Deanery and prebendal rentals and accounts

---

Introduction

Introduction

---

Catalogue

• Deanery rentals and accounts
• Stall rentals and accounts
• First stall
• Second stall
• Third stall
• Fourth stall
• Fifth stall
• Sixth stall
• Seventh stall
• Eighth stall
• Ninth stall
• Tenth stall
• Eleventh stall
• Twelfth stall
• General
• Documents relating to stall profits sede vacante (Sterne v Sharpe dispute)

---

---

Introduction

Durham cathedral priory was surrendered on 31 December 1539, and the great majority of its estates were granted to the newly established dean and chapter by royal letters patent dated 16 May 1541. Durham differes from the other cathedrals founded or re-founded by Henry VIII in that parts of its endowment came to be administered separately from the main body of the estates so as to benefit the dean and the twelve major canons as individuals instead of as a body; in fact a Durham stall was, until the reforms of the nineteenth century, a prebend in the proper sense of the word.
The dean and chapter of Durham in the 1540s did not feel that they were a rich body. The first dean anda all the first canons had been monks of the cathedral priory, and during the priory's last years thay had granted leases for 21 years or more of some of the property which in 1541 became the endowment of the new foundation. During the 16 months between the surrender of the priory and the foundation of the new chapter the crown had also granted leases of parts of this endowment. These leases made it impossible for the dean and chapter to gain much benefit from some of their lands in the 1540s (Surtees Society 143, p233), and it may be that the grant by the dean and chapter in January 1542 to Nicholas Marley (9th stall) of Relley and Almoner Barns for the term of his life, provided that he did not vacate his stall, was an early attempt to help out a canon who was for some reason worse off that most of his colleagues (register DCD/B/BA/1, f.26r-v). This is not the only very early evidence of chapter property being in the hands of members of the chapter: the receiver's book for 1541-2 lists receipts of rent from Dr Watson (Roger Watson, 2nd stall) and others for the tithes of Westoe, from the dean for the tithes of the parish of Billingham and from Dr Benett (William Benett, 4th stall) and others for the tithes of Ferryhill. There is also a late seventeenth-century mention of a 2nd prebendary's rental for 1542 (renewals book DCD/F/CA/1 p26). The terms on which members of chapter held chapter property in the 1540s are not always known, but they were clearly not always the same' the grant to Nicholas Marley mentioned above may be compared with a grant of 1 October 1544 to Robert Benett (11th stall) of the manor of Houghall and the former monastic cell on Farne Island, to be held for the term of his life “as corps of his prebend”, with its value being deducted from his annual stipend (Durham County Record Office D/Sa/D440). Different again are two simple 21-year leases of 1545 demising to William Benett (4th stall) Witton Gilbert and to Ralph Blakeston (10th stall) the manor of Pittington (register DCD/B/BA/1 f.34r-v, 56v-57r). A few other early leases, although not issued to canons, are probably meant to benefit canons, eg the lease in November 1545 of one third of Muggleswick to Matthew and Ralph Tuting, close relatives of the canon of the 8th stall (register DCD/B/BA/1 f.45v-46r; Durham Diocesan Records deposition book DDR/EJ/CCD/1/2 f.153-162; I owe this reference and the confirmation of the relationship to Dr David Marcombe), and the lease in September 1569 to Stephen Stephenson, son of the canon of the 9th stall, of Relley and Almoner Barns at the rents, of £7 and £1-0-4 respectively, which the canon of the 9th stall paid for these lands until the nineteenth century (DCD Loc.XXIX:89).
In the accounting year 1547-8 the Receiver's Book lists the dean and a number of the canons as tenants of the chapter. Nicholas Marley (9th stall) has the tithes of Heighinton which were destined to be assigned to his stall; William Todd (5th stall) has a third of Muggleswick, the manor which the 5th stall was later to share equally with the 6th and 8th stalls; William Benett (4th stall) has Witton Gilbert, later to be assigned to his stall; and the dean has the tithes of Billingham which later became part of the deanery estates. Robert Benett does not seem to have Houghall, in spite of the chapter's grant to him. The records are not very explicit, but they suggest a gradually developing practice of helping individual members of chapter by letting them hold convenient parts of the cathedral's endowment. This view of a gradual unplanned arrangement, to be eventually codified in the cathedral statutes of 1555, rather than of a plan laid down in 1541 and gradually put into effect, has a little support from two pieces of evidence. First, the fact that the estates assigned to the individual stalls differ in value right from the start, when in all other respects the canons of each new foundation cathedral are provided for equally, does not suggest a planned development. Second, if in a planned development Muggleswick was to be dividied among the holders of three stalls, it would be natural to choose stalls in consecutive numerical order, say the 5th, 6th and 7th, rather than the 5th, 6th and 8th. Both David Marcombe ( The dean and chapter of Durham 1558-1603, Durham PhD thesis 1973, p123) and a late seventeenth-century canon of DUrham who wrote a treatise on prebendal estates (Surtees Society 143, p233) favour the diea of prebendal estates dating from the chapter's foundation in 1541, though Dr Marcombe qualifies his statement with the phrase “either officially or unofficially”. As our late seventeenth-century canon points out, we could make more confident statements if we had the text of the statutes which Henry VIII presumably issued to the cathedral and the original manuscript of the 1555 statutes.
