Excerpt from Visitations of the Diocese of Norwich: A. D. 1492-1532When the fifteenth century was drawing to a close there were in the counties of Norfolk and Sufi'olk at least fifty-one religious houses of various denominations, without reckoning the Cells or dependent establishments which were used from time to time as resi dences for the inmates of the parent-house who required a change. Of these, forty-three were places of retirement for men, eight were nunneries for women. They may be roughly divided into three classes: (i) the houses of Monks and Nuns under the old Benedic tine rule, (ii) the houses of Canons who were supposed to be governed by the rule of St. Augustine, and (iii) those which had some peculiar rule of their own. The old Benedictine houses included two of the first importance - the magnificent abbey of St. Edmunds Bury and the priory of Norwich - and one abbey of the second rank, that of St. Benet's Hulme, besides three that were insignificant establishments - the abbey of Wymondham and the priories of Horsham in Norfolk and Eye in Suffolk. The number of Benedictine monks in the diocese may be estimated at nor. Less than one hundred and twenty, the nuns can hardly have numbered more than eighty in the three Norfolk and the five Suffolk houses. The houses of the Canons were far more numerous, there were at least twenty-four of such houses, great and small, and the number of their inmatesmust have exceeded two hundred and thirty when each house was at its normal strength.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.