86-655: Heronsgate (or formerly Herringsgate ) is a settlement on the outskirts of Chorleywood , Hertfordshire founded by Feargus O'Connor and the Chartist Cooperative Land Company (later the National Land Company) as O'Connorsville or O'Connorville in 1846. The Chartist Cooperative Land Society was launched by the National Charter Association in 1845 with the aim of resettling industrial workers from
172-543: A papal bull authorising some limited reforms in the English Church as early as 1518, but reformers (both conservative and radical) had become increasingly frustrated at their lack of progress. In November 1529, Parliament passed Acts reforming apparent abuses in the English Church. They set a cap on fees, both for the probate of wills and mortuary expenses for burial in hallowed ground; tightened regulations covering rights of sanctuary for criminals; and reduced to two
258-518: A different nature from those taking place in Germany, Bohemia , France, Scotland and Geneva . Across much of continental Europe, the seizure of monastic property was associated with mass discontent among the common people and the lower levels of clergy and civil society against powerful and wealthy ecclesiastical institutions. Such popular hostility against the church was rare in England before 1558;
344-647: A mill and brewery. Though variants have been proposed, the name has been derived from the Anglo-Saxon leah , meaning a clearing or a wood, of the ceorla or peasants. A line runs through Chorleywood that once divided the Kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex and now divides the counties of Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Edward the Confessor gave Chorleywood to the Monastery of St Albans . By 1278, it
430-456: A quarter of the nation's landed wealth. An English medieval proverb said that if the abbot of Glastonbury married the abbess of Shaftesbury , their heir would have more land than the king of England. 200 more houses of friars in England and Wales constituted a second distinct wave of monastic zeal in the 13th century. Friaries , for the most part, were concentrated in urban areas. Unlike monasteries, friaries had no income-bearing endowments;
516-455: A royal servant and counsellor, in the course of which his correspondence included strong condemnations of the idleness and vice in monastic life, alongside his equally vituperative attacks on Luther. Henry himself corresponded continually with Erasmus, prompting him to be more explicit in his public rejection of the key tenets of Lutheranism and offering him church preferment should he wish to return to England. On famously failing to receive from
602-476: A treatise which declared that the monastic life had no scriptural basis, was pointless and also actively immoral, incompatible with the true spirit of Christianity. Luther also declared that monastic vows were meaningless and that no one should feel bound by them. Luther, a one-time Augustinian friar , found some comfort when these views had a dramatic effect: a special meeting of the German province of his order held
688-609: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Chorleywood Chorleywood is a village and civil parish in the Three Rivers District , Hertfordshire , on the border with Buckinghamshire , approximately 20 miles (32 km) northwest of Charing Cross . The village is adjacent to the Chiltern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is part of the London commuter belt included in
774-576: Is also on the Chiltern Railways line running between Marylebone and Aylesbury . Junctions 17 and 18 of the M25 are at Chorleywood, as well as the A404 . The 336 bus route runs via Chorleywood between High Wycombe and Watford . St Clement Danes School is a mixed- academy school . Christ Church School, Chorleywood Primary and Russell School are mixed-primary schools. At the 2011 census,
860-536: Is featured in Peep Show . Midsomer Murders , Lewis and Jonathan Creek have also been filmed in Chorleywood. Chorleywood Common is 0.8 square kilometres (200 acres) of wooded common land . The Common is a County Heritage Site, a Conservation Area and a Local Nature Reserve with significant biodiversity and rich in fauna and flora, fungi, birds and wildlife. Since cattle grazing ended soon after
946-547: The Avignon Papacy . Their suppression was supported by the rival Roman Popes , conditional on all confiscated monastic property being redirected into other religious uses. The king's officers first sequestrated the assets of the alien priories in 1295–1303 under Edward I , and the pattern repeated for long periods over the course of the 14th century, most particularly in the reign of Edward III . Alien priories with functioning communities were forced to pay large sums to
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#17327905951531032-702: The Chorleywood bread process which is now used in over 80% of commercial bread production throughout the UK. In the 1973 BBC Television documentary, Metro-land , Sir John Betjeman described Chorleywood as "essential Metro-land ". Chorleywood has frequently been used as a filming location. The Royal Masonic School is featured in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade , while the Black Horse pub
