What is further known relative to the convent, is little and unimportant. The most remarkable circumstance, is the extreme poverty to which the monks were reduced in 1384; when, on being called upon to pay the sum of forty-six shillings and eight-pence, they pleaded their utter inability, and presented to the king the following piteous remonstrance:--"Cette Abbaïe, étant frontiere de l'Anglois, n'aïant ni château ni défense, a été arse et mise en un si chetif point, qu'il y a peu de lieux où nous puissions habiter, si ce n'est ès demeurans des anciens edifices, et ès vieilles masures.......... Notre grande Eglise est arse depuis trente ans, et une autre petite Eglise qu'avions depuis refaite, à grand meschief est ruinée et chue jusqu'en terre, avec la closture et tout le dortoir ars, ensemble nos biens et nos lits.... De plus sommes endettez en Cour de Rome pour les finances dez Abbez qu'avons eus en brief temps; et devons encore à plusieurs persones de grosses sommes de deniers que n'avons pu, et ne pouvons encore acquitter; dont c'est pitié.... finalement pour païer 10 livres sur les 56 livres demandées par le Receveur, avons engagé nos Calices sans les pouvoir retirer." NOTES: [138] _Description de la Haute Normandie_, I. p. 13. [139] The whole of the passage is curious.--"Item in _Ulteriori Portu_ et in _Auco_ oppido; decimam denariorum de Vice-comitatibus, et in utrâque villâ _quicquid abbas et monachi acquirere poterunt_. Quod si homines Abbatis piscem, qui vocatur _Turium_, capiunt, totus erit S. Michaelis: crassus piscis si captus fuerit, ala una et medietas caudæ erit monachis."--From this passage, it is plain what importance was attached to the _crassus piscis_, under which denomination were probably included the porpesse, the dolphin, and all kinds of cetaceous animals, as well as the grampus. Ducange, with his usual ability and learning, has brought together a considerable quantity of curious matter upon the subject, under the word, _Craspiscis_. From him it appears that, in the year 1271, the question was argued before the Norman parliament, to whom such fish belonged, in the event of its being thrown upon the shore; and the decision was in the following words.--"Quod consuetudo generalis est in Normanniâ, quod, quando talis piscis invenitur in littore maris, nec Baro, nec Miles, nec alius, qui a Rege teneat, talem piscem habet, si valeat ultra 50 libras, _nisi per cartam eum habeat_."--See also _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 21, respecting the existence of a whale-fishery near Jumieges, upon the authority of the writer of the _Gesta Sancti Philiberti_.