RELIGIOUS HOUSES 



serve the chapels of Bawtry and Austerfield. 

 The vicar w^as further to provide the prior yearly, 

 within eight days before Easter, w^ith a robe worth 

 20s. or with 20^. in money .^' 



Blyth Priory was personally visited by Arch- 

 bishop Wickwane in 1280, with the result that 

 on 28 June the following corrections were 

 forwarded to the house, prefaced by the statement 

 that although the reformation of the religious 

 belonged to the diocesan, he was willing to approve 

 of the statutes of the Abbot of St. Katharine's, 

 Rouen. The general rule of St. Benedict was, 

 however, also to be followed ; silence was to be 

 kept at the usual times and in the usual places ; 

 no drinkings after compline ; only the genuinely 

 sick to be accommodated in the farmery ; food and 

 drink not to be thrown away, but reserved for 

 the poor ; no money to be received for furs or 

 clothing ; the prior to direct his own household 

 more sternly ; small gifts and money offered at 

 mass to go to the common fund ; the carols and 

 chests of the monks to be opened twice a year ; 

 the prior always to be present in dorter, frater, 

 quire, chapter, and collations ; the church, houses, 

 and defences of the monastery to be repaired in 

 the roofs and whenever necessary .^° 



Archbishop Romayne held a visitation of Blyth 

 Priory in their chapter-house on 20 December 

 1286. On the following day he sent his man- 

 date to the prior and convent stating that at his 

 recent visitation he had found Thomas Russel, 

 one of their monks, so intolerable in his conduct 

 that, for his own good and that of their house, 

 he ordered that he should be sent back to the 

 chief abbey of their order, whence he came, there 

 to do penance ; the journey was to be undertaken 

 on that side of the Epiphany.^' 



The conduct of this monk must have been 

 singularly bad to evoke so immediate a mandate. 

 The archbishop, having relieved his mind as to 

 this bad blot on the fair fame of the priory, took 

 a considerable time before he forwarded any 

 general injunctions consequent on his visitation. 

 It was not indeed until almost a twelvemonth 

 after his visit, namely on 6 December 1287, 

 that his rulings were sent out to the priory. 

 The decrees of former archbishops were to be 

 observed ; approval was given to the injunctions 

 of the Abbot of Holy Trinity, Rouen, which were 

 to be read in chapter once a month ; the convent 

 was to obey the prior reverently, without murmur 

 or reluctance, and the prior was to treat the 

 convent with kindly consideration ; the prior was 

 to take yearly a faithful inventory of the goods 

 of the monastery and to render an account twice 

 in the year ; the custom of feeding in the miseri- 

 corde, where flesh was permissible, instead of in 

 the frater was condemned, but it was allowed 

 that whilst two parts of the convent dined in the 



"'Harl. MS. 3759, fol. 6, 7. 



'^ York Epis. Reg. Wickwane, fol. 7. 



frater, the third part, according to the disposition 

 of the president, might have the solace of dining 

 in the chamber termed misericorde ; enjoined 

 penances were always to be performed for the 

 cleansing of the soul.^' 



In July 1289 the archbishop had occasion to 

 write a kindly letter to the Abbot of St. Katharine 

 (Holy Trinity), Rouen, on behalf of John Belle- 

 ville, a monk of Blyth, of good conversation 

 according to the testimony of prior and convent, 

 and asking that he might be allowed to return 

 to Rouen, as he was suffering from the climate, 

 which did not agree with him.*' 



Subsequent letters from the archbishop to the 

 abbot, as entered in the former's register, were 

 of a different character. In April 1291 he 

 ordered the French abbot not to keep his monks 

 at Blyth for more than four or five years. 

 From the wording of this letter it is clear that 

 the monks of Blyth for the most part regarded 

 their sojourn there as a kind of banishment, and 

 looked forward with eagerness to the prospect of 

 a return to their native land.'" Four months 

 later the archbishop wrote, sending back to 

 Rouen Robert de Aunger^ille, one of the monks, 

 for unruly conduct, and besought the abbot to 

 send no more monks to Blyth of that character. 

 In the following February, John de Belleville 

 (the same monk whose removal had formerly 

 been sought on the score of ill health) was sent 

 back to Rouen by the archbishop on account of 

 intolerable conduct, and as the cause of quarrels 

 and discords. In terms of some dignity and 

 severity, the archbishop repeated his request that 

 only well-behaved monks should be sent to Blyth 

 in the future.'^ 



In April 1 291 the archbishop again wrote to 

 the abbot, but on this occasion in quite a different 

 strain , for it was a letter of protest against the 

 recall to Rouen of Nicholas de Bretteville, as he 

 was of inestimable value to the priory of Blyth. 

 It would almost seem as if the abbot was deter- 

 mined to pay out the archbishop for sending 

 back evilly disposed monks, by recalling those 

 who were most essential to good order, for in the 

 following October the archbishop wrote yet 

 another letter entreating him not to recall the 

 prior, whom his diocesan described as his dear son, 

 whose probity and religious and honourable life 

 he had noted, nor Nicholas de Bretteville, both of 

 whom were so necessary to the good government 

 of the priory. The archbishop pressed this all 

 the more, as he was going to the Roman court.'^ 



Archbishop Greenfield wrote to the Abbot of 

 St. Katharine's in 1 310 asking that his convent 

 would nominate some fit person to be prior of 

 Blyth between that date and Michaelmas, for he 

 found that the prior was very old and weak. 

 The archbishop commended two of the monks 



Ibid. Romanus, fol. 70 d. 



*» Ibid. fol. 72. 

 '" Ibid. fol. 77. 

 " Ibid. fol. 78. 



=" Ibid. 

 " Ibid. 



fol. 75. 

 fol. 77 d. 



87 



