6; 
THE MONKS OF MARMOUTIER. 
has been already made. Then he was called away from York 
to Tours by Charlemagne, and he became the great educational 
light of France, Tours being the city where he resided, found¬ 
ing a great School there, with its splendid library on the model 
of the one he had left behind in his native city of York. Alcuin 
would be well acquainted with Marmoutier, and would doubt¬ 
less spend much of his time at that great Religious House, 
even if it were not the place of his abode, which may have 
been the case. 
But whether Ralph Pagnell knew of all this or not, there 
can be no doubt that the Monks of Marmoutier would be 
acquainted with the facts, and it must have been with the 
greatest joy that a colony of them came over to York, to carry 
on in the native city of Alcuin a branch of their work at 
Marmoutier. 
1 his hrench Abbey, like S. Mary’s here, was a Benedictine 
House, and so, naturally, was Holy Trinity, its cell. The 
Priory has sometimes been erroneously called a Cluniac House, 
It had, however, nothing to do with the Cluniacs. All Cluniac 
Houses in England were Alien Priories, but all Alien Priories 
were not Cluniac, and Holv Trinity was one of these Alien 
Houses not under the jurisdiction of the Abbot of Clugny. 
they owned allegiance to the Abbot of Marmoutier alone, and 
were not even under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop in 
whose diocese they lived and worked. 
It would be impossible to describe at length the Order to 
which the Monks of Marmoutier in York belonged. Their 
habit was a black gown of stuff which reached right down to 
their feet, with a hood of the same material, and a scapulary. 
Under this gown they had a white habit of flannel for indoor 
use, and they wore boots or sandals. Because of the colour of 
their habit they were sometimes called Black Monks. 
I have already stated that the Priory of Holy Trinity was 
not under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of York, and one 
consequence of this is that not nearly so much is known of the 
monks as otherwise would have been, for they are rarely 
mentioned in the Archiepiscopal Registers. For instance, until 
eight years ago, the names of about a dozen only of the Priors 
were known, those given by the “ Monasticon Anglicanum,” and I 
