York Guides

Wool brought money, and when money was not handled with skill it could and did bring disaster. Particularly dangerous for the monks was the practice of signing contracts with the great continental firms of merchants for the supply of wool over a period of years against a substantial payment in advance. This provided a standing temptation for the convent to anticipate its real revenue, and when the quantity or quality of the clip fell short of the estimate on which the contract was based the abbey fell into debt. By 1274 Fountains was £900 in debt to the York Jewry, and the king found it necessary to appoint Peter Willoughby as an independent commissioner to take the abbey's finances out of the hands of the convent and to administer them more soundly. He succeeded in paying off the debt, but the lesson was not heeded, for in 1276 Abbot Peter Alyng made Fountains an object of scandal by signing a four year contract with a firm of Florentine merchants, pledging the abbey itself as security for completion. In 1280 an epidemic of sheep-scab ushered in lean years for the wool growers, and the omission of Abbot Henry Otley and Abbot Robert Thornton from the numeration of the abbots probably bears witness to their inability to cope with the situation. The abbey's debt rose to the catastrophic figure of £6,373 and in 1291 the king again had to put in a commissioner, his justice John of Berwick, to try and achieve some measure of financial stability.

This produced a profound change in the economy of the abbey's estates. Some granges were now run by hired labour under salaried bailiffs. Others, damaged in the wars, were leased to secular tenants by Abbot Coxwold in 1336, and others were converted into vills by Abbot Robert Monkton in 1363 producing a complete reversal of the earlier policy of depopulation. Fountains now began to subsist on rents in money and in kind.

The early years of the fifteenth century saw more trouble for the abbey. In 1384 the scholarly Abbot William Gower went blind in his old age and was succeeded by the forceful Abbot Robert Hurley. These were the years of the Papal Schism when the existence of rival popes split the allegiance of the Cistercian Order and led to the creation of an English Chapter, and to opportunities for ambitious monks and laymen to dispute the validity of elections. Abbot Hurley was involved in such a dispute at the daughter-house of Meaux where, in 1396, he did not hesitate to deploy archers in front of the gatehouse to prevent the English Chapter from ousting Thomas Burton, his candidate for the abbacy.

Others were not slow to learn from his example. When Abbot Burley died in 1410, the delegates of the Eglish Chapter, failing to get a sufficient number of votes for a successor at Fountains, appointed monk Roger Frank as abbot. Their action was challenged by Abott John Ripon of Meaux who put himself forward as a candidate and appealed to the pope. The complex legal struggle between Frank and Ripon lasted for six years and, before it ended, involved not only the English Chapter and the pope, but the Council of Constance, parliament, and the king himself. By 1414 the king had evicted Frank and replaced him by Ripon, but the matter did not end there. Frank and thirteen fugitive monks from Fountains wandered the north disguised in secular clothes, fomenting opposition. His relatives made an attempt to murder Abbot Ripon on the road to London. Tenants on the abbey's estates took sides in the quarrel, and in Craven conditions verged on a minor civil war. In 1423 the abbey was plundered after an attack with scaling-ladders, and in 1431 the home granges were raided and damaged.