Remains of Boxley Abbey and North Downs - geograph

Boxley Abbey in

Boxley Boxley is a village and civil parish in the Maidstone District of Kent, England. It lies below the slope of the North Downs approximately northeast of the centre of Maidstone town. The civil parish has a population of 7,144 (2001 census), inc ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, England was a

Cistercian The Cistercians, () officially the Order of Cistercians ( la, (Sacer) Ordo Cisterciensis, abbreviated as OCist or SOCist), are a Catholic religious order of monks and nuns that branched off from the Benedictines and follow the Rule of Saint ...

monastery founded c.1146 by

William of Ypres William of Ypres ( nl, Willem van Yper; 1090 – 24 January 116524 January 1164 O.S., 1165 N.S.) was a Flemish nobleman and one of the first mercenary captains of the Middle Ages. Following two unsuccessful bids for the County of Flanders, ...

, leader of King Stephen's Flemish mercenaries, and colonised by monks from

Clairvaux Abbey Clairvaux Abbey (, ; la, Clara Vallis) was a Cistercian monastery in Ville-sous-la-Ferté, from Bar-sur-Aube. The original building, founded in 1115 by St. Bernard, is now in ruins; the present structure dates from 1708. Clairvaux Abbey was a ...

in France. Some of its ruins survive, some four miles north-east of

Maidstone Maidstone is the largest Town status in the United Kingdom, town in Kent, England, of which it is the county town. Maidstone is historically important and lies 32 miles (51 km) east-south-east of London. The River Medway runs through the c ...

Notable events

In 1171, the then abbot was one of those responsible for the burial of the murdered archbishop of Canterbury,

Thomas Becket Thomas Becket (), also known as Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Thomas of London and later Thomas à Becket (21 December 1119 or 1120 – 29 December 1170), was an English nobleman who served as Lord Chancellor from 1155 to 1162, and then ...

. In 1193 the abbots of Boxley and

Robertsbridge Robertsbridge is a village in the civil parish of Salehurst and Robertsbridge, and the Rother district of East Sussex, England. It is approximately 10 miles (16 km) north of Hastings and 13 miles (21 km) south-east of Royal Tunbridge ...

journeyed to the continent to search for

King Richard I Richard I (8 September 1157 – 6 April 1199) was King of England from 1189 until his death in 1199. He also ruled as Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine and Gascony, Lord of Cyprus, and Count of Poitiers, Anjou, Maine, and Nantes, and was overl ...

, finally locating him in

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

. During 1512-13, the abbot appealed to the crown to arrest four of the monks, accusing them of rebelliousness.

The relics

The abbey was famous, and later infamous, for a

relic In religion, a relic is an object or article of religious significance from the past. It usually consists of the physical remains of a saint or the personal effects of the saint or venerated person preserved for purposes of veneration as a tangi ...

known as the

Rood of Grace The Rood of Grace was a crucifix kept at Boxley Abbey in Kent in southeast England. It was a mechanized likeness of Jesus, described by one Protestant iconoclast as an ingenious contraption of wires and rods that made the eyes move like a living t ...

, a wooden cross, the figure upon which was supposed to miraculously move and speak. In 1538 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries one Geoffrey Chamber, a "commissioner" employed by

Thomas Cromwell Thomas Cromwell (; 1485 – 28 July 1540), briefly Earl of Essex, was an English lawyer and statesman who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540, when he was beheaded on orders of the king, who later blamed false charge ...

to oversee the closure of the institution, examined the famed relic and discovered it to be a fake, observing the levers and wires that enacted the so-called miracles. The rood was taken down and displayed in

market so as to demonstrate the fraud. Finally, it was sent to

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

and to the accompaniment of a mocking sermon from

John Hilsey John Hilsey (a.k.a. Hildesley or Hildesleigh; died 4 August 1539) was an English Dominican, prior provincial of his order, then an agent of Henry VIII and the English Reformation, and Bishop of Rochester. Life According to Anthony Wood, Hil ...