1118-461: The Church of Rome and had ridiculed such monastic practices as repetitive formal religion, superstitious pilgrimages for the veneration of relics, and the accumulation of monastic wealth. Henry appears to have shared these views, never having endowed a religious house and only once having undertaken a religious pilgrimage, to Walsingham in 1511. From 1518, Thomas More was increasingly influential as
1204-628: The First Suppression Act in 1535 and the Second Suppression Act in 1539. While Thomas Cromwell , vicar-general and vicegerent of England, is often considered the leader of the dissolution, he merely oversaw the project—he had hoped for reform, not eliminating the practice. The dissolution project was created by England's Lord Chancellor, Thomas Audley , and Court of Augmentations head, Richard Rich . Historian George W. Bernard argues that: The dissolution of
1290-643: The First World War , the land has been used for recreational purposes. Chorleywood Golf Club maintains a nine-hole golf course on the Common; the golf club was founded in 1890 and is the oldest in Hertfordshire. "Christchurch, the parish church and a local landmark, stands facing the Common on the A404. The original church was built in 1845. When this building became dilapidated it was demolished, with
1376-472: The Reformation in England and Ireland was directed from the king and high society. These changes were initially met with popular suspicion; on some occasions and in particular localities, there was active resistance to the royal programme. Dissatisfaction with regular religious life, and with the gross extent of monastic wealth, was near universal amongst late medieval secular and ecclesiastical rulers in
1462-864: The Three Rivers non-metropolitan district with effect from 1 April 1974. A new Chorleywood Parish Council was created as a successor parish to the former urban district. Chorleywood has grown in the past century following the extension of the Metropolitan Railway (also known as the Met). Chorleywood station is in Zone 7 of the London Underground Metropolitan line , and is situated between Rickmansworth and Chalfont and Latimer . The majority of trains stopping at Chorleywood are operated by London Underground. The station
1548-614: The 11th and 12th centuries. Few had been founded later than the end of the 13th century; the youngest was the Bridgettine nunnery of Syon Abbey , founded in 1415. Typically, 11th and 12th-century founders endowed monastic houses with revenue from landed estates and tithes appropriated from parish churches under the founder's patronage. As a consequence, religious houses in the 16th century controlled appointment to about two-fifths of all parish benefices in England, disposed of about half of all ecclesiastical income, and owned around
1634-598: The 1530s corresponded little with the movement by Protestant Reformers, and encountered much popular hostility when they did. In 1536, Convocation adopted and Parliament enacted the Ten Articles , containing some terminology and ideas drawn from Luther and Melanchthon ; but any momentum towards Protestantism stalled when Henry VIII expressed his support for the Six Articles of 1539 , which remained in effect until after his death. Cardinal Wolsey had obtained
1720-494: The 16th century, monasticism had almost entirely disappeared from those European states whose rulers had adopted Lutheran or Reformed confessions of faith (Ireland being the only major exception). They continued in states that remained Catholic, and new community orders such as the Jesuits and Capuchins emerged alongside the older orders. The religious and political changes in England under Henry VIII and Edward VI were of
1806-557: The Benedictine St Radegund's Priory, Cambridge to found Jesus College, Cambridge (1496), and William Waynflete , Bishop of Winchester acquiring Selborne Priory in Hampshire in 1484 for Magdalen College, Oxford . In the following century, Lady Margaret Beaufort obtained the property of Creake Abbey (whose religious had all died of sweating sickness in 1506) to fund her works at Oxford and Cambridge. She
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#17327905951531892-488: The Chorleywood and Rickmansworth Rural parishes remaining in the Watford Rural District. The first meeting of Chorleywood Parish Council was held on 16 April 1898 at the village school, with Charles Barnes being appointed the first chairman. Chorleywood became an urban district itself on 1 April 1913, making it independent of Watford Rural District. The first meeting of Chorleywood Urban District Council
1978-725: The Crown; some were kept, some were given or sold to Henry's supporters, others were assigned to his new monasteries of Syon Abbey and the Carthusians at Sheen Priory ; others were used for educational purposes. All these suppressions enjoyed papal approval but successive 15th-century popes continued to press for assurances that the confiscated monastic income would revert to religious uses. The medieval understanding of religious houses as institutions associated monasteries and nunneries with their property: their endowments of land and income, and not their current personnel of monks and nuns. If
