84 ~  SINAI PARK 
Hulme was carried off. Again we ask and receive no answer, what 
must have been the mortality amongst the Monks and the servants 
of the Convent. 
And yet we do sometimes get an answer. In the house of 
Augustinian canons at Heveringland, prior and canons died to a man. 
At Hickling, which a century before had been a flourishing house 
and doing good work, only one canon survived. Neither of these 
houses ever recovered from the effects of the visitation. They were 
both eventually absorbed in other monastic establishments. I quote 
from Wadding the great Annalist of the Franciscans. 
He writes :— 
“Tt was from this cause that the monastic bodies, and especially the 
mendicant orders, which up to this time had been flourishing in virtue and 
learning, began to decline and discipline to became slack, as well from the 
loss of eminent men as from the relaxation of the rules in consequence of 
the pitiable calamities of the time, and it was vain to look for reform 
among the young men and the promiscuous multitude who were received 
without the necessary discrimination for they thought more of filling the 
empty houses than of restoring the old strictness that had passed away.” 
We get passing glimpes of this from the “ Burton Chronicle” :— 
“ John Ibstoke, Abbot, 1348-1366, he added two-and-a-half days to the 
indulgence from the blood-letting so as to extend it from the Saturday till 
Saturday.” 
As the number decreased at the Abbey there would be less need 
for the Sanatorium, and I doubt not that it would return to its original 
use of the great lodge for the Shobnall Park and would be used for 
hunting and other purposes by the Abbots. 
When it changed its name I cannot say, but it must have been 
shortly before the dissolution. 
In the 26th Henry VIII (1534) Seyne Park was valued at £8 
per annum. 
In the 3rd Edward VI (1549) the herbages of the farm was let 
to John Taylor at £20. 
Can it have been called Sinai because it was used as the court 
for the administration of Forest Law? The law was given upon Mount 
