RELIGIOUS HOUSES 
is on the whole least friendly to the Cistercians : he says once that the 
monks of Warden ‘did us much harm,’’ and there were occasional 
disputes with Woburn about tolls and tithes,” but he has plenty of 
sympathy with the misfortunes of both.’ Suits there were occasionally 
amongst them all, and they must have been difficult to avoid, when 
fields belonging to different houses lay so close together in the same 
parish, as in many parts of the Bedford, Fleete and Dunstable deaneries ; but 
they are in very small proportion to the suits with seculars. Especially 
noteworthy is the fact that though the monks of St. Albans had a school 
in Dunstable, and wide lands at Luton close to those belonging to the 
canons, not a single suit between the priory and the abbey is on record. 
The friars indeed, here as elsewhere, were the object of much jealousy 
to the old religious : and yet their intercourse with Dunstable and Mark- 
yate priories was not altogether unfriendly, as will be shown in detail 
under the history of their houses. 
HOUSE OF BENEDICTINE MONKS 
1. THE PRIORY OF BEAULIEU 
at any time. Early in the thirteenth cen- 
The priory of Beaulieu was founded be- 
tween 1140* and 1146 upon the site of a 
hermitage at Moddry in the parish of Clop- 
hill, granted to Ralf the hermit by Henry 
d’Albini, and afterwards by his son Robert 
d’Albini to the abbey of St. Albans as a cell 
of that monastery.® A small cell had already 
been founded at Millbrook under Richard, 
the fifteenth abbot ® (1097-1119), and this 
was merged in the new priory.” The house 
was never an important one, as it was always 
small and poor. The original endowment 
only provided for four or five monks,® and it 
is not likely that their number was increased 
1 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 180. 
2 Thid. 74, 93, etc. Mostly about the tithes of 
Chesham. 
3 Ibid. 32, 140, 192. 
4 The date falls between the death of Henry 
d’Albini (who founded Sopwell Nunnery 1140) and 
that of Geoffrey, abbot of St. Alban’s (1119-46). 
5 Foundation Charter, Arundel MS. 34, f. 32; 
Lansd. MS. 863, f. 83b. 
6 Granted by Neel de Wast, and confirmed by 
Henry d’Albini (Foundation Charter, and Matth. 
Paris, Gesta Abbatum [Rolls Series], i.67). Henry 
@Albini and his brothers had also given to St. 
Alban’s the church of Clophill, and tithes of 
Cainhoe and Cotes (Cott. MS. Nero, D vii. f. 98 ; 
Matth. Paris, Gesta Abbatum [Rolls Series], i. 68). 
7 Matth. Paris, Gesta Abbatum (Rolls Series), 
i. 78. 
8 The inquisition held in 1433 (J. de Amunde- 
sham, Ann. Mon. 8. Albani [Rolls Series], ii. 109) 
proved that the manor of Beaulieu in the parish 
of Clophill was granted to sustain for ever four 
monks to serve the chapel of Cainhoe ; and another 
carucate of land given later was to support one 
351 
tury the prior was involved in a long suit in 
the Curia Regis,® concerning the church of 
Milton Ernest, which the son of the founder 
wished to recover for himself; but it re- 
mained finally with the religious, and was 
granted to them afresh im proprios usus by 
Bishop Gravesend in 1275 on account of 
their poverty.’° At some time in the four- 
teenth century the house was partially de- 
stroyed by fire;** it suffered probably also 
from the general depreciation of property 
after the great pestilence. Finally, near the 
beginning of the fifteenth century, when 
Abbot John of Wheathampstead ‘ went down 
into the garden of nuts, to see if the vines 
were flourishing and the pomegranates were 
bearing fruit’*?—in other words, made a 
visitation of the cells—he found Beaulieu in 
such a poverty-stricken condition '* that it 
more to serve the chapel of St. Machutus in 
Haynes. 
® Cur. Reg. R. 15 John, 58, No. 4. 
10 Linc. Epis. Reg., Rolls of Grossetéte. 
11 Cott. MS. Nero, D vii.f. 111. Margaret, Coun- 
tess of Norfolk, among other gifts, ‘dedit celle 
nostre de Bello Loco vastate per incendium, xx 
marcas.’ 
12 J.de Amundesham, 4nn. Mon.S. Albani (Rolls 
Series), ii. 105. 
13 § Adeo collapsa et facultatibus per sinistros 
eventus diminuta’ (Supplication to the pope, in 
Arundel MS. 34, f. 33b). The priory had been 
unable to contribute anything to the abbey be- 
tween 1396 and 1401, and a wall built round it 
about this time was erected at the expense of 
the abbey (Matth. Paris, Gesta Abbatum [Rolls 
Series], iii. 455, 456). 
