2 ALIEN PETOHT OF ST. MICHAEl's MOTTNT. 



It is matter of familiar history that upon the conquest or acces- 

 sion of the Norman princes, England and a large section of France 

 had a sovereign common to both England and Normandy, and that 

 the continental adherents of William obtained large possessions in 

 England and displayed their patriotism and their piety by admitting 

 their favourite religious establishments abroad to a participation in 

 their own acquisitions in England. They granted English lands and 

 revenues to foreign monasteries and churches, who sent over persons, 

 in the interest of the foreign proprietors, to manage the property and 

 to collect and remit the profits. If the property was considerable, 

 or circumstances rendered it expedient, they not unfrequently estab- 

 lished a small colony of foreign monks in England on the spot for 

 this purpose, who formed what was called " a cell " of the principal 

 house, superintended by a local head called a Prior; all of them 

 being subordinate and owing obedience to the chief house, or Abbot 

 and Convent, abroad. 



Among the English lands so granted to the Norman Abbey of 

 St. Michael, in the Diocese of Avranches, was the land now forming 

 part of the Cornish St. Michael's Mount. The first grant was 

 indeed anterior to the Norman Conquest; the earliest charter being 

 a grant purporting to be made by Edward the Confessor, in whose 

 reign we find a strong Norman element exercising considerable in- 

 fluence at the court of the Saxon King. After the accession of 

 "William, this grant was confirmed by the great feudatories of the 

 Conqueror, among whom the possessions of the Crown, and the 

 forfeited estates of the ejected Saxon or Danish possessors, had been 

 distributed. One of these was the Count of Mortain, afterwards 

 also Earl of Cornwall. 



It should seem that the Priory on the Mount was an offset from 

 the Norman Abbey, and consisted wholly of monks settled here by 

 the Abbot of the Norman House to which it was afiiliated. At this 

 time England and Normandy were under the same Sovereign ; and 

 the subjects, being the subjects of a common sovereign, were not 

 aliens to each other. But when the two countries became separate 

 in the reign of John, the Priories established in this country in con- 

 nection with foreign Houses in the Ereneh territory, became alien 

 priories. The members of these communities were naturally sup- 

 posed to have foreign interests and predilections ; and their revenues 

 were wholly, or in part, at the disposal of the great French convent- 

 ual establishments. Hence, in the time of the French Wars, the 



