The Economy and Administration of Boxley Abbey and its Estates in the Fourteenth century
This paper sets out some of the main findings of the author’s ph.d. thesis which examined the surviving records for Boxley Abbey including a range of household accounts as well as more than 100 estate accounts. The quality of these documents is exceptional. Most fortunately the Boxley records at The National Archives relate to the mid fourteenth century, a time when, despite the Black Death, monasticism was at its high point.
This article summarises selected aspects of the thesis findings which include the Abbey’s steadily increased landholdings, some effects of the Black Death and the dramatic improvement in its fortunes with the installation of the Rood of Grace in the 1360s.
The founder of Boxley Abbey, Kent’s only Cistercian house, was William of Ypres (d.1164/5).[fn1]He had been an outstanding military commander during the reign of King Stephen, both ardent patrons of the Cistercian Order. The precise foundation date of Boxley Abbey in the 1140s is not known. The Waverley Chronicle stated that William of Ypres founded it in 1143.[fn2]
Increased landholdings and other assets
The earliest land grant to Boxley Abbey was in 1157 by its founder – land in Boxley assessed at £55, a comparatively modest initial endowment.[fn3]The Domesday survey (1086) had assessed the manor of Boxley at £55 and it seems likely that this constituted the entirety of the 1157 endowment. Domesday Book shows the manor consisted of 5 sulungs of arable land sufficient for 20 ploughs, three mills, twenty acres of meadowland and sufficient woodland for the pannage of 50 hogs.[fn4]Four documentary sources allow the subsequent growth of the Abbey’s landholdings to be closely charted, as follows: the 1189 confirmation charter the abbey received from Richard I, the placita de quo warranto of 1278-9, the Taxatio Ecclesiastica of 1291, the Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535.
In 1189 Richard I confirmed to the monks the manor of Boxley with all its [pg233]appurtenances,5 including land situated above and below the steep North Downs scarp slope there.[fn6]Other early landholdings of Boxley Abbey were in Hoo,7 a house in London which they had been granted by Paris, archdeacon of Rochester,8 a house with messuage in Dover,9 and a substantial area (205 acres) of Romney marshland held from the archbishop of Canterbury.[fn10] The monks expanded their landholdings considerably during the thirteenth century. In 1204 King John confirmed a number of grants made to Boxley Abbey including a marsh with 60 sheep and a fishery at Sharpness in the Medway Estuary. Unfortunately, it was vulnerable to rising sea levels and much had disappeared by the end of the fourteenth century. All of the accounts for Sharpness show that the Abbey spent money every year to maintain the defences. Despite this, in 1374 it was recorded that the marsh of Sharpness was largely ruined by a huge flood tide.[fn11]The abbey also acquired further holdings locally within the hundred of Maidstone, extended their Romney marshlands in the hundred of Newchurch – known as La Chene[fn12]– and the hundreds of St Martin’s (Canterbury) and Cranbrook. Also at Chingley (in Goudhurst parish) in the Weald which included a valuable stone quarry;13 Hasted stated that the monks of Boxley were in possession of the manor of Chingley early in the reign of Edward I.[fn14]
Valor’s consolidated account shows its landholdings were consolidated in three main areas (Map 1): the lands and tenements in the immediate Boxley area (Maidstone hundred); land around the Medway estuary, including Sharpness but also comprising the manor of Ham, or West Court, at Upchurch, the manor of Hoo, and [pg234]two appropriated churches owing tithes, at Stoke on the Hoo Peninsula and at Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey. Valor also referred to marshland in the parish of All Hallows, Hoo, which was called the abbot’s marsh, and to parcels of salt marsh in Hoo.[fn15] - land in the Weald at Chingley, and also at Marden and Staplehurst.
