§ 8.
The Benedictine monasteries in England were
colonised, or, where they were older than the conquest,
received new blood from the monasteries of
Normandy and France. We have seen that the rule
of St Benedict was made for a special monastery:
the order was a collection of independent houses
which found the rule suitable to their needs. Thus
each of the larger English Benedictine monasteries
was a separate community, under the jurisdiction of
the diocesan bishop, from whose visitations some
powerful abbeys, such as St Albans, Evesham and
Westminster, eventually obtained exemption. It was
also subject to the visitation of two abbots, chosen
annually by a general chapter of heads of English
houses. The ruler of the monastery was the abbot:
under him was his deputy, the prior, on whom a large
part of the direct oversight of the house devolved.
Where, as at Durham, the church of the monastery
was also the cathedral of the diocese, the bishop was
nominally abbot, but the actual ruler of the house
was the prior; and to such houses the name of cathedral
priory was given. The larger houses, however,
frequently founded off-shoots on distant portions of
their property, which were governed by priors appointed
by the mother house, and were known as
priories or cells. Although some of them became
important houses, they were at first part and parcel
of the mother house, and many continued to be so
throughout the middle ages. Thus St Martin's at
Dover was a priory of Christ Church, Canterbury,
and Tynemouth in Northumberland was a priory of
St Albans.
