THE SOURCES OF THE GODSHOUSE REVENUES

Dr Peile in dealing with this matter writes: ‘The revenue of God's House consisted chiefly of pensions from “alien priories” appropriated by Henry V during his war with France’. After giving certain particulars of amounts, he proceeds: ‘An income more unsatisfactory and more difficult of collection in the fifteenth century can hardly be imagined’.

Here and there in the foregoing pages it has been maintained that such difficulties as the college encountered in getting in its revenues have been greatly overestimated, that some arrears were only technically such, due in large measure to the date of making up the college accounts, and that instances are found in the records of other colleges of rents and other income due to them from places in and near Cambridge falling into arrear and involving ultimate loss, no less than those arising from sources far afield. The patent rolls of the fifteenth century, and other documents throwing light upon its social conditions, such as the Paston Letters, abound in evidence that the collection of payments due from secular persons and properties was no less difficult than their collection from alien priories. It would seem not unlikely that lack of information as to the true nature of alien priory sources of income is responsible for attribution to them of difficulty in collection far in excess of the facts and, in particular, there is a vagueness and prejudicial suggestiveness about the term ‘alien priories’ which would tend to disappear (1) by the use of the more exact ‘possessions of alien priories’, (2) by some account of their history leading up to their final suppression.