Page:VCH Buckinghamshire 1.djvu/417

Rh the second survey £19 14s. 8d. ; bells, lead, etc., were worth £10 i6s. 8d. The Minis- ter's Accounts of the same year give a total of only £15 7s. 10d.

William, occurs 1219 Hugh, occurs 1226 Nicholas, occurs 1232 John, occurs 1240 Hugh of Dunstable, elected 1251, resigned Warin, elected 1272 Nicholas of Hanslope, resigned 1300 Richard of Eye, elected 1300, resigned Nicholas of Hanslope re-appointed 1302, died 1319 John of Conesgrave, elected 1319 Hugh of Leckhampstead, elected 1334, died 1357 Richard de Nibbeley (or de Nuble), elected 1357, died 1367 Roger of Oving, elected 1367, died 1393 John Middleton, elected 1393 Simon London, resigned 1431 William Whaddon, elected 1431 Hugh Fuller, occurs 1461 John Medburn, occurs 1478 John Wells, occurs 1488, resigned 1492 Thomas Broke, elected 1492, resigned I503 Hugh Brecknock, elected 1503, died 1529 William Maltby, last prior, elected 1529

A seal of this priory is attached to the Ac- knowledgment of Supremacy (No. 105). It is in red wax and represents a prior standing with a staff in his right hand and an open book in his left. Legend : s. PRIORIS ET c. . . DE SNELLESHALL.

The date of the foundation of this priory is very uncertain, but it seems on the whole most probable that it was in existence before Ankerwyke or Little Marlow. It was most commonly called the priory of St. Margaret's in the Wood. Leland gives the tradition that it was founded by Henry de Blois, Bishop of Winchester, about the year 1160: but a charter of St. Thomas of Canterbury given in Dugdale confirms the grants of William, Bishop of Winchester, who died in 1129, con- firmed by Henry de Blois his successor. The manor of Ivinghoe had for a long time been part of the endowment of the see of Win- chester, even before the Conquest. The benefactors of the priory were not numerous, either in its earlier or later days : in the thirteenth century King Henry III. granted to the nuns the church of Merrow in Surrey, with other smaller gifts, such as an annual fair on the feast of St. Margaret, and ten acres of assart in Hemel Hempstead. There are several allusions in the episcopal registers to the poverty of this house, and in 1277 the prioress seems to have been thankful to be acquitted even of so small a fine as two marks, which she had incurred by privately settling a dispute which ought to have come before the king's justices.

The priory was dissolved under the first Act of Suppression, and contained at that time only five nuns, of whom three were novices. The prioress, Margery Hardwick, received a pension of £4 Bishop Dalderby granted indulgences on three different occasions to those who should