A HISTORY OF NORFOLK 



charter. Thereupon two nuns who were sisters, 

 by name Seyna and Lescelina, began building the 

 priory in 1 146, and it was dedicated to the 

 honour of St. Mary of Carhowe. From this 

 it would appear that the priory of Carrow was 

 an offshoot of an older Benedictine nunnery in 

 Norwich, conjointly dedicated to the honour of 

 the Blessed Virgin and St. John. 



King John in 1 199 granted the nuns a four 

 days' fair, to be held on the vigil, the day and 

 the two following days of the Nativity of the 

 Blessed Virgin ; it was re-granted in an amended 

 form in 1205.' 



Agnes de Monte Ganisio was prioress in 122 1, 

 and as late as 1237, and during her rule, Henry 

 III granted a confirmation charter. It was 

 also in her time that the priory obtained from 

 Margaret de Cheyney the valuable estate of the 

 manor of Wroxham together with the advowson 

 of the churches of Wroxham.' 



The hundred rolls of the beginning of Ed- 

 ward I's reign have various references to this 

 prior}'.' The most interesting statement is that 

 of the jury of the hundred of Clakelose, who 

 stated that William de Warenne gave a messuage 

 and 40 acres of land at Stow Bardolph to the 

 priory of Carrow at the time that his sister Muriel 

 became a nun of that house. Reginald de 

 Warenne and Alice his wife had previously 

 given to the nuns the advowson of the church of 

 Stow, a gift which was confirmed by William. 



Numerous small benefactions continued to be 

 made to the priory by some of the more impor- 

 tant county families, who doubtless, like William 

 de Warenne had relatives who were nuns there, 

 or girls who received their education within the 

 walls.* The taxation roll of 1291 gives its 

 annual value at £b() 2s. id., gathered from pos- 

 sessions in no fewer than seventy-five Norfolk 

 parishes, and from two in Suffolk. 



A return made to the crown in 141 6, of the 

 appropriated churches of the diocese, names the 

 following which pertained to the priory of Carrow, 

 with the dates of their appropriation : — East 

 Winch (1261), Stow Bardolph (1262), Wroxham 

 (1280), Surlingham (1339), Sulham (1349), and 

 Swardeston (1361).° 



The Valor of 1535 gave the clear annual 

 value of the priory as £(iJf lbs. b^d. 



Of the early history of this priory there is 

 little to record. 



' Chart. R. 7 John, m. 7 d. 



' The churches are named by the jurj' of the hun- 

 dred of Taverham in 1275 ; Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), 

 i, 528. 



' Hund.R. (Rec. Com.), i, 450,469, 501, 519, 525, 

 528. 



* Blomefield says that Pope Gregory X in 1 273, 

 inhibited their receiving more nuns than their income 

 would maintain, upon the priory's representation of 

 the strong pressure of the English nobility for admis- 

 sion of members of their families. 



* Norw. Epis. Reg. viii, 1 26. 



On 19 February, 1245, Walter Suffield was 

 consecrated bishop of Norwich, and William de 

 Burgh, bishop of Llandaff in the conventual 

 church of Carrow.^ 



There is a notice of some trouble in 125a 

 with a neighbour, one Robert de Stamford, who 

 held 8 acres near the priory and presumed to 

 plough up and sow a strip of land between his 

 field and the church which was used by the nuns 

 for processions on festivals,' and in 1280 Arch- 

 bishop Peckham ordered the deans of Norwich 

 diocese to assist the nuns of Carrow to recover 

 various rents detained by certain persons, and if 

 necessary to excommunicate the offenders.* The 

 most exciting event recorded, however, was the 

 attack upon the priory on 18 June, 138 1, when 

 the rebellious peasantry, under Adam Smith and 

 Henry Stanford of Wroxham, forced the prioress 

 to surrender her court rolls to be burnt.' 



The convent and parish of Carrow, and parts 

 belonging to it in Trowse Millgate and Bracon- 

 dale, were an exempt jurisdiction; in 1327 

 Nicholas de Knapton, chaplain to the prioress, 

 and the official of her jurisdiction proved wills 

 and exercised the usual spiritual authority. 



An indulgence of four years and four quatornes 

 was granted by Boniface IX in 1391, to peni- 

 tents who, on the feasts of the Blessed Virgin^ 

 visit and give alms for the consecration of the 

 conventual church of Carrow.'" 



Edith Wilton, who was prioress from 1395 to 

 1430, was attached in 14 1 6 on a charge of 

 harbouring in sanctuary the murderers of one 

 William Koc, of Trowse, at the appeal of 

 Margaret his widow, who charged the prioress 

 and one of her nuns named Agnes Gerbald with 

 the crime. The prioress was arrested and im- 

 prisoned and called to answer at Westminster in 

 Michaelmas term by Henry V. After many 

 adjournments of the court, she was eventually 

 acquitted. '^ 



Prioress Mary Pygot (1444-72) attended the 

 sumptuous funeral of John Paston, at Brom- 

 holm, in 1466. The prioress received 6s. 8d. 

 and the maid that came with her 2od.^'^ There 

 was also given to the anchoress of Carrow 40^. 



This anchoress was a woman of great celebrity, 

 whose religious ' revelations ' have been several 

 times published. Though never canonized, she 

 was usually known as Saint Juliana of Norwich. 

 She was termed indifferently the anchoress of 

 Carrow and the anchoress of St. Julian, because 

 her ankerhold was in the churchyard of St. Julian, 

 Norwich, a church appropriated to the priory. 



^Annals of Waverley, 336; Stubbs, Reg. Sacr. 

 AngTic. 59. 



' Assize R. 560, m. 7. 



* Reffstrum Epistolarum J. Peckham (Rolls Ser.), i, 

 152. 



' Powell, The Ris'itig in East Angfia, 32. 



'» Cal. Papal Reg. iv, 373. 



" Norwich City Muniments, Book of Pleas, fols. 

 390-41. " Paston Letters, ii, 266-7. 



352 



