The Growth of a Township
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Chapter Seven - The Creation of an English Estate.
The new era described as 'modern times' was heralded in England by the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. The Lancastrians gained the victory. Henry Tudor became king. Men were indeed entering modern times. A money economy was being developed. An economy and a religion based on the individual were replacing the old order of community and commitment. The whole medieval order, economic. social and religious were being rudely dismantled. The great families of Maltby's history - the de Buslis, di Viponts, Cliffords were no longer of account. New, very different people were gaining the ascendancy. The old gilds and manors decayed. Within less than a hundred years of Bosworth Field, what had been the Church of the English people and part of the Universal Church, became the Church of England with the King as its Supreme Head! Even to this day clergy of the Church of England have to make an oath of obedience and loyalty to the Crown, as well as to the Bishop! "The claims of self-interest were being asserted. Co-operation gave way before competition. Commercialism replaced custom". (Southgate, Economic History of England). This great change is illustrated well by Maltby's next hundred years history.
The old aristocracy was wedded to its ancient order. But it had become enfeebled. The old grandee kept open house for the community. The new men did not afford the wealth for this. They were mercantilists who had capital to invest in land, woods and sheep instead of in lavish parties for all and sundry. They were businessmen determined by their instincts to exploit their estates, newly acquired from manorial and monastic properties. They were ruthless with their tenants who were often deprived of their new homes. Some joined the growing stream of homeless vagabonds, the 'sturdy beggars', who by the time of Henry VIII, (1509 - 1457), had become a major social problem. Their ranks were increased by the deprived monks and conversi of Roche Abbey and other Monastic Houses.
A vast social, economic and cultural revolution was taking place. Land was changing hands two or three times in as many years. It had been estimated that in the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, one sixth of the lands of England changed hands. The new merchant class was beginning to make its way into the ranks of the aristocracy. During the early Tudor period, the gulf between the wealthy merchant and old fashioned country gentleman was disappearing. The most striking example was Ann Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife. She was a highly cultured and educated lady and was great-granddaughter of a London merchant. Marriage to one of Maltby's de Buslis, never mind a King, would in earlier times have been inconceivable. During this period the old Saxon and Norman names largely disappeared. In Maltby, Saunderson took the place of de Busli. Very few of our present peerages date back further than the early Tudor period. So it was in Maltby when in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries the Saundersons and then the Lumleys dominated the district. The monasteries had for a thousand years been a powerful force in English life.. Now as Maltbys story shows, they were swiftly reduce to ruins and a memory. The Country house replaced the Church as the centre of cultural and social life for three centuries and more. Maltby came to be well-represented with such houses - Sandbeck Park, Maltby Manor House, Maltby Hall, Hooton Levitt Hall, Hellaby Hall. For the new mercantile class living standards were rising. Peace after the Wars of the Roses meant there could be an emphasis on comfort instead of defence. The condition of the lower orders changed little, except perhaps for the worse.
The fate of Maltby Manor, belonging to the Duke of Cumberland, the Manor of Sandbeck and the Monastic lands of Roche make a classic example of the vast revolution from feudal to modern times.
With the peace that came after the defeat of Richard III in 1485 the old order must still have appeared secure. The shepherd Earl of Cumberland came into his own again! He had been a loyal Lancastian. Henry VII restored him to all his lands, Manors, Baronies and Castles. The Earl died in 1523. The King expressed his continued favour to his family. He created the Shepherd Earl's son Duke of Cumberland.
In the new individualistic climate, the trading classes came to power. Speculators itching for rich pickings from the monastic lands were quickly to the fore! After reports to the King on each monastery, the closures began in earnest. Henry appointed a Court of Augmentation to deal with the lands and possessions which were now at the disposal of the Crown. The Court was an instrument designed to increase the wealth of the Crown at the expense of the Church and the people of England. The Court sold off the lands and possessions to entrepreneurs quaintly named 'consolidators'. It was all a sort of 'privatisation'.
So it was that the lands and possessions of Durandus's foundation in the Maltby Valley came into the hands of the ruthless members of the new merchant class bent only on making money. Such men were a far cry from the two Richards who in their piety and sagacity gave the lands originally, and from such as the first Idonea di Vipont who gave her Sandbeck Manor before 1241 to the Abbot and Chapter of the Abbey. The entrepreneurs were bent on pushing forward their new economic order based on individual gain. They were of varied backgrounds. Among those invited by Henry's Court of Augmentation to deal with Roche and Sandbeck were London financiers, farmers, a vintner, a fishmonger, a surgeon, a cloth-maker. Most of them hailed from distant London. The syndicate purchased the whole of the estates.
