A HISTORY OF NORFOLK charter. Thereupon two nuns who were sisters, by name Seyna and Lescelina, began building the priory in 1 146, and it was dedicated to the honour of St. Mary of Carhowe. From this it would appear that the priory of Carrow was an offshoot of an older Benedictine nunnery in Norwich, conjointly dedicated to the honour of the Blessed Virgin and St. John. King John in 1 199 granted the nuns a four days' fair, to be held on the vigil, the day and the two following days of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin ; it was re-granted in an amended form in 1205.' Agnes de Monte Ganisio was prioress in 122 1, and as late as 1237, and during her rule, Henry III granted a confirmation charter. It was also in her time that the priory obtained from Margaret de Cheyney the valuable estate of the manor of Wroxham together with the advowson of the churches of Wroxham.' The hundred rolls of the beginning of Ed- ward I's reign have various references to this prior}'.' The most interesting statement is that of the jury of the hundred of Clakelose, who stated that William de Warenne gave a messuage and 40 acres of land at Stow Bardolph to the priory of Carrow at the time that his sister Muriel became a nun of that house. Reginald de Warenne and Alice his wife had previously given to the nuns the advowson of the church of Stow, a gift which was confirmed by William. Numerous small benefactions continued to be made to the priory by some of the more impor- tant county families, who doubtless, like William de Warenne had relatives who were nuns there, or girls who received their education within the walls.* The taxation roll of 1291 gives its annual value at £b() 2s. id., gathered from pos- sessions in no fewer than seventy-five Norfolk parishes, and from two in Suffolk. A return made to the crown in 141 6, of the appropriated churches of the diocese, names the following which pertained to the priory of Carrow, with the dates of their appropriation : — East Winch (1261), Stow Bardolph (1262), Wroxham (1280), Surlingham (1339), Sulham (1349), and Swardeston (1361).° The Valor of 1535 gave the clear annual value of the priory as £(iJf lbs. b^d. Of the early history of this priory there is little to record. ' Chart. R. 7 John, m. 7 d. ' The churches are named by the jurj' of the hun- dred of Taverham in 1275 ; Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 528. ' Hund.R. (Rec. Com.), i, 450,469, 501, 519, 525, 528.
- Blomefield says that Pope Gregory X in 1 273,
inhibited their receiving more nuns than their income would maintain, upon the priory's representation of the strong pressure of the English nobility for admis- sion of members of their families.
- Norw. Epis. Reg. viii, 1 26.
On 19 February, 1245, Walter Suffield was consecrated bishop of Norwich, and William de Burgh, bishop of Llandaff in the conventual church of Carrow.^ There is a notice of some trouble in 125a with a neighbour, one Robert de Stamford, who held 8 acres near the priory and presumed to plough up and sow a strip of land between his field and the church which was used by the nuns for processions on festivals,' and in 1280 Arch- bishop Peckham ordered the deans of Norwich diocese to assist the nuns of Carrow to recover various rents detained by certain persons, and if necessary to excommunicate the offenders.* The most exciting event recorded, however, was the attack upon the priory on 18 June, 138 1, when the rebellious peasantry, under Adam Smith and Henry Stanford of Wroxham, forced the prioress to surrender her court rolls to be burnt.' The convent and parish of Carrow, and parts belonging to it in Trowse Millgate and Bracon- dale, were an exempt jurisdiction; in 1327 Nicholas de Knapton, chaplain to the prioress, and the official of her jurisdiction proved wills and exercised the usual spiritual authority. An indulgence of four years and four quatornes was granted by Boniface IX in 1391, to peni- tents who, on the feasts of the Blessed Virgin^ visit and give alms for the consecration of the conventual church of Carrow.'" Edith Wilton, who was prioress from 1395 to 1430, was attached in 14 1 6 on a charge of harbouring in sanctuary the murderers of one William Koc, of Trowse, at the appeal of Margaret his widow, who charged the prioress and one of her nuns named Agnes Gerbald with the crime. The prioress was arrested and im- prisoned and called to answer at Westminster in Michaelmas term by Henry V. After many adjournments of the court, she was eventually acquitted. '^ Prioress Mary Pygot (1444-72) attended the sumptuous funeral of John Paston, at Brom- holm, in 1466. The prioress received 6s. 8d. and the maid that came with her 2od.^'^ There was also given to the anchoress of Carrow 40^. This anchoress was a woman of great celebrity, whose religious ' revelations ' have been several times published. Though never canonized, she was usually known as Saint Juliana of Norwich. She was termed indifferently the anchoress of Carrow and the anchoress of St. Julian, because her ankerhold was in the churchyard of St. Julian, Norwich, a church appropriated to the priory. ^Annals of Waverley, 336; Stubbs, Reg. Sacr. AngTic. 59. ' Assize R. 560, m. 7.
- Reffstrum Epistolarum J. Peckham (Rolls Ser.), i,
152. ' Powell, The Ris'itig in East Angfia, 32. '» Cal. Papal Reg. iv, 373. " Norwich City Muniments, Book of Pleas, fols. 390-41. " Paston Letters, ii, 266-7. 352
