Thomas Stevens (monk)

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Thomas Stevens (or Stephens), Abbot of Netley Abbey and Beaulieu Abbey; (b. prob. c. 1490) (d. 1550) was an English renaissance clergyman and Cistercian monk.

Little is known of Thomas' early life, but at some time in the early sixteenth century he became a monk at the small and poor Cistercian monastery of Netley Abbey in Hampshire. There he took holy orders and rose through the ranks so that by 1529 he was named abbot of Netley, succeeding John Corne.

Thomas was evidently a skilled administrator and agriculturalist. Under his stewardship his often financially troubled abbey remained solvent (a difficult task given the small endowment and the vast cost of providing hospitality to travellers by land and sea and the king’s sailors) and he was able to build up a farm surplus worth more than £100, a huge sum for the time and not far off the annual income of the house. He also maintained high standards of religious life at the abbey, and he and his seven monks gained good reports to the king from the local gentry and were much respected in the neighbourhood. Thomas was trusted by the government too, as is shown by his being given custody of two Franciscan friars who had offended the king by opposing his religious policies.

These policies were soon to have a dramatic effect on Thomas’ own life. In 1535 Netley's income was assessed in the Valor Ecclesiasticus, Henry VIII's great survey of church finances, at £160 gross, £100 net, which meant the following year that it came under the terms of the first Suppression Act, Henry's initial move in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Abbot Thomas and his monks were forced to surrender their house to the king in 1536 and it finally closed in February 1537.

This was not the end for Thomas, however as, shortly before the closure of Netley, King Henry appointed him abbot of Beaulieu Abbey, a wealthy royal foundation across the Solent. Thomas and six of his monks (the other desired to resign and take a job as a secular priest) crossed the Solent to join the abbey of Beaulieu until it itself was dissolved. At Beaulieu he made every effort to save his abbey by currying favour with the government, especially Thomas Cromwell, the leading minister, as well as bribing Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton, another minister (who had his eyes on taking over the abbey for himself and was eventually successful in doing so), with fine horses from the abbey stables.

These efforts were in vain, and it is probable that Thomas knew it, for one of his last acts as abbot before he was finally forced to surrender was to grant the mill and parsonage of Beaulieu to a friend and give his sister a manor house belonging to the abbey, an action that, while it may seem corrupt to modern eyes, was common practice among monastic superiors facing the extinction of their houses during the Dissolution as insurance against not getting a decent pension. The king’s commissioners arrived at the gates of the abbey in March 1538 and, after negotiations, the great monastery surrendered on April 2, the deed being signed by Thomas and 20 of the monks. It is likely that Thomas did not feel very sad about having to surrender his abbey a second time; the pension of 100 marks a year he was given made him a very wealthy man, and in a letter written shortly after the abbey fell he confessed that he was ‘well rid of’ the Beaulieu monks, whom he described as ‘lewd’. On the other hand, he had more sympathy for the people who had taken sanctuary at the abbey and who lived in the abbey grounds. He pleaded with the government for their lives, with the result that they were either given protection or pardons.

Thomas continued his career in the church after the fall of Beaulieu and in February 1540 was made rector of Bentworth in Hampshire. He remained there until May 1548 when he was made Treasurer of Salisbury Cathedral and given the prebend of Calne. He died on September 6, 1550 in possession of all three of his jobs.

Many letters and documents written by Thomas are preserved in the Public Record Office at Kew.

[edit] Bibliography

• Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1541-1857, Volume VI, Salisbury Diocese, 1986
• A History of the County of Hampshire: Volume II, The Victoria County History 1973