le Kember, returned the lay property as small, "inasmuch as the Prioress of Esburne, who is rector there (que est rector ibidem), has a messuage, with curtilege and garden, worth 60s. a year. She has also a hundred and four score acres of arable land, worth £4. 10s.; also four acres of meadow, worth 12s.; from fixed rents, £4. 10s. 4d.; the tithes of mills, 6s. 8d.; of hay, 60s.; of cider (cisere), 100s.; of flax and hemp, 17s.; of milk and calves, 35s. 8d. She has also from mortuaries and oblations 107s.; and from tithes of pigs, geese, pigeons, and other small tithes, 5s." These profits amount to £26. 3s. 8d. in the parish alone. In the Subsidy Roll of 1380, the temporalities of the Prioress from agricultural profits in Broadwater and Worthing were valued at 41s., and "William de laRuwe, Chaplain of Eseborne," paid his personal tax of 2s.[1]
It is not in our power to trace the early accumulation by the priory of this property, as shown in these valuations. The first documentary evidence consists of a deed of gift[2] of a messuage in the vill of Midhurst, from Sir John de Bohun to Thomas Snolk of Eseburne, dated 1 Edward III., 1327, to which the names of Hugh de Budyton, Symone de Stedeham, Henry de Batchin, Richard Joseph, William Snolk, Thomas Snolk, Roger atte Rude, William de Middleton, and others, are attached as witnesses. We then have a quit-claim of the same messuage from Thomas Snolk to "the Lady Beatrice, by the grace of God Prioress of Eseborne."
A few years later, in 1332, we have a record in the Patent Rolls (6 Edw. III., p. 1, m. 29), of a considerable gift made by Sir John de Bohun, of Midhurst. The King, when granting him license to endow the nunnery with "a messuage of 55 acres of land, 4 acres of meadow, 2 acres of pasture, and 36s. of rent in Sturmynstre Mareschal (co. Dorset), and Thornesdepe, and a fourth part of the hundred of Busebergh," stated that he had ascertained, by the inquisition of William Trussel, his eschaetor on this side Trent, that he should lose thereby from some of these lands, held in capite, the service of one man twice a year, and from others the services of four men twice a year, valued truly at 64s. a year.
