17. PRECEPTORY OF SHINGAY
Early in the 12th century land in Clerkenwell
had been promised to the Hospital of St. John of
Jerusalem, (fn. 1) but the first house of the Hospitallers
actually founded in the west was that of St. Gilles
in Provence, between 1099 and 1113, (fn. 2) and the
house at Clerkenwell dates from about 1144. (fn. 3)
Walter, first prior in England, held office 1144-62, and it was he who acquired the land at
Shingay and at Quenington in Gloucestershire, on
which the earliest preceptories were established. (fn. 4)
Between 1154 and 1159 Hadrian IV approved a
composition made between the monks of Old
Wardon and the Hospitallers concerning land in
Shingay, (fn. 5) and in 1159 the Hospitallers were
pardoned 9s. 11d. in the hundred of Armingford,
where Shingay lay, being their share of a fine of
10 marks imposed upon it for murder. (fn. 6) The
manor of Shingay was held by Roger Montgomery, Earl of Shrewsbury, in 1086. (fn. 7) In King
John's charter of 1199 confirming the hospital in
its lands Shingay is said to have been given by
Sybil de Rames, or Raynes, and the Earl of
Gloucester: (fn. 8) the lady may have been identical with
the Sybille de Rame to whom the Grand Master
leased a house in Jerusalem in 1177. (fn. 9) It is not
impossible that 'Sybille de Rame' retired to Jerusalem in her widowhood to live, as the earliest
sisters of the hospital were beginning to live, alone
but under Rule. At about the same time two
sisters were living at Shingay itself. Nine are
recorded in England before the foundation of
their house at Minchin Buckland, to which they
were all removed about 1185. The two who had
been at Shingay were named Amabilis and Amice
de Malketon. (fn. 10) Early references to the preceptory
are few. (fn. 11) About 1200 'the Master of Shingay
that then was' lent 80 quarters of barley to an
ancestor of Ralph Pyrott, lord of the manor of
Sawston in 1279, the church of Sawston being
pledged as security for repayment: when he
defaulted, the church, with its endowment of a
messuage, 50 acres, and a virgate, remained with
Shingay. (fn. 12) Shingay Church had previously belonged to the Abbot of Séez. (fn. 13) In 1338 the vicar
took his meals at the preceptor's table, and the
Abbot of Séez 'formerly patron of Shingay church',
received from it 20s. a year. (fn. 14) The church of
Wendy came to the preceptory with the fall of the
Templars, and in 1338 was worth 20 marks, (fn. 15)
but the manor of Wendy, worth £11 6s., had
been given to Shingay by Sir Robert d'Engayne, (fn. 16)
whose widow, Agnes, made a final concord with
Robert de Manneby, Prior of the Hospital, about
one-third of it—probably her claim for dower—
in 1262-3. (fn. 17) The prior's proctor on this occasion was Brother William de Marl', possibly the
preceptor.
When the Order was suppressed in 1540 the
Hospital, as represented by Shingay, had property
in forty-two parishes within the county, as well as
in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, and Huntingdonshire. From very early
days the preceptors carried out a remarkably
thorough policy of inclosure, which reduced the
village of Shingay to a mere handful of houses,
there being to this day no inhabitants other than
those belonging to the farm which lies within the
moat on the site of the 'Great House' which took
the place of the preceptory. The ordinatio
(fn. 18) made
in 1452, after a long dispute about Peter's Pence,
is stated in its preamble to have become necessary
'because the preceptor possessed crofts in which
once were houses whose inhabitants used to pay
Peter's Pence'; and the fact that the revenues of
Shingay Church would no longer support a vicar,
so that it was in future to be served by a chaplain,
suggests that by then the old village had been
largely cleared.
In 1303 William de St. Leonard, who appears
as preceptor in legal proceedings between 1298
and 1305, (fn. 19) was enrolled as a Brother of the Gild
of St. Mary in Cambridge, paying, probably because he was master of this rich preceptory, the
unusually large entrance fee of 3 quarters of corn. (fn. 20)
In 1338 the prior, Philip Thame, drew up a
report on all the possessions of the Order in England, with a balance-sheet for every manor, and
Shingay, with its 'members' Wendy, Arrington,
and Croydon, came fourth in all England and
Wales in point of wealth. (fn. 21) The individual knight
served much of his active life abroad, and even the
small personnel of religious in any given preceptory
was constantly changing. Preceptors were entirely
subordinate to the prior, who was required by the
constitutions of his Order to visit the houses in his
Langue, and provision was made for his travelling
expenses; 121 days in each year were allotted to
the actual business of visitation: the duration of a
visitation varied from 1 day to 6, that of Shingay
lasting for 4 days. (fn. 22)
In 1338 there was a dwelling-house with a
garden at each of the 'members', or subordinate
manors, of Shingay, as well as at the preceptory or
'bailly' itself. That at Shingay, valued at 20s. a
year, was inhabited by the preceptor, who was a
servitor, and two other Hospitallers, a knight and
a priest respectively, with their servants, and a
corrodarian Roger Basset, also called 'le Port' and
probably acting as gatekeeper. The house at
Wendy was valued at only 6s.; that at Arrington,
with its dovecote, at 13s. 4d., and that at Croydon
6s. 8d. (fn. 23) At Shingay there were two dovecotes,
a water-mill and windmill, the whole manor being
worth £96 7s. 4d. and the church £10 13s. 4d.
