The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [73]
It was the threat of just such a dispute that had caused the abbot to ask Brother Adam to go through the abbey’s entire cartulary record and make a recommendation. The church in question lay a hundred miles away, beyond even the abbey’s little daughter house of Newenham, in still more westerly Cornwall and had been given to the abbey by a royal prince several decades earlier.
The abbot was particularly anxious to have everything settled because he had soon to depart, as abbots often did, to attend the king’s council and Parliament – a duty which might keep him away for some time.
‘I have two recommendations to make, Abbot,’ Brother Adam replied. ‘The first is very simple. This Cornish vicar hasn’t got a case. The yearly income he is to receive was agreed with his predecessor and there’s no reason to change it. Tell him we’ll see him in court.’
‘Quite right.’ John of Grockleton might be jealous of Adam, but he approved of this kind of talk.
‘You’re sure of your legal ground?’ the abbot asked.
‘Certain.’
‘Very well. Let it be done.’ The abbot sighed. ‘Send him a pair of shoes.’ The abbot had a rather touching faith that anyone who needed placating could be rendered happy by a gift of a pair of the abbey’s well-made shoes. He gave away over a hundred pairs a year. ‘You said you had a second recommendation?’
Brother Adam paused a moment. He had no illusions about the reception he was about to get. ‘You asked me to go over the entire record of our dealings with churches,’ he began carefully, ‘and I did. Outside Beaulieu itself, we have holdings in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire and Cornwall – where we also receive a large income from the tin mines. All these have parish churches. We also own a chapel elsewhere.
‘And in every single case we have been involved in disputes. In the nine decades since Beaulieu’s founding I can’t find one free from legal disputes over churches. Some have dragged on for twenty years. They’ll still be fighting us down in Cornwall, I can promise you, long after we’re all underground.’
‘But the abbey has always managed to deal with these problems, hasn’t it?’ the abbot asked.
‘Yes. Our order has become highly skilful at it. A compromise is found. Our interests are always protected.’
‘There we are, then,’ Grockleton interjected. ‘We always win.’
‘But’, Brother Adam gently went on, ‘at what cost? In Cornwall, for instance, do we do any good works? No. Are we respected? I doubt it. Hated? Certainly. Are we legally in the right in these matters? Probably. But morally?’ He spread out his hands. ‘We are amply endowed with Beaulieu alone. We don’t actually need these churches and their income.’ He paused. ‘I dare to say, Abbot, in this respect, that we are scarcely different from the Cluniacs.’
‘Cluniacs?’ Grockleton almost jumped out of his seat. ‘We are not in the least like the Cluniacs.’
‘Our order was set up precisely to avoid their mistakes,’ Adam agreed. ‘And after performing the task you set me, Abbot, I read the founding charter of our order again. The Carta Caritatis.’
The Carta Caritatis – the Charter of Love – of the Cistercians was a remarkable document. Written by the first effective head of the new order, an Englishman as it happened, it was a code of rules designed to ensure that the white monks would stick, without deviating, to the original intent of the ancient rule of St Benedict. His point was, exactly, that the Cistercian houses should be modest, plain and self-sufficient, so as to avoid the distractions of worldly entanglements. And one of his sternest injunctions was that on no account were Cistercian houses to own parish churches.
‘No parish churches,’ the abbot nodded sadly.
‘Would it not be possible