The Victoria County History chapter on the priory seems to suggest that William also gave them his share of the church and a house at Ellesborough in Buckinghamshire, although quoting a provision to the effect that it belonged to the barony of Dudley.

There were other examples of monasteries replacing earlier hermitages – notably Haughmond Abbey in Shropshire, founded by the powerful FitzAlan family, also in the 12th century.

There was Wavera in Handsworth – perhaps a water feature like a pond or weir; an assart or patch of farmland taken from the royal forest, called Ruworth; Duddesrudding; an area of land between Petulf Greene and the main road, apparently adjacent to the donation at Handsworth; a puteum – generally a well but possibly a pit[10] - at West Bromwich; a watermill at Grete - by Greets Green, the other side of West Bromwich.

William also granted the monks tithes of his own household's production – their breadmaking, hunting, mills, bread, ale, and ferculorum – of the very platters of food cooked in his kitchens table.

The most important endowment was the block of land on the eastern side of West Bromwich parish, along the boundary with Handsworth, which formed the kernel of the priory's estates.

[13] The net result of the compromises reached was that the priory lost any share of the advowson but gained a messuage (a house with its adjoining land) worth a mark or 13s.

[14] A long list in a Close Roll of February 1297 records those restored on payment of the subsidy, including those belonging to the Prior of Sandwell, who had given the sum to the Sheriff of Staffordshire.

Alberbury was of the Grandmontine order, a dependency of the mother house in the Limousin, and so an alien priory subject to royal confiscation whenever there was war or even tension with France.

[22] It is possible that Pain de Parles acquired a foothold at Handsworth in the 12th century through his wife, Alice, but documentation is no longer extant.

In June 1224 William de Parles took advantage of a perceived weakness to claim half the advowson of the priory, alleging that it was he who had presented Prior Reynold during the reign of King John.

An inquisition held at Wolverhampton in April 1280 uncovered his erratic property dealings and found that he had in his later years granted to the prior of Sandwell 20s.

[31] In 1324, the newly elected Richard de Eselberg sought to establish his authority with support from Roger Northburgh, a vigorous, reforming Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield.

[32] In 1339 a letter from the Papal Curia in Avignon referred to Robert Ingheram, a monk of Sandwell, who had apparently left his order and wished to be reconciled.

In 1341 the prior Richard le Warde intervened in a dispute at Tettenhall, where there was conflict over the status of the College of St Michael as a royal chapel.

[36] On 10 October Prior Richard and his chaplain Edmund were included in a list of those planning to remove Cherleton in contravention of the king's earlier decrees.

This time Roger Northburgh, the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield appeared in court as a defendant and the matter was again put off until the Michaelmas term.

In 1354 the ageing Bishop Northburgh wrote denouncing poor property and financial management: the priory had neglected woodland and fences and let land on leases that were too long.

At Easter 1372 Kyngeston cited five men in the King's Bench, who he alleged had assaulted him: they failed to appear and the Sheriff was ordered to arrest them.

However, Richard II's Council ordered his arrest on 8 July 1380 because he had breached the Statute of Provisors, a 1350 law designed to prevent such appointments by the Pope.

When Richard, the last of Guy de Offeni's male line died around 1250, the manor of West Bromwich had been divided between his daughters, Sarah and Margaret.

[50] In 1387 John Marnham sued Westbury for delivery of a bond which he had retained unlawfully,[51] a nadir in the priory's relations with its lay patrons.

In 1401, Archbishop Thomas Arundel, restored to office by the new regime of Henry IV, was conducting a canonical visitation and personally appointed John de Acton, a monk of Shrewsbury, as successor to Tamworth.

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey had little respect for the independence of the monasteries and at the outset of his Chancellorship in 1515 requested papal sanction for visitations of all houses in England,[56] obtaining it in 1518.

[58] Sandwell was an obvious target, with a long history of abuses and conflict and a very small community – back at that point to the prior and a single monk.

[66] Sandwell Priory and its properties were valued at less than £40 a year – the spiritualities (income from tithes and religious functions) at £12 and the temporalities (rents and dues) at £26 8s.

[67] It seems that Wolsey retained some control of the church at West Bromwich and in 1528 Cromwell tried to get the curate ejected and replaced by William, the former monk of the priory.

It was included in a group of properties granted by the Crown to Dame Lucy Clifford in exchange for her share of a pension that she had inherited from the estate of the Marquess of Montagu[72] When she died in 1557, it passed to her grandson, John Cutte, who later sold it to the Whorwood family of Compton Hallows, near Kinver.

A large new Georgian house was built directly adjoining the eastern end of the priory site, and reusing some of its foundations and masonry.

[20] However, the earls acquired a further seat in the West Midlands at Patshull Hall, which became their residence from 1853.,[74] although the widow Countess Dartmouth Augusta Legge lived here and she was a source of philanthropy for the local area.

[75] Parts of the Sandwell estate were subsequently sold for housing and in 1947 West Bromwich council bought 1,367 acres from William Legge, 7th Earl of Dartmouth to preserve a substantial area of open country for the use of townspeople.