126 PAPERS, ETC. 



cured a licence for alienating it to one Thomas Älore. 

 The licence is dated at AVestminster, the 22nd of June, 

 in that year, and recites the various possessions — Carters 

 Lees, Carters Meade, Avesham Mede, Hole Meade, Seven 

 acre Meade, Ley Meade, More Close, the Croftes, Hynde 

 Londes, Chalfeuenlease, Pry Close, More Close, the whole 

 close next the Deyhouse, Three Acres, the woods and 

 lands called Priours Woode, the lands commonly called 

 the Demeane Landes, sltuate in Taunton, Hüll Bishop's, 

 Staple Grove, Eysshton, Trull, CorfF, Pytmyster, Chyrche, 

 Hylfarance, Norton, Kyngeston, and Cheddon.--' He and 

 his kept possession for a while, until in four short-lived 

 generations the flxmily, which had a hard struggle for 

 existence, and often seemed on the point of annihilation 

 through fallure of heirs male, succumbed at length to the 

 mysterious law of retributive justice, which had so many 

 examples in that dreadful time to give it solemnity, and, 

 as one would imagine, to force on the minds even of the 

 most unreflecting of mankiud a deep conviction of its 

 terrible truth — and " the name was clean put out." 



Grassy hillocks, as I have already observed, alone mark 

 the spot on which the Plouse was reared. Not a pier of 

 the noble Conventual Church, not a capital of one of its 

 clustered columns, not a boss from the vaulted roof, not a 

 fragment of tracery through which the light feil in soft and 

 many-coloured radiance upon the chequered pavement, not 

 even the half obliterated lines of a sculptured slab that 

 once told of aaintly Prior or learned Canon, who had gone 

 to his reward and left the memory of his virtues to devoted 

 and faithful hearts — not a solitary relic of that glorious 

 whole has escaped the band of the relentless spoiler. All is 



* Orig. 3 Edw. VI., 4 pars, rot. 95. Eep. Orig. B.M. Add. MS. 6.367, p. 98. 



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