Alien priories, the small dependencies of foreign religious houses
established in the years following the Norman Conquest, were
partly thank-offerings for military success and partly civilising
centres and reminders of home for England's new rulers. Their
foundation in the newly-conquered lands mirrored the success of the
Anglo-Normans in colonising the British Isles, since later examples were
planted in southern Scotland and in Ireland too. In England their
establishment dated from the late eleventh to the early thirteenth
centuries. They passed out of existence over a time-scale which was almost
as long, for from the late thirteenth century, during periods of Anglo-French war, they were under attack from the crown as alleged nests of
spies and as exporters of wealth to the enemy. The consequent seizure of
these small houses by the crown and their vigorous exploitation by the
exchequer reduced monastic life in all these houses and extinguished it in
many, so that the mother houses found it advantageous to sell smaller
properties while some of the larger priories were prompted to seek
denization. Such solutions are evident from the last two decades of the
fourteenth century. Apparent landmarks in this process of disintegration
and change prove, upon close inspection, to be illusory; neither the
‘expulsion’ of 1378 nor the Act of Dissolution of 1414 were such decisive
moments in the history of these houses as was once thought. Instead, we
may suggest, each of these small houses must be examined separately, for
the later history of each was distinctive. The religious life was entirely
extinguished in some, which had become merely manors, by the later
fourteenth century. Courtiers under Edward III and Richard II acquired a number which they used for the endowment of new religious houses; the
Carthusian order was an especial beneficiary. Henry V endowed his new
foundation of Sheen with alien priories, while some others were used to
augment the endowments of existing monasteries and even hospitals.
Pontefract (Yorkshire), thanks to the good offices of John of Gaunt,
became denizen in 1393.
