A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



Normandy, ruling their large estate in the interest of parent com- 

 munities that owed direct allegiance to a power with which England 

 was so frequently at war, constituted at times a genuine national danger, 

 and must have been a constant cause of local irritation. 



There was probably a general feeling of satisfaction throughout 

 Hampshire when these alien priories, that had been ruled with so much 

 fickleness for more than a hundred years, were finally suppressed at the 

 beginning of the fifteenth century ; more especially as their revenues 

 were merely transferred to other religious purposes. 



The island of Hay ling was owned by the powerful abbey of 

 Jumieges, where the abbot established a priory probably in the twelfth 

 century, the site of which is now beneath the sea ; the abbey of St. 

 Florent, Saumur, established a priory at Andover during the same 

 period ; St. Vigor, Cerisy, at Monk Sherborne (1100-35) ; St. Sauveur 

 Vicomte, at Ellingham (1160); whilst the abbey of Tiron, Chartres, 

 had three houses, namely at Andwell (early in twelfth century), Hamble 

 (1098-1128), and St. Cross (1120) in the Isle of Wight. In the Isle 

 of Wight the abbeys of Lire and Montebourg also respectively con- 

 trolled the small priories of Carisbrook (circa 1156) and Appuldurcombe 

 (circa iioo), whilst the house of St. Helen's (circa 1090) was of Cluniac 

 foundation. Not one of these ten houses were conventual, that is, the 

 inmates had no voice in the appointment of their superiors, who were 

 sent across the seas by the Norman abbots and who could be withdrawn 

 at pleasure. 



The constitution of these alien priories has already been referred to 

 in the ecclesiastical section, and their individual peculiarities are subse- 

 quently briefly discussed under their respective houses ; but a word or 

 two may here be permitted as to their treatment by the English Crown. 

 It is easy to understand how they sprang up in England under the first 

 kings of the Norman dynasty, but they soon became settlements of 

 foreign monks, whose sympathies naturally centred in their homes across 

 the seas, and whose main duties were the collecting and guarding of 

 English rents and tithes that were sent year by year out of the kingdom 

 to the parent house. King John was the first to seize the priories that 

 were dependent on foreign houses, compelling them to pay into the royal 

 treasury the sums or tribute usually termed apport which they had 

 been in the habit of forwarding to the continent. In 1295, when 

 Edward I. made war upon France to recover the province of Guienne, 

 he had great difficulty in procuring the necessary funds for the campaign. 

 He seized all the alien priories, numbering about a hundred, and used 

 their revenues to fill his war chest. In order to prevent the foreign 

 monks of the Isle of Wight and on the seaboard of Hampshire and else- 

 where on the coast giving possible help to invaders, he deported many of 

 them to other religious houses that were twenty or more miles from the 

 coast. Edward II. subsequently followed this example, taking the alien 

 priories into his own hands, but he not infrequently appointed their 

 priors custodians for a consideration, obliging them to pay to the Crown 



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