A HISTORY OF DORSET 



Matthew Paris describes the scene at Tarrant 

 on 13 April, 1237, when, surrounded by the 

 household, at the hour of comph'ne, devoutly 

 following the prayers, Richard le Poor at the 

 words, ' I will lay me down in peace and sleep ' 

 passed peacefully away.^" Before his death he 

 had sought to secure the welfare of this loved 

 community by placing the house under the pat- 

 ronage of Queen Eleanor, wife of Henry III, who 

 is afterwards occasionally termed the founder, 

 the house becoming popularly known as Benc- 

 dtctus Locus Reg'tne super Tarant. In October 

 following the death of their benefactor Henry III 

 confirmed to the sisters the grants set out in 

 his previous charter of 1235 with fresh addi- 

 tions, including the gift by William de la 

 Prentice of all his right in the hermitage of 

 Mannington, at the same time notifying that he 

 had taken under his protection the abbey of 

 Tarrant ' which Richard, sometime bishop of 

 Durham, founded.' In 1265 the king bestowed 

 on the abbess and convent — styled ' of the Cis- 

 tercian order' — for the good of his soul and 

 the soul of Eleanor, queen of England, ' our 

 consort,' his manor of Hurstbourne Tarrant 

 in Hants for the service of half a knight's 

 fee.i' 



The year following the bishop's death the 

 abbey was called on to give burial to a sister of 

 Henry III, Joan the wife of Alexander II of 

 Scotland, who fell ill while on a visit south to 

 her brother, and dying 4 March, 1238, 

 bequeathed her body to the nuns for burial ; '- 

 the king in the same month testified that he 

 was bound to assign to the abbess and convent, 

 within fifteen days of Easter next, land to the 

 value of ;/^20 a year according to a bequest 

 made to them by his sister Joan, sometime 

 queen of Scotland.^' A few years later, in 

 1246, a grant was made to the Abbess Maud 

 that the sheriff of Dorset should henceforth be 

 charged with the provision of two wax lights to 

 burn day and night in the abbey, one before the 

 host and the other before the place where the 

 body of the late queen lay buried.'* 



It would be impossible to enumerate all the 

 gifts made to this favoured house in the course of 

 the thirteenth century. A charter dated 2 1 April, 

 1242, sets out at considerable length all previous 

 grants, many of which had been included 

 in the charters of 1235 and 1237 already 



'° Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. (Rolls Ser.), iii, 479. 



" Rot. Fin. 50 Hen. Ill, m. 8. 



" Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. (Rolls Ser.), iii, 479. 

 The sheriff of the county lodged an account in 

 the Exchequer for 1 00/. which at the king's com- 

 mand he had paid for having an effigy of a queen 

 carved in marble stone, for the carriage of the s.ime to 

 the abbey of Tarrant and there placing it over the 

 tomb of the queen of Scotland. 



" Pat. 22 Hen. Ill, m. 8. 



" Ibid. 30 Hen. Ill, m. 3. 



mentioned.^' On 5 December, 1252, Henry III 

 granted to the nuns for the soul of his sister 

 Joan that they and their men should be quit 

 of suits of the county and hundred court 

 and of sherifTs tourn, that they might claim the 

 amercements of their men before the king's 

 justices whether in eyre or on the bench ; the 

 right of free election ' as fully as obtains in 

 the Cistercian order,' and the right of free 

 warren in all their demesne lands in Dorset, 

 Wilts., and Sussex, provided they should not be 

 within the king's forest.^' Edward I exhibited 

 the same regard shown by his father, and at the 

 instance of his wife, Eleanor of Castille, restored 

 to the nuns the wood of Beer which John de 

 Bohun had formerly bestowed on them without 

 licence of the king, with the result that it had 

 escheated to the crown.'' The manor of Bin- 

 derton, the gift of Bernard de Sauve, was 

 included in a charter of confirmation granted in 

 the eighth year of the king.'* 



According to the Taxatio of 1291 the yearly 

 income of the convent came to £,i2i> 16;. 4^^., 

 including spiritualities from the churches of 

 Tarrant Kaines, Little Crawford, and Wood- 

 yates amounting to ^^ 1 2 bs. 2id}^ Their tem- 

 poralities were assessed at ^i^ in the deanery of 

 Dorchester, ^^33 loj. 2i\d. in the deanery of 

 Whitchurch, £\() gx. "jd. in the deanery of 

 Pimperne, ^^22 lbs. ^d. in the manor of Han- 

 ford within the Shaftesbury deanery.** The 

 total value of their possessions within this county 

 came to ;^ioi 31. 45^., and they had ^^15 from 

 the manor of Binderton in the diocese of 

 Chichester,'' and j^io 31. from the manor 

 of Hurstbourne Tarrant in the Winchester 

 diocese.^^ In spite of the respectable rent-roll 

 represented by these figures we read that in 

 1292 the abbess obtained leave from the 

 king to sell forty oaks from her manor of 



" Chart. R. 26 Hen. Ill, m. 3. Among other gifts 

 the charter includes the church of St. Nicholas of 

 Woodyates with a virgate of land, the gift of the 

 prior and canons of Breamore (H;ints), the manor, 

 advowson of the church, and mill of Hanford given 

 by John de Mares and Agatha his wife, which the 

 king had confirmed, quit of all suit and foreign 

 service, 26 February, 1240 (ibid. 24 Hen. Ill, m. 

 3), with licence to hold a weekly market on Tuesday, 

 and a yearly fiir on the vigil, feast, and morrow of St. 

 James (ibid. 25 Hen. Ill, m. 3). 



"Chart. R. 37 Hen. Ill, m. 18. On i July, 

 1245, a royal licence was granted for the abbess to 

 hold free of service and in frankalmoign all the land 

 in Gussage All Saints, which by a former grant the 

 king had permitted Imbert Pugnes to give to them 

 for the same service for which he had held it. Ibid. 

 29 Hen. Ill, m. 3. 



" Close, 4 Edw. I, m. 10. 



"Chart. 8 Edw. I, No. 35. 



" Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 178. 



""Ibid. 184*, 185. 



" Ibid. 1383. »' Ibid. 213*. 



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