[1357] The Chronicle of Lanercost, translated by Sir Herbert Maxwell [1913], p. 136.
[1358] Reg. Palat. Dunelm. I, p. 353. In 1291 the number of nuns was twenty-seven, together with four lay brothers, three chaplains and a master. Dugdale, Mon. IV, p. 197.
[1359] Hist. Letters from the Northern Reg. ed. Raine, pp. 319-23.
[1360] V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 175, 240.
[1361] Froissart, tr. Berners, I, ch. cxxxvii. The English army on its way to Neville’s Cross was also a sore burden to the religious houses of the neighbourhood. See the very interesting document about Egglestone Abbey quoted from Archbishop Zouche’s Register (under the date 1348) by A. Hamilton Thompson, The Pestilences of the Fourteenth Century in the Diocese of York (Archaeol. Journ. vol. LXXI, New Series, vol. XXI, p. 120, n. 4). It is probable that this campaign, together with the Black Death, which followed hard upon it, brought about the final ruin of the little nunnery of St Stephen’s near Northallerton, which is not heard of after 1350. See ib. p. 121, n. 12, and V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 116.
[1362] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 160, cp. the case of Armathwaite below. The muniments of Carrow were burnt during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Hoare, C. M., Hist. of an East Anglian Soke (Bedford 1918), p. 112. “The destruction of charters, privileges and muniments was a severe loss; evidence for the holding of each strip of land and in support of every custom was of the utmost importance.” Graham, St Gilb. of Semp. and the Gilbertines, p. 138.
[1363] V.C.H. Cumberland, II, p. 190, and Dugdale, Mon. III, pp. 271-2.
[1364] Aug. Off. Misc. Books, 281, f. 11 [P.R.O.]. For the sufferings of Northern monasteries from the Scots 1330-50 see references collected from the patent rolls in P. G. Mode, op. cit. p. 32.
[1365] Chronicon Angliae, ed. E. M. Thompson (R.S. 1874), pp. 247-53.
[1366] It is extremely difficult to identify the nunnery spoken of in the story. According to Froissart the expedition sailed from Southampton (Froissart, Chron. I, ch. ccclvi); according to another account the port of departure was Plymouth (see J. H. Ramsay, The Genesis of Lancaster, II, p. 131). If Southampton be correct, Romsey Abbey would be the nearest nunnery answering to the description in the text, though it stands some miles from the coast. If Sir John sailed from Plymouth the only nunnery in the vicinity would be the little priory of Cornworthy, which certainly never contained a large number of nuns and boarders (though as to this the chronicler may be exaggerating). It is strange that no record of the crime appears to have survived in episcopal registers or in any official document; but it seems unlikely that the story is pure invention, since we know from other sources that the troops were notorious for general depredations along the coast. A petition presented to the King in Parliament (1379/80) runs: “Item, beseech the commons and the good folk who dwell near the coasts of the sea, to wit, of Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent, Surrey, Hampshire, Dorset and Cornwall: That whereas they and their chattels have oftentimes been robbed, and are destroyed and spoiled by men-at-arms, archers and others coming and going by the said ports to the service of our Lord the king at the war and by their long sojourn; and chiefly the people of Hampshire during the last expedition which was ruled and ordered, for by the sojourn and destruction made by men ordered upon the said expedition, the goods and chattels of the good people of Hampshire are destroyed, spoiled and annihilated, to the very great abashment and destruction of all the Commons of those parts, as well folk of Holy Church as others; and they will lodge themselves of their own authority, having no regard to the billets (herbegage) assigned to them by our lord [the king], to the destruction of the common people, if it be not remedied as soon as may be.” (Rot. Parl. III, p. 80.) The other nunneries in Hampshire were St Mary’s Winchester, Wherwell, and Whitney.