[fg]jpg|Map 1. Boxley Abbey’s landholdings mentioned in the text. Newenham and the upper/ lower granges are located very close to the Abbey. (Prepared by Chris Blair-Myers).|Image[/fg]
In addition, there were outlying holdings around Sandwich and the area on Romney Marsh (La Chene) in Newchurch hundred also including part of the manor of Silwell. Income was also secured from the abbots’ courts at Boxley, Chingley, Halstow and Teston. Records of the courts held by the Abbots of Boxley are held at the National Archives. The Abbot would have held regular sessions because he had jurisdiction over his tenants in the local areas.
The abbey had thus consolidated assets and appears to have maximised reven- ues by the early fourteenth century. It is readily apparent that the planned land acquisitions of Boxley Abbey throughout its history were largely rural or semi- rural. Urban properties were few in number and not actively sought.
Changing Character of Benefactions
Although the surviving documentary evidence for land acquisition by Boxley Abbey is incomplete, it is possible to discern a change in the type of benefactor and type of benefaction that took place in the period prior to c.1350, and the later benefactions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The early donors were very generally local people and families difficult to trace in the historical record. Known later grants to the abbey tended to be made by justices, conservators of the peace for Kent, or sheriffs of Kent. It is interesting that such a group of men should choose to support the only Cistercian house in Kent. Their common link was that they all shared public office in the county.
Administration and exploitation of Boxley Abbey’s estates
The surviving estate accounts allow detailed analysis of the evolving administration and exploitation of Boxley’s estates. They underline the primary role of the monastic estate in supplying food for the Abbey larder and other essentials. Details of the logistics of transporting food and livestock are covered as well as the day-to-day practicalities of running a typical home farm (grange). They are supplemented by the 1360 Assessment of Revenues, condensing in a single document the cooperative relationship that existed between Boxley and its estates (see below). The estate accounts shed light on the role of the monks as employers, the developing role of the Boxley cellarer in administering the abbey lands and the steps taken by the Abbey to cope with unforeseen challenges such as plague and periodic storm disasters affecting the coastal landholdings in particular.
Boxley’s income was based upon a mix of rents and farming profits. At least nine estates had been established by the beginning of the fourteenth century, some of which were potentially within a day’s ride of the abbey, as stipulated by Cistercian statutes.[fn16]Water resources were also harnessed through the three mills owned in the Boxley area.[fn17] [pg235]
The original Cistercian grange as envisioned by St Bernard was located less than a day’s ride from the abbey and managed by a group of lay brethren or conversi who ‘acted as a buffer between the monks and the outside world ... in business and commercial affairs’.[fn18]Wool was the most valuable commodity produced throughout – from flocks at Hoo, La Chene, Newenham, Sharpness and at the upper and lower Boxley granges. Because the dairymen were often also the shepherds, costs for running the dairy were commonly included alongside the expenses of the sheep. Cheese was produced for consumption by the abbey and it was also sold, usually made from the milk of ewes – only Chingley had a cow dairy.
Lay and Monastic Personnel of the Boxley Estates
A single reference to monks performing manual labour on the estates was made in 1332 at the lower Boxley grange. Monks routinely working on the estates was perhaps not uncommon, but unrecorded. The daily work on the estates was directed by the sergeant, a waged lay officer. However, on most of the Boxley estates monk wardens also acted as supervisors at various times.
Labour on the Boxley estates was provided by permanent workers, or famuli, and these were paid a stipend of money, grain (or both) in return for some sort of continuous service – as carters, ploughmen, shepherds, cowherds, swineherds, cheese makers, etc. At the upper grange prior to the Black Death there were between 20-30 famuli. At the lower grange there were between 18-20 throughout the fourteenth century, while at Newenham there were between 7-9 famuli.
Apart from this waged labour, tenants were called upon to perform carrying and ploughing services on the Boxley estates although the evidence for this is limited due to a lack of rent rolls. Between 1327 and 1388 their labour services were often commuted for cash.
Other workers were hired for special tasks and paid a daily rate – such as craftsmen employed to carry out maintenance of the Abbey’s dairy, cowshed, oxhouse, granary, cider press, dovecotes, mills and stables.
