AFTER the general suppression of monasteries in England, in the sixteenth century, it is remarkable how quickly and how effectually the accurate knowledge of, or interest in, these religious institutions passed away from public memory, and what vague ideas of their inmates remained. Though closely connected by so many historical and biographical ties to the progress of the kingdom, and to the importance of ancient families, all the documentary evidence relating to them was at once cast aside with neglect; and we principally owe it to

1 The woodcut of the east front is from Add. MSS. 5675, f. 7, 11.

a drawing by Grimm, in the Brit. Mus.

The self supported zeal and care of a few learned men after Those times that we can still, however imperfectly, trace the ↑alities, possessions, or customs of these establishments, which for many centuries exercised so important an influence, whether for good or evil, on the feelings of the people. Few records f the intimate life of monks and nuns have come down to us, though we have occasionally the free-spoken revelations of a garrulous monk, like the Chronicle of Jocelin de Brakelond; int the notices of the interior arrangements of monasteries are rare and insufficient, though the names of their former beenpiers are now often indistinctly used among us as bywords of reproach.

Some monastic orders, like those derived from Cluny and Fremonstre, were exempted by Papal authority from the superintendence of the diocesan bishops, but others continued

able to episcopal visitation; and from the records of such periodical examinations we occasionally gain an insight into the domestic life of convents, which their very nature is framed habitually to deny. This source of information has been seldom applied to, and may not be very attractive, involved as the facts often are in the phraseology of legal forms; but, being genuine and contemporaneous, their evidence is worth preserving on

matters en little known.

With respect to the small Priory of Benedictine Nuns at Fechoamne, nem Mulhurst, there are extant a few such visitaHome" during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which on This popiston may be referred to, as adding some details to its acounty history, and perhaps this convent exhibits to us, in the records of occasional misrule, nothing exceptional, or difforing hom what may have been passing in other similar communities. No fixed date can be named for the foundation of Buschourne Priory, though it happened about the middle of the thirteenth century, and was certainly due to the liberality of a neighbouring landholder, John de Bohun, whose family so long hold an important position at Midhurst, down to the time of Henry VII. Franco de Bohun held land there of the

* Dillaway, tu hits thindong of the Kope of Chichester, has given some incomplete extracts from these.

*Johannes do Bohuu clamat habere sine charta manerium suum do Esseborn

eum libera warrenna, &c., et quod ipse et antecessores sui, a tempore quo non extat memoria, pleno usi sunt libertatibus predietis." Dallaway, i. p. 237, from MSS.

Boult No 138.

honour of Arundel, in the time of Richard I. In the year 1439, the market tolls of Midhurst were commuted by John Bohun, Knight, Lord of Midhurst, on the burgesses agreeing to pay him £10 a year, and two law-days to be held every year in the name of Bohun, on the Thursday after Hokeday, and on the Thursday after Michaelmas (MS. Deed). According to an inquest after the death of "John de Bohun of Midhurst, chevaler," he appears to have died on the Tuesday before the Assumption, in 1481, and to have left a widow, Cecilia, and a son and heir, John de Bohun, above twenty-one years of age. Leland briefly describes Easebourne as "Prioratus monialium, Johannes de Bone, miles, fundator primus, modernus David Owen, miles."

We do not know with what revenues it was first endowed, nor indeed how soon they were increased by subsequent benefactors; but at the earliest date when we have an account of them, they appear to have been ample, and indeed out of proportion to the support of the five or six "poor nuns" settled there. Deriving an inference from some names which occur in the lists of the nuns, and from their bibles and books of prayer being in French, it is not improbable that the founder intended the nunnery as a refuge for noble or gentle poverty, and that its few inmates were well born, and selected from important families.

The first trace of any individual admitted is derived from a letter of Archbishop Peckham (1278-92), a Sussex man himself, requesting the Prioress and nuns of Easebourne to admit Lucy, daughter of the deceased knight, Sir William Basset, as a sister into their house. About the same time, Pope Nicholas' Taxation, A.D. 1292 (pp. 134-139), estimates the Church of Easebourne, with its chapel, at £26.13s.4d. a year, and the temporalities of the Prioress at £41, besides rents valued at £2 in Broadwater and Worthing.

Half a century later, in 1342, when Henry Husee and the King's Commissioners had to certify the value of property in the parish of "Esburne," the church was valued as before at 40 marcs (£26. 13s. 4d.); and the jury, consisting of Nicholas atte Felde, Thomas le Fytteler, Richard Kaperon, and Roger

Dugd. Monast. iv. 424, from Lambeth 5 Nonarum Inquis. f. 363. Register.

