{158b} Harleyan MSS. 4127. {158c} Ibid, add. MSS., 6118, 330_b_. {158d} The original charter of the foundation is lost, but a copy is given in Dugdale’s “Monasticon,” vol. v. p. 454. The wife of this William de Romara was Hawise, daughter of Richard de Redvers, Lord of Tiverton, Co. Devon, and of Christchurch, Hants., and sister to Baldwin, 1st Earl of Devon. By the title of Comitissa Hawysia de Romara, she gave the church of Feltham, in Middlesex, to the hospital of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, near London. She joined in the foundation of Revesby Abbey. (“Topogr. and Genealogist,” vol. i., p. 24). {158e} Dugdale’s “Baronage,” vol. i. p. 6. {159} Gelt was a tax of 2_s._ on each carucate, or 120 acres. {160} It is customary to speak of Revesby Abbey as the monastery of St. Laurence, but it would also appear at an early period to have been dedicated to the Virgin Mother as well; for, while the inscription on the tomb of the founder, as given above, mentions only St. Laurence, Dugdale in his “Monasticon” (p. 531), calls it “the Monastery of our blessed Lady the Virgin, and St. Lawrans.” Further, one impression of the Abbey seal is preserved in the office of the Duchy of Lancaster, and another at the British Museum; and they are inscribed “Sigillum Abbatis d’ St. Laurentio”; but there is also in the British Museum, a seal of “Henry, Abbot of St. Mary’s;” and another of “the Abbey and Convent of St. Mary,” is among the Harleian Charters (44, z 2), and both the latter have, as part of their device, the Virgin, crowned, holding the Infant Christ in her arms. {161} It is curious to find a Doctor among the slaves, he may have been a foster-brother to one of better birth. Barcaria, in Monkish Latin meant a tanning house (from “bark,”) or a sheep-fold, Norman French, “Bergerie,” and Barkarius may have been a tanner or shepherd. {164} I am indebted for these details to the accounts printed by the late E. Stanhope, for private circulation, and the Revesby deeds and charters, which he recovered, and also printed. {166} Saunders in his “History of Lincolnshire,” 1836, gives the patron of Revesby as Revd. C. N. L’oste. This, however, is an error, that gentleman being chaplain in 1831, and there then being no residence he resided at Horncastle, as many other country incumbents did at that time. The L’ostes held various preferments in this neighbourhood for more than one generation. In 1706, before the Banks family owned Revesby, the Revd. C. L’oste held the Rectory of Langton-by-Horncastle. He was a man of some attainments, and published a poetical translation of Grotius on the Christian Religion, which the writer of these notes possesses. Another L’oste, at that date resided in Louth; and, within living memory, another of the name resided in Horncastle.