A pointed oval seal of Prioress Isolt de Beauchamp, attached to a charter [3] dated Feast of St. Valentine, 1325-6, represents the Virgin Mary, full length, the Holy Child with nimbus on her left arm. The legend, which is defaced, runs : ... p. ... DICAT. VGO MAR[IA].
5. THE PRIORY OF ANKERWICK
The priory of Ankerwick [4] seems to have been founded during the reign of Henry II., probably not before 1160, [5] by Gilbert de Muntfichet, lord of Wyrardisbury, whose son Richard was also reckoned as a founder and benefactor. This is another poor and small monastery of which very little is known ; it was dedicated to the honour of St. Mary Magdalene. At the beginning of the six- teenth century there were six or seven nuns besides the prioress : an income of about £20 would probably never have supported more. And yet we find here, as at Ivinghoe and Little Marlow, the names of some well-known county families among the prioresses.
Of the external history of the house abso- lutely nothing is known : it probably went through the same struggles as other small monasteries during the fourteenth century, [6]and the death of a prioress (unnamed) is recorded in 1349[7] We may surely hope that in the course of three or four hundred years it was in some sense a source of blessing to the neighbourhood, although of this we have no record. It was surrendered some time before 8 July, 1536, when the prioress, Magdalen Downes, received a pension of £5 a year. [8]
What we know of the internal history of this house we must frankly own is not greatly to its credit ; yet the recorded episcopal visitations are separated by considerable spaces of time, and it would be rash to conclude from their tone that the monastery was never in a very satisfactory condition. As early as 1197 [9] a single runaway nun managed to give the priory a good deal of trouble. She is de- scribed as ' A. the daughter of W. Clement,' and had been fifteen years professed ; at the end of that time she grew weary of the cloister and returned to her friends. Now if she had only asked them for shelter and protection, very little might have been heard of the affair : she would have been ordered to return, and excommunicated if she did not obey ; and that might have been the end of the matter. But she was bold enough to claim a share in her father's property on the ground that she had been forced into the monastery against her will by a guardian who wished to secure the whole inheritance ; and this roused her own relations against her. They appealed to no less a person than the pope himself, Celes- tine III., who first appointed delegates to hear the case, and then, as the nun still proved difficult to deal with, sent a formal letter to be published by the Abbot of Reading and the prior of Hurley, ordering her to return to her monastery on pain of excommunication. The affair came at last into the Curia Regis, [10]
- ↑ Visitations of Longland, 1530.
- ↑ Linc. Epis. Reg. Inst. Longland, 1534.
- ↑ Harl. Chart. 84, f. 54.
- ↑ The name of Ankerwick is not found in Domesday : it suggests that the priory was built on the site of an ancient hermitage.
- ↑ It has been suggested that the priory was of earlier date, from the mention of ' Hugh abbot of Chertsey ' among its benefactors (there was an abbot of that name at Chertsey early in the twelfth century). But the charters referring to Wyrardis- bury Church in Hist.Mon. S. Petri Glouc. . 164-1 74 make it clear that an earlier date than 1 1 54 would make it impossible for Gilbert father of Richard de Montfichet to be the founder. Robert Gernon was the Domesday tenant of Wyrardisbury, and granted the church to Gloucester Abbey ; William de Muntfichet succeeded Robert Gernon and lived all through the reign of Henry I., for he founded Stratford Abbey in 1135 ; his son Gilbert, founder of Ankerwick, was a minor at the time of his father's death and through the civil war under Stephen, and not able to act on his own account till the reign of Henry II. was well begun. The name of Gilbert de Muntfichet occurs in the Red Book of the Ex- chequer (Rolls Sen), i. 38 and 730, under the years 1167-8 : his son Richard's from 1 187 to 1212. The events mentioned in Curia Regis R. 48 go back to the year 1182.
- ↑ During the reign of Edward III. the prioress petitioned Parliament for redress, complaining that Hugh le Despenser the elder had disseised her convent of 59 acres of land in Datchet. Whether her petition was granted is not recorded. Rolls of Parliament (Rec. Com.), ii. 406.
- ↑ Linc. Epis. Reg. Inst. Gynwell, 26. The conge d'elire is dated II Kal. May 1349, but the names of the prioresses are left blank.
- ↑ Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. 232, f. 37.
- ↑ Curia Regis R. 48, m. 14.
- ↑ This would be in the natural course after the excommunication had been pronounced, and the case came within the reach of the secular arm. The Roll is dated 9 John : but the letter of Celestine III. of which it contains a copy is dated in the 5th year of his pontificate, i.e. 1197. Some parts of the membrane are very much faded, and doubt- less some points in the story have been missed.
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