ST. Michael's mount. 231 



reports as to the conduct of this Prior, whose government was, 

 according to public report, improvident and rash, the goods of the 

 Priory being so dissipated as to cause grave anxiety lest the Priory 

 should be ruined. Acting on his instructions Wydeslade visited 

 the Priory and made personal inquiry of the Prior and others, the 

 result of which he reported to the Bishop under date the 22nd of 

 May, 1336. He had found the income of the Priory to be £100, 

 in addition to oblations, that the House owed £5 to different 

 creditors, that the Prior had farmed the land to different persons 

 for a very low rent {pro vili precio) to the serious loss of his house, 

 that he had parted with corn and other goods worth 1 8 marks to 

 persons from whom he could not venture to ask for their 

 equivalent return. Moreover, some relative of the Prior, whom 

 neither he nor the monks would name, was wasting and 

 consuming the goods of the Priory, and for a month and more 

 the Prior had stayed alone in the Priory contrary to the 

 observances of Regulars. Besides this the Prior had produced 

 no title to the churches which he asserted to have been 

 appropriated to the Priory (i.e. St. Hilary and St. Clement's). 

 To answer all these complaints the Prior was cited to appear 

 before the Bishop on the first Courtday after the 26th of May 

 (Grrandisson Eeg. vol. ii, fol. 199). De Cara Villa ceased to be 

 Prior in 1342. 



During his Priorship a survey' was made in connection with 

 the seizure of alien priories, occasioned by the war then impending 

 between England and France. It is still preserved among the 

 Public Records, but I translate it from the copy in Oliver's 

 Mon. Dio. Exon.* " Extent made by William de HardeshuU, 

 Clerk, and John Hamely, Sheriff of Cornwall, of the lands, 

 houses, benefices, possessions, places, and goods of the religious 

 and secular men within the power and dominion of the King of 

 Prance in the County of Cornwall, taken and seized into the 

 hands of our Lord the King by the aforenamed WiUiam on the 

 24th of July, in the 11th year of the reign of Edward III (i.e. 

 1337). (Here are set out the extents of Tywardreath and 



* In Journal of Eoyal Inst, of Cornwall, vol. 2, is a translation of this 

 document by Sir Edward Smirke, in which several of the figures differ from 

 Oliver's. We have, however, not thought it necessary to note these differences 

 and regret having had no opportunity of inspecting the original. 



