Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 29.djvu/283

THE ALIEN riilOKlES IN THE ISLE OF YIG11T. 2:il llie Isle of Wight. The Abbey of Lire,- in the diocese of Evreux, was foumled hy William Fitz-Osbern, the early friend and zealous cu.idjutor of Duke William of xSormandy. To liim, on the Conquest of England, among other large posses- sions, William granted the lordship of the Isle of Wight. Still Norman at heart, Fitz-Osbern availed himself of this grant to enrich his Norman abbey. This he endowed not only Avith the tithes of six of the largest of the island parishes, Arreton, Freshwater, Godshill, Newchurch, Niton and Whippingham, but also with lands. These lay in various parts of the island, but chiefly in and about Caris- brooke, his own feudal fortress. There, on the hill over against the castle, Fitz-Osbern founded a small religious house — not yet needing to be characterised as an aUe}i priory — with a prior and a handful of monks, under whose super- intendence, if not by their own actual labour, the land was to be cultivated, and who, after discharging the cost of the maintenance of the house, were to be accountable to the Abbot of Lire for the profits of their farming. A later examjDle is afforded by the little priory of Appuldurcombe, which was founded by Isabella do Fortibus, Countess of Albemarle, towards the latter part of the reign of Henry III., wuth the object of securing the revenues of the manor to the Abbey of Monteburg, in the diocese of Coutances, founded by llichard de Redvers, her ancestor, in 1090. Of the two remaining alien priories in the Isle of Wight, St. Cross and St. Helens, we know little or nothing. St. Cross was a cell of the Cistercian Abbey of Tiron, in the diocese of Chartres ; St. Helens a cell of a house of Cluniac monks, whose name has not been discovered. But with the lapse of time and the entire change of relations between the two countries, a complete change of feeling towards these foreign colonics sprang up, and the members of the alien priories came to be regarded with jealousy and dislike as interlopers. When the provinces of France in which the chief monasteries w^re situated ceased to recognise the King of England as their sovereign, and he had ceased to have any beneficial interest whatsoever in - The site of Uiis inonastery in its " Lj-ra " of the well-known lines, alhuliug Latinised foi-ni gave his name to the cele- to him as a precursor of the Ikefurma- brateil Bibhcal Commentator, Nicholas tion, — lie Lyra, who was born at Lire of Jesuit " Si Lyra non lyrasset parents, about a.d. 1290. He is the Lutherus uou saltas.*<'t." VOL, ,XIX. K K