6 PAPERS, ETC. 



It was about the year 1166, that William de Erle<^li, lord 

 of tlie manor of Durston, founded the House for a small Com- 

 munity of Augustine Canons. His father, John de Erlegh, 

 who died in the previous year, was possessed of several 

 manors in the county of Somerset, one of which still bears 

 his name in Somerton Erle, and is mentioned as paying 

 five marcs for scutage in 1161. In behalf of the souls of 

 King Henry and of Alianor the Queen, and of King Henry 

 his son and their other sons and daughters, and for the 

 benefit of the souls of himself and of his wife, this William 

 de Erlegh gave, as Brother John Stilliugflete informs us, 

 all the land of ßuklande, and the Church of Perretone 

 (Petherton),* with other churches and lands in divers 

 places, as appears by a charter for that purpose made, for 

 the planting and ordaining of Keligion at Buckland, by 

 the band of his kinsman S. Thomas of Canterbury ; and 

 that the said Canons thus planted and ordained should 

 possess the aforesaid lands and churches to their proper 

 uses in pure and perpetual alms.f 



According to the same chronicler, who wrote an 

 account of the Order in 1434, for a perpetual memorial 

 and commemoration of the various benefactors and their 



* " Tlie Brooke is cauUid Peder, aud risith West Sowth "West yn the 

 Kylies about a 2 myles of. First it cummitli by iS'ortla-Pedreton, a praty 

 uplandiscli Toun, wher is a fair Chirch, the Personage wherof was impro- 

 priate to Myuchiuboclaud." — Lelaud, Itin. vol. ii., p. 6G. 



t MS. in Off. Armer. L. 17, fol. 153. MS. Cott. Tib. E. ix., f. 23. 

 Appendix, No. I. 



As will be observed by the references, I am acquainted with two MSS. 

 of this work of Brother John Stillingflete, one preserved in the College of 

 Arms, L. 17., and the other in the Cottonian Library, Tiberius, E. ix. 

 Both are transcripts later by upwards of a Century and a half than the life- 

 timeof the chronicler. The former has been muchinjuredby the fireof 1731, 

 and exists but in fragments : the latter is considerably more ample in details, 

 although both of them were evidently copied from a common original, but 

 its text is most corrupt, and the writer was clearly Ignorant of the language 

 of the production which he endeavoured to perpetuate. 



