Bledlow: Ii—Church and Parsons Alison Young, F.S.A
BLEDLOW: II—CHURCH AND PARSONS ALISON YOUNG, F.S.A. THE story of the early landowners in Bledlow and the tenure of the Norman Abbey of Bec-Hellouin has already been told.1 Some account may now be given of Bledlow church (PI. IV), its successive patrons and the parsons who served the parish. Thanks are due to the Provost and Fellows of Eton College for access to documents and to the specialists whose contribution is acknowledged in the relevant footnotes. Again I have to thank K. M. Richardson for her continuing help in documentation. Having invested the capital by a wide flanking movement, William the Conqueror accepted the capitulation of the citizens of London at Berk- hamsted. In due course Duke William rewarded his compagnons and followers with estates confiscated from the Saxon landowners. The Honour of Berkhamsted, with outlying properties, including Bledlow, was originally held under Edward the Confessor by the thegn Edmund Atule. These lands were granted to Robert of Mortain, the Conqueror's half-brother.2 Following the practice, not unknown in Saxon England and then customary in Normandy, of endowing religious houses with gifts of land, Count Robert bestowed a part of his newly acquired possessions on the Abbey of Notre Dame de Grestain, where he also chose to be buried. This Benedictine community had been founded in 1050 near Honfleur, at the mouth of the Seine, by Mortain's father, Herluin, Conte de Contaville. The original text of the charter survives in a thirteenth-century copy, now in Eton College archives3 which records the gift, completed before Count Robert's death in 1091.
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