Tywardreath became very important after the foundation of an alien Priory which gradually extended its authority over St Austell, Fowey, Lostwithiel, Lanlivery, Golant, St Blazey and even as far afield as Lelant and St Anthony in Meneage.
The Priory must have drawn many people to Tywardreath and also much business.
In spite of the great importance of this House, its founder and exact foundation date have not been settled by the historians and unfortunately nothing now remains to mark its actual site.
Bishop Tanner is his Notitia Monastica for Cornwall states:
"Truiwardraith, Tuwardray or Tywardreit - Alien Priory of Benedictine Monks belonging to the Abbey of St Sergius & Bacchus at Angers (in Normandy) founded before 1169 AD by Champernulphus or Chambernon of Bere, Lord of the Manor of Tywardreath or by ancestors of Rob. de Cardinham perhaps Rob. Fitz William."
D Gilbert gives the founder as Will. Earl of Mortain & Cornwall and says it was afterwards re-edified and greatly augmented in its revenues by Robert de Cardinham tempore Rich.I 1190 (see the monastica Angleanum of Dugdale) for which reason he is taken to be the founder.
Robert de Cardinham was certainly a rich benefactor, it not the actual founder, for Lyson records that he gave the Church of Fowey and certain Manor lands at Fowey, and a Manor called Lelant to the Priory.
Also he gave all the tithes on all the provisions of his household except wine, wax, pepper, honey and cummin which had been previously bequeathed by his great-grandfather Wm. Fitz Richard who was supposedly the son of Ricardus Dapifer.
Ricardus Dapifer is mentioned in an old charter of Henry III as the earliest benefactor of the Priory and he was a man of wealth who held the office of High Steward of the household; either under the King or the Earl of Cornwall the foundation has been accredited to him.
Robert Fitz William gave the Church of St Austell, also the glebe and other property to the Priory (Lyson) hence his claim to its foundation.
From its foundation to its suppression in 1536 the Priory had twenty Priors the last one being Sir Nicholas Guest.
Some notes on a few of them are interesting.
- 1st Prior, Andrew - St Brewards Church granted to this Prior
- Baldwin 1169 - Rob Fitz William granted the glebe of St Austell to this Prior.
- Wm Bourges 1333 - A survey of property belonging to the Priory (Ed III 1337) valued it at £226 6s 10¼d.
- Wm de la Hay 1371 - The Priory had four monks. This Prior cut down certain trees in the churchyard which had been planted for the protection of the Church and did not apply the timber to the repairs of that fabric. He was visited by the Bishop's displeasure.
- Walter Barnecot 1450 - In 1486 Henry VII recommended his servant William Martyn to the usual corrody (tax free alms) of the house which the Prior and convent compromised for 5 marks a year charged on the Manors of Tywardreath and Trenant.
- Richard Martson 1496 - In 1504 he made the window in the Priory hall of seven lights of Pentewen stone. He resigned on a pension of £20 and casualty of toll tin.
- Thomas Collyns 1507 - He is certainly the best remembered of the Priors, perhaps because his tomb can be seen in St Andrew's Church to this day, but more probably because he was a wily and obstinate rascal who provided well for himself and various relatives while resisting all attempts to make him resign his office on account of his lax administration. Bishop Oldham upon his visitation in 1513 gave strict injunctions about income and expenditure, education of novices and the moral conduct of the Priory inhabitants. In 1521 Bishop Vesey heard very unfavourable reports of the monks and the Prior would often times be overcome with drink.
Some of his correspondence with Thomas Cromwell is curious. In one letter Cromwell compliments him on 'the good government of his convent'(!) and assures him that the King 'would allow him not only to resign. . . .but would admit of his recommending a successor ?' Collins' answer - 'full of thanks to Cromwell and gratitude to the King', said that 'he owed it to his conscience not to withdraw from them'. Cromwell's answer in a different vein spoke of 'the horrible savour of his (Collins) sins' and demanded his immediate resignation. This letter seems to have secured the immediate surrender of the Priory or Collins' resignation preparatory to it. He died in 1539.
His successor, Sir N Guest ruled until the dissolution in 1536. There were then five or six monks, none of whom chose to continue in religion or be drafted to a larger house. They received small pensions - there is a record that John Fountain got 26s 8d, John Nowell 20s and David Harry two portions of 20s each and Lawrence Kendall £6 a year.