The fraeria, or freewill offering, which brought
in the considerable sum of £23 6s. 8d., was
apparently collected through one preceptory in
each diocese—in this case by Shingay for Ely. (fn. 24)
It seems to have admitted subscribers to the great
spiritual privileges of the hospital. John Layer
wrote in the 17th century of Shingay that 'in
auncient tyme they had there a carte called a
fairy cart with which they fetched those from
Cambridge that were executed, and buried them
there—such blinde devotion they imputed to that
place'. (fn. 25) The 'fairy' cart has been explained as
the feretorium, but it may well come from a
confusion of feretorium and fraeria, for the
Hospitallers had the privilege of burying corpses
of persons who had given alms to their Order
which could not otherwise be laid in consecrated
ground—suicides, and such as died during an
interdict, as well as executed criminals. (fn. 26) The
fraeria included corporate members, secular and
religious, and among the customary dues paid by
the chamberlain of the Prior of Ely in 1427-8 was
13d. to the Master of Shingay 'for the fraternity
of St. John for the year'. (fn. 27)
The General Chapter of the Hospital in England met once, at least, in 1371, at Shingay. (fn. 28)
It was called for 28 October by the Grand Preceptor Raymond Berengar, locum tenens of the
master, Roger de Dinibus, and his vicar-general
in England and Ireland, who had been sent to
London on the master's business on 12 June;
John Paveley was Prior, and John de Dampford
Preceptor of Shingay. Unhappily the Acts of this
chapter containing a detailed valuation of all the
estates of the Order in England are lost. (fn. 29) The
accounts were probably drawn for the information
of the vicar-general in making a levy on the
province for the prosecution of the critical struggle
in the East. (fn. 30)
On 15 June 1381 the insurgent peasants, under
John Hanchach, attacked the property of the
hospital at Duxford and Shingay, destroying the
preceptory. (fn. 31)
The division of the Order into 'Tongues', and
the appointment of the Turcopilier, originally
Captain of the Syrian light cavalry, as head of the
whole Tongue of England, took place at about
that time. Sir Thomas Skipwith was Turcopilier
in 1417, resigned that office on being appointed
Governor of Cyprus in 1421, and died in 1422,
being then Preceptor of Shingay and Beverley. (fn. 32)
Sir John Ergham, who was preceptor at least
from 1427 to 1452, in December 1441 obtained
a papal indult for a portable altar, and to choose
his confessor. (fn. 33) Certain heraldic records and
fragments of which account is preserved by Cole (fn. 34)
once commemorated some of the later Preceptors
of Shingay, among them Sir Robert Dalison, who
died 5 September 1504 and was described on his
tombstone at Shingay as recently Preceptor of
Halston and Templecombe [1492-9] and at one
time Preceptor of Shingay; and in 1525 Thomas
Dalison was steward of Shingay. (fn. 35) Dalison's arms
were shown on his gravestone, and the arms of
three other preceptors were in the hall at Shingay
as late as 1747; yet another coat, that of Sir
Thomas Sheffield, was in Wendy Church in
1684. In 1507 Sir Thomas Sheffield was present,
as Preceptor of Beverley and Shingay, at a chapter
held in Clerkenwell. (fn. 36) A letter from the Lieutenant of the Grand Master to Henry VIII,
dated from Rhodes 15 November 1513, announced that 'by virtue of their obedience'
Thomas Newport, Bailiff of Eagle, and Thomas
Sheffield, Preceptor of Shingay and Treasurer of
the Order, had arrived at Rhodes, and requested
that they might remain there. (fn. 37) Another letter
of 16 July 1515, in which Sheffield is called
Preceptor of Beverley, requested that the same
two knights might still remain at Rhodes. (fn. 38) In
October 1518 Henry VIII received a letter from
Saragossa announcing that 'an ambasade is come
thither from Rhodes, being a Lord of France and
Sir Thomas Shefelde, for the reforming of their
Religio in those parts'. (fn. 39) Sheffield was perhaps at
