[7][8] A very extensive list of documentary sources is given by Bishop Tanner;[9] additional grants and other documents are held in the Suffolk Records, and some early books associated with the priory survive.

[11] Before 1195 he gave all his land at Campsey to his sisters Joan and Agnes de Valoines to build there a house for themselves and other religious women, to be dedicated to Mary the mother of God.

[24] Joan's long rule culminated in 1228–1230 in a dispute with Prior Adam of Butley Priory over the right to the tithes of Dilham church and mill in Norfolk.

[37] At about this time Margery, daughter of Sir Gilbert Pecche (d. 1291), married Nicholas de Crioll the younger, hereditary patron of Butley Priory and Leiston Abbey.

Excavations in 1970 confirmed the position of the north-east corner of the cloister where the passage entered the church, and part of an aisle chapel on the south side of the choir.

A watercolour by Isaac Johnson shows a series of tall arched windows likely to belong to this building, and the plan indicates a corridor and steps leading up to the frater lectern podium on the south side.

An important book inscribed Cest livere est a covent de Campisse is a large volume of Saints' Lives in Anglo-Norman verse (known as the "Campsey Manuscript", now in the British Library).

[48] The 14th-century seal of the priory depicts the Virgin Mary, crowned and seated on a throne, the Child Jesus standing on her right knee, within a triple-arched canopied niche.

[53] Cecily's inheritance, including the patronage of Campsey Priory (with its own extensive endowments represented in the Taxatio Ecclesiastica of 1291–92)[54] greatly enlarged the sphere of this seat of power.

In 1290 the patronage of the Butley and Leiston monasteries passed (with the manor of Benhall) to Guy Ferre the younger,[57] an important and trusted figure in the royal administration in Gascony, and Seneschal in 1308–09.

[63] Amid Robert de Ufford's swift rise in the favour of King Edward III a perpetual chantry was established at Campsey Priory in 1333, at the application of Queen Philippa, for a canon and two assistants to sing masses there for the soul of Alice of Hainault, Countess Marshal (died 1317), widow of the 5th Earl of Norfolk.

[68] They were married by August 1343, when they obtained papal indults from Clement VI to choose confessors, hold portable altars, and to have religious persons eat flesh at their table.

Supported by her brother Henry of Grosmont she arranged endowments[74] for a perpetual chantry of five male chaplains (one the warden) to sing daily masses in that chapel for Ralph's soul.

[78] The Earl's brothers Edmund and John de Ufford, with others, simultaneously granted the manor of Stanford, Norfolk and Roke Hall in Bruisyard, Suffolk in January 1353.

With a further endowment by Thomas de Holebrok on 13 August 1354,[80] Bishop William Bateman set forth preliminary statutes: they were to live, eat and sleep communally, and to follow the Use of Sarum in their three daily masses in a new collegiate church of the Annunciation at Roke Hall.

Lionel of Antwerp (by papal petition of John, King of France) thereupon refounded Bruisyard as a monastery for 13 or more nuns minoresses of St Clare, to be brought from Denny Abbey and elsewhere, under an abbess.

[86][87] Maud, professing to have loved the friars minor from childhood, entered the Order of St Clare and removed to Bruisyard Abbey: the transfer was complete by 1366.

[92] His brother Sir Edmund de Ufford, whose wife Elizabeth had predeceased him, followed in 1375, and was buried beside her in the chapel of St Mary in the priory church.

He further deposed that, if he died without heir male, the sword given by King Edward III to his father with the title of Earl was to be offered at Campsey on the day of his burial, and was to remain there forever.

The long sides had each formed nine panels with half pedestals and foliated canopies for mourner figures, the capitals of their columns sculpted with heads and small animals.

They were to celebrate daily for the souls of Robert and William de Ufford and their wives in the chapel of St Thomas the Martyr, and were on no account to enter the cloister or nuns' quarters.

[107] Isabella's first marriage to Lord le Strange reinforced the priory's long-standing endowments at Tottington in Norfolk, through the continuing series of charters by which Symon de Bruna and his daughter Katherine, and after them Sir John L'Estrange of Hunstanton (in the time of prioress Maria de Felton),[108] and lastly his son John L'Estrange and his widow Eleanor in 1416 (in the time of prioress Alice Corbet), confirmed and made further grants there to Campsey Priory.

He found prioress Elizabeth Everard, her subprioress Petronilla Fulmerstoune, and the nineteen other sisters all most praiseworthy in temporal and spiritual affairs, and only asked them to make an inventory of their goods before he moved on to inspect Woodbridge Priory.

In the Bishop's visitation, 27 June 1526, Barbara Jernyngham was her subprioress, and Margaret Harman, precentrix, went so far as to say that in 35 years she had never known anything to need correction except that the books in the choir might be mended.

For her part, the prioress remarked that the nuns spoke privately with the laity, to which Elizabeth Wingfield, chamberlain, responded that they were all forbidden to speak even to a graduate of the university, unless all were assembled together, and that her office was owed £5.

[120][121] Campsey Priory was not a poor house, and even with slightly diminished numbers its income, taken together with that of the chantry college within its precinct, should have been sufficient to protect it from the closure of the smaller monasteries in 1536.

There were also the altar cloth of white silk, four great latten candlesticks, a timber reredos with imagery, other lamps, an image of Our Lady, two cruets and an older Mass-book.

The priory was adequately furnished with feather beds and bolsters, forms, tables, chairs, stools and settles, with a painted cloth hanging in the Steward's chamber.

In 1550 Lord Willoughby alienated the site of the nunnery, with its appurtenant lands in Campsea Ash, Wickham Market, Rendlesham and Loudham to John Lane, Esq.

[129] Abbey House, a grade II* listed building standing near to the site of the nunnery, possibly incorporates in its fabric part of the living quarters of the chaplains.