2064-630: The Diet allowing him to confiscate any monastic lands he deemed necessary to increase royal revenues, and to allow the return of donated properties to the descendants of the donors. By the following Reduction of Gustav I of Sweden , Gustav gained large estates, as well as loyal supporters among the nobility who reclaimed donations given by their families to the convents. The Swedish monasteries and convents were simultaneously deprived of their livelihoods. They were banned from accepting new novices, and forbidden to prevent their existing members from leaving. However,
2150-591: The Divine Office. Even in houses with adequate numbers, the regular obligations of communal eating and shared living had not been fully enforced for centuries, as communities tended to sub-divide into a number of distinct familiae . In most larger houses, the full observance of the Canonical Hours had become the task of a sub-group of 'Cloister Monks', such that the majority of inhabitants were freed to conduct their business and live much of their lives in
2236-731: The Governor of the Bank of England in 1883–1885, lived in it. In 1892, the house was bought by Lady Ela Sackville Russell, eldest daughter of the 9th Duke of Bedford . She modified and enlarged the house turning the grounds into a model estate with market gardens. The Metropolitan Railway opened Chorleywood station on 8 July 1889. In the early 1960s, researchers at the British Baking Industries Research Association in Chorleywood improved upon an earlier American bread-making process. This resulted in
2322-614: The King and reject papal authority. Cromwell delegated his visitation authority to hand-picked commissioners, chiefly Richard Layton , Thomas Legh , John ap Rice and John Tregonwell , for the purposes of ascertaining the quality of religious life being maintained in religious houses, of assessing the prevalence of 'superstitious' religious observances such as the veneration of relics , and for inquiring into evidence of moral laxity (especially sexual). The chosen commissioners were mostly secular clergy, and appear to have been Erasmian, doubtful of
2408-525: The King as founder for assistance, only to find themselves dissolved arbitrarily. Rather than risk empanelling a jury, and with papal participation no longer being welcome, the Lord Chancellor , Thomas Audley , recommended that dissolution should be legalised retrospectively through a special act of Parliament. In 1521, Martin Luther had published De votis monasticis ( On the monastic vows ),
2494-751: The King. By the Submission of the Clergy , the English clergy and religious orders subscribed to the proposition that the King was, and had always been, the Supreme Head of the Church in England. Consequently, in Henry's view, any act of monastic resistance to royal authority would not only be treasonable, but also a breach of the monastic vow of obedience . Under heavy threats, almost all religious houses joined
2580-466: The Latin West. Bernard says there was: widespread concern in the later 15th and early 16th centuries about the condition of the monasteries. A leading figure here is the scholar and theologian Desiderius Erasmus who satirized monasteries as lax, as comfortably worldly, as wasteful of scarce resources, and as superstitious; he also thought it would be better if monks were brought more directly under
2666-596: The Papal Curia ; and although such arrangements were nominally temporary, commendatory abbacies often continued long-term. Then, by the Concordat of Bologna in 1516, Pope Leo X granted to Francis I authority to nominate almost all abbots and conventual priors in France. Around 80 per cent of French abbacies came to be held in commendam , the commendators often being lay courtiers or royal servants; around half
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2752-640: The Pope a declaration of nullity regarding his marriage, Henry had himself declared Supreme Head of the Church of England in February 1531, and instigated a programme of legislation to establish this Royal Supremacy in law. In April 1533, an Act in Restraint of Appeals eliminated the right of clergy to appeal to "foreign tribunals" (Rome) over the King's head in any matter. All ecclesiastical charges and levies that had previously been payable to Rome would now go to
2838-531: The UK. Of the 32,482 communities surveyed, Chorleywood came out top. More recently, Chorleywood has been ranked as the “least deprived” area in the country by the Department of Communities and Local Government. Settlement at Chorleywood dates to the Paleolithic era when the plentiful flint supply led to swift development of tools by man. The Romans built a village on the ancient site complete with
