By the Rev. Chr. Worclsicorth. 531 



January, 1539. By that time the greater (or more wealthy) 

 monastic houses were beginning to be suppressed. Bradenstoke 

 fell in the same month of January (after the Gilbertines and before 

 Lacock Abbey). Wilton Abbey, Edington (Bonhommes), and 

 Malmesbury Abbey fell within the year. The site of Stanley Abbey 

 had been granted to Sir E. Bainton three years before. Hospitals 

 and chantries, served, as they were, by secular priests, continued 

 (though threatened) until after the death of the old King, and 

 a few of the hospitals finally were preserved, but all the chan- 

 tries were suppressed. The chantries, in fact, were more than 

 " threatened," for their very existence had been rendered of 

 doubtful legality by the Act of 1529, already mentioned, when it 

 had been decreed that no person after the feast of Michaelmas 

 "then ensuing should receive any stipend or salary for singing 

 masses for the souls of the dead. As was the case in Yorkshire, so 

 also in Wilts, the Act of 1529 was noc strictly enforced. But the 

 survey taken under the commission of 30th January, 1535, and 

 made into the Exchequer, if not by the appointed day (30th May), 

 at least within the twelvemonth, and known as Valor Ecclesiasticus, 

 was a pretty sure sign that the chantries at least were doomed. 



An index of chantries of Wilts (which we hope our readers 

 who have more local knowledge will correct and amplify) may, 

 perhaps, be of some service to those interested in local history. 



" By Free Chapels " said Bev. Joseph Hunter, in 1834 (Introd. to 

 " Valor Eccl." p. 23)" appear to have been understood those chapels 

 which had been founded within parishes by the devotion of parish- 

 ioners living usually remote from their Parish Church, and which 

 had no endowment but what was the gift of the founders or other 

 benefactors." " Free Chapels were exempt from episcopal juris- 

 diction, and were at first the King's private property." W. Page, 

 Surtees Society, xci., p. ix. 



In his preface to Yorkshire Chantry Surveys, i., pp. viii., ix., 

 ■(Surtees Soc, vol. xci., 1892), Mr. W. Page says that the Hospitals, 

 "" although returned on the certificates of both Hen. VIII. and 

 Edw. VI., came only within the terms of the statute of 37 Hen. 

 VIII. [1545] for dissolving chantries, the statute of 1. Edward VI. 



2 N 2 



