26 The Fall of the Friars’ Houses and Alien Priories in Wilts. 
—which no doubt existed—the friaries were almost bound to get 
into financial difficulties during the last years of their existence. 
As a consequence very few of these houses yielded any substantial 
sum to the Court of Augmentations; yet still their plate and the 
lead from the roof would yield something, while the actual sites, 
from their position in or near great towns, were often eagerly 
sought after by courtiers, speculators, and others, who wished to 
erect town houses for themselves, or sell the sites again at a profit. 
There are a certain number of minor religious foundations in the 
county which may be enumerated for the sake of completeness. 
Some of them perished with their companions, others appear to 
exist, though probably under altered statutes, to the present time. 
There was at Ansty a preceptory of the Knights Hospitalers of 
St. John of Jerusalem. The manor was given by Walter de 
Turberville in the 12th year of King John, and in the Valor 
Ecclesiasticus is returned as worth £81 8s. 5d. At the dissolution 
the site was granted to John Zouch, 88 Henry VIII. 
At Temple Rockley was a hide of land, given in the second year 
of Hen. II. to the order of the Knights Templars. At the sup- 
pression of this order it was transferred to the order of St. John, 
and annexed to their preceptory of Saundon, Oxon. At the dis- 
solution Sir Edward Bainton obtained the site. (382 Hen. VIII.) 
An interesting memorial of a very critical period in the history 
of the University of Oxford is to be found in the College of De 
Vaux, in Salisbury. When the Pope in 1238 laid the University 
under an interdict, numbers of the scholars retired from the place 
and congregated at Abingdon or elsewhere, Salisbury among the 
rest. Here, in 1260, Bishop Giles de Bridport founded the College 
de Valle Scolarum, or de Vaux. This was suppressed and the site 
granted, 35 Hen. VIII., to Sir Michael Lister. “The college was 
just outside the Close, on the Harnham side. There is a view of the 
building, which is now entirely destroyed,! in Hall’s “ Picturesque 
1I quote from the “ Diocesan History of Salisbury,” p. 111, but there is a 
difference of opinion on the point. Mr. C. H. Talbot, of Lacock Abbey, writes: 
“TI believe there are some remains of it in the house called De Vaux House, 
where there are some buttresses of the fifteenth century.”’ 