2924-536: The agreement of the papacy. Monastic wealth, regarded everywhere as excessive, offered a standing temptation for cash-strapped authorities. Almost all official action in the English dissolution was directed at the monasteries. The closing of the monasteries aroused popular opposition, but resistors became the targets of royal hostility. The surrender of the friaries, from an official perspective, arose almost as an afterthought, once it had been determined that all religious houses would have to go. In terms of popular esteem,
3010-462: The authority of bishops. At that time, quite a few bishops across Europe had come to believe that resources expensively deployed on an unceasing round of services by men and women in theory set apart from the world [would] be better spent on endowing grammar schools and university colleges to train men who would then serve the laity as parish priests, and on reforming the antiquated structures of over-large dioceses such as that of Lincoln . Pastoral care
3096-539: The balance tilted the other way. Almost all monasteries supported themselves from their endowments; in late medieval terms 'they lived off their own'. Unless they were notably bad landlords, they tended to enjoy widespread local support; they also commonly appointed local notables to fee-bearing offices. The friars were by contrast much more likely to have been the objects of local hostility, especially since their practice of soliciting income through legacies appears to have been perceived as diminishing family inheritances. By
3182-402: The bishop would seek to obtain papal approval for alternative use of the house's endowments in canon law . This, with royal agreement claiming 'foundership', would be presented to an 'empanelled jury' for consent to use of the property of the house in civil law. The royal transfer of alien monastic estates to educational foundations inspired bishops and, as the 15th century waned, this practice
3268-502: The cities on smallholdings, making them independent of factory employers and potentially qualifying them for the vote. Chartists were invited to subscribe regular amounts towards an eventual £2.50 (£2/10s) share in the venture. Soon the money began to flood in, pennies and shillings at a time, and was deposited in an account held by Feargus O'Connor in the London Joint Stock Bank. The land was bought on 14 March 1846,
3354-465: The end, Henry gave most of the money to supply the war. At the time of their suppression, only some English and Welsh religious houses could trace their origins to Anglo-Saxon or Celtic foundations before the Norman Conquest . The overwhelming majority of the 625 monastic communities dissolved by Henry VIII had developed in the wave of monastic enthusiasm that swept western Christendom in
3440-575: The entire ecclesiastical estate of England and Wales, including the monasteries (see Valor Ecclesiasticus ), for the purpose of assessing the Church's taxable value, through local commissioners who reported in May 1535. At the same time, Henry had Parliament authorise Cromwell to " visit " all the monasteries , including those like the Cistercians previously exempted from episcopal oversight by papal dispensation, to instruct them in their duty to obey
3526-551: The exception of the tower and was rebuilt and consecrated in 1870. It has a cedar wood tower of unusual design on the flint built west tower." In the 19th century, the MCC established a cricket pitch on the Common, which is used by Chorleywood Cricket Club's senior and junior teams to this day. Chorleywood has three tiers of local government at parish, district, and county level: Chorleywood Parish Council, Three Rivers District Council , and Hertfordshire County Council . Chorleywood
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3612-547: The former monks and nuns were allowed to reside in the convent buildings for life on state allowance, and many communities survived the Reformation for decades. The last of them was Vreta Abbey , where the last nuns died in 1582, and Vadstena Abbey , from which the last nuns emigrated in 1595, about half a century after the Reduction. In Denmark–Norway , King Frederick I made a similar act in 1528, confiscating 15 of
3698-473: The friars, as mendicants , were supported financially by donations from the faithful, while ideally being self-sufficient and raising extensive urban kitchen gardens. The dissolution of the monasteries took place in the political context of other attacks on the ecclesiastical institutions of Western Catholicism. Many of these were related to the Reformation in Continental Europe . By the end of
3784-470: The government-defined Greater London Urban Area . Chorleywood was historically part of the parish of Rickmansworth , becoming a separate ecclesiastical parish in 1845 and a separate civil parish in 1898. The population of the parish was 11,286 at the 2011 census . In 2004, a study by The Social Disadvantage Research Centre at the University of Oxford named Chorleywood as the “happiest place” to live in