In 1555 William Huchyn was still alive and receiving his corrody (annuity) of 66s8d.
From its foundation to its dissolution the Priory had certainly had its ups and downs.
Although an alien house it was evidently loyal and gave no information to the enemy during the French wars and was therefore not suppressed as many others were but which "for its loyalty or integrity or some other reason stood firm till the general dissolution of all those religious houses.
That its wide spread rule came to be resented, especially by the towns is shown by the following correspondence carried by Thomas Treffry of Fowey to Prior Collins.
Thomas Treffry, the leading inhabitant of Fowey complained to Cromwell of the overbearing rule of the Priory.
Cromwell wrote "Wherefore I require you to agree with the inhabitants of the town (Fowey). . .that their liberties may be extended amongst them. . . .For his Highness thinketh that the said port of Fowey ought to be his (Treffry's) and to be held of him . . . Wherefore his Highness thinketh that ye be very unworthy to have rule of any town that cannot well rule yourself. . .and thus fare ye well".
The people of Golant built their own Church and became vitually free of the Priory rule, and so it went on.
Its proximity to the sea exposed it to attacks from pirates and in 1338 Bishop Grandesson allowed them, when such necessity occurred, to remove for their safety elsewhere, and there to follow their rule until the danger was over.
Certain it is that the Priory decayed from within and deserved dissolution.
Its site was supposedly that of the present Newhouse Farm and here and there in the village are stones from the ancient building. the stone archway forming part of the (old)vicarage doorway surmounted by a stone carved with a Fleur-de-Liis; the carved stone over the doorway of 'The Myrtles' in North street are doubless from the Abbey.
The seal of the convent is though to have been a Saltire or St Andrew's Cross between four Fleurs-de-Lis (Davies Gilbert)
Prior Collins is said to have shipped a cargo of Pentewan stone dressings from the monastic buildings from Fowey to Normandy but the ship foundered just outside Fowey harbour. In the last century quantities of Pentewan stone consisting of capitals, moulded jambs, corbels detc were dredged up from near Pridmouth (S.J. Vincent) which seems to verify the story.
A local gentleman, having taken considerable pains, sent the following communication to "The Gentleman's Magazine" in 1822.
"The ancient Priory of Tywardreath has long been so entirely levelled to the ground that it is not very easy even to ascertain its site.
Some time ago the present Vicar obtained leave to dig the ground on its supposed site in search of stones for erecting a Vicarage house. The place where he made an excavation appears to have been the east end of the Priory Chapel, and some measurements were taken at the time and I have, with the permission of the landlord opened the ground in several places, partly with the hope of ascertaining the form of the Chapel and partly of throwing some light on its architecture, the following particulars may not be unacceptable.
The Chapel appears, as far as can be ascertained, to have been 80 feet long by 57 feet wide, with a semi-circular bend towards the east, strengthened by four buttresses of wrought Pentewan stone, 2 feet wide, and ornamented by four pilaster, within the shafts is a single half column 14 inches in diameter. at each angle was a handsome piece of architecture as it was described to me of which pilaster resembling those already described formed a part, but with the base 5 inches wide and the moulding in proportion.
In the Vicarage garden adjoining the west end of the Chapel a fragment of stone arch was found with a fleur-de-lys elegantly carved in deep relief, the same device appears on the church stile and in a coat of arms in one of the windows of the Church and appears from Tanner to have been part of the arms of the Priory. The wall of the Chapel is the south wall of the churchyard.
The Chapel was paved with beach pebbles and was built partly of common clay slate raised on the spot, the wrought stone was of compact hard porphyry from Pentewan quarries in the parish of St Austell and hornblende from the cliffs between Duporth and Charlestown in the same parish. All the carved work is executed with much skill and taste."
Dissolution of the Priory
Before the actual Dissolution (1536) laymen had a great share in administering monastic estates. For example, Sir John Chamond was the chief steward of Tywardreath with a fee of 66s 8d for an office which was largely sinecure; John Tregrain, a rich merchant of Truro, was the auditor of Bodmin and Tywardreath; John Kempthorne was the steward of the manor courts at Tywardreath.