Throughout the 1550s and into the 1560s leases continued to make it difficult for the individual members of chapter to get possession of the estates which undoubtedly were assigned to them from the time of issue of the cathedral's new statutes in March 1555. Some of these leases, such as the prior and convent's 53-year lease of South Pittington, were old offenders, but one or two had been issued by the dean and chapter (Surtees Society 143, p233-234; register DCD/B/BA/1 f.16v-17v; DCD Loc.XXIX:2). The 1555 statutes list clearly and authoritatively the lands and tithes assigned to the deanery and the lands assigned to each prebendal stall (Surtees Society 143, p120), and record the purpose of these separate endowments as “the provision and increase of hospitatility”.
In the amendments to the statutes dated December 1556 (Surtees Society 143, p189) permission was given to the dean and chapter to take the process of endowing the prebendal stalls one stage further by assigned to each stall, in addition to the lands assigned be the statutes, a share of tithes. The deanery had already been assigned some tithes in the statutes. There is no evidence that advantage was taken of this permission before dean Skinnger's time (1561-1563), but an assignment of tithes to each prebendal stall was made then, and although confirmations of this assignment in 1567 and 1573 ran into difficulties and were cancelled (register DCD/B/BA/3 f69v; DCL MS C.IV.33, p407) a survey of 1580 shows that it had been accepted by that date (Surtees Society 82 p207-211). Yet in dean Matthew's time (1583-1595) these tithes were still regarded has having a different status from the lands assigned to the stalls (Surtees Society 143, p244).
A list (dated 1693) of lands and tithes assigned to the deanery and the prebendal stalls (renewals books DCD/F/CA/1 p163-164) records these endowments in virtually their final state. A list of 1727-1728 is almost identical in substance though different in the details of its arrangement. Both these lists show a few additions to the one in the attempted confirmation of 1573. The 1693 list has one item, a fee farm rent of 2s 4d assigned to the 2nd stall, which is not in the 1727-8 list.
The lands assigned to each stall were known as its corps (pronounced as, and occasionally spelled as, “corpse”), the tithes as its by-corps, and there were also ten hay-corps or parcels of meadow, all in the suburbs of Durham, from which the ten senior canons annually chose one each in order of seniority. Seniority seems to have been determined by the date of a canon's first appointment to a stall at Durham, so that a canon who moved from one stall to another did not lose seniority. The Receiver's Book for 1541-2 contains a list of waggon-loads of hay delivered to the dean and to every canon except Nicholas Marley, but the survey of 1580 printed in Surtees Society 82 shows the hay-corps being administered as has been described above. About the reason for the existence of hay-corps one can only guess: one obvious explanation is that they were intended to help the canons feed the horses on which they were to ride out into the diocese to preaach (as statute 14 envisages their doing; Surtees Society 143, p106), but this theory fails to explain the provision of hay-corps for only ten of the canons. Corps lands, and any minerals under them, belonged in law to the dean and chapter as a corporation, and minerals under corps lands were leased by the dean and chapter for their corporate benefit; it was only the surface of corps lands which was administedred for the benefit of the holder of an individual stall.
The connexion is not clear between the endowment of the deanery and prebendal stalls on the one hand and, on the other, the lotteries for leases organised by the dean and chapter in, for instance, 1572/3 (Surtees Society 82, p.xliii, 249). By these lotteries the dean and canons as individuals became leasehold tenants of some of the property which belonged to them as a body. It is possible that the lotteries were an attempt to provide financial aid to the then individual canons rather than to the holder of a stall and his successors, and that the lotteries were at least in part a response to difficulties which some canons were still having in getting possession of their corps lands. The lotteries were, it is worth noting, specifically of leases, and although the statutes allow the leasing of estates held by the dean and chapter in common they forbid the leasing of prebendal estates (Surtees Society 143, p118).
In spite of this statutory discouragement the practice of leasing prebendal estates was known by 1577, when two of the canons, Ralph Lever and Richard Fawcett, argued against the rest of the chapter that corps lands should not be leased without a proviso that the canon or his successor might take back the land at a year's notice so that he could keep hospitality ( Calendar of State Papers Domestic 1566-1579, p510). In 1581 the Privy Council forbade the leasing of corps lands, but in 1639 dean Balcanquall said that it was customary to lease such lands for 21 years or less with the proviso that if the stall concerned should become vacant during the term of the lease then the lease would expire at the following Michaelmas (university records UND/CH1/B104 p12-21). Dean Balcanquall's statement is supported by a number of seventeenth-century entries in both the Chapter Acts and the Registers, e.g. DCD/B/AA/2 17 March 1662, DCD/B/BA/8 f.281r-282v, DCD/B/BA/10 p.336-338, 374-375, 477-478, DCD/B/BA/11 f.49r-v, 100r-v, DCD/B/BA/12 f.425r-426v.
