78 
THE MONKS OF MARMOUTlER. 
army slipped into England, ravaged Yorkshire, nearly caught 
the Queen at York, and strewed the field of Mitton-by-the- 
Swale with the cloven tonsures and hloody suiplices of 3^^ 
warlike monks, some of them doubtless being Benedictines 
from S. Mary’s, and others the aliens of Holy Trinity. 
In the middle of the 14th century we find the Priory heavily 
burdened with debt, and very much put to it some of the Priors 
must have been. It was in 1379 that Richard II. ordered an 
enquiry to be made concerning the revenues of the House, 
when the jurors found the income to be £189 16s. od., and the 
outgoings £168 ns. oid., leaving a balance of £21 4 s * 
Shortly after this the Priory was in the hands of the King, and 
a custodian placed over it, none less than Bishop Waltei 
Skirlaw, who had been Bishop of Bath and Wells, and was 
just now translated to Durham. 
In the year 1399 the Alien Priories, including Holy Irinity, 
were restored to the Monastic authorities. One of them in 
Buckinghamshire, Tickford Priory, which hitherto had been 
a cell of Marmoutier, was made independent of that Abbey, 
and placed under the jurisdiction of Holy Trinity, with which 
it remained connected, its Priors being sent from York, until 
the time of Henry VIII. 
A few years later came the general suppression of the Alien 
Priories, except those that were conventual, and among these 
latter was Holy Trinity. It had its own Convent Seal, and 
used to exercise powers in many respects as if it had been an 
Abbey or independent Priory, having nothing to do with any 
foreign House. It attached the Common Seal of the Convent 
to all documents, and was in every sense of the term 
“ conventual.’’ 
In this emergency the Prior displayed great astuteness in 
the evidence he brought before the Royal Council, showing 
that two of the Bishops of Rome had issued bulls to the Prior 
and Convent, and he also produced Charters from Kings and 
Archbishops addressed to the Prior and Convent. 1 his 
evidence was regarded as sufficient, and whilst great numbers 
of Alien Houses, all over the country, were suppressed, among 
them being Allerton Mauleverer and Hedley, Holy Trinity 
was spared. The Prior and Convent, however, must have 
