Eye Priory Cartulary and Charters, Part Two, by Vivien Brown (review)

548 BOOK REVIEWS the late Quattrocento and describes in great detail. And finally, as the author states, his book will provide an institutional basis for all subsequent studies of confraternal association, hospitals, and charity in Florence. James R. Banker North Carolina State University, Raleigh Eye Priory Cartulary and Charters, Part Two. Edited byVivien Brown. [Suffolk Records Society: Suffolk Charters,Volume XIII.] (Rochester, NewYork: Boydell Press. 1994. Pp. xviii, 194. $35.00.) Volume II of Eye Priory Cartulary and Charters adds seventy-three documents to the 357 ofVolume I (reviewed ante, LXXX [April, 1994] , 344-345), including five originals. Although none of these documents were part of the original cartulary, many of them predate the ca. 1260 composition of that cartulary , and they comprise an important part of the record of the priory. All pre-1260 documents are printed in extenso in Latin; the later ones are fully calendared in English. This volume provides a thorough introduction, two maps, and detailed indices of fifty-three pages serving both volumes, without which aids these medieval records would be of limited value. The five-part introduction discusses the founder and his family, the history of the priory, the possessions of the priory , the charters, and the manuscripts. This concluding volume is especially useful because the editor has documented her account with a diverse selection of printed and manuscript sources in addition to the Eye documents themselves . Eye was founded by Robert Malet, whose father fought at Hastings. Robert forfeited his honor of Eye in the reign ofWilliam II; and although he returned to prominence under Henry I, he survived only five or six more years. Only with difficulty did Eye priory survive this period, with only nineteen of its original thirty-two churches. Later holders of the honor of Eye, who granted or confirmed rights of the priory, included King Henry I, Stephen, both before and after he became king, Stephen's son William of Blois, Henry II, and King John. The cartulary makes no reference to Eye's mother house, Notre-Dame ofBernay in Normandy, and the scant information about that relationship must be gleaned from other sources. Brown discusses in detail Eye's difficulties as an alien priory in the Anglo-French wars of the fourteenth century. But little is known about fifteenth-century Eye. In most of the churches the monks held only the advowson and a fixed pension . The I29I Taxatio Ecclesiastica (a surprising omission from the unusually comprehensive indices) valued the priory's spiritualities, income from churches and tithes, at £105, and its temporalities at £66 although "actual income must have exceeded these assessments of the Taxatio, especially with re- BOOK REVIEWS 549 gard to temporal wealth." Brown discusses the financial difficulties experienced by the priory because of corrodies, inflation, royal pressure during war, and loss of property at Dunwich due to the depredations of the sea. In one of the more valuable sections of the introduction, she gathers together information about the various churches and tithes, with cross references to the documents. That she categorizes document 326 a forgery is an example of her meticulous scholarship . This reviewer did note, however, a discrepancy between the Latin title and the English calendar of number 369. The editor and the Suffolk Record Society should be congratulated for providing these two volumes on Eye priory. Those interested in monastic history, in the history of the honor of Eye, or in the genealogical history of persons associated with the Suffolk area will find these volumes valuable. John W. Dahmus Stephen F.Austin State University Popular Piety in Late Medieval England: The Diocese of Salisbury, 1250-1550. By Andrew D. Brown. [Oxford Historical Monographs.] (New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press. 1995. Pp. x, 297. $58.00.) Despite the immense difficulties always inherent in assessing what "popular piety" may actually mean, perhaps no topic has come to attract more attention from the most recent church historians of late medieval England. All the more welcome is Dr. Brown's exemplary study of that fundamental if complex theme within the Diocese of Salisbury, a work remarkable not only for its long chronological range (1250-1550) but also for its exploitation of a wide variety...