ALLOWANCES.|| 1510, For one tenement waste in Sunderland, £0 10 0 -11, For one tenement waste in Sunderland, 0 8 0 −16, For one tenement waste in Sunderland, 0 4 0 EXPENSES FOR NECESSARIES. 1468, Paid for fourscore wainscot boards, -82, Paid the lord bishop for the landmalet) and suit of court in Sunderland, Paid a similar payment for the three a ... ... -83, Paid the lord bishop for the landmale and suit of court in Sunderland, £0 23 4 022 0 6 6 0 2 2 0 2 2 0020 ... derland, -87, Paid the bishop for the landmale in Sun -88, Paid the lord bishop for the landmale in Sunderland, ... Or allowances in various accounts. Their Sunderland property must have been much dilapidated to render such heavy allowance or reduction necessary. Wainscot not being the produce of this country, it appears that Sunderland must have had some-perhaps considerable-intercourse and trade with foreign countries at this time. Shipbuilding was established at least a century and a half before. + Landmale a reserved rent, or annual sum of money, charged upon a piece of land by the chief lord of the fee, or a subsequent mesne owner.-Raine. The bishops of Durham were then, and until recently were still, chief lords of the fee of Sunderland. The copyhold and leasehold properties in it, held under the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, now (1857) pay trifling annual sums to them under the name of "out rent," formerly the landmale. HH 95, Paid the lord bishop of Durham for the landmale and suit of court in Sunderland suit} 1510, Paid the lord for the landmale and suit of court in Sunderland, ... ... ... ... court} 020 068 ... -11, Paid the lord bishop for ditto ditto, -25, Paid for the landmale and suit of court Paid for carriage of salt fish from Sun- -28, Paid for the landmale and suit of court) -28, Paid for carriage of wine, salt fish, and) 020 other necessaries from Newcastle 0 10 0 and Sunderland, -35, Paid the lord bishop of Durham his fee] farm rent for Sunderland,* With these details our extracts from the Finchale Charters and Account Rolls terminate. By some of our readers they may be considered a mere list of dry and uninteresting names and dates: but he who wishes to understand history, must learn to estimate the importance of facts and details, especially those relating to remote or obscure periods, not by their apparent value, but in proportion to the insight which they afford into the general character of society. To the genuine antiquary and local historian these extracts are most important; tending, as This extract is from the Valor Eccles. Vol. V., page 340. they do, to illustrate a period in the history of Sunderland otherwise almost shrouded in impenetrable darkness and obscurity. Anciently there was a religious house, chapel, or "chantry, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, in Sunderlandnear-the-Sea, within the parish of Wearmouth;" but when or by whom founded, history does not acquaint us. From the Finchale records quoted above, we learn that there was a "Richard, son of the chaplain," witness to one charter, and "Henry, son of the chaplain," witness to another charter, conveying property in Sunderland to that priory, in the early part of the thirteenth century. We also find "John, the parson of Sunderland," occupying a very unenviable position in the Account Rolls, from 1355 to 1367. At the time of the suppression in 1535, "Ralph Parkyn was the chaplain of Sunderland chantry, the situation of which, with certain lands and tenements thereunto belonging, in the tenure of divers tenants, was of the yearly value of £3 6s. 8d."† Was there a burial ground or cemetery attached to this ancient and long since forgotten place of public worship? The following discoveries rather tend to confirm the supposition that a portion of the "lands" attached to the chantry had been set apart as a repository for the dead. On the 10th June, 1811, as some labourers in the employment of the Commissioners under the Sunderland Improvement Act, were levelling and improving the Long Bank, they found a human skeleton about two feet below the surface. December 20th, 1828, as some workmen + Valor Ecclesiasticus, temp. Hen. VIII. Vol. V., page 323. were digging in the kitchen of an old house in Warren Street, for the purpose of lowering the floor, they found a human skeleton, quite entire, about two feet below the floor which had been a flagged one. According to the local papers of the period, conjectures with respect to this deposit were numerous, but none satisfactory, so that the circumstance relating to the interment of the body remained veiled in mystery. In May, 1832, the skeleton of a female, without a head, was discovered by a mason digging a well in Moorgate Street. On the 1st June, 1840, as a workman was removing the pavement in Silver Street, the skeleton of a human body was discovered by some boys, who carried it away in pieces to amuse themselves, thus preventing any further inquiries being instituted as to how long the body had been lying in that somewhat singular sepulchre. All these remains of mortality were discovered in places in the immediate neighbourhood of the spot whereon it is presumed the Chantry of the Blessed Virgin Mary was erected, all remembrance of which had passed away: even local tradition, frequently a faithful chronicler in such matters, was silent upon the subject. Perhaps the only remaining trace of the site of this NICHOLSON. ancient chapel or chantry is to be gathered from an old plan (of which the following wood cut is a reduced copy), very kindly presented to us by William Nicholson, Esq., of Nicholson House, Bishopwearmouth, collated with another copy in the possession of Mr. Thomas Robson, |