The Cistercian monks who lived at Rufford Abbey received many grants and charters and letters patent of prerogative and extraterritoriality and of confirmation of manors and land and franchises from kings and queens, dukes and earls, barons, lords and knights.
It also secured confirmation of the privileges it had obtained for itself and its tenants, including exemption from secular exactions on all that was bought or sold by them or was conveyed for or by them by land or water, and the right of free warren for the monks throughout their Manors and lordship.
The Cistercians Monks of Rufford Abbey held a weekly market and fair and had the right to cut and sell trees from the Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, England.
The temporalities were spread over a large area, including the parishes of Babworth, Blidworth, Boughton, Bothamsall, Bilsthorpe, Edwinstowe, Egmanton, Eakring, Farnsfield, Kirton, and Coddington, East Retford, Holme, Kelham, Kneesall, i.e. Kersall and Ompton, Kirklington, Kirton, Littleborough, Maplebeck, Nottingham, Ollerton, Rufford, Southwell, Staythorpe, Tuxford, Walesby, Warsop, Welham, Wellow, Willoughby, and Winkburn, in Nottinghamshire.
Abney, Brampton, Brackenfield, Chesterfield, Palterton, and Shirebrook, in Derbyshire; Alkborough and Barton upon Humber, in Lincolnshire; and Rotherham and Penistone, in Yorkshire.