By the Rev. W. G. Clark-Maxwell. 27 
Memorials of Salisbury.” It is interesting to reflect what might 
have sprung from this rival of Merton and Peterhouse at the older 
universities, had it proved as fruitful as they in descendants. 
Alien Priories. 
The suppression of religious houses in the time of Henry VIIL., 
though carried out on a scale of unprecedented extent, had not 
been altogether unknown in England. Apart from the houses 
which Cardinal Wolsey suppressed, in order to endow Christ Church, 
Oxford, there had been from time to time instances of individual 
suppression by the Crown or some great landowner, followed by 
the transference of the religious to some other monastery or a new 
site, or sometimes by the re-founding of a different order. The 
largest precedent for suppression, however, is to be found in the 
case of the Alien Priories, as they are called, in the time of Henry 
VI. What were these Alien Priories, how many were there in 
Wilts, and what became of them and of their lands ? 
The phenomenon of Alien Priories finds its origin and its ex- 
_ planation alike in the fact of the Norman Conquest. The followers 
of the Conqueror became possessed in many cases of large properties 
in England. Some of these were already landowners in Normandy 
and so it came about that when these men or their descendants 
made benefactions of manors or other property to a religious house, 
it might happen that a monastery in Normandy or Anjou might 
hold land in England. (Whether the converse also obtained 
I have found no evidence to determine.) So long as England and 
Normandy remained united under one Crown this arrangement was 
not attended with inconvenience, beyond the fact that the distance 
between the monastery and its manor rendered it advisable to 
plant a small “cell,” or colony, from the mother house, to collect 
the revenue, to transmit it to France, and to supervise the manage- 
ment of the estate. When, however, Normandy was separated 
from the Crown of England, the difficulty arose that revenues from 
