TREBEIGH,

PRECEPTORY OF THE KNIGHTS HOSPITALLERS

Draft No. 2, June 2003

For further information about the references, see the Bibliography

© Victoria County History and Nicholas Orme

The Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, or Knights Hospitallers, established their first house in England at Clerkenwell outside London in about 1144. During the second half of the twelfth century they acquired property widely in England, enabling them to open other houses, known as preceptories or commanderies, including one in Cornwall at Trebeigh in the parish of St Ive.[1] The origin of the Hospitallers' connection with the county is veiled by the fact that the surviving cartulary of their lands does not include Cornwall.[2] In 1434, however, the compiler of a list of 'The Names of the Founders of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in England', included an entry for 'The Preceptory of Trebeigh' in which he wrote that 'Henry de Pomeria gave the Hospitallers the church of St Madern [i.e. Madron], with appurtenances, in the county of Cornwall, belonging to the same preceptory' and that 'Reginald de Marisco, knight, gave them the advowson of the church of St Cleer in the same county'.[3] Henry de Pomeria must have been Henry II de Pomeroy of the prominent landholding family of that name, based at Berry Pomeroy (Devon), who became its head in about 1165 and died in 1207.[4] In 1206 King John, who had taken possession of Henry's property including the church of Madron, recognised that it belonged to the Hospitallers by Henry's grant.[5] Reginald de Marisco was the son of William, brother of Reginald earl of Cornwall, and occurs as a witness to charters in the late twelfth century.[6] No evidence survives about the donor of the manor of Trebeigh in which the preceptory lay, but Reginald is a possible candidate, since the manor lay close to St Cleer. The likelihood is that the preceptory was founded in the last decades of the twelfth century.

The first mention of its existence occurs in June 1201 in connection with an atrocious crime that came before the king's justices of assize at Launceston. A local jury reported that Brother Simon the Hospitaller and Nicholas, his serving boy, had been discovered slain in their house of Trebeigh, and that Walter the miller, William de Sideham, and William de Rutha were suspected of their death. The first two had fled and were vagabonds; William de Rutha appeared at the assize and claimed benefit of clergy as a clerk and acolyte. He was ordered to be kept in custody. The jurors went on to say that the body of another Hospitaller named Hugh had been found in the stream at Trebeigh on the day after the former murders, and that Geoffrey Sireve and Roger de Rue were suspected of drowning him. Roger, who came from Trebeigh, had fled, while Geoffrey also claimed benefit of clergy as a clerk and acolyte. Two other local people, Gilbert the chaplain of St Ive and Alice his servant, were suspected of receiving the criminals, and both were taken into custody. The evidence suggests not merely an affray by passing evildoers but the involvement of local people, including clergy, the motives for which are not clear. More certainly the episode points to the establishment of a fully working preceptory at Trebeigh by about 1200, staffed by two Hospitaller brothers and at least one servant.[7]

The preceptory was sited on the manor of Trebeigh, a little way east of St Ive church and north of the road from Liskeard to Callington (SX 3037 6718). The manor is recorded in the Domesday survey of 1086,[8] and the road had some importance since it provided a route in and out of Cornwall alternative to that which led through Bodmin and Launceston. It took travellers to the River Tamar at Gunnislake, which they crossed by water (a bridge was built there only in the early sixteenth century), before going on to Tavistock in Devon and thence to Exeter. In the early nineteenth century Trebeigh was approached from the east by a track that left the main road near the River Tiddy, and the tithe map of 1840 shows another track leading westwards directly from Trebeigh to St Ive church.[9] It may therefore have been possible to turn aside to the preceptory while on a journey, without retracing one's steps. The purpose of the preceptory, like that of other small religious houses, was to maintain worship, the religious life, and hospitality, as well as to provide a headquarters from which to supervise the property and affairs of the Knights in Cornwall. The order of the Hospitallers was a centralised one, and legal power resided in the master and brethren of the priory of Clerkenwell, for whom the local brethren acted as agents. Privileges granted to the Knights by popes during the twelfth century exempted their lay property from the authority of local clergy and bishops, including the payment of tithes and taxes, but this did not extend to the parish churches in their ownership.[10] In the early eighteenth century the Cornish historian William Hals believed that the manor of Trebeigh had been 'a kind of franchise royal, exempted and privileged in some respects against the common law, and within its precincts held pleas of debt and damages… and had its prison and bailiff for the public service, as the hundred courts have'.[11] In 1840 the land around Trebeigh, north of the main road, formed a tithe-free area of 308 acres, which probably represents the barton or home-farm of the preceptory.[12]

