A Story in Stone

Abbots and Lords of the Manor

The Early 14^th Century

Relatively little is known of the church during the 60 years following Queen Eleanor’s death, but we do know that Edward I never returned to Geddington and that in less than a century the royal palace had become a ruin.  Although the Crown retained its interest in Geddington Woods until 1629, the close association that there had been under the earlier Plantagenet monarchs ended with Eleanor’s death.

In 1324 Edward III, who had been granted the Manor of Geddington by his father in 1299, learned that:

“the manor of Godynton…is wasted for lack of good keeping and the houses whereof are in great part broken and fallen down”.

[Calendar of Fine Rolls 22 Nov. 1324]

Three years later, in 1327, the King granted the manor, together with the town, castle, and forest of Rockingham, to his mother, Isobel of France, for life.  In 1333 she was also granted the advowson (the right to nominate the Rector or Vicar) of Geddington Church, which she held until she surrendered it in 1356. 

The Black Death

The Bishop’s Licence

Following Queen Isobel’s surrender of the advowson in 1356, and with the palace buildings increasingly ruinous, the King then granted the right of presentation in 1356 to the Abbot of Pipewell Abbey.  After a delay because the then Rector, William de Walcote, was still living, Bishop Gynwell of Lincoln granted his licence to the Abbot in 1358. In doing so, the Bishop:

“…appropriated annexed united and granted the Parish Church of Geytingdon.……to the religious men the abbot and Convent of the monastery of Pippewell…” and ordained that “….the aforesaid religious men shall in the first place construct and build the Chancel of the same Church and the windows of the same competently…”

The Abbot presented William Freman as the first Vicar of Geddington shortly afterwards.

Pipewell Abbey

Pipewell was a Cistercian abbey lying between Wilbarston and Rushton.  Founded in 1143, it was never large in size, with fewer than 20 monks in 1365, and its principal income came from an estate in Warwickshire and from the woods of the surrounding Rockingham Forest.  Bishop Gynwell’s 1358 licence stated that the abbey was in great poverty, owing to various causes, including damage to crops by wild beasts, some disastrous fires, and the sudden flooding of its fishponds. 

The Monks Complete the Church

Within two or three decades of the Abbey assuming responsibility for the church, the Chancel and the present tower were completed. During the following (15^th) Century there were further substantial building works, including all the upper clerestory windows in the Chancel and Nave, and a new rood loft (c1450), with the stonework of the windows in the North and South Aisles also belonging to this period. 

The Pope Writes….

By the early 15^th Century, there were four chapels dependent on the revenues of the Rector of Geddington Church (the Abbot of Pipewell).  However, in 1441 we find this arrangement creating difficulties and the Pope writes:

“To the Abbot and convent of the Cistercian monastery of Pypwell in the diocese of Lincoln. Grant at their recent petition – containing that the vicarage of the parish church of Geydyngton near their monastery are united and appropriated four chapels, distant from the monastery about two miles of those parts, one in each of the towns (ville) of Little Newton, Great Ocle [Oakley], Great Newton and Barforde, and that the perpetual vicar [the Abbot] is bound to keep at his expense a secular priest in the chapel of Little Newton and one in that of Great Ocle, and one in each of the others, which have cure [the care or ‘cure’ of souls], in order to celebrate mass and other divine offices daily and administer the sacraments to the parishioners in the said towns; and adding that the fruits etc. of the said vicarage are so much diminished that the said vicar cannot keep the said priests, and that in consequence the burden of doing so falls entirely on the abbot and convent, to whom the said parish church is united and whose many other burdens are daily increasing – that they and their successors may appoint monks of the monastery to celebrate the said masses etc. in the said parish church and chapels.”

A little later, in 1450, the problem was eased when the chapel of St. Leonard in Great Newton was demolished to provide material for the repair of the chapel at Little Newton.

The End for Pipewell

When, on the 12^th February 1510, Henricus Bisshopp was presented by the Abbot of Pipewell to the Bishop of Lincoln as Vicar of Geddington, none of those present could have imagined the turmoil into which their church and the lives of their faithful parishioners were about to be plunged.  Although he remained Vicar for the next 30 years, by the time of Henricus Bisshopp’s death in 1545, the English church no longer received its spiritual leadership from Rome but from the King, Pipewell and all other English monasteries had been dissolved, and Pipewell Abbey was fast becoming a ruin.  The English Reformation was under way.

John Mulsho of Newton

Towards the end of the 14^th Century John Mulsho of Newton, a confidant of Richard II, became a key local figure and was elected to Parliament between 1388 and 1397.  He died in 1400 and the splendid memorial brass (once in Newton Church) commemorating John and his wife Johanna is now in the floor of the North Aisle.

Around the edge of the monument is inscribed on brass:

Hic iacet Johannes Mulsho  Armiger qui obit die mensis Anno d’ni mill,o CCCC Et Johanna uxor eius que obiit Nonas Maii Anno d’ni millo CCCC Quor aiabs picitur Deus.  Amen

[Here lies John Mulsho, Armiger, who died on the ? day of the month of the year 1400, and also his wife Johanna who died on the Nones (7^th) of May, of the year 1400. Wherefore God is seen. Amen] 

NOTE: ‘armiger’ literally means "arms-bearer". In high and late medieval England, it meant an esquire attendant upon a knight, but bearing his own unique armorial device.

The female figure of St. Faith inside the cross wears a crown, has a halo and holds a gridiron. Saint Faith was a young girl from Agen in France who c.AD290 was tortured to death with a red-hot brazier.  

Inscribed on St. Faith’s right side is: 

S’ca fides [St. Faith];            and on her left side:   virgo + Mr  [virgin and Martyr]. 

At the foot of the cross, a man with cropped hair kneels alongside a woman wearing a veil and mitten sleeves.  From the man’s mouth a brass label (signifying prayer) rises to the saint, inscribed:

Fides virgo pia fis mihii p’picia

[Faith, the pious virgin, became my daughter – i.e. he had adopted her as his patron]. 

And from the woman’s mouth:  

Martir grata Dei tu memor esto mei   [Martyr, by the grace of God May you remember me].

John Mulsho’s  great grand-daughter Anne, and her husband Henry Tresham, inherited the estate in 1460, thus beginning a period in which the Tresham family became pre-eminent in the area.