340 
JOUKNAL OP THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
And by and by, as years rolled on, how we cannot tell, the Car- 
melites acquired a piece of land in a part of the town far from the 
parish church, and as the vicar and his patrons saw rising day by 
day the walls of a structure, evidently intended for a church, and 
preparations being made for other extensive buildings, they thought 
the time was come to bestir themselves, and complaint was made to 
the bishop that something was going on with which he ought to 
be acquainted, and request was made that he would stop these 
strange proceedings. The complaint was not without effect, and 
sharp remonstrance from the bishop came in due course. 
The Carmelites, however, were not the men to be baffled, and 
they laid the matter before the king, Edward II., who had always 
stood their friend. The king took up their cause, interceded 
with the bishop, and with such effect that he not only overlooked 
the irregularity, whatever it was, but issued his license, 28th Sep- 
tember, 1314, for the religious men of the order of the Blessed 
Mary of Mount Carmel to celebrate the divine offices within their 
land at Sutton. Nor was this all. Bishop Stapledon also gave 
them a license empowering any bishop, whom they could find will- 
ing to help them, to consecrate their church. They were not, how- 
ever, to bury strangers, dying within the parish of St. Andrew, 
without the consent of the vicar. 
Now, I am inclined to think that what we should now call a 
district was assigned to the White Friars. Their church and house 
was situate far away from the parish church. Doubtless there 
was a good population around the locality selected, and the vicar, 
perhaps, was not sorry to have the care taken off his shoulders 
without any cost to himself ; and from the fact that the friars were 
thus evidently allowed to discharge all divine offices, except to 
bury strangers, I think that we shall not be far wrong in conclud- 
ing that Sutton Prior was the parish of which St. Andrew was 
the church ; that Sutton Half was the tithing, the church of which 
was the White Friars. 
We thus find the Carmelites firmly established in Plymouth. 
They proceeded with their buildings, which extended far east, and 
on the north to what we now call Tothill-lane, hard by where now 
another convent stands, and where a church, but not of so imposing 
an appearance as the old one of the White Friars, has been recently 
erected. 
But in 1374 there was further trouble. The prior was one 
