MEMORIALS OF THE ABBEY OF ST. MARY OF FOUNTAINS CONTINUED AND EDITED BY J. T. FOWLER, D.C.L., F.S.A. VOL. III. CONSISTING OF BURSARS' BOOKS, 1456-1459, AND MEMORANDUM BOOK OF THOMAS SWYNTON, 1446–1458. Published for the Society by ANDREWS & CO., SADLER STREET, DURHAM. 1918. 388373 At a General Meeting of the SURTEES SOCIETY, held in Durham Castle, on Tuesday, March 6th, 1917, It was resolved, That CANON FOWLER prepare a third volume of the Memorials of Fountains from manuscripts belonging to the Marquess of Ripon and to the Ingilby family. INTRODUCTION. The first volume of the Memorials of Fountains was issued by the Surtees Society in 1863, under the able editorship of the late Mr. J. R. Walbran, of Ripon, F.S.A. The second volume, which was issued in 1878, contains eighty pages of original documents prepared by Mr. Walbran, whose work was cut short by his decease on April 9th, 1869. No one having been found to carry on the work as he began it, the late Canon Raine was requested by the Society to complete the volume. This he did, by adding to the above-mentioned eighty pages an appendix, consisting chiefly of reprints of some valuable brochures by Mr. Walbran, on various subjects more or less connected with the Abbey, and the volume, so completed, was issued in 1878. One of the tracts therein contained, namely a note of Fountains Records and their places of deposit, suggested to me the preparation of this third volume. Among the records described are (1) a book of Bursars' accounts preserved in the Studley Muniment Room, and (2) a Memorandum book, consisting principally of accounts, in the collection of MSS. at Ripley Castle. My experience in copying and editing Ripon and Durham Account Rolls created a great interest in other records of the same kind, and Mr. Walbran's abstracts from the Studley and Ripley MSS. led to expectations on my part, which have been more than fulfilled. The Marquis of Ripon and the late Lady Ingilby most liberally entrusted their MSS. to my care, and I have now copied every word of them. They are not too long to be printed in extenso, and they will serve as excellent specimens of accounts as kept in the fifteenth century. The Bursars' book is a folio volume on paper, loose in its vellum cover, and it has suffered greatly from damp, as also, apparently, from the depredations of mice. It has included, when complete, the whole of the receipts and expenses of three years, namely 1456-1459, but several leaves have been lost. The present number of these is 78 (pages 1 to 156), size about 11 by 8 inches. On the cover are inscriptions and scribblings, now scarcely legible, but the dates 1668 and 1678 can be discerned, and on many of the pages are castings up of sums, translations of headings, and other notes, in a seventeenth century hand. It is remarkable that none of the totals are entered in the original writing; the word Summa was everywhere left with a blank after it. Those totals which were inserted in the seventeenth century, and others that have only now been made out, are given in seventeenth century or in modern form as the case may be. The Table of Contents now provided shows at a glance the various heads under which the receipts and expenses are entered. Such accounts as these, relating as they often do to the most trivial as well as to more important matters, have nevertheless a peculiar interest and value as constantly bringing us into close mental touch with daily life in Fountains, a place now visited by thousands of people, but by most of these known only as a ruined abbey, or an object for a drive. Its memory still lives in these old books, so much more durable and lasting is paper than stone and timber.” The Memorandum book, twice described in itself, pp. 95, 253, as "penes' (or 'propter') seruos siue famulos," is called by Mr. Walbran "Prior Swynton's account book," and internal evidence indicates that it is a record of the management of Thomas Swynton, a monk of Fountains, who became Abbot in 1471, but I do not know on what authority Walbran styled him "Prior." On fo. 8 of the book (p. 105) we find expenses "Prioris et Th. Swynton " (1453-4), but T. S. may have been Prior at some other time. Mr. Walbran has given some interesting particulars about the man in Vol. i, p. 149, but nothing with regard to the alleged Priorate. It is clear that Swynton held some office of impor 1 Mon. Angl. epitomised, 1693. Ep. Dedic. 2 Vol. ii, 104. |