THE HAMPSHIRE ANTIQUARY & NATURALIST. 



119 



being plundered by William the Lion. The king began to 

 besiege the castle of Alnwick with several thousand 

 troops, and, not expecting any sudden opposition, sent off 

 his forces to plunder the county, keeping only 6a knights 

 with him. As the English band of 400 advanced through 

 the mist they saw the friendly castle of Alnwick stand out 

 before them, and as the mist passed away they were as 

 greatly surprised as the Scots in finding only 60 knights 

 with the king besieging the castle. The Scottish king and 

 all his small band saw that they were in a fix, and after a 

 fight they were all captured except two persons, viz., 

 Roger de Mowbray, an English baron whose castles 

 Henry It had seized, and Adam de Port, who, probably 

 guessing what fate would await them if captured, forced 

 their way out through the English lines and escaped to 

 Scotland. Adam de Port died many years after this event, 

 in 1213. Some years after his outlawry, his estates, or 

 some of them, are said to have been restored to him, and 

 he was probably buried here with his fathers. 



Another charter relating to the endowment of the 

 priory is that of William de St. John, son and heir 

 of Adam de Port, who acquired his father's estates 

 in 1213. He assumed his mother's name of St. John, and 

 dropped that of de Port. This has been explained as being 

 brought about by his inheritance of the St. John estates, 

 but it is certain that he inherited also the forfeited estates 

 of his father, Adam de Port, as well as those he had 

 through his mother, the Countess, and I think it is prob- 

 able that this restoration of the de Port estates, and the 

 removal of the forfeiture may have been partly the reason 

 for the change of the family name. He confirmed this 

 priory in its possessions, and was a man trusted bv King 

 John, for whom he acted in matters relating to the priory 

 of Southwick and other concerns for the king in this 

 county. 



Then came the loss of Normandy, and the monastery of 

 St. Vigor of Cerisy, which had no doubt hitherto received 

 the surplus revenue or produce of the lands of this priory, 

 thus became a foreign monastery, and this priory became 

 known to the Englisn people as one of the alien priories. 

 For about 200 years the foreign monasteries were allowed 

 to receive what they could get from these alien priories in 

 England, a system under which the produce of English 

 lands were used to swell the revenues of foreign monastic 

 houses, which were doubtless taxed when necessary for 

 the French king's English wars, a svstem under which 

 John Bull's forefathers paid for their own fighting, and also 

 helped occasionally to find the sinews of war for their 

 adversary. During actual war with France, Sherborne 

 and other priories were seized bv the king. A writ re- 

 lating to the alien priories of Hampshire was addressed in 

 the 18 Edward II to Ralph de Hereford and Richard de 

 Westcote, " keepers of the alien religious houses, of the 

 power and dominion of the King of France in the county of 

 Southampton." One of the last gifts which this priory 

 received from the de Port or St. John family appears to 

 have been the wood in Bramley, called the Park of the 

 Prior and Convent of Sherborne, which was granted by 

 John de St. John, a grandson of William de St. John. 

 John died in 1301, and his grant was probably made just 

 before the passing of the Statutes of Mortmain, which put 

 an end to all such gifts, and which, by preventing the 

 monasteries and priories from acquiring more land, no 

 doubt tended to the increase of chantries attached to the 

 parish churches, the chantry priests being commonly paid 

 by stipend. 



The tower arches of this Priory Church are of the age of 

 the de Ports and the early English portion of the building 

 of the times of the St. Johns. Sherborne Priory had a con- 



siderable endowment of tithes, but the tithes of the mills 

 at Sherborne given by Adam de Port were of a different 

 kind from the ordinary great and small tithes of agricultural 

 produce. The mill tithes were personal tithes, and unless 

 some earlier grant relating to them existed, such as in this 

 case, they were due only from mills erected after 1315. 

 These mill tithes were the source of endless disputes in 

 the middle ages. If the season was a wet one and the corn 

 inferior, the miller could declare his earnings were not 

 equal to the assessment, and if a very dry season occurred 

 the miller at such a place as Sherborne could confidently 

 point to the Shirebourn and declare that it was impossible 

 for him to grind without water in the brook. The millers' 

 tithes were a 10 p^r cent, income tax on the mill earnings. 



The alien priories in England were suppressed by the 

 statute of 1414 and their revenues for the most part 

 appropriated to other purposes. There were twelve of 

 these in Hampshire. A chantry priest was, however, in 

 many cases provided to live on the foundation and comply 

 with the intention of the founder as regards masses for the 

 dead. This appears to have been the case at this priory, 

 and the appointment of the priest was commonly vested in 

 the head of the family representing the founder. In this 

 case, Thomas Poynings de St. John, Lord St. John of 

 Basing, who died in 1428, held the adowson of the priory 

 at that time. 



The annual value of the priory at the time of its appro- 

 priation to other purposes was stated to be .58 ^s. 4jd. 

 Of this amount 6 was reserved for one priest to pray for 

 the founders and benefactors, i 35. 4d. for the poor of the 

 priory, ad i 145. to the vicar at the priory. The revenues 

 of this priory were given by Henry VI to Eton College, 

 but this gift was cancelled by Edward IV, when the con- 

 nexion of the Priory of Sherborne with the Hospital of 

 God's House, Southampton, began, and this is of much 

 historical interest. 



It is not necessary here to dwell on the origin or early 

 medieval history of that hospital, for the connexion of 

 Sherborne Priory with it only began in the latter part of 

 the isth century. The occurrence which led to the 

 possessions of this priory being transferred to God's House 

 Hospital, half-a-century after that event occurred, was 

 probably the conspiracy against the life of Henry V, which 

 took place at Southampton in the year 1415. Richard Earl 

 of Cambridge, the King's cousin, was one of the three who 

 were condemned to death. He was beheaded outside 

 the Bargate at Southampton, and buried within the pre- 

 cincts of God's House, according to tradition, inside the 

 hospital church. His son, Richard Duke of York, was be- 

 headed by the Lancastrians, and his head stuck on the bridge 

 at Wakefield. The gift of this priory to the Hospital at 

 Southampton is an example of the filial pietv of Edward 

 IV, for in his charter he says that he gives the alien priory 

 of Sherborne to the hospital of Domus Dei, in order that 

 commemorative masses may be sung for the soul of Prince 

 Richard, the late Duke of York, his father, and for Richard 

 late Earl of Cambridge, his grandfather, buried in the same 

 hospital. The Earl of Cambridge was the isth ancestor 

 through the Yorkist line of our present Queen. 



On the restoration of Henry VI, the prory again reverted 

 to Eton, afterwards it returned to God's House, and this 

 was confirmed by the Tudors. 



The Wardenship of Domus Dei had more than a century 

 earlier been conferred on Queen's College, Oxford, by 

 Edward III, and so the connexion of that College with this 

 priory arose, but all legal matters of business relating 

 to the ancient possessions of this priory still have to be 

 transacted by the Provost of the College, not as head of the 

 college, but as " Gustos Hospitalis Domus Dei in villa 



