Cistercian abbey in Lancashire with extensive ecclesiastical and monastic connections to medieval Mann.

The connection was established under the Norse kings. A charter attributed to King Olave granted the church of St Mary of Furness liberty in the election of a Bishop of the Isles. A later charter of King Godred confirmed the same privilege, stating that he had granted Furness “full liberty of electing a bishop of the Isles”, as his father Olave’s charter testified.

This right generated repeated involvement by the monks in episcopal elections. Manx Society editions preserve disputes in which King Olave and others opposed candidates associated with Furness, as well as documents in which bishops acknowledged that the right of election belonged to the monks.

Papal protection strengthened the abbey’s position. The bull of Eugenius III in 1153 took the abbey and its possessions under papal protection. Later bulls of Urban III and Celestine III again confirmed the monastery and its rights.

Furness also stood behind the development of Rushen Abbey. Medieval and later Manx accounts describe Rushen as a Cistercian house connected with Furness, while the surviving documentary record preserves grants, confirmations and disputes involving the two institutions.

The relationship did not give Furness secular government of the whole Isle of Man. The surviving grants concern ecclesiastical rights, property and monastic interests, including the disputed privilege of episcopal election.

Furness also appears in the textual history of the Chronicle of Mann, which nineteenth-century editors believed had been continued for a period by monks of Furness after the earlier Rushen portion.