198 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



stratensian house. Tanner calls it the latter, and states that it 

 was founded by Philip de Albini in Henry II.'s reign. It was 

 dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and held six or eight religious 

 about the time of the dissolution, when its revenues were 

 reckoned in gross at 14 i8s. 4d. The prioress was one 

 Joanna Thompson. On July 3, 1539, she and her sister nuns 

 formally surrendered the house to the commissioners, and at- 

 tached their common seal to the document (the Virgin crowned 

 and bearing a sceptre, with the Holy Child upon her lap). 

 The legend is imperfect, and only the following letters re- 

 main : 



. . . ORIS-ET-CONVENTVS-DE-IRF . . .* 



Lingering near these forgotten mounds it is easy to see that 

 some parts of the neighbouring farmhouse are built of stones 

 belonging to the ruins, and an old woman tells us she re- 

 members some seventy years ago that walls belonging to the 

 Priory were yet in existence. Musing among the lambs, with 

 rooks flying overhead in the sunshine, we recall that sultry 3rd 

 of July, some three hundred and forty years ago, when Joanna 

 Thompson and her trembling nuns, while the very foundations 

 of their life seemed torn np, resigned revenues and lands to the 

 king, who so soon would grant the latter to Robert Tyrwhitt. 

 They looked upon the same pastoral slopes as we do ; the 



* See Dugdale's Monasticon (1830, Caley, &c.), vol. vi. pt. 2, p. 936, 

 and Tanner's Notitia Monastica (Nasmith, 1787), No 43 (Lincolnshire). 

 In a footnote Tanner observes that Dugdale places Irford among Bene- 

 dictine monasteries. He himself considers that it is more likely it was a 

 Praemonstratensian house, because it seems to have had some dependence 

 upon Newhouse, which was undoubtedly Prsemon stratensian, and the 

 seal of the Abbot of Newhouse was affixed in behalf of these nuns to a con- 

 vention which they made with the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln. The 

 Prsemonstratensian order was a reformation of St. Augustine's rule, there- 

 fore this house might easily be called "ordinis S. Augustini " in Rymer's 

 vol. xiv., p. 667. 



