“According to the tablet in the church (we quote from the ‘Border Antiquities’ of Sir Walter Scott), this was a monastery of St. Augustine, and founded in 1116; but no mention of it in the records occurs earlier than the 16th of Henry II., 1169. Its endowments consisted of all the lands lying between Picts’ Wall and Irthing, and also between Burgh and Poltross, and several other valuable possessions. Bernard, Bishop of Carlisle, dedicated the Church to Mary Magdalen. * * * * Edward I. granted to the Prior and Convent the advowson of two churches in his patronage, because the Priory had been burnt and the lands ravaged by an incursion of the Scots. He wrote an epistle to the Pope, expressly to obtain his sanction to this grant, which was not withheld. Many other liberal donations were made to this monastery, and some of them exhibited the peculiar character of the times--such as the tithes of venison, and the skins of deer and foxes; tithe of the mulcture of a mill, pasture for milking and sheep, the bark of trees, a well or spring, and sundry villeins their issue and goods.” [8] The sad death of this “last Lord Dacre” is thus recorded by Stow. The event occurred on the 17th of May, 1559. “He was by a great mischaunce slayne at Thetford, in the house of Sir Richard Falmenstone, Knight, by meane of a vaunting horse of woode, standing within the same house; upon which horse, as he meant to have vaunted, and the pins of the feet being not made sure, the horse fell upon him and bruised the brains out of his head.” In the January following, Leonard Dacre, Esq., of Horsley, in the county of York, second son of Lord William Dacre, of Gilsland, “choosing,” according to Camden, “rather to try for the estate with his prince in war, than with his nieces at law,” entered into rebellion, with a design to carry off the Queen of Scots. This object was frustrated by Mary’s removal to Coventry; subsequently he seized upon Naworth and other Castles, but having been attacked and defeated by Lord Hunsdon, he fled into Flanders, where he died.