During most of the seventeenth century leases of corps lands were issued by the dean and chapter under their common seal to whomsoever the holder of a particular stall chose. The Chapter Acts contain notes of a number of grants of leases of this sort; for instance on 6 April 1665 the Chapter Acts record the granting and sealing to Mr Edward Duncon of “Mr Dean's corps”; the relevant lease was copied into register DCD/B/BA/15 at f.23v-24r. Similarly the note of the granting and sealing of a lease of the “fourth prebend's corps” on 5 October 1661 leads to a copy of the lease at register DCD/B/BA/14 f.106r-v. Each of these leases is for 21 years or until the Michaelmas following any vacancy of the stall that may occur before the end of the 21 years. Before the end of the seventeenth century the system changed and leases of corps and by-corps began to be issued by the individual member of chapter concerned. Two such late seventeenth-century leases of by-corps are preserved in Durham Cathedral Library (Hunter MS 8, items 1,22); one of these leases, dated 1690, is for six years provided that the canon concerned retains the stall for that length of time, and the other, dated 1695, is for nine years with the same proviso. A third such lease, but of land and not tithes, is preserved among documents relating to Finchale at DCD/K/LP1/39/4; it was issued by John Smith (7th stall) on 1 October 1698 and was to run for ten years provided that Smith kept his stall for that period.
After the end of the seventeenth century there seems to have been no major changes in the administration of corps and by-corps. No leases of stall estates of a later date than 1698 are known to survive, but the timing of changes in rents (as shown in the rentals of most stalls) suggests a trend towards leases of perhaps five, six or seven years. In 1725 the chapter admitted at a visitation, “There hath been a custom of letting their estates for the life of the prebendary to the great detriment sometime of the corps but we will prevent its being so for the future” (register DCD/B/BA/26 p.107). In the 1780s William Hutchinson wrote of corps being “let, as gentlemen let their estates, or parsons their glebe, at a rack rent, without any fine, and at as high a yearly value as they can” ( History and antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham, II, 1787, p.163); this suggests a situation very like that in 1872, when we are told that “the separate estates of the Dean and Canons ... are either in their own occupation or let at rack rents from year to year, or for a short term of years terminable with their own lives” (Dean and Chapter of Durham Estates' Scheme: report of the proceedings before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, 13 November 1872, p.5). By 1872, to be precise, “the separate estates of the Dean and Canons” meant the estates of the 3rd stall, since sections 49-51 of the Cathedrals Act of 1840 (3&4 Vict, c.113) had handed over all deanery and prebendal estates to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners while reserving the rights of existing incumbents, and by 1872 Professor Henry Jenkyns was the only member of the Durham chapter who had been installed before the passing of that act.
It was normal fror a dean or canon of Durham to employ as his agent for the management of his corps and by-corps a member of the chapter's estate staff; William Warburton, soon after his installation in the 1st stall in 1755, wrote of “the under-treasurer of the Church, whom I employ as my agent to take care of all my matters” (Surtees Society 124, p195). By “all my matters” Warburton meant his corps and by-corps and the supervision of his house in the College during his periods of absence from Durham. Warburton had no other preferment in the north, but an obvious course of action ofr those members of chapter who did have other preferment in the north-east of England was to employ the same agent to manage the financeds of such preferment, perhaps with someon working under his direction on very local matters such as the collection of tithes and glebe rents. Thus it is that associated with the records of the cathedral's central administration, and included in this list, is not only material strictly relevant to the administration of stall estates, such as rentals and valuations, and accounts of income and expenditure connected with the College houses of the dean and canons, but also accounts and other documents concerning the finances of Sherburn Hospital (under 12th stall) and of the parishes of Easington (3rd and 11th stalls), Northallerton (1st stall) and Lastingham (6th stall).
Apart from the stall rentals and valuations in this list almost no records of these estates are known to survive. As has been indicated above, there are some scraps to be found in the Chapter Acts and Registers. Bishop Talbot at his visitation of the cathedral in 1725, ordered leases of stall estates to be copied inot a special register, but this book either has been lost or never existed. Among the plans in the cathedral archives, P/4/5 shows land assigned to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 9th and 11th stalls, as well as some of the areas assigned to hay-corps. The following plans deposited by the Church Commissioners show corps lands: CCD 469 (9th stall), 841 (4th stall), 3652 (deanery), 13644 (5th stall), 13648-9 and 13652 (10th stall). Other plans are among the Durham Halmote Court records (DHC11/V/20 shows 1st stall lands, see also DHC11/V/67 and DHC11/V/73), and the Mawson deposits (MAW 7/3).
Patrick Mussett, 1980 (references updated by Andrew Gray, 2013)

---

For further information, use this link to access the parent description for the series .

---

Catalogue

Deanery rentals and accounts
Reference: DCD/H/DRA
Stall rentals and accounts
Reference: DCD/H/SRA
Documents relating to stall profits sede vacante (Sterne v Sharpe dispute)
Reference: DCD/H/LP27
Dates of creation: 1754-1780, (undated)
Extent: 0.5 box
Documents relating to a court case between Canons Sterne and Sharpe over the profits of the second stall during its vacancy. This case involved the whole dean and chapter. Jaques Sterne was installed to the second stall in 1755, after it had been vacant for three years.