Egerton MS 3140

REGISTER OF EYE PRIORY, co. Suff., a Benedictine house founded circ. 1080 by Robert Malet, as a cell of Bernay Abbey in Normandy, and after 1385 independent; 13th-15th centt. Lat. A composite volume containing rentals, custumaries, lists of tithes and other dues, services, etc., owed to the Priory, with copies of some miscellaneous charters, leases, and other documents and memoranda, written at various dates in a number of hands, and a kalendar. Compiled apparently by a process of addition to art. 2, which originally formed the concluding section of the Priory's chartulary, deposited by the 9th Lord Braybrooke in Essex Record Office (G. R. C. Davis, Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain, 1958, no. 397). With the chartulary remains the rental for Eye that is wanting at the beginning of art. 2, see the transcripts, 1814, in Add. MS. 8177, f. 200, 19089, f. 242. Extracts, 1636, from the present register by Sir Simonds D'Ewes in Harley MSS. 294, f. 172b, 312, f. 80, 639, ff. 68-71, were used in the account of the Priory given in Monasticon Anglicanum, iii, 1846, pp. 401 sqq. See also Brit. Mus. Quart., xii, 1937-1938, pp. 9-10; Davis, op. cit., no. 398. The principal individual contents are:-

(1) Rental for Eye; early 14th cent. Written presumably to replace the rental missing from art. 2. ff. 1O-12b.

(2) Rentals and custumaries for the following places in co. Suff.; temp. Edw. I:-(a) Eye. Lacks the rental, for which see above. ff. 20-23;-(b) Stoke. ff. 23b-32b;-(c) Bedingfield. ff. 33-38b;-(d) Fressingfield. ff. 39- 41;-(e) Occold. ff. 41b-43b;-(f) Petthaugh. f. 43b;-(g) Dunwich. f. 44. ff. 20-44.

(3) Kalendar, 13th cent., with the obits of Priors and a few other memoranda added, down to circ. 1500. ff. 64-69b. Vellum and (ff. i-vi, ix-xiii) paper; ff. xiv + 71. Small quarto. XIII-XVIII centt. Gatherings irregular, except ff. 20-43 (art. 2) three quires of 8 leaves with signatures xvi-xviii at the foot of the last; a further signature [xix?] has been trimmed off the foot of f. 49b. Artt. 1-3 are rubricated. Binding, reversed calf, blind stamped, 17th cent. Belonged, when D'Ewes made his extracts in 1636, to Sir Thomas Deye of Eye. To D'Ewes should apparently be attributed the 17th cent. foliation and the title 'Registrum Danoun' written on the original front paste-down (f. vii b) and on a vellum label now detached from it (f. xiv): the name Danoun was chosen by D'Ewes, in accordance with his usual practice, as the first to appear in the register's text. Later belonged to Thomas Martin of Palgrave by whom, or perhaps by whose clerk Thomas Gooch, were added, circ. 1725, two incomplete indices (ff. iii-vi) and transcripts of six original documents rel. to Eye, Stoke, etc., 12th-16th cent. (ff. ix-xiii). Belonged, 20th cent., to F. A. O'B. Bedingfield of Bedingfield (d. 1934).