Some Effects of the Black Death
Kent went through two major occurrences of plague, the major Black Death in 1348/9 and during 1361. The accounts for the Boxley estates which show evidence of detailed auditing date to the years immediately following the major outbreak when there was clearly a tightening of administrative control of the estates. There is evidence that the production of grain at the upper Boxley grange slowed significantly in the aftermath. It was found necessary to bring certain estates under the direct control of experienced monk wardens. There is evidence of a significant increase in the amount of money paid out in wages after the Black Death – when there was also a sharp decline in fixed rent receipts.
Seven surviving accounts at the National Archives catalogued for La Chene are significant showing the principal expense being a huge £66 19s. 6¼d. to be spent on repairing the walls and embankments in 1351.[fn19]This was likely a general consequence of the decline in the labour force and increase in wages after the Black Death leading to a failure to routinely maintain the embankments and sea defences.
[pg236]The monks attempted to continue directly farming as much of their land as possible for as long as it was profitable. However, the upper Boxley grange had become largely pastoral by 1363, while the farm at Newenham was partially leased by 1375. The distant estates at Chingley and La Chene were all leased by 1360 and this provided the security of a regular income with fewer overheads. Nevertheless, large sums of money were invested at the same time into the highly productive estate at Sharpness/Ham to maintain, repair and extend the river embankments there. Some part of the remnant Sharpness estate was leased by 1392. The abbey always attempted to farm as much of their land in demesne as was practical.
Initially after the Black Death there were problems following the lack of tenants available to take up mills, fisheries and rental properties and this resulted in a reduced income. Also in the aftermath, it appears cash in hand was often in short supply, necessitating a number of short-term loans to cover immediate expenses from one year to the next. Regular loans made to the abbey from a number of sources during this time, included money borrowed from patrons. The accounts show that until 1371 the bursars were constantly juggling loans and debts in order to run the abbey.
The abbey’s internal administration
Analysis of twenty-five bursars’ accounts show that changes in managing Boxley Abbey itself occurred most notably immediately after 1348, around 1360 and around 1371. Immediately after 1348, there was a tightening of control of money coming into the house, so that by the mid 1350s the bursars received the bulk of the cash revenues generated by the abbey lands. The bursars then re-allocated those revenues to other ‘obedientiaries’.[fn20]
The surviving archive for Boxley Abbey includes more than 100 fourteenth- century obedientiary accounts. The collection is incomplete and the accounts vary in size and in quality. The administration of the abbey was conducted by a relatively small number of monks entrusted to secure the financial health of the house enabling the rest to continue their life of prayer.
One fundamental difference between Boxley and other, larger, monasteries, is that, perhaps in common with other lesser houses, it never instituted a distinct estate for the abbot. The advantage of such arrangements (until at least the mid fourteenth century) was that the convent itself escaped the oppressive custody of the Crown during vacancies. It follows that provision for the abbot features prominently in the bursars’ accounts. Nevertheless, the abbott never withdrew wholly from the convent, and continued to oversee and indeed direct conventual affairs. As there was no separation of revenues between the abbot and monks at Boxley, the bursars allocated the abbot a cash sum, and paid the expenses of his office – such as stipends for his staff and his travel costs – directly from the bursary. This allowed the abbot to concentrate more fully on the administration of the abbey.
It is readily apparent that the Abbot John Herrietsham was a major figure in the history of the abbey and his rapid career progression is easily traceable.[fn21]He was ordained sub-deacon at Boxley in 1345,22 and from 1347 until 1351 was warden of the bakery.[fn23]He also acted as monk warden on the abbey estates in the early 1350s [pg237]whilst simultaneously holding the post of bursar in 1352 and cellarer in 1353. After 1354, none of the accounts named him in any capacity, suggesting that he probably became abbot then. The first time he is named as abbot was in 1357 and he remained in that post until at least 1403, possibly 1416.[fn24]
Throughout his career Herrietsham promoted the full implementation of a stricter obedientiary system. This conformed to many of the statutes laid down for the Cistercian order by Benedict XII in his papal bull of 1335, fulgens sicut stella. The influence of fulgens can be discerned at Boxley, requiring a monastery to have two bursars, one of whom was the principal one, to receive all money and then redistribute it. It stipulated that there should be an annual audit, and that the abbot must be accountable to the bursars for his own income and expenditure.
