no longer interested in the abbey. The monks were left struggling to pay to complete the vast project and provide the running costs of it all by themselves, a task that would prove beyond their means, despite a substantial income and incurring huge debts to other church institutions and even to the merchants of Lucca. Work stopped for at least a decade after 1290 and was resumed only on a much reduced scale thereafter. Nevertheless, by the 1330s the monks had managed to complete the east end of the church (the rest remained a shell) and sufficient of the cloister buildings to make the place habitable, though far from complete.
In the 1350s there was cause for renewed hope. Edward the Black Prince took an interest in completing the abbey and donated substantial funds to the job. Work began on completing the shell of the nave. However, in 1360 disaster struck yet again. A hurricane ca brought the arcades of the unfinished nave crashing down in ruins. This set the seal on things. It was subsequently agreed under the patronage of Richard II to finish the abbey on a much reduced scale from what was originally planned.
[edit] A troubled life
As well as the burden of trying to finish the abbey buildings, Vale Royal faced many other serious problems. From the beginning the monks' relationship with their tenants and neighbours was usually poor and sometimes abysmal. As noted above, the initial foundation was resented by the people of Darnhall and Over who found themselves under the lordship of the abbey. The monks proved harsh and oppressive landlords and the people responded fiercely, sometimes going to law, sometimes resorting to violence. The people of the area attacked monastic officials on many occasions (even killing the abbot in 1339), and more than once rose in arms against the abbey. Relations with the gentry were no better and they also often came to blows with the monks. The abbey was involved in feuds with a number of the prominent local families and these frequently ended in large scale violence. Vale Royal was often beset by scandal of other kinds too. Many of the abbots proved to be incompetent or venal, and the house was frequently grossly mismanaged. As time went on discipline became lax and in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries there was much disorder at the abbey, with reports of serious crimes including attempted murder being committed by Vale Royal monks. Another abbot, Henry Arrowsmith, a man with a reputation for lawlessness, was murdered in 1437 by a group of men including the vicar of Over. This abbot was slain in revenge for a rape he was alleged to have committed. The abbey was taken under royal supervision in 1439, but there was no immediate improvement: in the 1450s the scandalous doings of the monks of Vale Royal were still attracting the attention of the government and even the General Chapter, the international governing body of the Cistercian order who, in 1455, ordered senior abbots to investigate the abbey, which they described as "damnable and sinister". Thereafter things were considerably better and the last years of Vale Royal were fairly peaceful and well ordered.
[edit] Dissolution of the monasteries
In 1535 the abbey was valued in the Valor Ecclesiasticus as having an income of £540 (a very comfortable sum, which leads one to wonder how many of the abbey's financial problems were due to bad management). This figure meant that Vale Royal escaped being dissolved under the terms of the First Suppression Act, King Henry VIII's initial move in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The last abbot was John Hareware (elected 1535), who had previously been abbot of Hulton Abbey. He pursued a two-pronged policy of attempting to ensure the survival of his abbey and, should that fail, the security of himself and his brethren thereafter. He bribed courtiers, influential nobles and in particular Thomas Cromwell with money and property in the hope of gaining respite; he also leased out most of the abbey lands to keep them out of royal hands should the abbey fall and began to realise the other asets such as stock and timber for cash.
Vale Royal was finally forced to surrender in September 1538 by Thomas Holcroft, one of the king's commissioners for the dissolution in rather shady circumstances. The monks were pensioned off, Abbot John himself receiving £60 per year and the abbey's plate.
[edit] Later history
Thomas Holcroft purchased the abbey and some of its estates from the king. He demolished the church and much of the abbey buildings and converted the south and west cloister ranges including the abbot's house and the monks' dining hall along with their kitchen into the core of a new mansion on the site. In 1615 Vale Royal came into the hands of the Cholmondeley family. The widow Lady Mary Cholmondeley bought the abbey as a home for herself when her son inherited the family lands at Cholmondeley. She passed the house and estate on to her second son Thomas, and purchased Knight's Grange in Over with its estate for her youngest son. It was she who entertained James I at Vale Royal and whom he called "the Bolde Lady of Cheshire". The abbey was to remain the home of the Cholmondeleys for over 300 years. They extended and altered the abbey buildings to create the vast mansion that the visitor today sees today.
[edit] The abbey today
Nothing remains of the great church, though archaeological work has revealed many details of its structure and a monument known as the 'Nun's Grave' traditionally commemorating a fourteenth century Cheshire nun, Ida Marian Godman, marks the site of the high altar. The present country house on the site incorporates substantial parts of the south and west ranges of the abbey plus Holcroft's Tudor house. Vale Royal is now home to a golf club
[edit] Trivia
The "Palatine Prophet" Robert Nixon made many prophecies concerning the inhabitants at Vale Royal Abbey.
