Though the great age of monastic and mendicant foundation was over by the end of the 13th century, most of the hundreds and hundreds of English and Welsh monasteries, canonries, and nunneries already in existence were going to be around until the fate and force of dissolution befell them in the 1530s. Each of these houses had a patron, for just as the textbooks say about feudalism, "no land without a lord," so we can say "no house without a patron." The patron might be the (male) heir of the founder and first patron of the house, or it might now be some lay person who had bought or inherited this position or had otherwise acquired it, or it could be a high- ranking churchman or institution, or--increasingly as the years passed--it might be the crown, as escheats and forfeitures made their mark. Stöber's study of the role of late medieval patrons and their relations with their houses is written with due regard for change over time and for the various patterns of patronage we can discern for different regular orders. But her basic thesis is that late medieval patrons have received a bad press, in so far as they have been noticed at all, and her efforts at revisionism on their behalf are well documented and pleasantly argued. The book fills a gap in the study of the late medieval Church's ties to the laity; a welcome addition to the analysis of lay piety, secular patronage, and the dynamics of family and regional religiosity.
In the great age of monastic foundation kings and queens, high born and affluent secular figures, and wealthy ecclesiastics all considered the foundation and endowment of a regular house, or the resuscitation of an old one, as an appropriate testimonial to their own worldly status and as an accepted outlet for piety and benefaction. By 1300 there would be few new houses and royal patronage had now taken over much of what had once been a pattern of lay patronage that had been spread across many families, touching many religious orders, and to be found throughout England and Wales. But despite this directional flow, over 100 regular houses (including canonries and nunneries) were still in lay hands at the dissolution and their links with their patrons generally remained positive and supportive despite changing fashions in worship and the liturgy, in the laity's choice of burial sites, and in a widespread disenchantment with encloistered spirituality. Stöber sets the scene with some tabular material (not always crystal clear) in which she distinguishes categories of patrons and the number of houses beholden to those in each category, looking at the situation at the time of foundation, in 1300, and at the dissolution. She distinguishes between royal, ecclesiastical, and (other) lay patrons, though in many cases "unknown" has to get the nod, and she gives a detailed breakdown of patrons for the Benedictine houses and for those of the Augustinian canons (these groups together comprising the majority of English and Welsh houses).
The founder (and original patron) of a regular house or canonry or nunnery was expected to endow the new creation, usually with land but sometimes with gifts in kind or cash or even with parish churches. Late medieval patrons usually continued to accept this obligation, though mostly on a smaller scale, and if their generosity had limits it was often crucial for building and rebuilding projects, for books for the house's library, and for general maintenance and the quality of life. Furthermore, the propensity of so many patrons and their families to be buried in "their" house meant a steady flow of money for the funeral and for prayers, and in many instances for that cornucopia of testamentary bequests in kind and in cash that were part of the on-going circle. Monastic building projects might be graced with coats of arms of the key family in return for their tangible contributions, and secular heraldic devices inserted into new windows or carved over doorways were not there simply to display monastic sophistication touching shields and quarterings.
What else was involved in what was always understood to be a reciprocal relationship between patron and (his or her) house? From the house's perspective, protection from enemies--both internal and external--and patrons could be called upon to lend support in disputes with other lay families or regular houses over property or a murky jurisdiction, or in a contested in-house election, or in a campaign to maintain a house's independent status within its order. In return the patron could expect hospitality, and perhaps membership in the confraternity (with its spiritual privileges), and even long-term care in old age (though this was extreme and unusual). A good patron's name might be added to the house's necrology or martyrology, ensuring that the prayers on his or her behalf were an integral part of the regular cycle of pleas for heavenly grace and intercession. And the greatest of privileges, and one frequently claimed, was the right or privilege of burial within the house. As the counterweight to the orality of prayer, the tomb--and very often it really was a goodly grouping of family tombs--stood as the long-lasting and visible manifestation of the two-way bond between secular patron and spiritual client.
This last perquisite is the most interesting of the various privileges or house-patron links that Stöber discusses, touching family history and tradition as well as monastic memorialization. From the perspective of institutional and social history, burial and family burial traditions are a key to the way in which identification with a regular house was a lay family's status symbol as well as its spiritual fall-back. For some families the links (and burials) went back to the generation of foundation, while in others it was an invented or created tradition, perhaps only begun in the 14th century though usually one that continued through the 15th and into the 16th century. Of course, it was a house and family tradition that was also pretty likely to accommodate a fair number of exceptions; almost no family saw all its members resting alongside each other in any single house. Nevertheless, we have some impressive aggregations; 10 FitzWalters in their house at Little Dunmore, 17 deVeres (earls of Oxford) at Earls Colne, 20 of the Wingfields in the Austin priory at Letheringham, among families that reach double figures. Moreover, since about 20 percent of the 100 or so of the patron-families held patronage over more than one house, the choice of a favorite burial site was a matter of choice, of preference. Thus tracking where they did choose to lie, and why they did so, and how many of them chose to go out in this way, opens a window on questions about a family's pecking order as it weighted the alternatives of the house's identity and its size and wealth, along with considerations of their own regional affiliations, loyalties, and patriarchal identity.
