96 A DORSET ROYAL PECULIAR. 



Preston Slower East 



Sutton Priors Stower West 



Sturmister Marshall Haydon 



Milton Abbas Lillington 



Alton Pancras Nether Compton 



Anderston Over Compton 



Bere Regis Oburne 



Kingston Rime intrinseca 



Bloxworth Stockwood 



Frome Whitfield Strattern (Stratton) 



Corfe Mullen Shearbourne 



Lower Litchett Thornford 



Thomeston Yatminster 



Turner Piddle Leigh 



Wimborne Minster Chetnole 



The Benedictine Nunnery, which had been founded at 

 Wimborne by St. Cuthberga sometime in or before the year 

 705, is said to have been destroyed by the Danes (probably 

 early in the eleventh century), and to have been refounded,as 

 a secular community with Dean and Canons, by Edward the 

 Confessor, the founder of Westminster Abbey. 



Prom the middk 1 of the eleventh century, with the exception 

 of a short period when it was granted by King Henry to 

 Robert Count of Meulan, and by his son (King) John, to the 

 Augustinian Priory of St. Stephen, Plessis in the diocese of 

 Bayeux, in Normandy, the Deanery of Wimborne Minster 

 appears to have been in the gift of the Kings of England, and 

 so to have continued until the dissolution of the chapter in 

 the first year of the reign of Edward VI. 



That the King looked upon Wimborne as belonging to 

 himself, and that he would brook no interference with what he 

 considered his royal prerogative, even from the Pope himself, 

 is evident from the following extract : 



20 August, 22 Henry III. (1238). To the Bishop of Salisbury and 

 the Archdeacon of Wells : 



Whereas the King has heard that W. de Badeston, clerk, has obtained 

 apostolic letters directed to them to provide for him in some church 

 in the diocese of Salisbury, and they by the same authority have seen fit 

 to provide for him in the church of Shapwyk, belonging immediately 

 to the deanery of Winburn ; and whereas the said deanery is a 



