ABSTRACT
The archdeaconry of the East Riding was one of five archdeaconries constituting the massive archdiocese of York, and contained 165 parishes in the early 1530s. It thus provides a convenient case study to assess the dynamics of the patronage exercised by the religious houses in the early part of the sixteenth century. Twenty-seven houses possessed the right to nominate parish clergy in the area (see Map 8.1). Of these, almost half ( 13) were situated within the Riding itself, and a further 10 were within 20 miles of its boundaries. Of the remainder, Guisborough Priory was located near the North Sea coast in the North Riding, and Bardney Abbey some 40 miles south of the Humber in Lincolnshire. Indeed, only two of the houses exercising patronage within the Riding were more than a day's ride away. 3 The extent to which monastic patronage had a firmly local focus is underlined by the fact that, with the exclusion of the friaries, only two East Yorkshire houses, the Benedictine nunneries of Thicket and Nunburnholme, possessed no advowsons in the Riding.
