42 PAPERS, ETC. 



he niade otliers in thelr stead. He bound himsclf and bis 

 heirs in the sum of £100 for the due Performance of this 

 engagement, whicli was entered into in the Chapter holden 

 in the House of S. John's of Clei'kenwell beside London, 

 the 2nd of October, 1519.* 



It should be remarked, that, although no mention is 

 made in these documents of the Preceptor and bis asslstants 

 at Buckland, we are not to conclude for certain, how likely 

 soever, that such personages did not exist ; because, 

 according to the rule of the Order, as we have repeatedly 

 noticed, they were simply officials, and the direction of their 

 estates was virtually in the bands of the Superior at 

 Clerkenwell. It would appear, nevertbeless, that a change 

 had taken place in the general mode of management. The 

 Position of the Preceptor and bis Brethren, if such officers 

 were still in being, which I hardly believe, was clearly very 

 dilFerent froni what it was when the accounts of their 

 predecessors just two centuries before were so minutely laid 

 open to our inspection. 



On the same day as the date of the last Instrument, the 

 2nd of October, 1519, the Prior and Chapter leased for a 

 term of forty years, to the said Henry Thornton, farmer 

 of Bucland, a tenement with its appurtenances, late in the 

 tenui'e of John Curson, situated and lying in the parish 

 of S. Clement Danes, outslde Temple Bar. The rent was 

 40s. Sterling a-year.f 



We are now closc upon tiraes of trouble. I have already 

 in previous Memoirs entered fuUy into the bistory of the 

 unscrupulous movement which terminated in the violent 

 suppression of the Religious Houses, and the wholesale 



* MS. Cott. Claud. E. VI., ff. clxxsüii, cl.fxxiiii b. 

 t AIS. CoU. Claud. E. VI., I. clxxxviii. 



