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Rh Elizabeth Wyvill, occurs 1530, died 1534 Margaret Hard wick, last prioress, elected A pointed oval seal of Prioress Isolt de Beauchamp, attached to a charter 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].

The priory of Ankerwick seems to have been founded during the reign of Henry II., probably not before 1160, 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, and the death of a prioress (unnamed) is recorded in 1349 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.

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 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,