"\voouspnii\G riiioKY. 109 



Ilfracombe, and Morville, who I belleve was also a land- 

 owner in Devonshire, were tlie actors in a tragedy which 

 caused a general feeling of liorror tlirough the wbole 

 Christian world. That powerful monarch, Henry II., 

 proud Plautagenet as he was, submltted to a degrading 

 penance, having been publicly scourged before the high 

 altar by the monks of Canterbury, while a' Backet, 

 canonized by the Romish church, was even to the tirae 

 of the Reformation held in veneratlon as a saint and 

 martyr, and miracles were said to have been worked at hia 

 shrine, which the gifts of persons of all ranks and uations 

 soon rendered one of the riebest in Europe. 



Under these circumstances we can easily suppose that 

 the descendants and relations of these unhappy men would 

 have been most anxious to testify their regret, and accord- 

 ing to the custom of the day to endeavour by gifts to the 

 church to expiate the crime of his murder. It was to 

 this feeling that the Priory of Woodspring,* or Worspring, 

 owed its foundation. We find preserved in the Cottonian 

 Library an autograph letter from William de Courteney, 

 who was nearly related to the Tracy family, to the Bishop 

 of Bath, signifying and submitting to him his intention of 

 founding a conventual house at Worspring, for the good 

 of the souls of his father, Robert, there buried, of his 

 mother, himself, his wife, and those of his ancestors and 

 descendants ; and we find that in the year 1210 the same 

 William de Courteney removed the house of canons regulär 

 of St. Augustine, dedicated originally to the blessed Virgin 

 and St. Thomas a' Becket, from Dodelyn, to his manor of 

 Woodspring, and endowed it Avith considerable property. 

 At this removal it was dedicated to the Iloly Trinity, St. 



* Woodspring is situatcd in the parish of Kewstoke, 8 miles N.W. of 

 Axbridge, Somerset. 