At the same time as auditing began to emerge in the Boxley estate accounts, written inventories were made of goods that belonged to offices within the abbey. A collection of inventories for some of the obedientiary offices, written in the form of an indenture has survived,25 listing the goods belonging to the offices of porter, cellarer, sub cellarer, refector, infirmarer, sacrist, warden of the bakery, warden of the guesthouse and warden tailor.
Herrietsham ordered a comprehensive Assessment of Revenues of the abbey in 1360[fn26]setting out the obligations of the Boxley estates to the monastery and sought to reduce the spending budget. This stricter regime implies that the abbey was struggling financially by that date. In a letter to Edward III in 1363, Simon Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, asked that Boxley be excused from paying its tenths.[fn27]On the other hand, the assessment of 1360 is evidence that the abbey had at least succeeded in consolidating its income, and re-organising its estates after the Black Death.
Cellarer and sub cellarer
The cellarer was normally responsible not only for provisioning food within the monastery but also for allocating it daily to each monk.[fn28]At Boxley, most unusually, a separate office of sub cellarer had by the middle of the fourteenth century taken over this role.
The Boxley cellarer’s duties included managing the woodland around the upper and lower granges, with sales of timber providing his office with a steady income. He also administered the abbey’s works departments, as well as Chingley quarry. The tile house at Boxley made large quantities of tiles, used for various running repairs to the abbey’s buildings. The abbey also sold large numbers. Tester found the tile mosaic at Boxley and concluded that its tilery was the source of examples at Canterbury, Rochester and Leeds.[fn29] The ready supply of stone from Chingley was another essential requirement for repairing and extending abbey buildings; in 1384 the cellarer recorded 800 stones received from the quarry.[fn30] Another of the cellarer’s duties was to supervise the annual mowing of the hay meadows around Aylesford and New Hythe, subsequently leased out for pasture.
Large quantities of fish purchased in London were carried by boat and overland to the Boxley fish house. Boxley received substantial supplies of eels from the fishery at Sharpness throughout the fourteenth century, in addition to oysters and mussels and unspecified marine fish species.
[pg238]The upper and lower granges together with Newenham Court were the home farms for Boxley providing the abbey with a steady and varied supply of meat and poultry. Although the tithes from Eastchurch and Stoke came mainly in the form of grain, both also sent pigs and poultry to the abbey. The upper and lower granges provided large numbers of rabbits from each of the warrens located there.
It is notable that there was a significant increase in cows, bulls and calves eaten from 1372 onwards. This may be more a reflection of farming changes rather than a growing preference for beef in the monastic diet.
The rood of grace and its impact on the abbey’s fortunes
There are only three surviving accounts for the sacrist at Boxley and all pre-date the appearance of the Rood of Grace in the bursar’s accounts.[fn31]A few shillings are listed under ‘offerings’ probably to existing shrines in the church; the abbey possessed a relic of a finger reputed to have belonged to St Andrew and possessed a ‘miraculous’ statue of St Rumwold.
There are perhaps a number of reasons why the Rood of Grace emerged at this time. In Kent, the Black Death was followed by a series of poor harvests in the 1350s and 1360s.[fn32]Saints were believed to offer a supernatural aid to their home churches and districts during such calamities. However, Boxley lacked a patron saint – a wooden crucifix with Christ’s body including moving parts offered pilgrims an unusual alternative experience.