3870-428: The house when they died. In addition, though this scarcely ever happened, the endowments of the house would revert to the founder's heirs if the community failed or dissolved. The status of 'founder' was considered in civil law to be real property , and could consequently be bought and sold, in which case the purchaser would be called the patron . Like any other real property, in intestacy and some other circumstances
3956-682: The houses invited to receive them might refuse to co-operate; and local notables might resist the disruption in their networks of influence. Reforming bishops found they faced opposition when urging the heads of religious houses to enforce their monastic rules, especially those requiring monks and nuns to remain within their cloisters. Monks and nuns in almost all late medieval English religious communities, although theoretically living in religious poverty, were paid an annual cash wage ( peculium ) and received other regular cash rewards and pittances , which softened claustral rules for those who disliked them. Religious superiors met their bishops' pressure with
4042-779: The houses of the Observant Friars were handed over to the mainstream Franciscan order; the friars from the Greenwich house were imprisoned, where many died from ill-treatment. The Carthusians eventually submitted, other than the monks of the London house which was suppressed; some of the monks were executed for high treason in 1535, and others starved to death in prison. Also opposing the Supremacy and consequently imprisoned were Bridgettine monks from Syon Abbey . The Syon nuns, being strictly enclosed, escaped sanction at this stage,
4128-450: The houses of the wealthiest monasteries and convents. Further laws by his successor in the 1530s banned the friars and forced monks and nuns to transfer title to their houses to the Crown, which passed them out to supportive nobles who soon acquired former monastic lands. In Switzerland, too, monasteries were under threat. In 1523, the government of the city-state of Zürich pressured nuns to leave their monasteries and marry and followed up
4214-804: The income of French monasteries was diverted into the hands of the Crown, or of royal supporters, all with the Popes' blessing. Where the French kings led, the Scots kings followed. In Scotland, where the proportion of parish tiends appropriated by higher ecclesiastical institutions exceeded 85 per cent, in 1532 the young James V obtained from the Pope approval to appoint his illegitimate infant sons (of which he eventually acquired nine) as commendators to abbacies in Scotland. Other Scots aristocratic families stuck similar deals, and consequently over £40,000 (Scots) per annum
4300-476: The king, while mere estates were confiscated and run by royal officers, the proceeds going to the king's pocket. Such estates were a valuable source of income for the Crown in its French wars. Most of the larger alien priories became naturalised (for instance Castle Acre Priory ), on payment of heavy fines and bribes, but for around 90 smaller houses, their fates were sealed when Henry V dissolved them by act of Parliament in 1414. The properties were taken over by
4386-577: The meeting room at the Golf Club was preferable and reverted to holding meetings there in 1925. In 1939 Chorleywood Urban District Council bought Chorleywood House for £5,000. The house became the council's offices and meeting place until the council's abolition in 1974. Chorleywood Urban District was abolished under the Local Government Act 1972 , merging with Rickmansworth Urban District and most of Watford Rural District to form
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#17327905951534472-427: The monasteries continued to attract recruits right up to the end. Only a few monks and nuns lived in conspicuous luxury, but most were comfortably fed and housed by the standards of the time, and few orders demanded ascetic piety or religious observance. Only a minority of houses could now support the twelve or thirteen professed religious usually regarded as the minimum necessary to maintain the full canonical hours of
4558-422: The monasteries in the late 1530s was one of the most revolutionary events in English history. There were nearly 900 religious houses in England, around 260 for monks, 300 for regular canons , 142 nunneries and 183 friaries; some 12,000 people in total, 4,000 monks, 3,000 canons, 3,000 friars and 2,000 nuns. If the adult male population was 500,000, that meant that one adult man in fifty was in religious orders. In
4644-623: The next year by dissolving all monasteries in its territory, under the pretext of using their revenues to fund education and help the poor. The city of Basel followed suit in 1529, and Geneva adopted the same policy in 1530. An attempt was also made in 1530 to dissolve the famous Abbey of St. Gall , which was a state of the Holy Roman Empire in its own right, but this failed, and St. Gall survived until 1798. In France and Scotland, by contrast, royal action to seize monastic income proceeded along entirely different lines. In both countries,
