5 - MONASTIC PATRONAGE

Summary

Patronage is the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, and that is Power.

John Wessington's tenure of the priorate of Durham coincides with a period of English history now notorious for the influence of private patronage and protection. Not even a large and apparently self-sufficient Benedictine monastery could insulate itself from the contemporary search for ‘good lords’ nor prevent the exploitation of its offices and benefices in the interests of their clientele. In a century when the Durham chapter could no longer hope to be as powerful or as prosperous as it had once been, the importance of its patronage would appear to have increased rather than the reverse. Such patronage had never been negligible: and it is unfortunate that only from the fifteenth century does unofficial correspondence survive, at Durham as elsewhere, to fully illuminate the pressures behind the appointment of a steward and the presentation of a rector. Popes and kings had long interested themselves in the richer benefices of the monastery's gift and it would be unwise to stress unduly the novelty of the situation which confronted Prior Wessington in 1416, a situation in which the greatest misfortune that could befall a young clerk was to lack ‘cosynage’. Nevertheless, it is clear that an insatiable demand for spiritual and temporal offices at the convent's disposal created more embarrassment for Wessington than his predecessors.