A HISTORY OF NORFOLK The Austin Canons were exceptionally strong in Norfolk, particularly near the sea-board. One of their houses, Creake, was an abbey but of no particular size. By far the most famous was the priory of Walsingham, of continental as well as English repute as a place of pilgrimage. Pentney Priory was a house of good repute and much appreciated for educational purposes. The other fourteen priories were of comparatively small account. At Crabhouse there was a house of Austin nuns, and at Shouldham a Gilbertine establishment, with a community of nuns and canons in separate blocks of buildings but with a common church. The Trinitarians or Maturins had a house at Ingham, using part of the parish church as their conventual chapel. The Norwich espiscopal registers show the curious fact that the bishop instituted not only the prior or warden, but also the sacrist who ministered to the parish. The White Canons or Premonstratensians had three abbeys, at West Dereham, Langley, and Wendling ; they must have been brought into close contact with the people, for they usually served the various churches in their gift. At Carbrooke the Knights Hospitallers had a preceptory, from whence the alms-gatherers for their order went throughout the whole county. Norfolk was singularly rich in houses of the various mendicant orders. Norwich, Lynn, and Yarmouth had establishments of each of the four great orders ; Thetford had both Dominican and Austin Friars ; the Franciscans were at Walsingham ; and the Carmelites at Blakeney, and Burnham Norton. In addition to this, there were some houses of those minor orders of friars, who were suppressed in favour of the greater orders about 1 300. At Norwich and at Lynn there were thirteenth-century houses of Friars of the Sack, and the county town had also houses of both the De Domino and Pied Friars. Of hospitals the county had a great supply, exceeding forty in number. No fewer than twenty-three of these were lazar-houses. The smaller of these lazar-houses had usually no regular endowment, but were dependent on alms, so that the record references to them are but casual. At Norwich there were five of these small leper-houses, at five of the gates, in addition to the definite establishment of St. Mary Magdalen, a little distance from the city. At Lynn there was the rather unusual establishment of a hospital partly for sound and partly for unsound brethren. The colleges or collegiate churches numbered seven, of which the Chapel-in-the-Fields, Norwich, was the earliest (thirteenth-century) example, and Thoresby's or Holy Trinity, Lynn (sixteenth-century) was the latest. The alien priories, attached to great abbeys of France, numbered seven ; of these the priory of Sporle, to which the bishop instituted, was the most important. A certain amount of early light is thrown on the religious houses of the county by the metropolitical visitation of Archbishop Peckham. He was in this diocese from November 1280 to the following January, when we know that he visited the houses of Wymondham, and St. Benet-at-Holme, Coxford, Creake, and Castle Acre, and probably many others. It is clear that he found the monasteries on the whole in a creditable state, very little to find fault with, and very little to reform. If there had been any flagrant 316
