Delapré Abbey

Delapré Abbey on the outskirts of Northampton, England is now a rather posh neo-classical mansion, ownership of which has passed to a trust, and locals use it for recreation and socialising. While it was still a Cluniac nunnery before the Reformation, it was where Henry VI, King of England, was brought to hear Mass after his defeat at the Battle of Northampton, which was fought before the abbey’s walls.

Poor King Henry, whom local tradition says later sheltered in a barn in Bracewell near Barnoldswick and was captured between Clitheroe and Waddington, was mentally ill. He was not really cut out for medieval kingship even when his health was good, being more interested in poetry and religion than killing Frenchmen, which seems to have been prerequisite for ruling England during the Hundred Years War. After he lost the battle, he was respectfully taken from his celebration of the Mass to imprisonment in London.

They abbey must have seemed a peaceful place for a timorous king who had just witnessed a gruesome medieval battle. He might have been better at being a monk, but inheritance and providence had made him a king. We are what we are, and we should seek to be that to which God has called us. We might not excel, nor be recorded as one of history’s greats, but we can do as good a job as we may.

Delapré Abbey said farewell to its famous prisoner and bloody armies before returning to the quiet routines of a nunnery. Within less than a century, however, it too would alter its purpose, the Reformation dispensing with monastic houses of monks and nuns. It now serves a new purpose, and well enough. Its architecture is a weird compound of unrelated styles, yet it remains a peaceful outpost on the boundary of a busy city.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

-Ecclesiastes 3:1-4

A D