Beverley

Beverley is a market town, civil parish and the county town of the East Riding of Yorkshire.

Beverley Preceptory, Knights Hospitaller

founded c.1201, manor of the Holy Trinity and other endowments granted by Sybilla de Valoniis;
dissolved 1540; granted to William Berkeley 1544/5

A preceptory was established at Beverley at the beginning of the 13th century, probably in 1201, when Sybil de Beverley, second wife of the third Lord Percy, gave to the Knights Hospitallers the manor of Holy Trinity, east of Beverley, the manor of North Burton and other lands.  In 1338, besides their house and grounds at Beverley, the knights had some 350 acres at Burton, 150 acres at Fitling, 120 at Walsay, 270 at Cleving, and about the same at Dalton. The voluntary offerings collected in the district were reckoned at £20, the whole issues being rather over 125 marks. From this had to be deducted various expenses for the exercise of hospitality, as enjoined by the founders, and for the support of the establishment, consisting of a preceptor, Simon Fauconer, knight, and two brethren, Simon Belcher, knight, and Philip Ewyas, sergeant, two chaplains and clerks employed to collect the voluntary offerings, a steward and the usual retinue of servants. The clear yearly profits amounted to 60 marks. The estates of the Templars' preceptory of Westerdale were at a later date put under the commander, or preceptor of Beverley, and the total value of the preceptory of Beverley was returned in 1535 as £164 9s. 10d. John Sutton was preceptor at this time, as he had been in 1528, and continued to hold the post until the suppression of the order in 1540, when he was given a pension of £200.

The Church of St. Mary, Beverley, is supposed to have had upon its site, a Chapel of Ease dedicated to St. Martin by Archbishop Thurston, of York, between 1114-42; it is certain, however, that it was constituted a Vicarage of St. Mary in 1325. The Nave was built about 1450, and consists of six bays and seven clerestory windows, but in 1530 the upper part of the central tower fell upon the Nave with
much loss of life. Its pillar was erected by the Guild of Minstrels, which like that of the Masons, claimed to date from Saxon times; it has upon the fluted cornishes five figures of the Minstrels with their instruments, of which only two respectively with guitar and pipe are intact; and stands on the north side facing the pulpit. The "Misere" stalls in the chancel are of the 15th century, with carved bas reliefs under the seats; one of these represents a "fox" shot through the body with a woodman's arrow, and a "monkey" approaching with a bottle of physic.

Around 1450 the will of a mason from Beverley gives a tantalising glimpse into the emergence of masonic regalia. An inventory of John Cadeby's possessions mentions several zonas, or girdles. Two were silver mounted, and one of these had the letters B and I in the middle, indicating Boaz and Jachin, the twin pillars of Solomon's Temple.