RELIGIOUS HOUSES 
The countess was herself buried at Chick- 
sand; and the wife of Geoffrey Fitz Piers, 
the heiress of the Mandevilles, was at first 
laid in the same church, though she was 
afterwards carried to Shouldham Priory.’ 
Simon de Beauchamp and his son William 
confirmed the gifts of Payn and Roais.? 
The priory was well endowed, and able at 
first to support a large number of canons, 
nuns and lay brothers—perhaps as many as a 
hundred; but after a succession of bad 
seasons (which were felt with almost equal 
severity at Dunstable and other religious 
houses of the neighbourhood) its resources 
were so much diminished that in 1257 fifty 
of the nuns and ten lay brothers had to be 
dispersed among other houses of the order.* 
The priory of Chicksand did not recover its 
prosperity for a very long time. In 1307 * 
the nuns received a grant of forty acres of 
land in the neighbourhood, and the whole 
manor of Chicksand was confirmed to them 
ten years later ;° but they were neverthe- 
less in very heavy debt at the time and con- 
tinued to be so for a good while after. In 
1309 ° the prior of Chicksand, William de 
Hugate, borrowed 100 marks from the prior 
of Newnham, but this was only a small item. 
Another prior, John, in 1324" acknowledged a 
debt of 400 marks to a merchant of Florence ; 
and not long after he owned himself to be 
under a bond for 3,300 gold florins, for which 
he was obliged to demise to his creditor for 
life the manor in Meppershall called ‘the 
chapel of St. Thomas,’ with the grange of 
Haynes, for £200 a year ; besides selling two 
sand, Whereupon she gathered a band of armed 
retainers in great haste and came up with the 
train, and ordered it to proceed at once to 
Chicksand. But early the next morning the 
servants of the earl turned the bier the other 
way, and drove it triumphantly to Walden before 
she could prevent it. As soon as the body was 
safely laid before the altar in his church, the abbot 
sent word to Roais, and kindly invited her to the 
funeral! This is on the authority of the Walden 
Chronicle, but the dates of the death of the two 
Geoffreys are taken from Round—Geofrey de 
Mandeville. The energetic character and strong 
personality of this lady may account for the tra- 
dition which made her foundress also of Newnham 
Priory, especially as the real founder, her son 
Simon, was very young at the time when he trans- 
lated there the canons of St. Paul’s. 
1 Leland, Itin, i. 116, and Dugdale, Mon. vi. 975. 
2 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 950. 
3 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 205. 
‘ Ing. ad q. d. 1 Edw. II. n. 95. 
5 Pat. 10 Edw. II. pt. ii. m. 29. 
6 Harl. 3656, £. 77. 
7 Close, 17 Edw. II. m. 22d. 
woods, and granting the fruits of the church 
of Haynes for seven years. Simon his pre- 
decessor had demised to the same creditor, a 
merchant of Genoa, the manor of Wolver- 
ton, Bucks. An agreement was made by 
which the alienation of the property in 
Haynes and Meppershall was to be averted 
by the payment of £1,200%° in instalments ; 
and it seems that this sum was finally paid," 
for the grange of Haynes and manor of 
Meppershall were still a part of the property 
of the priory at the dissolution. But the 
whole convent was in sore straits for many 
years. Four times*® between 1340 and 1347 
the prior was obliged to sue for a remission 
of the tenths due to the king ; on the first of 
these occasions he pleaded that all his lands, 
manors and churches were in the hands of 
creditors, and that his brethren and sisters 
knew not how to live, although many of 
them had been sent away already to other 
houses of the order; and the second pardon 
was granted on the ground that the religious 
were so poor that they were unable to give 
alms or carry on any of their ordinary works 
of charity. In the midst of this distress came 
the great pestilence ; its effects on this par- 
ticular priory are not known, but it must in 
one way or other have made matters worse, 
and it is probable that the number of canons 
and nuns at Chicksand was never again so 
large as in the early part of the thirteenth 
century. During the last hundred years of the 
priory’s existence its material prosperity seems 
to have been restored in some measure ; but 
the deed of surrender gives the names of only 
eight canons and eighteen nuns.'? 
Of the internal history of the convent 
from 1150 to 1535 scarcely a trace remains. 
In 1324, the time of their great poverty, the 
king placed one of his wards under the charge 
of the nuns of Chicksand ;** from which we 
may gather that they, like other religious of 
less strict enclosure, took boarders from time 
to time for the support of the house. At the 
8 Jbid. 18 Edw. IT. m. 4. 
® Ibid. 
10 Tbid. 
11 An instalment of £300 was paid at the time of 
the agreement. 
12 Close, 4 Edw. III. m. 24; ibid. 5 Edw. III. 
pt. 1,m.1; Pat. 9 Edw. III. pt. 1, m. 14; Pat. 
11 Edw. III. pt. 3, m. 28. 
13 Deed of Surrender (P.R.O.), No. 56. 
4 Close, 17 Edw. II. m. 15. Three daughters of 
the Mortimer family were placed in three different 
Gilbertine monasteries, with an allowance accord- 
ing to their ages. For the youngest, Isabel, the 
prior of Chicksand was to receive 12d. weekly, and 
a mark yearly at Michaelmas. 
391 
