By the Rev. W. G. Clark-Maxwell 



27 



Memorials of Salisbury." It is interesting to reflect what might 

 have sprung from this rival of Merton and Peterhouse at the older 

 universities, had it proved as fruitful as they in descendants. 



Alien Priories. 



The suppression of religious houses in the time of Henry VIII., 

 though carried out on a scale of unprecedented extent, had not 

 been altogether unknown in England. Apart from the houses 

 which Cardinal Wolsey suppressed, in order to endow Christ Church, 

 Oxford, there had been from time to time instances of individual 

 suppression by the Crown or some great landowner, followed by 

 the transference of the religious to some other monastery or a new 

 site, or sometimes by the re-founding of a different order. The 

 largest precedent for suppression, however, is to be found in the 

 case of the Alien Priories, as they are called, in the time of Henry 

 VI. What were these Alien Priories, how many were there in 

 Wilts, and what became of them and of their lands ? 



The phenomenon of Alien Priories finds its origin and its ex- 

 planation alike in the fact of the Norman Conquest. The followers 

 of the Conqueror became possessed in many cases of large properties 

 in England. Some of these were already landowners in Normandy 

 and so it came about that when these men or their descendants 

 made benefactions of manors or other property to a religious house, 

 it might happen that a monastery in Normandy or Anjou might 

 hold land in England. (Whether the converse also obtained 

 I have found no evidence to determine.) So long as England and 

 Normandy remained united under one Crown this arrangement was 

 not attended with inconvenience, beyond the fact that the distance 

 between the monastery and its manor rendered it advisable to 

 plant a small " cell," or colony, from the mother house, to collect 

 the revenue, to transmit it to France, and to supervise the manage- 

 ment of the estate. When, however, Normandy was separated 

 from the Crown of England, the difficulty arose that revenues from 



