county up to £46 5s. The largest item in this revenue was the church of Aylesbury, which was endowed with the manor of Stoke Mandeville, 8 hides, and worth 20 ; the church of Buckingham had only the small hamlet of Gawcott, 1 hide, worth 30s. The manor of Wooburn, 8½ hides, worth £15, was part of Harold's forfeited property ; the bishops of Lincoln kept it until the Reformation and had a palace there.
The abbey of Westminster held two manors Denham, 10 hides, worth 7, the gift of a thegn in King Edward's day ; and 8 hides in East Burnham, worth 100s. 28d.
The abbot of St. Alban's had three manors : Grandborough, 5 hides, worth 100s. ; Winslow, 15 hides, worth £11 13s. 4d. ; and Aston Abbots, 10 hides, worth £6. Nothing is said about Little Horwood, which was reckoned a century or so later amongst the earliest gifts to the abbey.
The abbess of Barking held the manor of Slapton, 6 hides, worth £6, from this time till the dissolution of the religious houses.
The canons of St. Frideswide held at this time only the manor of Upper Winchendon, 10 hides, worth 6 ; this also was under the same tenure till the dissolution.
This completes the tale of church lands held in capite ; but several of the greater feudal tenants had already endowed foreign monasteries with portions of their lands. So the monks of St. Nicholas, Angers, had already 2½ hides in Crofton, worth £4, which afterwards formed a part of the endowment of the priory of Wing. The monks of Grestain held 6 hides in Ickford, worth 6, and 11 hides in Marsh Gibbon, worth £8. The monks of St. Peter, de la Couture, held 5 hides in Woolstone, worth £3, under Walter Giffard. But it seems that up till the time of the Survey there was no religious house actually founded within the county.[1]
Immediately after the Conquest began the work of church building and re-building all over the country ; and it is possible in the twelfth century to reckon numbers with a fair degree of accuracy. There are, indeed, about forty churches and chapels in Buckinghamshire which even now bear traces of the Norman period[2] : but there is larger evidence than this. The monastic chartularies, the Lincoln Episcopal Registers, and the Taxatio of Pope Nicholas IV., supplementing one another, give us a total of 183 parish churches existing before the thirteenth century, with a very large number of parochial chapels appendant. It is note- worthy that neither at this nor at any time before the nineteenth century did any of the larger towns of Buckinghamshire possess more than one parish church. Aylesbury had, indeed, four important dependent chapels, and the vicarage of these was severed from that of the mother church in 1294 [3]; but Buckingham, Amersham, High Wycombe, and Newport Pagnel had only one church apiece. The two churches of
- ↑ The Domesday survey alludes to the minster of ' Stanes ' and the minster of St. Firmin at Crawley ; but Mr. Round is of opinion that the word is used here, as elsewhere, only in reference to a parish church.
- ↑ See Records of Bucks, viii. 221-233.
- ↑ Linc. Episc. Reg. Inst. Sutton n8d. Both vicarages, however, were under the same rector.
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