gorgeous altar cloth. On the alabaster table stood two candlesticks, and five windows gave the chapel light. At one side stood the organ, and the floor was paved with tiles of ecclesiastical design.

Their inventory completed here, the visitors returned to the church, and passed up the steps in the south transept into the dormitory. Turning to their left the visitors entered the scriptorium (immediately over the chapter house), in the library of which they found fifty-two books and in an ambury in the cloister they found fifty-four others. Passing on through the dormitory, past the beds of the monks, each with its mattress, two blankets, and two coverletts, the abbot's chamber was visited. Then followed six other chambers, known as the sea wall chamber, the inner, high, under, middle, and end chambers. Next came the hall or refectory, with its three long tables, and its adjoining chambers-the buttery, the pantry, and the kitchen. Here were "two furnaces of Brasse to boil in," and a large number of cooking utensils, besides twenty-four plates of pewter, eighteen pewter dishes, fifteen saltcellars, a brazen mortar with a pestle of iron, a pair of mustard querns, and three barrels of verjuice. Next came the abbot's dining chamber hung with green two tables, four chairs, and two carpets. abbot's buttery, with the bakehouse and brewhouse. Turning into the cloister garth the visitors noted its pavement of small tiles and ten stalls of wood. Entering the chapterhouse the visitors stood beneath the beautiful groined roof, now the sole relic of the abbey which can in any way pretend to be at all complete, and which itself has suffered from modern restoration.

tapestry, with its Adjoining was the

Last came the fratry, adjoining the chapter house, and then the visitors turned to the abbey farm, where they took record of fifty-eight milch kine, seventy-five other cattle,

nine horses, seventy-seven sheep, seventeen wild kine, and twenty-three draught oxen. There were also to be enumerated three acres of wheat, ten of barley, two of pease, and thirty-two of oats, valued altogether at £41. 12s. Then came the steeple, with its six bells, valued at £60, and the lead of the roofs, valued at £66. 13s. 4d.

Shortly after the dissolution of the abbey, another survey was taken of the abbey lands. These lands, including the site of the monastery, were declared to be worth £34. 12s. 10d. per annum, or at twenty-three years' purchase £796. 15s. 2d. To this sum £1. 13s. 4d. was added for the woods, making the total estimate £798. 8s. 6d., and it was declared that there was "no man that will bye the seid demeanes but onely John Kechyn." Accordingly, "John Kechyn, of Hatfield, in the Countye of Herts, Esquiyer," was on the sixth day of June, 1544, declared the purchaser at the sum named. On his daughter's marriage the abbey lands passed to Robert Dalton, of Bispham, by whose descendant in the female line, Sir Gerald Fitzgerald, they are held at the present time.

Of the abbey itself but little remains. The chapter house alone stands complete. Octagonal in form, with its roof supported in the centre by a single shaft, the chapter house is indeed a worthy relic of the once flourishing abbey. Its diameter is thirty feet, its walls two feet six inches in thickness. Its windows, five in number, have been partly blocked, and the floor has been considerably raised in order to render it available as the mausoleum of the Dalton family. In front of the chapter house was a vestibule of which no trace now remains. To the north stood the church, long, narrow, and aisleless. On the eastern side of the south transept were two chapels, and perhaps the sacristy; the base of the column dividing the chapels is still to be seen in situ. the eastern side of the north transept were two or possibly

On

three chapels. Beyond the west end of the nave stood the great bell tower, remnants of which were lying on the shore in the early part of the last century. Of the church only small portions of the walls of the nave and transepts and the base of a column now remain. From the west end of the church ran southward a building-called by the late Mr. Sharpe in Cistercian Monasteries the domus conversorum— which probably included the dormitories of the abbey servants and the cellarage of the monastery.

On the east side of the cloister was the chapter house, with the scriptorium above, and southward from it ran the fratry with the monks' dormitory above. On the south side of the cloister were the passage to the outer buildings of the monastery, the lavatory, and the refectory, and possibly a part of the kitchen. Of these only grass-grown mounds remain. Of the abbot's residence, of the kitchens, of the number of other buildings which stood to the south of the convent, not one stone stands above another, except where, overhanging the sea, stands a tottering wall, possibly the last remnant of that building described by the visitors of three and a half centuries ago "as an old house called Kyng Johns Hall, standing upon the See syde, thakked with Strawe."

Three other relics remain to be noticed. The first, a ridge gravestone, marked with shears on one side, lies near the church. The second is a screen, now preserved in the extremely curious old church at Mitton, which mentions the name of William Staynford, an Abbot of Cockersand. The third is a large muniment chest, beautifully carved in high relief, and said to have belonged to the abbey. This chest is now preserved in the chapel adjoining the old home of the Dalton family at Thurnham. I have not added to this list of relics the matchless stalls of Lancaster Church, as though they are said to have come from Cockersand, the tradition lacks corroboration.

D

Another relic might perhaps be added in the shape of the chartulary of the abbey, formerly in the possession of the Daltons and quoted so freely by Dr. Whitaker, and which I hope will shortly be printed.

But though the remains are not extensive, though the chapter house is the only building standing, the site of that old monastery by the sea is to me particularly interesting. There is very little work to be done to show exactly where all the buildings of the monastery stood, but that little ought not to be left undone. The mere removal of the turf along the lines of the walls, and a very slight levelling, would show before us the floor of the old church. And not improbably the work would be rewarded by a harvest of tiles and of objects of interest of many kinds, for which the chapter house close by would form a suitable home.

We should then be able to form a much more life-like picture of the ecclesiastical establishment which ranked third in the roll of Lancashire monasteries, and of the life of an abbey whose remains have survived the perils of the sea of which the monks complained nearly five centuries ago, and which have proved far less harmful than the hand of man.

LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE

I

DOMESDAY.

BY GEORGE ESDAILE.

N choosing the title of my paper I fear that the subject may be thought too dry and dusty, but as this year is famous amongst other matters as the anniversary of the eighth century of the completion of the Great Survey, I feel that any remarks on such an interesting subject may not be out of place. I do not purpose to give a popular paper, but only to endeavour to account for the discrepancies and omissions in the portions relating to the two counties with which we, as residents or antiquaries, are most nearly connected.

Having thus circumscribed my limits to that portion known as vol. i. of the Domesday Book, 1783, I will proceed to lay before you as briefly as possible the matter I have gathered, together with some deductions which may render us less discontented with the sparse entries about the district which is not called Lancashire in the Domesday Survey.

These references to the area of the county of Lancaster are found in vol. i., pp. 2696, 270, 3016, 302, and 332, and are comprised in the hundreds of "West Derbei, Newetone, Walintone, Blacheburne, Salford, and Lailand," which contained about one hundred and eighty-eight vills, places, or