Bishop of Rochester The Bishop of Rochester is the ordinary of the Church of England's Diocese of Rochester in the Province of Canterbury. The town of Rochester has the bishop's seat, at the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was foun ...

, it was hacked to pieces in front of

St Paul's Cathedral St Paul's Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in London and is the seat of the Bishop of London. The cathedral serves as the mother church of the Diocese of London. It is on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London and is a Grad ...

and burnt. There is no evidence that any miracles were ever associated with the moving image, notwithstanding the monks' practice of infiltrating hired imposters into the throng to celebrate the supposed cures. However, the presence of wires and levers in themselves does not constitute fraud; theatrical historian Leanne Groeneveld contends that this "puppetry" was presented as a theatrical show to a fully cognisant audience.

Diarmaid MacCulloch Diarmaid Ninian John MacCulloch (; born 31 October 1951) is an English academic and historian, specialising in ecclesiastical history and the history of Christianity. Since 1995, he has been a fellow of St Cross College, Oxford; he was former ...

, a biographer of Thomas Cromwell, notes that moveable parts, "for devotional and not fraudulent purposes", were occasionally a feature of religious statuary made during the twelfth century, the date of this figure. A legend that an effigy of the infant Saint Rumbold could only be lifted from its plinth by the particularly righteous was exploited by the monks, who engaged or disengaged a hidden bolt under the statue, according to the size of the cash gift on offer. The supposed finger of the

apostle Andrew Andrew the Apostle ( grc-koi, Ἀνδρέᾱς, Andréās ; la, Andrēās ; , syc, ܐܰܢܕ݁ܪܶܐܘܳܣ, ʾAnd’reʾwās), also called Saint Andrew, was an apostle of Jesus according to the New Testament. He is the brother of Simon Peter ...

, inlaid heavily with silver, was also on display but was pawned to a local merchant for eleven pounds when the flow of "credulous and devout" visitors ceased.

The Dissolution and beyond

The abbey appears to have been "surrendered" to the king, or dissolved, on 29 January 1537 (in the 28th year of the reign on Henry.) The site of the abbey and many of its manorial estates were granted to

Sir Thomas Wyatt Sir Thomas Wyatt (150311 October 1542) was a 16th-century English politician, ambassador, and lyric poet credited with introducing the sonnet to English literature. He was born at Allington Castle near Maidstone in Kent, though the family was ...

in 1540. After the dissolution some of the complex was transformed into a house with the remainder virtually demolished. Parts survive within the present mainly 19th-century Boxley Abbey House, and there are some fragmentary remains of the church still standing.

Boxley Abbey Barn Boxley Abbey Barn is a large medieval barn in Boxley, Kent. It is a remnant of the buildings of the mostly demolished Boxley Abbey. The barn is long, aligned with its long axis roughly east–west, and was built in the late 13th or early 14th ce ...

, a large 13th-century stone building which served as the abbey's

Hospitium Hospitium (; gr, ξενία, '' xenia'', προξενία) is the ancient Greco-Roman concept of hospitality as a divine right of the guest and a divine duty of the host. Similar or broadly equivalent customs were and are also known in other cul ...

remains. It is a Grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

. The precinct of the abbey is a

scheduled monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and d ...

. The site is private. The parish church of St Mary and All Saints was associated with the abbey.The Antiquary, Volume 8 (1883), p. 49.
/ref> Boxley Abbey (2).jpg, Boxley Abbey ruins, 1811 (now gone) Ruins of Boxley Abbey gateway.jpg, Ruins of the Abbey's gateway Boxley Abbey Barn Grade 1 Listed Building.jpg, The Abbey's ''hospitium'', now Boxley Abbey Barn, re-roofed

References

Bibliography

* ''Houses of Cistercian monks: The abbey of Boxley'', A History of the County of Kent: Volume 2 (1926), pp. 153–55. * Anthony New. ''A Guide to the Abbeys of England And Wales'', p75-76. Constable.

External links