When the Normans came in, Robert Earl of Morton and Cornwall became the patron of this religious house, erected buildings, and gave some lands, but from a superior affection for Normandy, he abridged its liberties, and annexed it to the monastery of _Saint Michael de periculo Maris_, on the coast of Normandy, to which situation the Mount is said to bear a striking resemblance; from this time, it became only a cell dependant upon, and subordinate to that foreign priory. As these Monks were of the reformed order of Benedictines, and of the Gilbertine kind, a nunnery was allowed in their vicinity; this they would make us believe was done with no other view, than to shew the triumph of faith over the impulse of sense, but it certainly must be confessed, to speak even most charitably of it, that such an union amid the sequestration of solitude, carries a strange appearance with it to our protestant suspiciousness. The remains of this convent, we have already said, were removed by the late proprietor, and the _New Buildings_, as they are called, erected on their site; from the appearance of the carved fragments of stone, and other marks of architectural distinction, found among the ruins, the Nunnery appears to have been by far the most costly and magnificent part of the edifice, the result we presume of _Monkish gallantry_. Its establishment appears to have terminated at the time Pomeroy surprised it, (an account of which transaction is recorded under the military history,) but the Priory continued a cell to Saint Michael's in Normandy, until that connection was destroyed, and all the alien priories were seized in the reign of Edward the Third.