4730-472: The number of church benefices that could in the future be held by one man. These Acts were meant to demonstrate that royal jurisdiction over the Church would ensure progress in "religious reformation" where papal authority had been insufficient. The monasteries were next in line. J. J. Scarisbrick remarked in his biography of Henry VIII: Suffice it to say that English monasticism was a huge and urgent problem; that radical action, though of precisely what kind
4816-917: The parish of Chorleywood had a resident population of 11,286, of whom: Chorleywood is twinned with Dardilly , France. The following people and military units have received the Freedom of the Parish of Chorleywood. Dissolution of the Monasteries The dissolution of the monasteries , occasionally referred to as the suppression of the monasteries , was the set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541, by which Henry VIII disbanded Catholic monasteries , priories , convents , and friaries in England, Wales , and Ireland ; seized their wealth; disposed of their assets, and provided for their former personnel and functions. Though
4902-435: The personal compliance of the abbess being taken as sufficient for the government's purposes. G. W. O. Woodward concluded that: All but a very few took it without demur. They were, after all, Englishmen, and shared the common prejudice of their contemporaries against the pretensions of foreign Italian prelates. In 1534, Cromwell undertook, on behalf of the King, an inventory of the endowments, liabilities and income of
4988-480: The plots allocated by ballot on 20 April 1846 ( Easter Monday ) and settled on 1 May 1847. The 35 plots of land covering 103 acres (0.42 km), consisted of 17 plots of 2 acres, 5 plots of 3 acres and 13 plots of 4 acres. A beer house established on the edge of the estate is now known as the Land of Liberty, Peace, and Plenty public house. The National Land Company was wound up by Act of Parliament in 1851. The estate
5074-498: The policy was originally envisioned as a way to increase the regular income of the Crown, much former monastic property was sold off to fund Henry's military campaigns in the 1540s. Henry did this under the Act of Supremacy , passed by Parliament in 1534, which made him Supreme Head of the Church in England . He had broken from Rome's papal authority the previous year. The monasteries were dissolved by two Acts of Parliament, those being
5160-478: The practice of nominating abbacies in commendam had become widespread. Since the 12th century, it had become universal in Western Europe for the household expenses of abbots and conventual priors to be separated, typically appropriating more than half the house's income. With papal approval, these funds might be diverted on a vacancy to support a non-monastic ecclesiastic, commonly a bishop or member of
5246-481: The previous century, resulted in their being singled out for royal favour, in particular with houses benefitting from endowments confiscated by the Crown from the suppressed alien priories. Donations and legacies had tended to go instead towards parish churches, university colleges, grammar schools and collegiate churches, which suggests greater public approbation. Levels of monastic debt were increasing, and average numbers of professed religious were falling, although
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#17327905951535332-775: The property of the houses to have reverted to the Crown as founder. The conventional wisdom of the time was that the proper daily observance of the Divine Office of prayer required a minimum of twelve professed religious, but by the 1530s, few communities in England could provide this. Most observers were in agreement that a systematic reform of the English church must involve the drastic concentration of monks and nuns into fewer, larger houses, potentially making monastic income available for more productive religious, educational and social purposes. This apparent consensus often faced strong resistance in practice. Members of religious houses proposed for dissolution might resist relocation;
5418-449: The property with which a house had been endowed by its founder were to be confiscated or surrendered, then the house ceased to exist, whether its members continued in the religious life or not. The founder and their heirs had a legally enforceable interest in certain aspects of the house; their nomination was required at the election of an abbot or prior, they could claim hospitality within the house when needed, and they could be buried within
5504-693: The religious houses of England and Wales—with the notable exceptions of those of the Carthusians , the Observant Franciscans , and the Bridgettine nuns and monks—had long ceased to play a leading role in the spiritual life of the country. Other than in these three orders, observance of strict monastic rules was partial at best. The exceptional spiritual discipline of the Carthusian, Observant Franciscan and Bridgettine orders had, over
5590-407: The response that the cloistered ideal was only acceptable to a tiny minority of regular clergy, and that any attempt to enforce their order's stricter rules could be overturned in counter-actions in the secular courts, if aggrieved monks and nuns obtained a writ of praemunire . The King actively supported Wolsey, Fisher and Richard Foxe in their programmes of monastic reform; but even so, progress
