A HISTORY OF NORFOLK on account of a certain notable piece of the wood of the true cross. The reason for this piece of the cross being 'notable' is explained by the statement that some, their sins it is supposed being the cause, are unable to look perfectly upon the said piece, thereby sometimes incurring infirmities of divers sorts. At the same date the priory received the papal con- firmation of the appropriation of the churches of Bardv/ell, Crostwick, and Tuttington, with leave for one of the monks to serve Crostwick as it was near the monastery. The priory, in asking for this confirmation, assured the pope that they had suffered grievously through the sea irrevocably absorbing many of their lands and tenements, through long pestilences, and through fire.^ In order to still further help the priory of Bromholm in this their special distress, Boniface took the unusual step of granting indulgence equal to that of the church of St. Mark's of Venice to penitents who, on Passion Sunday, or on the three days preceding and following, visit and give alms for the conservation of this Cluniac house in England. This grant also authorized the prior of Bromholm to nominate six priests, secular or religious, to hear the confessions of such penitents." Fox gives a curious account of the alleged burning of this cross at the beginning of the fifteenth century. He states that one Sir Hugh Pie, chaplain of Ludney, was accused before the bishop of Norwich on 5 July, 1424, for holding that people ought not to go on pilgrimage or to give alms save to beggars at their doors, and that the image of the cross and other images ought not to be worshipped. He was also accused of having ' cast the cross of Bromholm into the fire to be burned, which he took from one John Welgate of Ludney.' However Sir Hugh utterly denied these articles, and purged himself by the witness of three laymen and three priests.' At any rate the cross was not burnt, for it is in evidence more than a century later. There is a peculiarly interesting memorial of the subject of the Bromholm pilgrimage in a four- teenth-century ' Hours of Our Lady' in Lambeth Library. To one of the pages an illuminated leaf has been attached ; upon it is painted a heart, containing within it a crucifix having the two transverse beams of the patriarchal shape. Above the heart is written ' Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judeorum,' and on each side one of the two lines forming this couplet : — This cross yat here peyntyd is Signe of ye cros of bromholm is. ' Cal. Papal Reg. v, 432-3. * Ibid. 384. ' Fox, Jets and Monuments, iii, 5 86. ' Lambeth MSS. 545. It was first noted by the late Dr. Sparrow Simpson in 1873, and described and illustrated by him in the Joum. of Arch. Assoc. XXX, 52-61. Beneath the heart in a later hand, the concluding line being partly erased : — Thys ys the holy cros that yt so sped Be me ... in my need. Within the outline of the heart and round the cross is written, in minute and much contracted characters, the following hymn, which is also given in full on an adjacent page : — Oracio Devota de Cruce, O crux salve preciosa, O crux salve gloriosa, Me per verba curiosa Te laudare, crux formosa Fac presenti carmine Sicut tu de carne Christi Sancta sacrata fuisti Ejus Corpus suscepisti, Et sudore maduisti, Lota sacro sanguine Corpus, sensus, mentem meam, Necnon vitam salves ream Ut commissa mea fleam, Ne signare per te queam Contra fraudes hostium. Me defendas de peccato, Et de facto desperate, Hoste truso machinato Reconsignas Dei nato Tuum presiduum. V. Adoremus Te Xpe. Quia per crucem, etc. Oratio. Adesto nobis, Domine Deus noster, et quos sancte crucis letari facis honore ejus quoque perpetuis defende subsidiis. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. .Amen. Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit, sicut Domino placuit ita factum est. Sit nomen Domini bene- dictum. The so-called visitation of Legh and Leyton, undertaken early in 1536, noted a cross called ' The Holy Cross of Bromholm,' the girdle and milk of the Virgin, and pieces of the crosses of SS. Peter and Andrew. They also alleged that Prior Lakenham and three of his monks had confessed to them their incontinency. The county Commissioners for Suppression, later in the same year, described Bromholm as a head house of the Cluniac order, of the clear yearly value of £ioc) as. ?>d. They found four religious persons, all priests and requiring dis- pensations, adding that ' they bene of very good name and fame.' There were thirty-three other persons having a living there, namely, four waiting servants, twenty-six labourers and hinds, and three almoners. The house was in good repair, and the bells and lead valued at ;^200. The movable goods, cattle, and corn were valued at ;^49, and a hundred acres of wood at Ibb 13s. ^d.' On 2 February, 1537, Richard Southwell wrote to Cromwell that he had in his charge the cross of Bromholm, which he would bring up after the suppression was finished, or sooner Chant. Cert. Norf. No. 90. 362
