A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



In the account presented on 30 May, 1536, by Sir James Worsley, 

 John Paulet, George Paulet and William Berners, not a single scandal is 

 even hinted at in connection with the Hampshire houses. Of the 

 Cistercian nuns of Wintney, they say that they are by report of good 

 conversation and all desirous of continuing in religion ; of the Bene- 

 dictine nuns of Winchester, that the whole number are religious and in 

 living virtuous ; of the Austin canons of St. Denis, Southampton, that 

 they are of good conversation ; of the Cistercian monks of Netley, that 

 they are of good religious conversation ; of the Cistercian monks of 

 Quarr, that they too are of good religious conversation ; of the Austin 

 canons of Breamore, that they are of good conversation. 1 Notwithstand- 

 ing however the nature of these reports of the smaller houses, every one 

 of them was suppressed before the close of the year. 2 



A peculiarly interesting and exceptional point of this return may 

 here be noticed. The commissioners say of the abbey of Netley, which 

 was close to the water's edge, that it afforded both to the king's subjects 

 and to strangers travelling the seas ' great relief and comforte' ; and of the 

 abbey of Quarr, which was also close to the sea coast, it is reported that 

 it is ' a greate refuge and comforte to all the inhabitants of the Yle and 

 to strangers travellinge the sees.' There can be but little doubt that 

 these expressions refer to the fact that the monks of both Netley and 

 Quarr kept a fire flaring or a lamp burning at nightfall for the guidance 

 of ships. 3 



The Premonstratensian abbey of Titchfield, valued at the dissolution 

 at 249 i6j. i</., surrendered on 28 December, 1537, John Salisbury, 

 the abbot, being made suffragan bishop of Thetford. 4 The superior of 

 another Hampshire house, the priory of Breamore, was made suffragan 

 bishop of Taunton. 



It is stated in Milner's Winchester that one of the results of the 

 1535 act was to destroy the four houses of friars at Winchester ; but 

 this is an error. The friars throughout England (saving the extin- 

 guished Observants) had escaped because of their honourable condition 

 of poverty. They had no fixed source of income to which the act could 

 apply ; they were not even named in its clauses, and there can be little 

 or no doubt that it was never drafted with any idea of including them. 

 It seemed however to occur to the king and his agents that even friars 

 had houses, that their sites were valuable, and that their very poverty 

 would make their resistance feeble. An attack all along the line was 

 therefore decided upon in the autumn of 1537. It began in London in 

 November, 1537, and it reached Winchester in May, 1538. An ex- 

 friar was made the chief instrument of this action in the west of Eng- 

 land. Richard Ingworth, formerly prior of the Dominicans of King's 



1 P. R. O. Augm. Office, Chantry and College Certificates, in. Owing probably to wrong 

 classification, this return has hitherto been overlooked. 

 * Letters and Papers, Henry Vlll. 1536, passim. 

 s See W. J. Hardy's Lighthouses : their History and Romance (1895). 

 4 Letters and Papers, Henry Vlll. (1537), li. 1274. 



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