Page:Sussex Archaeological Collections, volume 6.djvu/167

 messuage, with 12 acres and 1 rood of land in Haylesham and Manekesey, valued rent 18s. 1d, Westminster, May 16.

39º Edw. Ill, p. 1, m. 28.—Allows the prior and convent of Lewes to give to Michelham the advowson of the church of Eghynton, taxed at 12 marks, to be appropriated to their own uses. Westminster, Febuary 8.

I do not find evidence of any material accession of property after this date, excepting in the year 1398 the appropriation of two churches. Indeed it is apparent that, for a considerable period before the Reformation, there was generally a striking abatement in the public disposition to augment the wealth of religious incorporations. The corruptions which had crept into them, the increase of knowledge which made men more quick-sighted to discern such evils, jealousy on the part of the laity of the ecclesiastical power, by degrees grown to so great a height, the inconveniences also which were found to result from having so large a proportion of the real property of the kingdom in the "dead hand" of the church, all these causes conspired to cool the ardour of benefactors, whilst the very fact of so much having been already given, necessarily abridged the power of giving more.

In 1398, however (21º Ric. II), Robert Reade, a prelate of great vigour and activity, who had been first Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, and afterwards translated first to Chester, and then in the same year (1396) to Chichester, in answer to a petition from the prior and convent of Michelham, bestowed upon them the churches of Alfriston and Fletching. The allegations upon which his assignment of these churches was founded, are stated to be—the ruinous condition of the conventual buildings, some in part actually fallen down, which their own means were utterly inadequate to restore; the great damage done to them by inundations of the sea, by which much of their arable land, meadows, pastures, and other fertile grounds, from whence great part of their sustenance was derived, had been suddenly swallowed up; the heavy burthen of debts already incurred, and the daily expenses they were put to in keeping out by embankments the ravages of the sea, and maintaining the hospitality imposed upon them by