Thicket Priory I: Foundation to Dissolution c.1180-1539

Considerable work has been expended by academics and historians on the history of the great abbeys and monasteries that covered the English landscape since the Norman Conquest. However, the same cannot be said about the lesser religious houses, and even less so on nunneries.

In recent times some attention has fallen on even the most humble of these priories, and few were as humble as the Benedictine Priory of Thicket in the Ouse and Derwent area of the East Riding of Yorkshire, a sparsely populated area that was heavily wooded with low quality scrub and thickets and subject to frequent flooding.

Thicket Priory was founded before 1180, possibly as early as 1162, and survived until it was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1539. Thicket followed the Rule of St. Benedict, but also claimed to be of Cistercian Order, which was disputed and led to a case before the Ecclesiastical Court of York. In order to understand the issues at the heart of this case the background to the Benedictines and Cistercians is briefly discussed in the opening chapter.

Most nunneries in England during the medieval period were poor, and this was the case in the East Riding of Yorkshire, where none came close to the GBP200 per annum threshold to avoid the first wave of Dissolutions. Thicket was middling in income, having a clear annual value of under GBP21 per annum.

It is hoped that this monograph will add to the corpus of histories of these smaller religious houses.