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owner of the site was approached, although the site is only in rough pasture, he declined to allow a sod to be turned. Upon this refusal, Dr. Cox turned his attention to Watton Priory, which is in several respects a more interesting foundation than that of Meaux. Here the society were fortunate enough to meet with large-hearted and appreciative men in Mr. Bethell the owner, and Mr. Beckitt the tenant, who at once did all in their power to further the proposal of the society. The excavations at Watton Priory, the oldest and the wealthiest of the Gilbertine houses, are already exciting widespread interest.

Of the third summer meeting, held at Beverley on the 25th and 26th September, including the preliminary excavation at Watton, a detailed account will appear in the volume of next year.

It will be noticed that at the end of the Transactions and bound up with this volume are two separately-paged papers, an index to archæological publications and a report on parish registers. These are issued, at a nominal cost, by the committee of societies in union with the Society of Antiquaries (London). The council, feeling sure that the members would desire to possess them, have followed the example of other associations in having these papers bound up with the local transactions.

The council will be glad to receive communications as to papers suitable for the "Transactions" or for reading at Winter Meetings of the society.

The council wish it to be understood that the writer of each paper is alone responsible for the views expressed therein.

Statement of Accounts for the Year ending 23rd September, 1893.

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TRANSACTIONS

OF THE

East Riding Antiquarian Society.

The Annals of the Abbey of Meaux.

TH

BY REV. J. CHARLES COX, LL.D., F.S.A.

'HE Cistercian Abbey of Meaux, though not one of the earliest of the order, nor one of the most richly endowed, was a religious house of great importance in Holderness, and exercised a very wide influence in the district. Unlike many monasteries of this and other orders, Meaux had but very few outlying estates in other counties or at any considerable distance, for its territories extended several miles on every side of it, or were dotted about in other parts of the East Riding, comparatively near

to the mother house.

Meaux Abbey has also attained to a considerable celebrity among antiquaries and historians through the valuable chronicles of the house that have come down to our time, and which were edited in three volumes of the Rolls Series, in 1866, by Mr. Edward A. Bond. In the British Museum is a Latin chronicle of the abbey from its foundation in 1150 down to 1396, with a feodary, rental, and other items, in the handwriting of Thomas Burton, the nine

B

teenth abbot.* In the Cheltenham library of the late Sir Thomas Phillipps was another copy of this chronicle, also in the autograph of abbot Burton, and of nearly double the bulk. The extra material, however, consists almost entirely of additional historical matter that had no connection with the abbey. The British Museum MS. originally belonged, after the Dissolution, to the Alford family, to whom the crown granted the monastic estates. Sir William Alford's name appears in several places; he was the son of Sir Launcelot Alford, to whom the site and and lands of Meaux were assigned. The Cheltenham copy belonged to Sir Sir Christopher Hildyard, of Winestead, in Holderness, in the earlier part of the seventeenth century.

In the Bodleian, British Museum, and Phillipps libraries are several early transcripts from these original chronicles. There are also in the British Museum two other original manuscripts pertaining to Meaux. One of these is a chartulary, giving copies of charters from the foundation to 1390.† The other is a full register, written throughout in ex-abbot Burton's own hand, containing, in addition to abstracts of charters, a full rental of the monastery in 1396, an exact measurement of lands, a list of the monks and their servants, a catalogue of farm-stock, and a singularly full and rich inventory of the furniture of the conventual buildings, of the church ornaments and relics, and of the books in the library. The details in this exceptionally fine medieval manuscript are considerably fuller than those pertaining to any other monastic house that I have had occasion to study. Some of these details and inventories are given by Mr. Bond in his annotations on the Chronicles, but much has never yet been published

* Egerton MSS., 1461.
+ Lansdowne MSS., 424.
Cottonian MSS., Vitellius, c. vi.

or explained. I have made a transcript of the extraordinarily full list of relics (far more copious than any I have yet seen or heard of as pertaining to an English religious house), and have since found that Mr. W. H. St. John Hope had copied all the remainder of the inventories. It is hoped that these will appear, with some other unpublished matter pertaining to the monastery of Meaux, in next year's transactions of our society.

On folio 47 is given a note of lands and rents granted to the monastery for these special uses: the foundation, the maintenance of the monks, the chapel without the gates, the chapel of the Blessed Virgin on the bridge which is in the wood, the services or fabric of the church, the lights of the church, the making of the wafers (pro hostiis formandis), the mass wine for the church, the oil for the church, the alms at the gate, the lay infirmary, the tannery, the clothes of the convent, and the making of pittances.

On folio 234 is a list of the choir monks of Meaux in 1396. From the way in which these names are arranged in double columns, and from the totals at the bottom of each list, there seems no doubt that they represent the arrangement in the choir seats, the one nearest to the west on the south or decani side being the abbot, and the other in the like position on the opposite or cantoris side being the prior

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