The 2nd Duke of Cumberland appears to have acquired the Roche Estate for a short time. He had inherited his Fathers Estates which included Maltby Manor with its farms and houses, water mills, pastures and a meadow of two hundred acres. However, the Cumberlands' interest in Maltby and Roche ended quickly. The 3rd Duke wasted his fortune in horse racing, ship building, tilting and other extravagant pursuits. Hewet, a London clothier, bought up the spendthrift Earl's possessions at Roche and also the Manor of Sandbeck. From Hewet Sandbeck passed to other speculators.In 1545 Richard Turke, described as a citizen and Alderman of London, bought the Manors from Hewet for a sum of £833. 6s. 8d. All this took place within six years of the dissolution of Roche. The Duke of Cumberland's own Maltby Manor was sold off in 1585 to a local family, the Stanhopes.
The most ruthless and power full of the new entrepreneurs - men like Turke and Hewet - consolidated their new-found wealth. Little by little the new pattern of estates and farms took shape in Maltby, Roche and Sandbeck. After the initial dismembering of the estates there was a time of consolidation in which substantial farmers and yeomen took part.
Among these 'substantial farmers' was Nicholas Saunderson. Nicholas was a member of an old Lincolnshire family. The Saundersons originated in County Durham in the Fourteenth Century. Later the family moved South and bought land at Tickhill and Maltby. Nicholas died in 1556. Before he died. he contributed to his family's fortunes. He acquired land in South Yorkshire and in his native Lincolnshire at Rearsby and Saxby. He made a propitious marriage with Agnes Sandon of Partney in Lincolnshire.
Nicholas's son Robert Saunderson died in 1582. He was described by the South Yorkshire historian Joseph Hunter as the 'great advancer of his family'. But the father had already begun the process of converting the family from purely farming pursuits to a way of life based on the ownership of land. Robert made a major step in the creation of what came to be a typical Eighteenth Century English country estate. Sandbeck Manor, once the possession of the noble Idonea di Vipont, and through her gift in the ownership of the Roche monks for a long time, once more came to have a permanent owner. Robert Saundersons purchase of Sandbeck was shrewd and far-seeing. The Manor was aesthetically perfect for the centre of an English Country Estate. Robert also bought neighbouring lands. Sandbeck and the other lands had all been in the ownership of the London entrepreneur, Richard Turke. The change came in 1549 only ten years after the dissolution of the monasteries. There are times in history when profound changes take place very swiftly.
A Manor House had been provided at Sandbeck for the Manor given by Idonea to the Monks. But Robert continued in his simple farming life in Lincolnshire. He lived at the village of Fillingham, North of Lincoln, on the 'Lincoln Ridge'. When Robert died on 1582, aged 63, his widow Catherine went to live at Sandbeck Manor House. She had married a second husband.
Robert had indeed been the 'consolidator' of the growing Sandbeck Estate. He was the shrewd businessman. In Saxby Church, Lincolnshire, there is a graceful monument in his memory. It records the building of two houses at Fillingham. It then describes Robert. He was a Commissioner of the Peace. He purchased the 'Lordship of Saxby', and was a man of good hospitality. The memorial highlights his piety, 'leaving a house of clay for a mansion of glory, he died at Fillingham, November 2nd, 1582. In his lifetime, he prospered in his way'. If social and economic change had come to England, men like Robert Saunderson were the best to control and direct.
Robert and Catherine had six children. The heir was another Nicholas. Born in 1564, he added honours and titles to his family. Fortune was with him. He inherited Lincolnshire estates from a cousin. He married Dame Mildred Hultoft, a Boston heiress. From the time he inherited Sandbeck until his death he added to the Maltby Estates. In 1627 he purchased the Roche Estate, which had been lost by the spendthrift 3rd Duke of Cumberland. Nicholas also bought Maltby Manor with its beautiful Elizabethan Manor House. The house survived until the 1950s. It had come into the possession of Maltby Urban District Council. The house was allowed to decay beyond recovery. It was the only remaining example of Elizabethan domestic architecture in Maltby.
Nicholas Saunderson also acquired extensive woodlands at nearby Stainton and cottages at Maltby. His growing prosperity decided hime to build a new house at Sandbeck. It was to replace the one in which his mother and step-father lived. It had to be a house fitting the estate of a member of the growing class of landed gentry. There is a representation of this house in an Estate map of 1714. It appears as a tall, three-storied building with gables. In the 1620s, Nicholas has obviously decided to leave his native Lincolnshire and make Sandbeck his home.