his preceptory early in 1522, for an heraldic window, which seems to have been in Wendy Church
in 1684, showed his arms—a cheveron between 3
garbs—quartering those of Lound of Butterwick
in Lincolnshire, with the inscription 'Orate pro
bono statu Thome de Sheffield militis magni
seneschalli Rhodi et Preceptoris Preceptorii de
Shengay ac Beverley qui istam capellam de novo
prima fundatione reedificavit in an: 1522'. (fn. 40) He
was present with thirteen other English knights
during the greater part of the siege of Rhodes,
and commanded the Palace battery. (fn. 41) On 4 May
1523 he was appointed Grand Seneschal, that is,
the master's right-hand man in all but chancery
work, and is said to have died at Viterbo on
10 August 1524. (fn. 42)
At the end of 1533 Sir William Weston,
Prior of England, was called upon to order the
Turcopilier (who was at this time normally resident in England), Sir Edward Hill, Commander
of Shingay, and another preceptor to proceed to
Malta, if they were not already on their way
thither, and on 17 March 1535 Hill, Sir Ambrose
Cave, and Sir Thomas Copuldyke were again
peremptorily called to the convent. (fn. 43) Ambrose
Cave had been admitted into the Order at a Provincial Chapter in England on 3 October 1524,
together with Robert Dalison the younger,
Thomas Copuldyke, and eleven others. (fn. 44) When
Shingay fell vacant by the death of Edward Hill
in 1536 he applied for that preceptory as his
meliorment. His application was opposed by Sir
Antony Rogers and Sir John Babington, the
younger, on the ground that he had not resided in
his Commandery of Yeveley and Barrow for five
years, and Sir Thomas Dingley, Preceptor of
Baddesley and Mayne, was instituted by Weston,
the prior, who was his uncle. (fn. 45) There was an
irregularity about the nomination of Dingley, (fn. 46)
and shortly after his appointment he was attainted
of treason, apparently for showing sympathy with
the Pilgrimage of Grace, (fn. 47) and executed on
8 July 1539. (fn. 48)
Under the Act of Attainder the king seized
Dingley's preceptories as the property of a traitor,
and a private act was passed shortly afterwards
granting assurance of the Commandery of Shingay to Sir Richard Longe, and of the Commandery
of Baddesley, Hampshire, to Sir Thomas Seymour in tail male. (fn. 49) The Hospital in England
was dissolved by Statute in April 1540; on
22 April Sir Henry Longe was confirmed in
possession of 'the preceptory or lordship' of Shingay at a rent of £17 10s. 6d., and a long list of
parishes in which the property lay was given; (fn. 50)
but on 20 July 1541 Bishop Goodrich, still
referring to the estates under that name, ordained
that, as the revenues of the church of Shingay
were no longer sufficient to support a vicar, the
preceptory must provide a chaplain and indemnify
the bishop and archdeacon by annual payments of
2s. and 8s. 4d. respectively. (fn. 51) Sir Ambrose Cave
had been appointed by the Grand Master but had
never obtained effective possession of Shingay,
but on 29 December 1540, when pensions were
granted to eleven preceptors, Ambrose Cave received an annuity of 100 marks out of the possessions of the hospital in Leicestershire. (fn. 52) The
house had been valued at £175 4s. 6d. in 1535. (fn. 53)
The chapel of the preceptory, for the serving
of which Goodrich made provision in 1541, was
still standing in 1643 when Dowsing saw 'a
crucifix and three of the Marys with her children and 12 pictures more', probably in stained
glass, (fn. 54) but was pulled down about 1697. (fn. 55)
Preceptors of Shingay (fn. 56)
Nicholas de Wrotham, (fn. 57) before 1260
William de St. Leonard, occurs 1296, 1305
Nicholas Basset, occurs 1338
John de Dampford, occurs 1371
William Thweyt, before 1378
John Cavendish, occurs 1381
Thomas de Skipwith, died 1422
John Ergham, occurs 1427, 1452
Thomas Green, occurs 1481, died 1502
Robert Dalison, died 1504
Thomas Sheffield, occurs 1507, died 1524
Edward Hill, or Hills, occurs 1533, died 1536
Thomas Dingley, irregularly appointed, 1536,
attainted 1539
Ambrose Cave, appointed 1537(?), never held
the position.