A HISTORY OF DORSET 



among the last entries of Bishop Chandler, who died the following July> 

 was a notification dated 7 May, 1426, wherein he interdicted Edward 

 Poliny, John Lok, and John Lowyer, of the order of mendicants of St. 

 Dominic, for their contumacy in disobeying his citation, and denounced 

 their conduct in putting up an altar within the limits of the parish church of 

 Radipole, extorting the oblations and devotions of the faithful in Christ 

 flocking to them whom they had callously seduced. It was forbidden 

 either to celebrate or to hear celebration in the place, and all those who had 

 assisted, contrary to the bishop's admonition, were ordered to appear before 

 him to give account of their conduct."^ The matter did not end here, for 

 John Roger and Hugh Deveril, knt., and others came forward and stated 

 that ' there was no place dedicated to God in the vill of Melcombe Regis,' 

 that the parish church, distant by a mile and a half away, was not easy 

 of access to the inhabitants of the town, their families, guests, and the 

 merchants who visited the town by land and sea, so that the said inhabitants 

 were notoriously rude and unlearned {•valde riides sint et indocti), that moved by 

 the spirit of piety, and pitying the desolation of the vill they had begun a 

 house for the perpetual habitation of the friars preachers, who had for no 

 small time given themselves to the service of God and the salvation of men in 

 the place where they laboured. The petitioners further begged the bishop's 

 consideration of the following articles : (i) of the intention of the builders in 

 beginning the work, (2) the fitness of the place to be dedicated as a church, 

 (3) its endowment, (4) the apostolic and regal licence obtained for com- 

 mencing the foundation, (5) the question whether the house of the friars' 

 preachers could be dedicated without diminution of the episcopal jurisdiction 

 and saving the rights of the parish church.'" The registers record no 

 definite reply to this petition, but among the orders celebrated during the 

 rule of Neville are entries stating that Richard, bishop of ' Caten,' held ordina- 

 tions for the diocesan in the church of the Dominican friars of Melcombe on 

 22 May, Vigil of Holy Trinity, 1434, and on 25 May, 1437.'^° 



That terrible landmark of the fourteenth century, the visitation of the 

 plague known as the Black Death, acquires a special interest in this county, 

 inasmuch as nearly all contemporary writers are agreed that Dorset was 

 the first district to be attacked, and Melcombe Regis is usually supposed to 

 be the place where the disease first showed itself. ' In the year of Our Lord, 

 1348, about the feast of the translation of St. Thomas (7 July),' says the 

 author of the Eulogium Historiarum, ' the cruel pestilence, terrible to all future 

 ages, from parts over the sea came to the south coast of England to a port 

 which is called Melcombe in Dorset, and sweeping over the southern districts 

 destroyed innumerable people in Dorset, Devon, and Somerset.' '" Judging 

 from the institutions of that time the epidemic did not fully manifest itself 

 till the year had somewhat advanced, when it fell with fatal effect on the 

 county, its ravages being especially marked on the coast where it first 

 showed itself, and in the low-lying districts. One of the earliest victims 



'*^ Sarum Epis. Reg. Chandler, fol. 54, 55. ''' Ibid. Neville, fol. 3+. "* Ibid. Orders celebrated. 



"" Op. cit. (Rolls Ser.), iii, 213. The graphic account of Henry Knighton, canon of Leicester, says 

 that at that time a lamentable pest penetrated into those parts nearest the sea by Southampton, and coming to 

 Bristol there died of it as it were all the healthy folk of the town, taken away by sudden death, for few people 

 kept their beds more than two or three days, and some only half a day, before death came to them at the set- 

 ting of the sun, Leic. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), 61. 



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