5676-515: The rest of the Church in acceding to the Royal Supremacy; and in swearing to uphold the validity of the King's divorce and remarriage. Opposition was concentrated in the houses of Carthusian monks, Observant Franciscan friars and Bridgettine monks and nuns. Great efforts were made to cajole, bribe, trick and threaten these houses into formal compliance, with those religious who continued in their resistance being liable to imprisonment until they submitted or if they persisted, to execution for treason. All
5762-477: The road from Hatfield to Reading . Chorleywood is most famous for its Quakers . Non-conformists flocked to Chorleywood, promised sanctuary by the locals. William Penn founded the Pennsylvania Colony with settlers from Chorleywood, Rickmansworth and nearby towns in southern Buckinghamshire, having lived and married in Chorleywood. Chorleywood House , a Regency mansion, was built in 1822 by John Barnes, replacing an earlier house. John Saunders Gilliat ,
5848-464: The same year voted that henceforth every member of the regular clergy should be free to renounce their vows, resign their offices, and marry. At Luther's home monastery in Wittenberg all the friars, save one, did so. News spread among Protestant-minded rulers across Europe, and some, particularly in Scandinavia, moved very quickly. In the Riksdag of Västerås in 1527, initiating the Reformation in Sweden , King Gustav Vasa secured an edict of
5934-623: The secular world. Extensive monastic complexes dominated English towns of any size, but most were less than half full. From 1534 onwards, Cromwell and King Henry wanted to redirect ecclesiastical income to the Crown—they justified this by contending that they were reclaiming what was theirs. Renaissance princes throughout Europe were facing severe financial difficulties due to sharply rising expenditures, especially to pay for armies, ships and fortifications. Many had already resorted to plundering monastic wealth. Protestant princes would justify this by claiming divine authority; Catholic princes would obtain
6020-537: The status of 'founder' would revert to the Crown—a procedure that many houses actively sought, as it might be advantageous in their legal dealings in the King's courts. The founders of the alien priories had been foreign monasteries refusing allegiance to the English Crown. These property rights were therefore automatically forfeited to the Crown when their English dependencies were dissolved, but their example prompted questions as to what action might be taken should English houses cease to exist. Much would depend on who, at
6106-504: The time Henry VIII turned to monastery reform, royal action to suppress religious houses had a history of more than 200 years. The first case was that of the so-called ' alien priories '. As a result of the Norman Conquest , some French religious orders held substantial property through their daughter monasteries in England. Some of these were granges , agricultural estates with a single foreign monk in residence to supervise; others were rich foundations in their own right (e.g., Lewes Priory
6192-401: The time the house ended, held the status of founder or patron; as with other such disputes in real property, the standard procedure was to empanel a jury to decide between disputing claimants. In practice, the Crown claimed the status of 'founder' in all such cases that occurred. Consequently, when a monastic community failed (e.g., through the death of most of its members, or through insolvency),
6278-533: The value of monastic life and universally dismissive of relics and miraculous tokens. By comparison with the valuation commissions, the timetable for these monastic visitations was tight, with some houses missed altogether, and inquiries appear to have concentrated on gross faults and laxity; consequently, where the reports of misbehaviour can be checked against other sources, they commonly appear to have been both rushed and greatly exaggerated, often recalling events from years before. The visitors interviewed each member of
6364-453: The widespread decline of the fervent monastic vocation, and that in every country the monks possessed too much of wealth and of the sources of production both for their own well-being and for the material good of the economy. Pilgrimages to monastic shrines continued until forcibly suppressed in England in 1538 by order of Henry VIII, but the dissolution resulted in few modifications to England's parish churches. The English religious reforms of
6450-410: Was a daughter of Cluny and answered to the abbot of the French house). Owing to frequent wars between England and France in the late Middle Ages , successive English governments objected to money going overseas to France. They also objected to foreign prelates having jurisdiction over English monasteries. After 1378, French monasteries (and alien priories dependent on them) maintained allegiance to