The Valor Ecclesiasticus, taken on the eve of the Dissolution gave the revenues for Tywardreath as £123 9s 3d and for Tywardreath manor as £8 7s 11d.
The Ministers' Accounts for 1540 gave the following values, the site of the manor and its lands £9 9s 4d, rents of assize £12 11s 4d, rents of free tenants £1 11s 0d, and profits of courts 8s 2d: the total value being £23 19s 10d: the Priory £201 10s 8½d (Figures from Dugdale Monasticor)
The lax economy under Prior Collins probably accounts for the differences.
The monastic income came from tithes, chiefly from churches whose rectories were appropriated to them (spiritual income) and revenues from manors and other lands (temporal income)
It is interesting to note that in the case of Tywardreath, the spiritual income was £99 17s 10d and the temporal income £51 18s 3d, showing the importance of tithes.
Tax-free allowances were made for the fees paid to laymen for managing monastic estates such as stewards, receivers, bailiffs.
Allowances to small officials and various expenses are not shown in the accounts therefore it is difficult to get a true picture of the cost of administration
After the Dissolution, the Priory with its possessions and tithes, came into the market and formed a fruitful source of investment for the landed gentry. For some years the Crown, until forced by economic pressure of wars, leased but did not sell.
In October 1536 the site and demesnes of the Priory and the grange of Trenant were leased to John Grenville for 21 years at £9 9s 4d.
Sir William Godolphin and Sir John Arundell both wanted the Priory and evidently quarrelled over it and harried John Grenville but eventually it was granted to the Earl of Hertford (Protector Somerset) with the manor (value £14 5s per annum); being the King's brother-in-law he paid nothing for it.
Somerset sometime later alienated it to the Duke of Suffolk.
In 1540 Henry VIII had annexed the following property of The Priory to the Duchy; the manor of St Austell value £5 3s 6d; Fentrigan value £3 13s 4d; Trevennen £9 11s 7d; Greadow £10 19s 6½d; Fowey £1 19s 2d; Porthea Prior £7 10s 10d.
In 1564 the manor and 1/6th of the desmenes were sold outright to John Young who later sold to Christopher Copleston. By now their value had gone up to £1466 10s.
In 1573 Copleston alienated more of the demense to one of the Rashleighs.
In 1545 Philip Rashleigh had already bout the manor of Trenant and paid £209 6s 8d in cash for it.
Like the church lands the tithes were leased, bought and sold and changed hands many times.
These tithes consisted of: those on corn in the demense lands of the Priory; those upon wool, lambs, offerings and other small tithes in the parish; those on fish in it: on corn and other tithes on the demense lands of the monastic grange of Trenant; the tin tithe on all lands under the tenure of Nicholas Kendall.
These tithes had all been leased to Nicholas Kendall but in 1546 they were valued by Matthew Colthurst, the Court's surveyor on behalf of Robert Curzon in the Court of Augmentations to which many disputes were taken.
Nicholas Kendall evidently belonged to a local family of repute but the tithes, after some argument, were granted to Robert Curzon, probably partly as a gift by Protector Somerset's self enriching government.
The value was assessed at 24s 7d a year not including a sum of £5 6s 8d that lessees had to pay for a curate's wages at Golant Church.
The toll tin on all the lands of the late priory was estimated at a value of £33 2s 10d a year.
Later on these tithes came into the hands of the Rashleigh family, and in the 19th Century they were worth £400 a year.
The Harris family leased the rectories of St Sampson, St Blazey, Lanlivery, Treneglos and Warbston, all of which formerly belonged to the Priory.
(Rouse. Tudor Cornwall)
In the 20th Century the big land-owners in Tywardreath were the Basset's of Tehidy and the Rashleigh's of Menabilly and although they have sold most of their property here their names are still commemorated in the village - Tehidy Road - the Basset & Rashleigh arms over the old National Schools, the Rashleigh memorials in St Andrew's Church.
With the resignation of Dr Rashleigh as Chairman of the Tywardreath Courts and the death of Sir Colman Rashleigh of Polmear (1951) all active links between the village and the Rashleigh family have been broken.
The distribution of the monastic lands amongst the landed gentry has ended in the re-distribution of that land among the inhabitants of Tywardreath who amongst them 'own' their village.