The new house was completed in time for Nicholas to reside in it for a short time before his death in 1630. There may have been a private chapel in this second Sandbeck House. There is a record of the Vicar of Maltby riding the 3½ miles to conduct divine worship at Sandbeck. The work on the new house began on 1626. Saunderson employed a builder and a mason. They gave nothing but trouble. On the agreement made with them Saunderson wrote, "Arrant knaves both of them. They performed nothing accordingly, but got my money and never measured their work".
"Cowboy" builders have ever been with us! In the building instructions for this second house there is mention of the original Manor House. Having built up and consolidated the farms, Nicholas and Mildred produced a large family. The Saundersons, like other landed families, had arrived! In spite of his new Sandbeck and Maltby Estates Nicholas maintained his more humble and simple Lincolnshire way of life. His activities are described in his diary of 1607-22. It describes the leasing of land, the rearing of sheep, the selling of wool and timber. The picture is of a man on the move, encouraging his workers. Dame Mildred shared his farming activities. By the 1620s much more of the estate was let out.. Sandbeck was assuming its future role. There was to be a great House surrounded by parklands, woods and tenanted farms.
Nicholas Saunderson's dedication to his farms did not deter him from entering public life. He became M.P. for Grimsby in his native Lincolnshire in 1625. Other honours came. He was knighted by James I in 1603 at Belvoir as he travelled South for James's Coronation. It seems to have been James's habit to create knighthoods and Baronetcies for financial reasons! Thus in 1612 Sir Nicholas was created a Baronet. In 1627 came his final accolade - he was made Viscount Castleton - but only in the Irish peerage. He died in 1630.
With the closure of the Convent at Arthington the "patronage" of the Church of St. Bartholomew, Maltby passed to Henry VIII. The Crown was indeed Supreme Head of the Church of England. In 1545 he appointed William Powell Vicar. The parishioners would be confronted by changes in the pattern of their Church organisation. It is difficult to achieve a picture of the parish in view of the great changes carried out by Henry and his children, Edward, Mary and Elizabeth. The confusion would be all the greater for the interlude when Mary Tudor (the champion of the old ways) ruled from 1553 to 1558. Professor A. G. Dickens describes the "last medievil English gentleman" in an essay. It is the nearest we can get to a picture of parish life in these confused times. The "gentleman" was Robert Parkyn, Rector of Adwick-le-Street near Doncaster. He died in 1569. His Rectorship covered all the changes under these different monarchs. Adwick is only a few miles from Maltby, so in a sense Parkyn, in his writings, gives a picture for other villages in his district besides his own. He speaks first of Henry's ruthless methods in destroying the monasteries and the old social order, while at the same time remaining conservative about the Church's doctrines. With the Ascension of Henry's sickly son, Edward, Parkyn writes of the drastic changes in doctrine - the Prayer Book in English, the changes in the arrangement of the Church building. Then came Mary Tudor. Parkyn speaks of the return to "old ways" until the Ascension of Elizabeth.
Bishops' reports during the reign of Elizabeth show the Church in confusion about worship and discipline; and give a picture of buidings falling into grave disrepair. The records of Rectors and Vicars at Maltby show that Powell was not removed by the reactionary Mary, and was Vicar for many years. Maybe his sympathies were with the dispossessed monks.
As the country settled into the new order of things the old, simple pattern of life continued in Maltby. Instead of the Manorial Lord, the Vicar and Churchwardens ruled. As before, the Churchwardens were elected annually and, as in he old days, collected the rates and maintained the Church fabric.
In Elizabeth's reign parishes were expected to keep a register of births, marriages and deaths. Maltby is one of those fortunate parishes whose Registers have been preserved. They began in 1597 and record events which were of significance in Maltby's life. Except for the life of the new aristocracy, the merchants and yeoman farmers, the Registers present a picture of a village suffering from recurrent poverty and plague. In the entries for 1623 there is a sad entry. It states the two "travelling women" died at Roche. The register says: "Buried at Maltby, two strangers or travelling women that dyed at Roche about xiii November and twenty December 1623"
While the Saundersons were consolidating and moving towards the creation of a great English Country Estate, others of merchant class were attracted to the remote and beautiful limestone village. The first Mention of Maltby Hall appears during the reign of Charles I. An "Inquisition Post Mortem" was taken of Anthony Wright. It is the only Seventeenth Century mention of the Hall which occupied the commanding site where now stands Maltby Comprehensive School. From the Eighteenth Century onwards Maltby Hall figures prominently in Maltby's history. At the same time, one William Spencer of Bramley (3 miles distant from Maltby), built in 1620 "from its foundations" Hooton Levitt Hall. It stood until the 1950s on the limestone spur opposite to Maltby Hall. Spencer settled his son Thomas in the Hall. New wealth and new families were invading the beautiful village.
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