The Hospitallers' property in Cornwall originally consisted of four main possessions: the manor of Trebeigh and the advowsons of three parish churches. One of these advowsons, that of St Cleer, was disputed by in 1239 by Ingelram de Bray and his wife Beatrice, descendants of Reginald de Marisco, but they failed to make good their claim and withdrew it in return for being received into all benefits and prayers of the order.[13] A further attempt to claim the advowson by Michael de Bray in 1311 was defeated when the Knights produced evidence of the agreement of 1239.[14] In due course the Hospitallers sought, like other ecclesiastical bodies, to extract revenues from the churches they held. St Cleer was the first to be appropriated, meaning that the Knights were awarded its tithes, by an arrangement sanctioned by Bishop Quinel of Exeter (1280-1291).[15] In the papal taxation of 1291 the value of the church to the Knights was stated to be £6 13s. 4d., over and above £2 paid to the vicar of the parish.[16] At Madron by 1291 the Hospitallers received an annual pension from the rectory, estimated at £6 13s. 4d., compared with £5 6s. 8d. received by the rector.[17] In 1309 Bishop Stapledon of Exeter agreed to the appropriation of the rectory, by which the Knights took all the revenues, including the tithes of fish, and the local clergyman became a vicar entitled only to the glebe and 'altalage' (probably meaning offerings and small tithes). He and his successors were obliged to pay the small annual procurations due to the archdeacon, to maintain the church furnishings, windows, and chancel roof, and to accommodate Knights of the order or their proctor when they visited.[18]

The third advowson, St Ive, probably passed to the Knights along with Trebeigh, which was the principal manor of the parish, but it was not until early in 1350 that they applied to the bishop to appropriate it. The bishop of Exeter, John Grandisson, asked the canons of Exeter Cathedral to meet him in the chapter house on 5 April to discuss the matter, but the appropriation was never sanctioned and the Hospitallers remained merely patrons of the living for the rest of the middle ages.[19] It may be relevant to note that Grandisson had previously clashed with the Knights over their parish of Temple in Cornwall.[20] In 1312 the Order of Knights Templars was suppressed by the pope, and much of its property eventually passed to the Hospitallers. This included Temple and its manor, together with a mill in Launceston.[21] In 1336 negotiations took place between the prior in London and Bishop Grandisson to vary the terms of the appropriation of Madron. An agreement was concluded on 30 October by which the bishop allowed the Knights to take a portion of the glebe of Madron in order to construct a barn and other necessary buildings, with free ingress and egress, and the vicars of Madron were exonerated from their duty of accommodating the Knights and their proctor.[22]