To amplify the general story of how many patron families established a tradition of common burial and focused patronage, Stöber offers five aristocratic families as case studies; Montague, Berkeley, de Clare, Howard, and Scrope of Bolton. Each family exercised patronage over more than one house, so choice of burial site, or the establishment of a dominant pattern, is an issue to be explored and explained. In a scenario with numerous alternatives, these families basically settled for a pattern of collective burial: Bisham, the main choice from among the five houses of which the Montagues were patrons; at the Augustinian Canons of Bristol, from the six houses over which the Berkeleys exercised patronage; at Tewkesbury, out of the 16 houses under Clare patronage; at the Cluniac priory at Thetford out of the record crop of 19 houses for the Howards; at the house of Praemonstratensian canons at Easby, of the two under the patronage of the Scropes of Bolton.
But even these strong patterns were trends, not binding rules. A family might change its allegiance over the years; new houses came under their patronage, their geographical center of gravity shifted, a different house or order might become the flavor of the decade or even the century (as the Grey Friars in London did for many of the aristocratic families). Even in the most clustered family there were usually some who chose burial elsewhere (or who had it chosen for them--as with the duke of Suffolk, after his murder in 1450). The Montagues had favored Bruton before the king transferred the patronage of Bisham to them in the 1340s, along with their elevation to an earldom, and at least eight members of the family subsequently chose the new house (along with three who were buried elsewhere and then reinterred. The Staffords seemed unable to make a definitive decision and their earls alternated between burial at Stone Priory and at Tonbridge. But despite these qualifications--and they are to be found for virtually every family (including the royals: Westminster Abbey, Canterbury, Windsor, etc.)--there were so many advantages to maintaining or creating a tradition of collective burial that it proved an easy path for family after family to follow. It represented patronage in its most eloquent guise. The row of tombs stood as memorials that asserted pride and patriarchy and time-honored commitment. Perhaps a family that lay together would rise in unison when the time finally came.
A few more points of interest. If patronage was a significant thread that bound the affluent laity to the houses of regular religion, with all the reciprocities this link entailed, the thread could unravel as well as connect. When English and Welsh houses neared their end in the 1530s, the ties that bound house and patron were clearly going to be loosened and then, in virtually every instance, cut apart. Stöber tells of lay patrons who just turned their backs on the imminent crisis; see no evil, hear no evil. Others remained loyal to their commitment to the end and even beyond, working to protect their house and in some instances asking that it now become a family chapel or a parish church in which ancestral bodies could remain in a place of honor. And still other patrons, no doubt surmising (correctly) that it would all be up for grabs anyway in the very near future, tried to get hold of a goodly portion of the house's lands and possessions, whether to preserve the spiritual tradition or for more worldly motives.
The tale of lay patronage is largely told in the context of families, and when these can be broken down we find, as we might expect, that we know more about male patrons and the path of patriarchal inheritance and its transmission than we do about their female counterparts. In so far as it is a contributing factor to this gender-skewed view of patronage, lay women were more inclined than men to endow nunneries, and since women's houses were outnumbered by at least four to one by men's houses, and they were usually smaller and poorer (and less attractive for family burials), this too helps diminish the role of female patrons in the narrative. The role or status of patron was incorporated into the package of male lines of descent; another strike against a visible role for women. And even when an endowment or major benefaction came from a marital couple working in tandem, the records of the transactions are more likely to be concerned with him than with her.
In keeping with the interests of this reviewer, this review has mostly been written with attention to social and family history. But this book is also (or even primarily, for some purposes) about religious institutions, and the oversight here is in no way to be blamed on Stöber. In the text she goes through each regular order that qualifies for consideration, from those major ones (Black Monks, Augustinian Canons, Cluniac houses) to such ships-in-the-night as the Bonhommes (with Edmund, earl of Cornwall as first founder and patron of Ashridge in Hertfordshire) or the Order of Tiron (with Thomas de Rupe, heir of the founder and a patron in the 14th century). A long appendix (210-51) covers "some seven hundred religious houses," by orders, amplifying the tabular material by listing each house's founder (who was also, by definition, its first patron), its patron in 1300, and its patron at the dissolution (which for some houses antedated the 1530s). Stöber's monograph not only fills in a significant blank space regarding the social role of regular religion in late medieval England and Wales, but it emphasizes, in one more setting, the extent to which institutional Christianity, in its many form and manifestations, was "big business." The diversity of orders and houses and histories that we get in brief in such a reference guide as David Knowles and R. N. Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses, England and Wales (1971 edition) or from a geographical perspective in the Ordnance Survey map of monastic Britain, is fleshed out here in terms to reciprocity and interaction. Stöber has posed some important questions and she has offered some valuable answers.