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A rumpus with royalty
(8/15)
The monks’ lands at Barnoldswick
lay adjacent to the forest of Blackburnshire and straddled the
Yorkshire / Lancashire border.
They were the source of a particularly lengthy and litigious dispute
in the early years of Edward III’s reign (1327-77), for when
the forest of Blackburnshire came into royal hands in 1322 the
abbey lost its common rights on this land. The forest had previously
been held by Kirkstall’s patronal family, the Lacys. Abbot
William Driffield of Kirkstall launched proceedings against King
Edward and his mother, Queen Isabella, over the restoration of
the abbey’s common rights here. The abbot argued that in
1287 about 840 acres of Kirkstall’s moorland, woodland and
pasture at Barnoldswick had been taken by Earl Henry de Lacy into
his forest at Blackburnshire, in return for Henry’s aid during
the community’s financial difficulties The legal process
was a long and drawn out affair, which occupies thirteen pages
of manuscript in the Coucher Book. Kirkstall’s perseverance
was not in vain, and in 1335 the monks were awarded seisin (possession)
of the 420 acres in Yorkshire.(11)
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