MR. URBAN,

Dec. 15. INTON or Henton Charterhouse

His a village in Somersetshire, five

miles south of Bath on the road to Salisbury. It derived its secondary appellation, which distinguishes it from various other places of the same name, from a Priory of Carthusians formerly established there. It has also been sometimes styled Hinton Comitis, having been a manor attached to the Earldoin of Salisbury. It was among the lands which William the Conqueror conferred on Edward of Salisbury, who is supposed to have been only Vicecomes or Sheriff of Wilts, but whose grandson Patrick received the title of Earl of Salisbury from the Empress Maud. At the composition of Domesday, Edward de Sarisberi held " Hantone" of the King, having three ploughlands in the demesne; and there were nine serfs, twelve villeins, and fifteen cottagers, with six ploughs; two mills rendering 24s., twelve acres of pasture, and wood one mile long, and half a mile broad.

William de Longespé, the first Earl of that name (and one of the natural children of King Henry the Second by Fair Rosamond), had first placed the society, in 1222, on his manor of Hatherop in Gloucestershire; and had by his will bequeathed them various sacred utensils, a thousand ewes, three hundred rams, forty-eight oxen, and twenty bulls. But his widow Ela, "because (as is stated in her charter) the monks and brethren destined for that place, although they had continued there many years (that is, apparently, about five), could not find in the tenements the Earl had given them a place suitable to their rule," was in 1227 induced to remove them to her park of Hinton. In exchange for the lands in Gloucestershire, she then granted them all her manor of Hinton, with the advowson of the church, and the park; and likewise all her adjoining manor of Norton, with the advowson there; and all GENT. MAG. Suppl. C. PART II.

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their appurtenances, except such military service as was due to her, and the service of Richard the parker, for the virgate of land he held; which service however should belong to the monks, whether Richard rested his claim upon his office of keeper, or on military tenure. The house of the religious was to be built in the honour of God and the blessed Virgin, and of St. John the Baptist, and of All Saints, at the place in the park of Hinton which was called Locus Dei; and the habit and rule to be observed was that of the church of Chartreux,-the strictest of all the religious orders. Twelve years after, King Henry the Third, by charter dated in the twenty-fourth year of his reign, took under the special protection and defence of himself and heirs, the house of the Carthusians at Hinton; and granted to the monks for ever all the privileges and customs which his grandfather King Henry had granted to the Carthusian house he had founded at Witham. That house, which was also in Somersetshire, was the first settlement of the order in

England *; its dedication is in the same terms as that of Hinton; and its rights and privileges were the same as those possessed by the original_establishment at Chartreux. Pope Innocent the Fourth granted a Bull of privileges to Hinton in 1245.

At the Taxation of Pope Nicholas in 1291, the temporalities of this Priory were returned as, in Chynton 47. 10s. ; in Norton Comitis 127.; in Hinton 24. 15s. making a total of 411. 5s.

Its wealth was increased by a variety of grants from the neighbouring landowners, and the merchants of Bris

Regarding this Monastery and two printed volume, entitled "Monastic Reothers in Somersetshire, there is a privately mains of the Religious Houses at Witham, Bruton, and Stavordale, co. Somerset. Collected by Sir Richard Hoare, Bart. anno 1824." Only fifty copies were printed for distribution by the munificent author; and none for sale.