From 1365 a new source of income for the abbey from visitors to marvel at the Rood of Grace emerges in the bursar’s accounts – one that became dominant towards the end of the fourteenth century.[fn33]His receipts recorded money, initially from the sacrist, and then from an obedientiary named as the ‘warden of offerings to the holy cross’. This income from the ‘shrine’ of the Rood of Grace thus emerged as a miraculous bounty at an uncertain time when the monks of Boxley were faced with serious economic challenges.[fn34] The shrine’s precise date of origin is not known but William Lambarde’s Perambulation of Kent (1576) repeated a version of the story which allegedly had been put about by the monks.[fn35]A French prisoner of war had constructed the Cross in order to help gain his freedom. With the aid of hidden wires and various mechanisms the figure of Jesus on the Cross had moveable joints and could move His head with such precision that even the eyes rolled – thus able to display displeasure or satisfaction according to the size of the cash donation. Subsequently the cross allegedly became the source of many miracles and was visited by a young Henry VIII.[fn36]
In 1364, the bursar’s accounts show that the casting and installation of four new bells cost more than £50.[fn37]This may be associated with the archaeological evidence found by P.J. Tester of a tower at the west end of the church dated to the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century.[fn38]Tester suggested that the tower was specifically built to make a more impressive entrance for pilgrims to visit the Rood of Grace.
The Rood of Grace immediately had a very positive effect on the state of the Abbey’s economy. There were no new loans recorded in the accounts after 1364 and many debts settled from 1365 onwards. For example, in 1372 the bursars repaid more than £70 of debt and a further £45 the following year.[fn39] [pg239]As the income from the shrine increased so too did the living standards of the abbot and convent. This change is visible in the bursars’ accounts that identified personnel specifically as ‘abbot’s staff’ from 1373 onwards. Clothing purchased for them was more expensive and luxurious than that for the conventual staff. In 1373 clothing for the abbot’s staff and household cost more than £19.[fn40] The granary accounts introduced ‘abbot’s bread’ from 1373 alongside the conventual bread, both of them made with pure wheat. There are indications that the abbot had bread for his household baked separately in his own kitchen with a number of references to the abbot’s kitchen and to wages paid by the bursars to the abbot’s cook in the later fourteenth-century accounts.[fn41] The high point in offerings to the cross of Boxley shown in the surviving accounts was in Oct 1378-Oct 1379 when the warden handed over more than £224 to the bursars.[fn42] The shrine was still bringing in significant revenues in the early fifteenth century – for example from February to the end of December 1404 the warden handed over more than £78. In the following year, for a 39-week period, offerings amounted to more than £52.[fn43]
Long-term building work was initiated on the abbey around the time that the shrine income begins to appear. The rebuilding of the cloisters, initiated in 1373 is recorded in a contract between the abbot and a stonemason called Stephen Lomberhurst.[fn44] He would re-build the cloisters of the abbey on all sides with four new windows on the south side of the church for a total payment of £120 staggered over a four-year period. He was to use stone from the quarry at Chingley, which he rented from them at the time. However, excavation at Boxley Abbey in 1971 by Tester concluded that the work to rebuild the cloisters was never finished;[fn45] although bursar’s accounts reveal that a considerable part of this work was carried out.
In the same year that work on the cloisters was initiated, more than £22 was spent on making elaborate altar cloths and on beautiful vestments. These included embroidered gold cloth, red cloth green muslin, blue spangling for the vestments, lace and gold fringing cloth.[fn46] They were clearly vestments intended to impress visitors.
Records of expenses incurred on the abbot’s behalf reveal substantially increased costs – included 65lb of candles purchased in 1390, candles and a quire of paper in 1406, 48lb candles and silk for mending his clothing in 1405, and 98lb of candles in 1404 along with various purchases of medicine.[fn47]The account of 1408 recorded that special spices were purchased for the abbot and sick monks in that year.[fn48] The office of warden of the holy cross continued to hand over money to the bursars’ office until at least 1408, which was the last surviving account for the bursars at Boxley.[fn49]This detailed record of the receipts was an unexpected finding of the author’s thesis. Presumably, the income continued until the Dissolution in 1538 when the Rood’s trickery was exposed and burned in London in full public view.[fn50]
[The author’s thesis ‘Redressing the Balance: Boxley 1146-1538: a lesser Cistercian House in Southern England’ (University of Winchester, 2014) can be seen in full on the KAS website.
