Amongst other endowments of this religious house, given to it by its founder, were the patronage and temporalities of a number of churches, many of which had only been recently erected in Lancashire; these were Heysham, Croston, Eccleston, Childwall, Preston, Kirkham, Melling, Bispham, Bolton (near Lancaster), and Poulton-le-Fylde. By charter dated March 26, 1200, King John took into his hands the custody, protection and maintenance of the church of St. Mary of Lancaster, and the Prior and monks there "serving God and St. Mary," with all their lands and possessions. In 1260 Pope Alexander issued a Papal Bull in which he expressed a desire that "the church of the Monastery of Lancaster, of the Order of St. Benedict, of the Diocese of York," might be "filled with fitting honours," to accomplish which, "in the mercy of God and the authority of the blessed Peter and Paul his apostles, he mercifully" remitted to all "true penitents and the confessed" who approached the church for the sake of devotion annually on the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, "to whose honour it was asserted the church was dedicated," a hundred days of the penance enjoined on them. And in the 10 Kal., March, 1292, Pope Nicholas granted relaxation for one year and forty days of the enjoined penance to those penitents who visited the church of Lancaster on the feasts of the Blessed Virgin and St. Nicholas, in their octaves, and on the anniversary of the dedication.[175] In 1246 a dispute was settled between John Romanus, Archdeacon of Richmond, and the Abbot and convent of Sees. The matter had been referred to the priors of Kirkham and Bridlington by the Pope, and through this intervention a compromise was arrived at, the terms of which were that the right of patronage with the pension of three marks, and all right which the Abbot and convent had in the church of Bolton in Lonsdale, should be yielded up for ever, and that the moiety of the church of Poulton, with the appurtenances which Alexander de Stanford possessed, when it became vacant, should be ceded to the priory of Lancaster to its own uses, provided that in the said church the vicarage should be taxed "by good men chosen by each party" from the goods of the same church to the value of 20 marks; to the vicarage the Abbot and convent of Sees to present their own clerk for ever, who shall find hospitality for the Archdeacon and support all other due and customary burdens.