300 
paid by the Priory 4 marks* of good and lawful money in the 
Church of the said Priory and six wagon loads of firewood. If 
the Vicar serve, in his own person, one of the Churches, he is to 
provide a priest for the other ; if he serve neither, then has he to 
find two priests, so that each church may have its own priest. 
This order is ratified by the Prior of Bath. In 1534, the nett 
value of the Vicarage of Norton cum Hinton is set down at 
£5 11s. 3d. To this extent had the monks succeeded in im- 
poverishing the two Livings. The Church of Hinton was thus 
degraded from the position of a Parish Church to serve the needs 
of the monks, and its union with the Church of Norton continued 
for nearly 200 years, until 1824, when it was again separated and 
made a perpetual curacy, the endowment being a ‘‘ modus,” in 
lieu of tithes of some £12 a year, which has been supplemented 
by smal) grants from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and Queen 
Anne’s Bounty. This is a typical instance of what was no doubt 
a contributing cause of the Dissolution of Monastic Houses, an 
appropriation of Parochial Endowments, which estranged the 
goodwill of the Parochial Clergy and the Laity, and which 
resulted in the permanent impoverishment of many Livings. 
The next incident which I have to record in the history of the 
Priory, is another small appropriation of a different kind. At 
Longleat, near the site of the present mansion, was a Priory of 
Black Canons dedicated to S. Radegund. This Priory had become 
exceedingly impoverished, and it was accordingly dissolved in 
1529, and what remained of its possessions was transferred to 
Hinton and continued to belong to it until its own dissolution, 
and it was called “ the Cell of the Priory of Longleat.” 
A curious incident in connexion with a monk of Hinton, one 
Nicholas Hopkins, has to be recorded. This Hopkins had been 
Confessor to the ambitious Duke of Buckingham, whose fall is 
recorded in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. He had indulged in 
—————» 
* £2 13s. 4d. 