The end of Boxley Abbey’s story was examined in ‘The late Monastery of Boxley in the County of Kent: Court of Augmentations accounts for the dissolving [pg240]of Boxley Abbey’, Michael Carter, Archaeologia Cantiana, cxlii, 2021, pp. 176- 187.]
Acknowledgement
To accompany the publication of her thesis on the KAS website, the author was invited to draft a summary of its main findings for Archaeologia Cantiana. Unfortunately, family and other commitments made this impossible in the short term. She is most grateful to Terence Lawson for undertaking the task and happily approves his text printed here.
[fn]1|Endnote 10 contains details of an apparently unique piece of documentary evidence for this.[/fn]
[fn]2|H.R. Luard, ed, Annales Monastici,. 5 vols, Rolls Series, London 1864-9, ii, p. 230.[/fn]
[fn]3|The Red Book of the Exchequer, Hall, H., ed., London, 1896, p. 681.[/fn]
[fn]4|The Domesday Book of Kent, trans. L.B. Larking, London, 1869, p. 33.[/fn]
[fn]5|TNA, C 53/45.[/fn]
[fn]6|Compared to some other monastic sites in Kent, Boxley Abbey’s is an easily accessible one. The North Downs trackway (or Pilgrim’s Way), probably very well trodden in medieval times, runs along the crest of the Downs immediately above the abbey and, for visitors from the west, the River Medway is conveniently bridged at next-door Aylesford.[/fn]
[fn]7|The charter confirmed the right to hold a market at Hoo. TNA, C 53/45.[/fn]
[fn]8|Lambeth MS 1212, ff. 208, 209.[/fn]
[fn]9|TNA, E 210/6715.[/fn]
[fn]10|Appendix 1, p. 183: Lambeth MS 1212, f. 128 provides a list of over 1,000 acres of marshland which was held by Boxley Abbey on Romney Marsh by 1205 as part of their manor of La Chene. This supplemented the land William of Ypres had already granted in the area. It was the only contemporary reference ever found by the author in any source to William of Ypres being named as the founder of Boxley. The document names him as fundator eorum – their founder.[/fn]
[fn]11|TNA, SC 6/897/4.[/fn]
[fn]12|Presumably Norman French for oak; current French ‘Le chêne’. There are several locations in Newchurch labelled ‘oak’.[/fn]
[fn]13|TNA, SC 6/897/4.[/fn]
[fn]14|Hasted, E., A History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, 12 vols (Canterbury, 1778-99), vol. 7, pp. 73-88.[/fn]
[fn]15|Valor Ecclesiasticus temp. Henr. VIII auctoritate regia insitutus, Caley, J. and Hunter, J.C., eds., 6 vols (Record Commission, London, 1810-1834), p. 79-80.[/fn]
[fn]16|The figure of nine estates includes the two appropriated churches at Stoke in Hoo and at Eastchurch on Sheppey.[/fn]
[fn]17|The abbey owned two mills at Boxley which the fourteenth-century documents named as Pollmill and Doverlope Mill. The latter was renamed Turkey Mill by 1640 when it was sold. Boxley was situated upon a large vein of fullers earth and both were in use as fulling mills by the seventeenth century Doverlope was named as a fulling mill in two of the accounts of the Boxley cellarer John Northbourne 1337 and 1338 TNA, SC 6/ 1251/8. Valor described Pollmill as a fulling mill and referred to Overlott mill at Boxley (which must be the same Doverlope) as a corn mill in 1535. Presumably Overlott originated from the term overshot, an indication of the type of water wheel involved.[/fn]
