ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



in May, 1 399, together with the priories of Hinckley (Leicestershire) and 

 Carisbrooke (Isle of Wight) and all other possessions of the Norman abbey of 

 Lyre in England to the prior and convent of Mountgrace of the Carthusian 

 order."^ Though these dependencies of foreign houses are often alluded to as 

 ' reputed ' priories, only four of them can be proved to have maintained a 

 religious community. 



It is difficult to summarize the religious position of the fifteenth century 

 as it advanced, or rather it requires a summary from more than one point of 

 view^. With an inevitable amount of dissatisfaction, and, on the part of the 

 faithful, of discontent with the secular aims that animated most of the bishops 

 and the higher ranks of the clergy, we have still to consider the evidence 

 of the reality and movement of church life and the progress of religious 

 aspiration. The chantries founded at that time and up to the Reformation 

 are perhaps most significant of this advance, for, while the devout remained 

 faithful to the form chosen by an earlier generation for the expression of 

 their religious feelings, the introduction of other objects in their ordination 

 testifies to the spread and growth of the ideal of education and enlightenment 

 as a means to the amelioration of society. Again, indulgences are more 

 frequently granted for purely secular objects. The register of Bishop Ayscough, 

 1439—50, records an indulgence for those assisting the building of a new 

 haven at Bridport for the safety of merchants and mariners, to further the 

 construction of which all the ecclesiastical authorities of the town banded 

 themselves into a common association.^'^ Neither was diocesan visitation 

 neglected. In January, 1503, in the midst of a visitation of the diocese by 

 the bishop's vicar-general in spirituals, Bishop Audley wrote to the deans of 

 Bridport and Shaftesbury respecting the excessive number of those begging 

 alms and attempting to deceive the people by selling indulgences, denouncing 

 all such traffic, forbidding the vendors to be allowed to preach in any of the 

 churches of the above deaneries, and ordering the clergy to be warned against 

 them ; this prohibition was not to apply to the nuncios of the order of St. John 

 of Jerusalem in England."' 



The religious houses of Dorset appear to have reached their lowest level 

 in the fourteenth century when their condition frequently called for interven- 

 tion on the part of the king and ordinary and the appointment of custodians. 

 Their poverty, the natural result of the economic pressure of that time, was in 

 many cases greatly enhanced by the bad and inefficient rule of superiors, the 

 effects of which lasted much longer than the actual period over which it 

 extended. The troubles, for instance, of the Cistercian abbey of Bindon, whose 

 history throughout the fourteenth century is one sordid record of debt, disorder, 

 and dissension calculated to lower the tone of any community, came to a 

 climax under the rule of John de Monte Acuto ; and his deposition in 133 i 

 by order of the chapter-general of Citeaux -'"' by no means put an end to the 

 embarrassments his government had done so much to foster. The difficulties 

 again of the abbey of Shaftesbury, the extent of whose property gave rise to 

 the proverb ' if the abbot of Glastonbury could marry the abbess of Shaftesbury 

 their heir would hold more land than the king of England,' ""' were mainly 



'" Pat. 22 Ric. II, pt. 3, m. lo-il. '°* Sarum Epis. Reg. Ayscough, fol. 71. 



'" Ibid. Audley, fol. 1 14. '"' Close, 6 Edw. Ill, m. 3 </. 



"" Fuller, CAii/ri Hist, iii, 332. 



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