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Domesday survey, and the number was considerably greater when the holdings of alien priories were confiscated at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Mont-Saint-Michel, for example, had a priory in Cornwall as well as one at LeMans, and its lands in Maine, Brittany, and various parts of England did not allay its desire for more whenever opportunity offered. For a period of five years, from 1155 to 1159 inclusive, we have a record of the activity of its abbot, Robert of Torigni, in relation to the monastery's property, and a very instructive record it is. It takes him to England and the Channel Islands, to the king's assizes at Gavrai, Domfront, Caen, and Carentan, to the courts of the bishops of Avranches, Coutances, and Bayeux, and to that of the archbishop at Rouen; proving his rights, compromising, exchanging, purchasing, receiving by gift or royal charter; picking up here a bit of land, there a mill, a garden, a vineyard, a tithe, a church, to add to the lands and rents, mills and forests, markets and churches and feudal rights which he already possessed. There are also various examples of loans on mortgage, for the monasteries were the chief source of rural credit in this period, and as the land with its revenues passed at once into the possession of the mortgagee, the security was absolute, the annual return sure, and the chances of ultimate acquisition of the property considerable. With the resources of the monastery during his administration of thirty-two years Abbot Robert was able to increase the