[fn]18|J. Burton, Monastic and Religious Orders in Britain, 1994, p. 77.[/fn]
[fn]19|TNA, SC 6/886/19.[/fn]
[fn]20|By the end of the thirteenth century, like many monastic houses, Boxley’s affairs were divided into departments (obediences) and managed by monk officials called obedientiaries. 241 ELIZABETH EASTLAKE[/fn]
[fn]21|The steady rise of the young Abbot John and various of his contemporaries was probably the result of the opportunities offered by the deaths of many of their seniors in the Plague. There is, however, no direct evidence of Boxley’s plague mortality.[/fn]
[fn]22|C. Johnson (ed.), Diocesis Roffensis Registrum Hamonis Hethe, 1319-52, II, Canterbury and York, 49, 1948.[/fn]
[fn]23|TNA, SC 6 1252/8. The bakery accounts survive for 1348, 1349 and 1350 and John Herrietsham was named as warden of the bakery in the bakery inventory: TNA, SC 6/896/20.[/fn]
[fn]24|TNA, E 326/8725; agreement in 1403 with monks of Rochester concerning the tithes of Boxley named in full John Sheppey as prior and John Herrietsham as abbot. In CCR 1414, p. 311, there is a reference to John, Abbot of Boxley. In D.M. Smith The Heads of Religious Houses: England and Wales, III 1377-1540, Cambridge, 2008, p. 271, the next abbot Richard Shepey was in post by 1416 with no reason given for the vacancy.[/fn]
[fn]25|TNA, SC 6/896/20.[/fn]
[fn]26|TNA, SC 6/1253/11.[/fn]
[fn]27|TNA, SC 8/235/11706.[/fn]
[fn]28|C. White (trans.), The Rule of St Benedict, Penguin, 2008.[/fn]
[fn]29|P.J. Tester, ‘Excavations at Boxley Abbey’, Archaeologia Cantiana, lxxxviii, 1973, pp. 129- 158 (146); TNA, SC 6/1252/9: The cellarer’s account for 1349 allowed 10,000 tiles to the Prior of Rochester.[/fn]
[fn]30|TNA, SC 6/1255/7.[/fn]
[fn]31|For 1351, 1361 and 1362. TNA, SC 6/1252/12; TNA SC 6/1253/14.[/fn]
[fn]32|B. Campbell, ‘Agriculture in Kent in the High Middle Ages’, Later Medieval Kent: 1220-1540, ed. S. Sweetinburgh, Kent History Project, 9, Woodbridge, 2010, pp. 46-7.[/fn]
[fn]33|Endnote 6 points out Boxley’s comparatively easy accessibility; this factor would probably have boosted numbers visiting the shrine.[/fn]
[fn]34|The term ‘shrine’ is used throughout this study because the cross was an image that was the subject of veneration by pilgrims. However, none of the Boxley accounts use the word shrine to describe the cross.[/fn]
[fn]35|J. Cave Brown, The History of Boxley Parish, 1892, pp. 48-9.[/fn]
[fn]36|Letters and Papers, Henry VIII, vol. 4, part 1, p. 299.[/fn]
[fn]37|TNA, SC 6/1253/15.[/fn]
[fn]38|P. J. Tester, 1973, ‘Excavations at Boxley Abbey’, p. 135.[/fn]
[fn]39|TNA, SC 6/1253/20; TNA, SC 6/1254/1.[/fn]
[fn]40|TNA, SC 6/1254/1.[/fn]
[fn]41|TNA, SC 6/1255/14.[/fn]
[fn]42|TNA, SC 6/1254/16.[/fn]
[fn]43|TNA, SC 6/1256/10.[/fn]
[fn]44|TNA, SC 6/210/1299.[/fn]
[fn]45|P.J. Tester, ‘Excavations at Boxley Abbey’, p. 135.[/fn]
[fn]46|TNA, SC 6 /1254/1.[/fn]
[fn]47|TNA, SC 6/1255/14; TNA, SC 6/1256/10.[/fn]
[fn]48|TNA, SC 6/1256/13.[/fn]
[fn]49|TNA, SC 6/1254/5.[/fn]
[fn]50|J. Gardiner, ed., Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, on the reign of Henry VIII, vol. 13, part 2, London, 1893, pp. 117, 120, 283, 284.[/fn][pg242]