Among the benefactors of the House were William Rufus; Mary, sister to the Queen of Henry the First; that King himself; King Stephen; the Earls of Gloucester and Stafford; and many others. In 1390, under Richard the Second, Bermondsey ceased to be an alien Priory, and was made denizen. This was not without a remonstrance from Cluny. Fifty years later three Cluniac monks were sent over to set forth the claims of the Mother House. The brethren stated their case, but could not get any attention paid to their arguments. One of them died in this country, the other two went home having accomplished nothing. A piteous letter to the Abbot of St. Albans explains their position:— “For the rest, be it known to you, my Lord, that after having spent four months and a half on our journey, and following our Right with the most serene Lord the King and his Privy Council, we have obtained nothing: nay, we are sent back very disconsolate, deprived of our Manors, our Pensions alienated, and what is still worse, we are denied the obedience of all our Monasteries which are 38 in number: nor did our Legal Deeds, nor the Testimonies of your Chronicles avail us anything, and at length, after all our pleading and expenses, we return home moneyless, for in truth, after paying for what we have eaten and drunk, we have but five crowns left, to go back about 260 leagues. But what then? We will sell what we have; we will go on; and God will provide. Nothing else occurs to write to your Paternity: but that as we entered England with joy, so we depart thence with sorrow; having buried one of our Companions—viz. the Archdeacon, the youngest of our company. May he rest in Peace! Amen.” [Illustration: THE ARMS AND SEALS OF THE PRIOR AND CONVENT OF S^T. SAVIOUR AT BERMONDSEY _W. B. Grove._] Meetings of the Council were held at Bermondsey from time to time: in the reign of Henry the Third many of the nobility who had taken the Cross met here in deliberation. In 1213 the then Prior, Richard, founded the almonry in Southwark, which afterwards developed into St. Thomas’s Hospital. In 1276 there was a dispute between the Bishop of Winchester, who claimed an annual procuration, an entertainment of one day during his Visitation, and the House. In 1309, by a breach in the River Wall, the lands of the House were so much damaged that the brethren were exempted from the purveyance of hay and corn.