The Fountains Abbey Lease Book

edited by D.J.H. Michelmore (1981)

 

This volume is en edition of a register of leases and indentures compiled by Abbot William Thryske, probably in 1533. Additional material was added during the abbacy of Marmaduke Bradley, the last abbot of Fountains.

The lease book provides a detailed insight into the economy of the richest Cictercial abbey in England from the late-fifteenth century until the Dissolution. Most of its estates lay in Yorkshire, although it also possessed property in Cumberland and in Boston (Lincolnshire). By the end of the Middle Ages, a significant proportion of the abbey’s income was derived from dairy-farming; the Lease Book contains important material on this aspect of late- medieval pastoral husbandry, as well as on transhumance in relation to sheep flocks, which were pastured on the limestone uplands of Craven in summer and on lower lands to the east in winter. It also provides details of the relationship between the monastery and its tenants and of their social status, inheritance customs and ambitions.

A general introduction discusses daily life in the abbey in the sixteenth century, its economy, the management of its estates and the monastic servants and tenants. Notes to the leases provide additional information derived from a number of related documents ranging in date from the mid-fifteenth century until the Dissolution. The volume concludes with a gazetteer giving grid references for all the estates mentioned in the volume. An appendix contains the text of thirteen additional documents which were not transcribed into the Lease Book.