Talk:Hatfield Regis Priory

Founder

I removed the assertion that the priory was founded by Aubrey de Vere in 1135 and the claim that there exists a foundation charter. A number of original charters regarding Hatfield Priory survive and the earliest records a grant in 1139. [British Library Add. Ch. 28322, printed in D. C. Douglas, Social Structure of Medieval East Anglia (1927), p. 231.] Therefore we are on solid ground to say that Hatfield Priory was founded in or before 1139.

While many sources state that the founder was Aubrey de Vere, the supposed evidence does not stand up to close examination. The claim appears to rest on the 1655 edition of Monasticon Anglicanum by William Dugdale and Roger Dodsworth. They stated that their source was the antiquarian John Leland, but Leland states that the founder of Hatfield Priory was Robert de Vere, 3rd Earl of Oxford (died 1221). The supposed foundation charter of 1135 is not a charter but a label, written no earlier than about 1300, attached to the remains of a bone-handled knife by which seisin was supposedly delivered for 2/3 the demesne tithes of the manor of Uggley, Essex, said knife and label now in the possession of Trinity College, Cambridge. According to the label, the tithes had been granted to Hatfield by a tenant of Aubrey de Vere primus and Aubrey confirmed the grant on 15 August 1135. If the label records the events accurately, then the priory was founded in or before August 1135.

The antiquary Philip Morant, in his two-volume History of Essex, [v. 2 (1768), p. 506] includes transcriptions of two documents that would appear to support the claim that Aubrey de Vere either founded or played a major role in the early years of Hatfield Priory. The text of one of those documents, said to be attached to a bone-handled knife and dated 15 August 1135, is the same as that of the label in Trinity College except that it confers all the tithes of Hatfield to the priory and the grantor is Aubrey de Vere tertius. The second purports to be a charter of Count Aubrey recording a grant of the church of Hatfield by his father Aubrey de Vere to the priory, which gift the count placed "on the church" rather than on the altar, where grants were routinely placed. His father then witnessed his son's charter. These oddities, the failure of Morant to cite his sources, and the fact that these two documents are mentioned by no independent sources and do not survive, cast doubt on their authenticity. The dispute with St. Botolf's Colchester over the tithes of Hatfield Regis adds to the doubt.DeAragon 22:15, 4 August 2015 (UTC)