Despite generally good financial management, it fell within the scope of the Suppression of Religious Houses Act 1535 and was dissolved in the following year.
[3] William was married to Seburga, an illegitimate daughter of a much wealthier and more powerful baron, Hamo Peveril,[4] whose seat was High Ercall Hall.
FitzAlan's confirmation quite explicitly recognises that the gift comes from William, Seburga and Alan but says it is pro salute animae suae – for the salvation of his soul, in the singular:[5] perhaps simply a mistake.
The document refers to Canonicis de Wombrug, implying that the community envisaged in the grant was composed of Augustinian Canons Regular.
The seal in use in the early 13th century bore the inscription SIGILLUM SANCTI LEONARDI DE WOMBRUG and showed the saint holding a pastoral staff, the symbol of a bishop, and a book.
[2] St Leonard was particularly popular in the 12th century following the release of Bohemond I of Antioch, a captured crusader – a circumstance which he seems to have attributed to the saint's intercession.
The benefactors were mostly middle-ranking,[2] ranging from FitzAlan vassals making formal grants to newly-wealthy landowners showing gratitude and generosity.
However, endowments still continued to be made from the former Peveril estates, even though they had been granted to new tenants by Henry II – often to people who had aided him in his Welsh campaigns.
[21] He was sufficiently grateful to include the king's soul with those of himself and his wife when he gave Wombridge Priory the advowson and tithes of the chapel at Uppington.
Roger was dead within two years, apparently in disgrace with Richard I, but Galiena, his widow, continued his beneficence to the priory, giving half a virgate of land at Harrington.
[24] Griffin of Sutton, Madoc's son and heir, gave a substantial area of woodland and made numerous small grants to the priory, including rents paid in cocks and hens,[25] receiving from the canons in recognition of his constant generosity two horses: a destrier and a palfrey.
He then made a range of gifts to monasteries, including two to Wombridge: half a virgate, then farmed by a man called Eilric, followed by a further nine acres - all at Lee, a settlement that thus became known as Priorslee.
[32] Further, he gave the priory two mills on his estates, with the direction that the income from them should support a perpetual chantry at Wombridge for the souls of himself and Hawise, his wife.
He also gave the canons permission to take their carts across his land to obtain stone from his quarries and released them from any requirement to attend his manorial court.
[41][42] In the 1190s John de Cambrai gave a virgate and eight acres of land, as well as a meadow, at Wappenshall in his manor of Lee Cumbray (now Leegomery), north-west of Hadley.
There seems to have been a network of middle-ranking landowners, friends of the Hadleys and mostly vassals of the FitzAlans, who ensured that the priory was well, if not lavishly, funded in its early decades.
Their benefactions were a form of social solidarity in this life, and in many cases afforded them a family chantry and mausoleum that would have been beyond their reach in the great abbeys.
[45] The most comprehensive royal charter was issued by Edward II in 1319[2] to confirm an extremely detailed list of properties and benefactors compiled by the priory.
[2] About 1269 Thomas Tuschet, then lord of Lee Cumbray, gave the priory similar access to quarries in his wood at Ketley, so building must have gone on for some time.
However, the parties were able to agree that the patron should take only simple seisin, i.e. ceremonial exercise of lordship, sending his representative into the priory, but leaving the estates untouched and not interfering in or claiming to license the election.
For their part, the canons were to present the prior elect to the patron, who was then to convey the information in person or by open letter to the bishop.
This saved them from the frequent complaints about sleeping alone that were levelled against the canons of larger houses with more dispersed estates, notably nearby Lilleshall Abbey.
Bishop Alexander de Stavenby alluded to the “praiseworthy conversation” and “poverty” of the canons as reasons for handing over Loppington church to the priory.
[62] He ordered that Brother Thomas de Broughton, who was apparently acting as a lawyer, be recalled to the priory; that a chamberlain be appointed to deal with the canons' vestments; that rules on silent periods, exclusion of women and care of the sick be enforced more thoroughly.
The zealous Bishop Roger Northburgh, on a visitation of 1324, was mild in his criticisms, compared with his strictures at other Augustinian houses in the county.
[10][59] However, Brother Thomas was still running Roger Corbet's manorial courts and the cellarer was failing to eat with the canons, dining instead with the guests.
On a visit to Worfield in the previous year, Northburgh had approved the prior selling a corrody to a chaplain, Henry of Tong.
Brother Roger of Eyton had pretended to embark on a pilgrimage but had actually gone off to live a secular life, in contravention of his monastic vows: the bishop accepted his submission and arranged his readmission and penance.
The Dunstanville chantry was funded by income from mills, as was that of the Haleston or Haughton family, vassals of the Dunstanvilles, who in 1284 yielded up their mill to the priory in settlement of a suit for novel disseisin, on condition that they be permitted to nominate a canon to conduct services for their souls[63] and those of various other barons, including Sir Robert Burnell, the father of Robert Burnell,[64] the Lord Chancellor.
Eyton comments: “No story of feudal coheirship can be more intricate than that of the descent of Roger Mussun's nine daughters.”[65] His detailed tracing of the story shows Wombridge priory acquiring small parcels of land and privileges from the holdings of each of the nine lines coheiresses[66] by numerous methods over more than a century: purchase, gifts, opportunistic lawsuits, persuasion.