6536-463: Was administered by the Court of Chancery until the freeholds were sold off by auction on 27 May 1857. Heronsgate lies by junction 17 of the M25 , to the south of Chorleywood. [REDACTED] Media related to Heronsgate at Wikimedia Commons 51°38′25″N 0°31′12″W / 51.640261°N 0.520048°W / 51.640261; -0.520048 This Hertfordshire location article
6622-586: Was advised in this action by the staunch traditionalist John Fisher , Bishop of Rochester . In 1522, Fisher himself dissolved the women's monasteries of Bromhall and Higham to aid St John's College, Cambridge . That same year, Cardinal Wolsey dissolved St Frideswide's Priory (now Oxford Cathedral ) to form the basis of his Christ Church, Oxford ; in 1524, he secured a papal bull to dissolve 20 other monasteries to provide an endowment for his new college. The remaining friars, monks and nuns were absorbed into other houses of their respective orders. Juries found
6708-416: Was another matter, was both necessary and inevitable, and that a purge of the religious orders was probably regarded as the most obvious task of the new regime—as the first function of a Supreme Head empowered by statute "to visit, extirp and redress". The stories of monastic impropriety, vice, and excess that were to be collected by Thomas Cromwell 's visitors to the monasteries may have been exaggerated but
6794-514: Was common. The subjects of these dissolutions were usually small, poor, and indebted Benedictine or Augustinian communities (especially those of women) with few powerful friends; the great abbeys and orders exempt from diocesan supervision such as the Cistercians were unaffected. The resources were transferred often to Oxford University and Cambridge University colleges: instances of this include John Alcock , Bishop of Ely dissolving
6880-654: Was diverted from monasteries into the royal coffers. It is inconceivable that these moves went unnoticed by the English government and particularly by Thomas Cromwell , who had been employed by Wolsey in his monastic suppressions, and who would become Henry VIII's King's Secretary . Henry appears to have been much more influenced by the opinions on monasticism of the humanists Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More , especially as found in Erasmus's work In Praise of Folly (1511) and More's Utopia (1516). Erasmus and More promoted ecclesiastical reform while remaining faithful to
6966-560: Was held on 15 April 1913 at the clubhouse of Chorleywood Golf Club on Common Road. Arthur Capell was elected as first chairman of the council. The council generally met at the Golf Club until the Second World War . A council chamber and surveyor's office was incorporated into the Chorleywood Memorial Hall on Common Road, built in 1922, and the council did meet there during 1923 and 1924, but then decided that
7052-455: Was historically part of the parish of Rickmansworth . A separate ecclesiastical parish of Chorleywood was created in 1845, following the construction of Christ Church, but Chorleywood remained part of the civil parish of Rickmansworth until 1898. When the Local Government Act 1894 created parish and district councils in December 1894, a parish council was established for Rickmansworth, which
7138-509: Was in turn part of the Watford Rural District . Shortly afterwards inquiries were held into creating an urban district of Rickmansworth. It was eventually decided that it would not be appropriate to apply urban powers to the whole civil parish of Rickmansworth, and therefore that it would be split into three new parishes: Rickmansworth Urban, Rickmansworth Rural, and Chorleywood. These changes took effect on 15 April 1898, with
7224-616: Was known, perhaps duplicating the "woodland" element, as 'Bosco de Cherle' or 'Churl's Wood', Norman for 'Peasant's Wood'. Upon the Dissolution of the Monasteries , it passed to the Bishopric of London, being renamed 'Charleywoode'. It became Crown property during the reign of Elizabeth I . The Turnpike Act (1663) gave Chorleywood a chance to exploit its strategic position, allowing locals the opportunity to charge civilians to use
7310-472: Was painfully slow, especially where religious orders had been exempted from episcopal oversight by papal authority. It was also never certain that juries would find in favour of the Crown in disposing of the property of dissolved houses; any action that impinged on monasteries with substantial assets might be expected to be contested by a range of influential claimants. In 1532, the priory of Christchurch Aldgate , facing financial and legal difficulties, petitioned
7396-525: Was seen as much more important and vital than the monastic focus on contemplation, prayer and performance of the daily office. Erasmus had made a threefold criticism of the monks and nuns of his day, saying that: Summarising the state of monastic life across Western Europe, David Knowles said, The verdict of unprejudiced historians at the present day would probably be—abstracting from all ideological considerations for or against monasticism—that there were far too many religious houses in existence in view of
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