- Se 
By the Rew. W. G. Clark-Maxweill. 25 
as stated above, in July, 1538; and on the 2nd October of that 
year the Black Friars of Salisbury surrendered. The document is 
given in vol. xviii, p. 161 of the Magazine, in an article on the 
Black Friars of Wiltshire by the Rev. C. A. R. Palmer. It is 
signed by the prior, John Hesskyns, and thirteen brethren. An 
inventory of the goods of the monastery is also given, which 
certainly bears out the Bishop of Dover’s statement as to the 
penury of the friars’ houses, especially since this is mentioned as 
one of the better ones. 
The fall of Salisbury Black Friars involved that of Wilton as a 
dependent house, and synchronised with that of the Grey Friars in 
the same town. The inventory of this house also is given.' 
_ The sites, ete., were disposed of as follows :— 
The White Friars, at Marlborough, to John Pye and Robert 
Brown, 34 Hen. VIII. 
The Black Friars, at Salisbury, to John Pollard and William 
Byrte, Jan. 6th, 1545. 
The Black Friars, at Wilton, to Sir William Herbert, in 1547. 
The Grey Friars, at Salisbury, to John Wroth, 36 Hen. VIII. 
The Visitors’ reports, taken as a whole, reveal a much greater 
embarassment in pecuniary matters in the houses of friars than in 
monasteries. The reason for this, is not, I think, far to seek. The 
rule of St. Francis forbade not only the possession of private 
property by the individual friar, but even the holding of corporate 
estates by the community, and though, no doubt, this primitive 
severity had become in many cases relaxed, yet the fact remains 
that friaries on the whole did not enjoy the settled income which 
arose from landed property, and consequently lived in a much more 
hand-to-mouth fashion than did their elder rivals, the monks, So 
long as offerings from the faithful continued to flow in unchecked 
all was well: but when once it became evident, as must have been 
the case before 1538,that all religious houses were marked for destruc- 
_ tion, the tide of almsgiving slackened apace: and naturally so, for 
who will give to a body whose possessions may to-morrow be seized 
by the king’ And so, apart from the question of bad management 
1 See Appendix. 
