RELIGIOUS HOUSES and in 1263, when the earl visited Dun- stable, the prior went out to meet him, and admitted him to the fraternity of the house. 1 In 1265 a council was held at Dunstable to consider the possibility of peace with the de- feated barons, and the king and queen visited the house in the course of the year J ; but though Simon de Montfort had been there It was just at this time that the king was asking for subsidies for his Welsh war. By an accumulation of misfortune, in the same winter the outer walls of the priory had collapsed in the wet weather, and their hayricks had been destroyed by fire ; 7 and the tithes due to the Hospitallers from North Marston church were in such long quite recently, and the sympathy of the arrears that a new arrangement had to be prior with his cause could not have been al- together a secret one, no fine was imposed upon the priory on that account. In 1274 a long and expensive suit was begun between the prior and convent of Dunstable and Eudo la Zouche, 3 who had become lord of Houghton and Eaton Bray by his marriage with Millicent de Cantelow. made to pay them off. 8 In 1295 the house at Bradbourne was so poor that all the wool produced there had to be granted to the sup- port of the three brethren who served the church and chapels. 6 The later pages of the annals are a long story of poverty and struggle to get clear of debt ; and the continuous narra- tive ends dismally enough with the account Eudo refused to recognise the rights of the of the expenses of the installation of John of prior (established not only by charter, but by long custom) to a gallows and prison in Houghton ; he released one of his men from the prison and overthrew the gallows. Under the next prior, William le Breton, the gal- lows was restored ; but Eudo still refused to recognise the prison as the prior's right, and presently erected a gallows of his own. The dispute went on for some years, and, after the death of Eudo, was continued by his wife Millicent until the ye; finally decided in favour of the prior. 1 Tr poverty and difficulties of the house went on increasing, although great efforts were made, after the deposition of William lc Breton and other officers of the monastery in 1279,° to curtail expenses and get in ready money for the payment of debts. Corrodies and chantries were granted to several persons, manors and churches were let out to farm, and in the year 1294 the usual allowance for one canon was made to serve for two." » Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 226. Richard de Morins had been an admirer of the elder Simon de Montfort, whom he calls ' genere nobilis sed fidei fervore nobilior ; in armorum exercitio nobi- lissimus,' and adds that the son was ' debilior patre ' (ibid. 52). ' Ibid. 240. 3 Ibid. 261-3.
- Ibid. 343-53. This later dispute turned on
the rights of the common of Houghton, and Milli- cent appealed to Domesday, saying her ancestors held the land of the king by barony. (It is assumed that this Millicent is the same as the wife of Eudo la Zouche.) 6 Ibid. 283. 8 Ibid. 387. The amount of white bread used in the house, and the expenses of the almonry and guesthouse were all lessened at the same time. Shortly before this, in the year 1290, the chronicler records how the body of Queen Eleanor passed Cheddington, which amounted (with the addition of the debts of the previous prior) to £242 8s. 4^. 10 Of the fourteenth century there are only a few scanty notices, the only events told at any length being those con- nected with the peasants' revolt in 1 38 1, when the prior, Thomas Marshall, appears by his courage and moderation to have saved his own house from serious loss, and his burghers from punishment. 11 In 1349 an when it was attempt was made by Thomas de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and marshal of the king- dom, to prove that the prior held his lands by barony ; but the jury which was sum- moned at that time declared upon oath that the lands had always been held in pure and perpetual alms. 1 ' King Henry VI. visited Dunstable in 1459, 13 but there is no record of his relations with the priory ; its history during the fifteenth century is not recorded in any way. But in the sixteenth century it was again connected with an important historical event, when on 23 May 1533, in the Lady Chapel of the conventual church at Dunstable, Archbishop Cranmer pronounced through Dunstable on the way to London, and rested a night in the church : at the erection of the memorial cross the prior assisted, asperging with holy water (ibid. 362). ' Ibid. 388. 8 Ibid. 394. The arrears amounted to 210 marks. By the Concordia made at Westminster 4 marks a year were to be paid in future and all arrears forgiven except 12 marks. The arrange- ment with the Hospitallers for this church dated from 1185 (Had. 1885, f. 24; Nero, E vi. f. 236). 8 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), 401. 10 Ibid. 409. » Ibid. 418. « Ibid. 412. 13 Ibid. 420. 373
