Monk Bretton Priory was founded in the year 1154 and lasted until the suppression of monastic orders across north-western Europe in the sixteenth century.
During that span of time these following monarchs ruled over England and parts of Britain: Henry II, Richard I, John, Henry III, Edward I, Edward II, Edward III, Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Edward IV, Edward V, Henry VI, Henry VII and Henry VIII.
Founded in the 1150’s, Monk Bretton Priory belonged to the powerful French order of Cluny. Its monks followed the 6th-century Rule of St Benedict.
Sometime between 1090 and 1098 Ilbert de Laci, who ran his lordship from Pontefract Castle, set up a priory of Cluniac monks at Pontefract. Those monks came from the great Cluniac motherhouse, La Charité-sur-Loire, in France. Ilbert’s family was rewarded for this gift with daily prayers to save their immortal souls, said by the monks at of St Johns, Pontefract.
Ailric of Cawthorne was a local, English landowner under de Laci lordship. He also made gifts to St John’s. Later, Ailric’s grandson, Adam Fitz Swain, set up his own Cluniac priory here at ‘Lund’ (or Bretton), staffed by monks from St Johns. Its foundation can be dated to 1153-54.
Gerald Alliot at Barnsley Archives records this time-line to show that ‘Barnsley manor and grange’ meant land that was given to Cluniac monks at Monk Bretton Priory.