In 1338 the prior of Clerkenwell, Philip de Thame, drew up a detailed statement of the Hospitallers' income and expenditure in England for the benefit of the grand master of the order, which gives us the fullest account of the Knights' affairs in Cornwall and at Trebeigh in particular.[23] At this time the property of the order in Cornwall constituted 'the bailiwick of Trebeigh' and was evidently administered from that house. The preceptory itself was valued at 16s. 8d. per annum, and a nearby water-mill at 10s. 8d. The house included a garden and dovecote, and we also know of a chapel, probably with a burial ground, though these are not mentioned in the account. The surrounding estate consisted of 200 acres of arable land and pasture, and 3½ of meadow. Rented land produced 30s. per annum. Small sums of 3d., 9d., and 13s. 4d., were produced by letting glebe land at St Ive, Madron, and St Cleer respectively. The church of Madron returned £32 per annum, and St Cleer £18 13s. 4d. Each English preceptory raised money through a confraria, which was a voluntary collection made in local churches once a year; the contributors were probably given rights of confraternity including the benefit of prayers by the Hospitallers and their clergy. This collection had formerly generated £21 6s. 8d. per annum in the bailiwick of Trebeigh, probably from all the churches of Cornwall, but was now worth only £18 13s. 4d. - a decline that was reported, in varying degrees, all over England and explained as the result of heavier taxation caused by the wars with France.[24] In 1338 the preceptory of Trebeigh was staffed by Vincent de Herdwyck, the preceptor, and Robert de Langeton, both whom were serving brothers of the order, ranking below those who were fully knights and indicating that Trebeigh was one of the order's lesser houses. They lived at Trebeigh with a chaplain and an unspecified number of servants, two of whom were assigned to the preceptor. Hospitality was offered to visitors, but their identity is not explained. The expenses of the preceptory amounted to £20 10s. 8d. per annum, which was spent on corn, rye, meat, and fish for food; robes and mantles for the serving brothers; the stipends of the chaplain and servants; and fodder for the horses of the preceptor and the visitors. Altogether the Hospitallers valued their Cornish income at £75 11s. 4d. per annum which, after deducting the expenses of the preceptory, left available a surplus of about £55 for the uses of the order.

Only scraps of information about Trebeigh survive from the later fourteenth and most of the fifteenth centuries. In 1351 Simon de Meneworth, Hospitaller of Trebeigh, was granted papal permission to choose a confessor and receive a plenary indulgence at the hour of his death.[25] In 1371 Brother Tylman (Tylmannus), the preceptor, gained permission from the bishop of Exeter that the priest he was employing to serve the church at Temple might celebrate extra masses each week, presumably to combine the service with that of another local church.[26] In the early fifteenth century the Hospitallers began to amalgamate a number of their preceptories, either through lack of brethren to serve them or in order to save money, and Trebeigh was united with the preceptory of Ansty in Wiltshire. The exact date of this union is not clear. It has been placed between 1427 and 1432, on unknown grounds,[27] and had certainly taken place by 1452 when Bishop Lacy of Exeter, on being asked to report on the possessions of the Hospitallers in his diocese, referred to Trebeigh as 'formerly a cell'.[28] The effect of the union would have been that the two Hospitallers were withdrawn from Trebeigh, at least on a normal basis, and that its affairs were managed by the head of the house at Ansty, who now bore the enlarged title of preceptor or commander of Ansty and Trebeigh.[29] A chaplain continued to be maintained at Trebeigh to serve the chapel, and two names of chaplains survive during the 1450s.[30] The rest of the buildings and the order's possessions in Cornwall were probably leased to prosperous laymen, who paid rent and expected to make a profit from exploiting the resources entrusted to them.

Towards the end of the fifteenth century registers of the business of the order begin to survive, which throw light on the management of Trebeigh and the Cornish property. In 1495 the Hospitallers granted Walter Trethew, chaplain, custody of the chapel of Trebeigh and a chamber at the end of the chapel, in return for his good service to the order and on condition of celebrating divine service in the chapel in person or by a deputy. He was also to receive sufficient fuel for his chamber, an acre of land called Freren Acre, and a stipend of £4 13s. 4d.[31] Trethew was rector of St Ive from 1475 until his death in 1520, and evidently held the chaplaincy of Trebeigh in plurality with that post. In 1496 the Knights granted the next presentation of the church of Madron to Thomas Hobson, gentleman, Nicholas Nynys, citizen and tailor of London, and Peter Bevill of Cornwall, probably in return for money.[32] In 1505 they made a lease to Bevill for two years of what was now called the commandery of Trebeigh, including all its lands, rents, tithes, offerings, and fraryes (i.e. the confraria collections), excluding woodlands, advowsons of churches, and control of wards, marriages, and bondmen. The lease was described as an anticipacio, and was a common practice of the order at this time, enabling money to be raised immediately through the leaseholder paying the whole sum in advance, in this case £90. Bevill was obliged to pay the rector of St Ive or his deputy for providing divine service in the chapel and to maintain all houses, walls and building with thatching and daubing, and to take care of hedges and ditches.[33]

