RELIGIOUS HOUSES 
Grey. The name of Sir Gerard Bray- 
brook? occurs frequently in some later 
charters. The last patron of all was Lord 
Mordaunt of Turvey, one of whose ancestors 
had witnessed a foundation charter of the 
priory. ‘The house was probably never very 
rich, though no exact statement of its in- 
come can be made earlier than the dissolu- 
tion. 
During the time of Bishop Sutton, in 
1298, a nun of Harrold was found guilty of 
a breach of her vow of chastity ;? and in 
1311 Bishop Dalderby issued a commission 
for the visitation and correction of this house 
amongst others. No account of this visita- 
tion is preserved, nor are any others recorded ; 
only in 1369° Bishop Gynwell appointed 
Dame Katherine of Tutbury (afterwards 
prioress) to administer the revenues of the 
priory during vacancy, and to reform ex- 
cesses. It may be that during her term of 
office the house was well governed, and had 
a better reputation ; but this is of course mere 
conjecture. The name of this prioress and 
her successor, Emma Drakelowe, are found in 
many of the charters relating to tenements 
and leases in the chartulary. Nothing further 
is known of the state of the priory, internal or 
external, until it was visited by Dr. Layton 
in 1§35,° with other houses in Bedfordshire. 
If the accusations contained in his letter to 
Cromwell were true, the priory had certainly 
ceased to be in any real sense a religious 
house. He declared that he found there a 
prioress and four or five nuns, of whom one 
had ‘two fair children’ and another ‘one 
child and no more’; and also describes how 
Lord Mordaunt had induced the prioress and 
her ‘foolish young flock’ to break open the 
coffer containing the charters of the priory, 
nuns of trespassing on his lands, assarting his 
woods, etc., while he was disseised of them for 
the king’s service (Cur. Reg. R. 27, 4 John, n. 2). 
In 1226 Ralf Morin claimed the church of 
Eythorne, Kent, against the Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, who vouched to warrant the prioress of 
Harrold, who claimed that she and her nuns held 
the church by gift of Ralf’s father Ralf. Ralf re- 
plied that they were only entitled to a pension of 
2 a year from the church under a charter of the 
archbishop (Bracton’s Note Book, iii. 543). 
1 Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), ii. 329. 
2 Lansd. MS. 391, f. 44. 
3 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Sutton, 192d. The 
partner of her guilt was condemned to be beaten 
through the market-place of Harrold; and when he 
refused to submit, excommunicated. 
4 Ibid. Memo. Dalderby, 202d. 
5 Ibid. Memo. Gynwell, 83. 
8 Wright, Suppression of Monasteries, 91 (Letter 
xlii.) 
and to seal a writing in Latin of which they 
did not understand a word, but were told it 
was merely the lease of an impropriate bene- 
fice. ‘All say they durst not say him nay,’ 
he adds ; ‘and the prioress saith plainly that 
she would never consent thereto.’ 
In the case of Chicksand, which is charged 
with similar misdoings in the same letter, the 
very form and content of the accusation 
challenge criticism at once. But if the charges 
laid against Harrold are denied, it can only 
be on the simple ground that Layton is a dis- 
credited witness, There is no actual evidence 
for or against his statements. But unhappily 
there is nothing at all improbable in the story 
of Lord Mordaunt and the charters. The 
patron of a house so small and so poor would 
be in a position to take avery high hand with 
the little convent, especially as one or two of 
the nuns would very likely be members of 
his own family. However this may be, the 
house was certainly dissolved under the Act 
of 1536, and a pension of £7 assigned to 
the prioress, Elinor Warren.” 
The priory was endowed by Sampson le 
Fort with the churches of St. Peter, Harrold, 
and Brayfield, Northants, with their appur- 
tenances, and a few acres of land besides.® 
The church of Stevington ® was added soon 
after, and that of Shakerstone (Leicester) in 
the fifteenth century.’° Nostatement can be 
made as to the value of its lands in the thir- 
teenth century, as it is not mentioned at all 
in the Taxatio of Pope Nicholas, nor in the 
Feudal Aids. The total income of the priory 
in 1535 was £40 18s. 2d. ;*4 the first valua- 
tion after the dissolution, in 1536, amounted 
to £57 10s., including the four rectories 
mentioned above, with small parcel of land, 
rents and tenements in the counties of Bed- 
ford, Huntingdon and Buckingham.” 
PrioressEs OF HARROLD 
Agnes’? died 1245 
Basile‘* de la Legh, elected 1245, occurs 
1252 
7 L. and P. Hen. VILLI. xiii. (1), 1520. 
8 Lansd. MS. 391, ff. 4-6. 
9 Ibid. f. 12. 
10 Tbid. f. 18b. 
11 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 204. 
12 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 331. 
13 Occurs Lansd. MS. 391, f. 37; and Epis. Linc. 
Reg. Rolls of Grossetéte (at the election of the next 
prioress), 1245. 
14 Linc. Epis. Reg., Rolls of Grossetéte ; 
her name occurs under the date 11 November 
1245 in Lansd. MS. 391, f. 373 and in Willis’s 
Hist. of Bucks, p. 159 (1252). 
389 