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le Kember, returned the lay property as small, “inasmuch as the Prioress of Esburne, who is rector there (que est rector ibidem), has a messuage, with curtilege and garden, worth 60s. a year. She has also a hundred and four score acres of arable land, worth £4. 108.; also four acres of meadow, worth 128.; from fixed rents, £4. 10s. 4d.; the tithes of mills, 6s. 8d.; of hay, 608.; of cider (cisere), 100s.; of flax and hemp, 178.; of milk and calves, 358. Sd. She has also from mortuaries and oblations 1078.; and from tithes of pigs, geese, pigeons, and other small tithes, 58." These profits amount to £26. 3s. 8d. in the parish alone. In the Subsidy Roll of 1350, the temporalities of the Prioress from agricultural profits in Broadwater and Worthing were valued at 418., and “ William de la Ruwe, Chaplain of Eseborne," paid his personal tax of 28.6

It is not in our power to trace the early accumulation by the priory of this property, as shown in these valuations. The first documentary evidence consists of a deed of gift of a messuage in the vill of Midhurst, from Sir John de Bohun to Thomas Snolk of Eseburne, dated 1 Edward III., 1327, to which the names of Hugh de Budyton, Symone de Stedeham, Henry de Batchin, Richard Joseph, William Snolk, Thomas Snolk, Roger atte Rude, William de Middleton, and others, are attached as witnesses. We then have a quit-claim of the same messuage from Thomas Snolk to "the Lady Beatrice, by the grace of God Prioress of Eseborne."

A few years later, in 1332, we have a record in the Patent Rolls (6 Edw. III., p. 1, m. 29), of a considerable gift made by Sir John de Bohun, of Midhurst. The King, when granting him license to endow the nunnery with "a messuage of 55 acres of land, 4 acres of meadow, 2 acres of pasture, and 368. of rent in Sturmynstre Mareschal (co. Dorset), and Thornesdepe, and a fourth part of the hundred of Busebergh,' stated that he had ascertained, by the inquisition of William Trussel, his eschactor on this side Trent, that he should lose thereby from some of these lands, held in capite, the service of one man twice a year, and from others the services of four men twice a year, valued truly at 64s. a year.

6 Sussex Arch. Coll. V. pp. 236, 239. 7 For copies of this and of the deed relating to the Prioress Margerita, as well as for that relating to the market tolls, I

am indebted to the kindness of Sir Sibbald Scott, Bart., from his own MS. collections.

Relaxing for the purpose the prohibition of the Mortmain Statute, the King received a fine of £20, on signing this grant with his private seal on January 28, 1333, at West

minster.

The names of Alicia and Maria occur soon after, as among the early prioresses of Easebourne. It appears by a Patent Roll of 1339, that a former Prioress Alicia and the convent had taken possession of a gift of 3 assarts and a meadow, containing 40 acres of land and 12d. of rent in Wolbedyng and la Niwode, held in capite of the King by Ralph de Wolbedyng, whereupon the King had seized them into his own hands, no previous license, as required by the Mortmain Statute, having been obtained. Maria, now prioress, by pleading that this transgression occurred before the publication of the statute, and by paying a fine of one marc, obtained the royal pardon, and the liberty of holding the said acquisition for ever, by a deed dated at Berkhampstede, January 15, 1339. (Rot. Pat. 12th Edw. III. p. iii. m. 2.)

Perhaps, by the influence of the same Ralph de Wolbedyng, an additional gift was added in 1354 "by Peter, the parson of the church of Wolbedyng, and Richard Wyatt, chaplain." This consisted of "18 acres of land with a meadow in Myntestede in Stedeham," valued by the escheator at 18d. a year; and the King also permitted the same benefactors to give the nunnery a messuage of 19 acres of land and 1 acre of meadow in Lynch. The priory had already obtained the royal license to accept lands to the value of 10 marcs a year, non obstante the Mortmain Statute; and these fresh acquisitions were to be reckoned in part satisfaction of such a sum. (Rot. Pat. 28th Edward III. p. 1, m. 9, dated Westminster, May 10.)

We learn the name of another prioress by a deed dated in 1362. In that year "Margerita Wyvile, Prioress of Eseborne, and the nuns of the same place," granted the lease of a cottage, situated between that of Matilda Sawyer and the tenement of Christiana atte boûr, to Hugh Walsche, his wife Scelia, and Agnes, their daughter, for their lives, on the payment of 18d. a year, attendance on the Court of the Priory every three weeks, and a heriot on the death of the survivor. "One part of the Indenture, sealed with the Common Seal of the House