Monastic and secular religion and devotional reading in late medieval Dartford and west Kent

Topics addressed in this thesis include the dynamic monastic religion characteristic of certain orders right up to the Dissolution; the relationship between monasticism and secular religion in local society; orthodox parish religion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; the generation of robust Catholic parish religion through reciprocal action of local clergy and laity; and the education and devotional reading of nuns, laity and parish clergy. Dartford Priory, founded by Edward Ill, was pre-Reformation England's only Dominican nunnery, founded at the high point of the continental Dominican second order. It was one of the seven largest and wealthiest English nunneries at the Dissolution, and was one of only six monasteries refounded in Mary's reign. It was a place of learning and contemplative spirituality, drawing on the influence of the continental Dominican nunneries as well as its literary and kinship connections with the English Carthusians and Syon Abbey. The nunnery also• developed close links with the religion of the local parish, through the activities of the prioress, the granting to laity and secular clergy of access to the conventual church and the sending out of its friar chaplains. Secular religion in pre-Reformation Dartford, and west Kent (the diocese of Rochester) in general, was a vigorous traditional Catholicism expressed through the local structures of the parish. This thesis contributes to knowledge of the active role of the laity in pre-Reformation parish religion, and of the parish clergy who assisted them in developing this, many of which priests served in the areas in which they had grown up as children. It also contributes to knowledge of education and book-ownership by clergy and laity in local society in late medieval England. In west Kent education and reading largely served to reinforce the orthodoxy of both the laity and the parish clergy, both graduates and non-graduates.