Prior, Matthew, an English poet, writer of verse both sacred and profane, whose period of authorship was contemporary with the last years of Dryden and the earliest siaue of Pope, was possessed of little vigor "i
originality, but was remarkable for hi.- .skill in versifi- cation and his gay and easy grace of imagery and die- lion. His occasional epigrams, and his lively but in- decent tales, are hi- best production-: ll gb there is
merit, also, in his semi-metaphysical poem Alma, or tin' Progress of tht Soul, and in his attempt at religious
poetry in Solomon, a work which has I., in compared
io Pope's Essay on Shin. It wa- greatlj preferred to Pope's poem by John Wesley, because more consistent with the orthodox theory id' human corruption. The
design is certainly t >■ poetical, because less tending
to the argumentative; though the inferior execution has prevented Prior from attaining the occasional buc- cess w hich redeems parts of Pope's i oem from oblivion. Prior's poem- w ere only the recreal idns ol a man active- ly engaged in public life, lie was bom in 1664, and was the son of a joiner in Loudon. Accident having direct- ed the attention of lord Dorset to the boy's studious habits, education was procured lor him ; and. on leaving ( (xford, he distinguished himself, under the government of king William, .as a dexterous diplomat i-t in several foreign mi— ions. Deserting his political party, like so many men of higher rank in that slippery time, he
PRIORY
597
PRISCILLIAN
shared, in the latter part of his life, the vicissitudes and dangers of the Tories. He lived till 1721. See the ex- cellent article in Allibone, Diet, of Brit, and A mer. A u- thors, s. v., and the references there given. (J.H.W.)
Priory is a religious house occupied by a society of monks or nuns, the chief of whom is termed a prior (q.v.) or prioress ; and of these there are two sorts : rirst, where the prior is chosen by the convent, and governs as in- dependently as any abbot in his abbey; such were the cathedral priors, and most of those of the Augustine or- der. Secondly, where the priory is a cell subordinate to some great abbey, and the prior is placed or displaced at the will of the abbot. There was a considerable dif- ference in the regulation of these cells in the mediaeval times; for some were altogether subject to their respec- tive abbots, who sent what officers and monks they pleased, and took their revenues into the common stock of the abbeys; while others consisted of a stated num- ber of monks, under a prior sent to them from the su- perior abbey; and those priories paid a pension yearly, as an acknowledgment of their subjection, but acted in other matters as independent bodies, and had the rest of the revenues for their own use. The priories or cells were always of the same order as the abbeys on which they depended, though sometimes their inmates were of a different sex ; it being usual, after the Norman Con- quest, for the great abbeys to build nunneries on some of their manors, which should be subject to their visitation.
Alien priories were cells, or small religious houses, in one country dependent on large foreign monasteries. When manors or tithes were given to distant religious houses, the monks, either to increase the authority of their own order, or perhaps rather to have faithful stew- ards of their revenues, built convenient houses for the reception of small fraternities of their body, who were deputed to reside at and govern those cells. — Hook. s. v. In the fourth year of Henry V, during the war with France, all the alien priories (that is, those cells of the religious houses in England which belonged to foreign monasteries) which were not conventual were dissolved by act of Parliament and granted to the crown. About the year 1540 the cathedrals founded for priories were turned into deaneries and prebends. — Eden, s. v.
Pris'ca (2 Tim. iv, 19). See Priscilla.
Priscil'la (npireiWo, dim. from Prisca, Lat. au- di at), the wife of Aquila, and probably, like Phoebe, a deaconess. She shared the travels, labors, and dangers of her husband, and is always named along with him (Rom. xvi, 3; 1 Cor. xvi, 19 ; 2 Tim. iv, 19). A.D. 55-64. The name, is Prisca (ITp/ff/co) in 2 Tim. iv, 19, and (according to the true reading) in Rom. xvi. 3, and also (according to some of the best MSS.) in 1 Cor. xvi, 19. Such variation in a Roman name is by no means unusual. We find that the name of the wife is placed before that of the husband in Rom. xvi, 3 ; 2 Tim. iv, 19, and (according to some of the best MSS.) in Acts xviii, 20. It is only in Acts xviii, 2 and 1 Cor. xvi, 19 that Aquila has unequivocally the first place. Hence we should be disposed to conclude that Priscilla was the more energetic character of the two ; and it is par- ticularly to be noticed that she took part, not only in her husband's exercise of hospitality, but likewise in the theological instruction of Apollos. Yet we observe that the husband and the wife are always mentioned together. In fact, we may say that Priscilla is the ex- ample of what the married woman may do, for the gen- eral service of the Church, in conjunction with home duties, as Phoebe is the type of the unmarried servant of the Church, or deaconess. Such female ministration was of essential importance in the state of society in the midst of which the early Christian communities were formed. The remarks of archdeacon Evans on the po- sition of Timothy at Ephesus are very just. ''In his dealings with the female part of his flock, which, in that time and country, required peculiar delicacy and discretion, the counsel of the experienced Priscilla would