Similar grants are recorded in subsequent years. In 1508 an anticipacio was arranged with Richard Weston and George Dalison, esquires, for one year, of both Ansty and Trebeigh, in return for a sum of £26 6s. 10¾d. They were bound to maintain chaplains at both houses and hospitality at Ansty.[34] A similar grant for one year, of the same premises and for the same sum, was made to John Babington, preceptor of Dalby and Rothley, and Francis Bell, gentleman, in 1524.[35] These last two grants cannot have involved the whole of the property of the united preceptory, because on the same day as the second of them, 7 July, the Hospitallers granted a long lease of Trebeigh for forty years to John Chamond, knight, of Efford, Cornwall, and John Walshe of Truro, clerk, in return for an annual rent of £60. This, like the grant of 1505 to Bevill, included the obligation to maintain a chaplain, to make repairs, and bear costs, and further specified that Chamond and Walshe should make copies of court rolls at their own expense and send them to the prior of Clerkenwell.[36] Further grants of the next presentation to the Hospitallers' churches in Cornwall were made in the case of Madron (1515) to Michael Bray of Cornwall, gentleman; St Ive (1515) to James Cokkar, Thomas Hartyshede, and Thomas Grove; and Madron (1526) to John, Richard, and Edward Arundell of Trerice.[37] The Hospitallers' own records appear to have been more accurate about the value of their property in Cornwall than assessments made for royal taxation. In 1522 the royal valuation of property known as the 'Military Survey' reported that the Hospitallers' possessions in Cornwall consisted of the rectory of St Cleer, worth £23, the rectory of Madron, worth £18, land in St Ive parish, i.e. Trebeigh, worth £7, and land in Menheniot worth 13s. 4d.[38] The total of these sums fell well below the leasehold rent, and must therefore have overlooked some assets. In 1535 the royal valuation of Church property, Valor Ecclesiasticus, valued the income of the combined preceptory of Ansty and Trebeigh at £90 1s. 9½d., without going into details.[39] A small payment to Trebeigh by Launceston Priory, for rent of a mill in Launceston, occurs separately under the entry for that priory.[40]

The order of St John was dissolved in England by an act of Parliament concluded in May 1540, and its property was vested in the crown. The prior and a number of his brethren were granted pensions, of whom Cuthbert Leighton, the last preceptor of Ansty and Trebeigh, received one of £60.[41] At that date Trebeigh and the Hospitallers' other Cornish possessions were still leased to Sir John Chamond, but in 1551 the king's Court of Augmentations granted the reversion of his lease to Robert Gardyner, king's servant, at a yearly rent of £48, the lease to run for 21 years from the expiry of Chamond's term.[42] On 2 April 1558 the order was re-established by Mary I and granted some of its former property, including the lordship and manor of the late preceptory of Trebeigh.[43] The revival of the order was short lived, since the new prior of England, Sir Thomas Tresham, died on 1 March 1559, and in the following May the first Parliament of Elizabeth I passed a statute annexing to the crown all religious foundations and their property established during Mary's reign, including the order of St John.[44] In December 1573 the crown granted the reversion of Gardyner's lease to Henry Welbye of Lincolnshire and George Blythe of London, and then in January 1574 to Peter Coryton, esquire.[45] Eventually the possession of the manor of Trebeigh came to Henry Killigrew of Woolstone in Poundstock, and passed by marriage through his daughter Elizabeth to John Wraye, esquire, of Bridestowe, Devon, who made Trebeigh his residence and died there in 1597.[46] The site was later developed as a private house, and there are no substantial visible remains of the preceptory.[47]

PRECEPTORS OF TREBEIGH

Vincent de Herdwyck occurs 1338[48]

Tylman occurs 30 Dec 1371[49]

PRECEPTORS OF ANSTY AND TREBEIGH

William Weston occurs 17 Feb 1482-22 Dec 1506[50]

Edward Hill occurs 14 March 1524[51]

Cuthbert Leighton occurs 1534-1540[52]