The religious house thus restored, consisting of a prior and six Benedictine monks, was made a cell to the mitred Abbey of Saint Mary, at York. And under this cell, Bishop Tanner says, there was a small nunnery situated at Rottington, about a mile from St. Bees. At the dissolution, the annual revenues of this priory, according to Dugdale, were £143 17_s._ 2_d._; or, by Speed's valuation, £149 19_s._ 6_d._; from which it appears there were only two religious houses in the county more amply endowed, viz. the priory of Holme-Cultram, and the Priory of St. Mary, Carlisle; which latter was constituted a cathedral church at the Reformation. The conventual church of St. Bees is in the usual form of a cross, and consists of a nave with aisles, a choir, and transepts, with a massive tower, at the intersection, which until lately terminated in an embattled parapet. This part of the building is now disfigured by an addition to enable it to carry some more bells. The rest of the edifice is in the early English style, and has been thoroughly restored with great taste and feeling. On the south side of the nave there was formerly a recumbent wooden figure, in mail armour, supposed to have been the effigy of Anthony, the last Lord Lucy of Egremont, who died A. D. 1368. The Lady Chapel, which had been a roofless ruin for two centuries, was fitted up as a lecture-room for the College established by Bishop Law in 1817. The priors of this religious house ranked as barons of the Isle of Man; as the Abbot of the superior house, St. Mary's, at York, was entitled to a seat amongst the parliamentary barons of England. As such he was obliged to give his attendance upon the kings and lords of Man, whensoever they required it, or at least, upon every new succession in the government. The neglect of this important privilege would probably involve the loss of the tithes and lands in that island, which the devotion of the kings had conferred upon the priory of St. Bees. In the library of the Dean and Chapter of Carlisle is the following curious account of the discovery of a giant at St. Bees:-- "A true report of Hugh Hodson, of Thorneway, in Cumberland, to S^r Rob Cewell (qy. Sewell) of a Gyant found at S. Bees, in Cumb'land, 1601, before X^t mas. "The said Gyant was buried 4 yards deep in the ground, w^{ch} is now a corn feild. "He was 4 yards and an half long, and was in complete armour: his sword and battle-axe lying by him. "His sword was two spans broad and more than 2 yards long. "The head of his battle axe a yard long, and the shaft of it all of iron, as thick as a man's thigh, and more than 2 yards long. "His teeth were 6 inches long, and 2 inches broad; his forehead was more than 2 spans and a half broad. "His chine bone could containe 3 pecks of oatmeale.