Tanner has given a list of the various names by which this little priory appears to have been called in early times. St. Syriac, St. Ciriac, St. Carricius, St. Kerrocus, St. Cyret, and St. Julette. It was a small cell of two monks only, dependent on Montacute; and being mentioned by Gervase of Canterbury, it is known to have existed at the least so early as the time of King Richard the First.
The church of St. Currie, or Karentocus, was given to the monks of Montacute by their founder.
This cell occurs but once in Pope Nicholas’s Taxation.
Prior de Sancto Karabo (or by a various reading Sto. Karoko) habet de redditu in decanatu de Westweleschire, et Major Tregeschire, £2.
In the valuation returned to King Henry the Eighth, and preserved in the Augmentation Office, this small establishment is said to possess a revenue of £11. 1s.
It appears to have been valued as a separate house from the parent establishment, although the return states, Cella Sancti Kaboci in comitatu prædicto, dicto Prioratui de Monte Acuto appertinens, unde Laurencius Castelton est Prior, est dative et removabile dicti Prioris de Monte Acuto.
The site was granted in the 37th of Henry VIII. as parcel of the possessions of Montacute, to Laurence Courtenay.
St. Cyric’s Creek, by which this house stood, is said to have derived its name from a saint so called, who was buried there, perhaps in the very place where the small monastery stood. The place has long since acquired the appellation of St. Cadix; it belongs to the coheiresses of the family of Wymond.
It is certainly a curious circumstance, that a work which engaged the attention and even the admiration of England for a long period of years, should have emanated in any way from a remote cell, consisting of two monks. Mr. Carew assigns 1292 for the date of this work; but Mr. Warton says, in his History of English Poetry, that a life of Guy Earl of Warwick was written by Giraldus Cambrensis, who died about the year 1220; but the history of our renowned champion has been composed in Norman French, and in old English, both in prose and in verse; moreover, the first part of the romance describing the adventures of a preux chevalier combating à la outrance to recommend himself to the favour of his lady love, is clearly by a different hand, and even of another age from the second part, which represents him deserting the idol of
his affection; journeying to Palastine; and on his arrival back to England, instead of repairing to Warwick Castle, the abode and rich inheritance of his wife the Lady Felicia, retiring to a cell, and taking alms at the castle gate, on the supposition that a powerful and malignant demon, the creation of perverted imagination in those times of ignorance, and blasphemously named after the Divinity, might be propitiated by such disgusting observances, and by human misery. The monk of St. Cyric may therefore have blended, enlarged, abridged, versified, or rendered into prose the achievements of Sir Guy, and his performance may have been peculiarly suited to the taste of his age.