Titchfield Abbey

The Abbey of St Mary and St John the Evangelist at Titchfield was founded in 1232 by Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, for Premonstratensian canons.

St Norbert founded the Premonstratensian Order in 1121. These were canons regular', who lived a common life under monastic vows but whose rule, ascribed to St Augustine, was rather less exacting than the Benedictine rule of monks properly so-called. As he could not reform his fellow canons of the cathedral chapter of Xanten in northwestern Germany he left them and became a wandering preacher in France and Flanders until the bishop of Laon in north-east France persuaded him to stay in that diocese. St Norbert settled about twelve miles from Laon in a forest which received the name of Préniontre and there he attracted disciples. He adopted the rule of St Augustine for his community and added many precepts for a strict life. In due course several monasteries were founded, which, according to the practice of the new Order, were reckoned as abbeys from the beginning. In 1126 Norbert became archbishop of Magdeburg. Shortly afterwards the Premonstratensian abbots met together; they compiled a book of customs and took much from the uses and statutes of the Cistercians, who had recently been established as a reformed order of Benedictine discipline.

The Premonstratensians thus came to occupy a similar place vis-ci-vis the Augustinians. The Order was divided into provinces and two abbots were each year appointed to visit the houses of the provinces and report to the annual general chapter at Prémontré. The Order was exempt from episcopal visitation, though in the case of Titchfield the famous bishop William of Wykeham asserted a modified right of visitation on the grounds that it had been founded by one of his predecessors. The canons wore a white habit and were thus known as 'White Canons', to distinguish them from the Augustinian canons, who wore black.

The first English monastery of the Order was founded at Newhouse in Lincolnshire, in 1143; in all, there came to be thirty-three houses of the Premonstratensian Order in England and Wales, two of them for women. As they were often in isolated positions considerable remains survive of a disproportionately large number of these monasteries.

Titchfield was the latest house of this Order to be founded in England. The first abbot and canons came from a previous foundation of Peter des Roches at Halesowen in Worcestershire; this was a daughter-house of Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire and was founded soon after 1214.

The history of the monastery was uneventful. An undated list in a register written at Titchfield gives the names of the abbots, of whom eleven were buried in the east walk of the cloister, the first before the door of the chapter house, another near the door of the library and another at the entrance to the church before the altar of St Richard dc Wych, Bishop of Chichester, who was canonised in 1273. In 1291 Pope Nicholas IV granted an indulgence to penitents who visited the church and gave alms. Several of the abbots in the fourteenth century were noted as prudent rulers.

The English abbots of the Order obeyed Edward I's prohibition against sending money to mother-houses in France and they refused to pay taxes demanded by the abbot of Prémontré and the General Chapter. On account of their resistance they were not reckoned as alien priories and escaped penal taxation in the Hundred Years War with France. The abbot of Titchfield was summoned to the House of Lords on four occasions. Several royal visits in the Middle Ages are recorded: Richard II and Anne of Bohemia were entertained at the Abbey in 1393; Henry V visited before setting off for the French wars; and it was probably in this abbey church that Henry VI was married in 1445 by Bishop Ayscough of Salisbury to Margaret of Anjou, who had already been married to him by proxy before sailing for England.

Glimpses of life in tile monastery are shown in the Prcmonstratensian records of visitations from 1478 to 1502, conducted by Richard Redman, Abbot of Shap and, at that time, Bishop of St Asaph, who held a commission for life, from 1459, as the abbot of Préniontré' s representative in England. The number of canons was fourteen or fifteen, and usually two of them served as vicars of the Parish Churches of Titchfield and Corhampton. In 1482 and 1488 the administration was noted as excellent and the buildings were in good repair. Abbot William Austen, who died in 1485, built the house called the 'Grete Place', the spacious Abbot's House, which in turn gave its name to the even more spacious house into which the whole abbey was later transformed; he also restored the windows in domestic buildings, described as 'all the chambers'. In 1498 there were only eleven canons: the abbot was told to increase the number and to provide a suitable infirmary for sick canons.

In 1512 Pope Julius II exempted the English houses of the Order from foreign jurisdiction and the abbot of Welbeck was recognised as the head of the Order in this country. John Maxey, abbot of Welbeck about ~ became Bishop of Elphin in Ireland in 1525 and he also held the abbey of Titchfield, in commendam with Welbeck, from 1529 until his death in August 1536. A note in the Titchfield register records that he rebuilt the monastery and church, described as 'ruinous', a general term for buildings in urgent need of repair.

Abbot Maxey was succeeded at Titchfield by John Sympson, late abbot of the Premonstratensian house of Durford, just across the Hampshire-Sussex border, which had fallen under the Act of 1536 for the suppression of monasteries with a net income less than ~200. He resigned very soon and was promised a pension by the canons of a year. It may be surmised that John Salisbury, who had been consecrated as suffragan bishop of Thetford on 19 March 1536, took the office of abbot of Titchfield, to be held in commendam, with the intention of surrendering the monastery to the King's Commissioners. The surrender was made on t8 December 1537; the abbot was awarded a pension of £66 13s 4d, eight canons £6 13s 4d each and three novices £3.

Rose Graham DOE