Note 424 — Chapter V · (continued 3)

I have had to mention Blyth in my paper on the Arundel case in the Archæological Journal, xxxvii. 244 (1880). The monastic part at the east end is gone, and the effect of the parochial part strangely changed by later additions. No one would think from the first glance at the outside that the nave of a Norman minster lurked there.

There are two notices of Blyth in the Normanniæ Nova Chronica under 1088 and 1090. The first merely records a grant of the church to the Trinity monastery (also called Saint Katharine) at Rouen; “a viro venerabili Rogerio de Bully et ab Munold [sic] uxore sua.” The second records the gift a second time, and adds, “ibi constituit xiii. monachos.” He had had dealings with the house before. In the cartulary of the monastery, No. xliii. p. 444, he sells the tithe of Bully [Buslei], “quemadmodum sibi jure hæreditario competebat,” for threescore and twelve pounds and a horse (“pro libris denariorum lx. et xii. et i. equo”). The signatures, besides those of Duke William and Count Robert of Eu, are mainly local, as “Hernaldi cujus pars decimæ,” “Huelini de Brincourt,”—Neufchâtel that was to be. Mr. A. S. Ellis suggests that this sale was to supply the lord of Bully with the means of crossing in 1066. It is odd that there is no mention of Blyth in the cartulary.