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The History of Shrewsbury Abbey in Shropshire
By David Nash Ford
S H R E W S B U R Y
A B B E Y
Home of St. Winifred & Brother Cadfael
The site of
Shrewsbury Abbey is a very ancient one. A wooden Saxon church of
St. Peter, possibly a small monastery, was recorded here in the
Domeday Survey. St. Wulfstan, the Bishop of Worcester (from
1062), used to stop there to pray on his journeys between Chester
and his own See.
The Benedictine Abbey of today,
however, is a post-Conquest foundation, dedicated to St. Peter
and St. Paul. It was in 1083 that the priest of St. Peter's,
returning from a pilgrimage to Rome, persuaded Roger de
Montgomery, the newly appointed Earl of Shrewsbury, to raise the
already existing church into a grand abbey. Roger had two monks
brought from his lands in Sées (Normandy) to direct the building
arrangements and monastic life was established four years later.
Fulchered, the first Abbot, also came from Sées. The founder
himself took the vows in his Abbey in 1094, three days before his
death.
Though the Abbey flourished,
during the early twelfth century, the monks of Shrewsbury
apparently felt their monastery incomplete for the lack of the
relics of a special patron to honour and bring glory to the name
of God - not to mention lucrative offerings from vast hoards of
pilgrims. The Prior, Robert Pennant, therefore took it upon
himself to find a suitable candidate whose remains he might
appropriate for his Abbey Church. With his Abbot's blessing, he
led an expedition into Wales where, in 1138, he acquired the
bones of St. Gwenfrewi from the inhabitants of Gwytherin in
Gwynedd. Known as St. Winifred to the English, this lady was
brought back to Shrewsbury and enshrined, probably behind the
high altar, with great ceremony. Her holiness did indeed make the
Abbey a major pilgrimage centre, bringing honour and prestige to
its Abbots.
The Medieval Abbots of Shrewsbury
were some of the most significant ecclesiastics in the Country.
They were often drawn into political life because of their great
diplomatic and administrative skills. They would be called upon
to inspect the local militia and survey the town's castle; they
served as Justices of the Peace and as gaolers for important
hostages; and, from the 13th century, they sat in Parliament.
In those days, parliament moved
around the country and met at important sites, chosen by the King
according to where he happened to be staying. Parliament gathered
at Shrewsbury Abbey in 1283, when King Edward I was campaigning
against the Welsh. It included the first ever sitting of the
House of Commons. The last native Prince of Wales, David II, was
brought before the assembled crew who were to decide his fate.
The poor man was condemned to death and dragged through the town
before being hung, drawn and quartered. A hundred years later,
Richard II also used the Abbey for political business, summoning
hither the 'Great Parliament' of 1398. Only the previous year,
the Abbots of Shrewsbury had been given the right to wear the
mitre usually reserved for bishops.
Shrewsbury Abbey was known for its
many scholars and, in the early fifteenth century, its Abbot,
Thomas Prestbury, was even Chancellor of Oxford. He played a
prominent part in the events surrounding the rebellion of Harry
'Hotspur' Percy and his uncle, the Earl of Worcester, against
King Henry IV, as recorded by Shakespeare. Feeling poorly
rewarded for their active part in the King's usurpation of the
throne, the Percys rose up against the monarch and marched on
Shrewsbury. The Abbot met with the rebel leaders and offered them
a paerdon in return for withdrawal, but this was refused. The two
armies clashed on the Whitchurch Road, just north of the town and
the Battle of Shrewsbury (1403) which ensued was one of the most
brutal of the Medieval period. Henry IV was victorious, Hotspur
was killed and the Earl of Worcester captured and executed in the
town.
The monarchy continued to take an interest in the Abbey throughout the 15th century,
and in 1487, King Henry VII gave issued a licence to Abbot Mynde for the establishment
of the Guild of St. Winifred whose members were to offer daily prayers at the lady's
shrine for the good health of the king, the Abbot and the Guild. It lasted only fifty
years, but was reinstated by the Abbey authorities in 1987.
As with all English abbeys and
priories, monastic life came to an end at Shrewsbury during King
Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries (1540). The Abbey's annual
income, as returned just before its suppression, was £615. The
last Abbot, Thomas Botelier, surrendered his church peacefully
and was granted a hefty pension as reward his co-operation. The
King, at one time, intended to make Shrewsbury the seat of a
bishop and to endow the See out of the revenues of the Abbey, the
church of which would have been the cathedral. But the Act
drafted to this effect was never passed. It would have been the
means of preserving some other great churches too, such as Bury
St. Edmunds or Reading. Other plans to make the site a school or
a residence for Royal guests also failed.
Eventually only the nave of the
church was saved. It was given to the parishioners of Holy Cross,
while the rest of the buildings were sold to one William Langley.
The choir, transepts, high altar and lady chapel were all
demolished and a new eat wall erected at the head of the nave.
Other monastic buildings survived for some centuries, however,
particularly the cloister's western range and the so called
"Old Infirmary" which still stands today, though in a
much reduced form. Demolition continued though and, as a parish
church in the following centuries, the historic abbey was largely
neglected. There were major bills for repairs after the abbey was
damaged during the Civil War Siege of Shrewsbury when Charles I's
own chaplain was vicar. It was even used as a prison for the
defeated Royalists after the Battle of Worcester (1651). By the
early nineteenth century, it had been engulfed by the Railways,
though land adjacent to the church was saved from redevelopment
by an Act of Parliament establishing The Abbey Cemetery
Company in 1839. Interest in the building was finally revived
by the new Archaeological Societies of late Victorian England
and, in 1885, the Bishop of Lichfield was left £10,000 by Mrs
Harriet Juson of Shrewsbury for the construction of a new chancel
at the Abbey. Over the next two years, the church was carefully
restored, by John Loughbridge Pearson, to the beautiful structure
that we see today. And it is a pilgrimage centre once more, made
famous throughout the World by Ellis Peters and her literary
creation, Brother Cadfael: abbey herbalist and detective
extraordinaire.
Click for the Architectural
Details of Shrewsbury
Abbey.
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