Lacock Abbey Charters
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wiltshire ikecnrh énrietp (formerly the Records Branch of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society) VOLUME XXXIV FOR THE YEAR 1978 Impression of 450 copies LACOCK ABBEY CHARTERS EDITED BY KENNETH H. ROGERS DEVIZES 1979 © Wiltshire Record Society I979 ISBN: 0 901333 11 5 THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED TO MICHAEL J. LANSDOWN IN APPRECIATION OF HIS TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AS THE SOCIETY’S HONORARY TREASURER, 1953-1978 PUBLICATION OF THIS VOLUME HAS BEEN ASSISTED BY A GRANT FROM THE MARC FITCH FUND Set in Times New Roman 10/1 lpt. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY J. G. FENN LTD. (Print Division) STOKE-ON-TRENT STAFFS. CONTENTS Preface page v Abbreviations vi INTRODUCTION l THE CHARTERS LACOCK Foundation grants 10 Grants of privileges 15 Parish church 18 Watercourse 25 Burgages 25 Other property in the town 29 Property elsewhere in the parish 32 Exchanges 44 Quitclaims of common right 45 Settlements of disputes 46 Miscellaneous grants 47 Leases 48 BISHOPSTROW Grants to the abbey 58 Grants by the abbey 61 Miscellaneous 62 HEDDINGTON Grants to the abbey 63 Leases by the abbey 65 SHREWTON 66 CHITTERNE Grants of the manor 68 Other title deeds 70 Miscellaneous deeds 74 Leases 77 UPHAM WESTLECOTT UFFCOTT AMESBURY BOX CALNE CHIPPENHAM TROWBRIDGE WESTBURY WOODMANCOTE HATHEROP HANHAM AND BITTON SHORWELI. INDEX OF PERSONS AND PLACES List 0fH"I€!1'1b(’l‘.5' Pubiimrions of the Society PREFACE Thanks are due to the late Miss Matilda Talbot of Lacock Abbey, who made the Lacock cartularies available to Miss Joan Gibbs for transcription, and to the late Col. A. D. Burnett-Brown for further help and interest. The late R. L. Atkinson and the late Neville J. Williams also provided practical help and encouragement at that stage. Miss Janet Burnett-Brown, now of the Abbey, has given every facility in more recent years, and her wide knowledge of its history has been valuable. Mr. C. R. Elrington and Dr. D. A. Crowley, successive editors of this series, both rnadc helpful suggestions at various times. Finally the part that Miss Gibbs played in the preparation of this volume must be emphasized; Mr. Rogers has asked me to record that, were it not that the form of the volume is very dilfcrent from when she passed it on, her name should appear on the title-page. IO December I978 D. C. COX ABBREVIATIONS B.L. British Library Cal. Chart. R. Calendar of the Charter Rolls preserved in the Public Record Ofiice Cal. Pat. Calendar of the Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Ofiice C.P. 25(1) Public Record Office, Court of Common Pleas, Feet of Fines, Series I E 40 Public Record Office, Exchequer, Treasury of the Receipt, Ancient Deeds, Series A E 42 The same, Series AS Earliest Charters W. G. Clark~MaXwell, ‘The Earliest Charters of the Abbey of Lacock’, W.A.M. xxxv. 191-209 N.C. Lacock Abbey, ‘newer’ cartulary O.C. Lacock Abbey, ‘older’ cartulary V.C.H. Victoria History of the Counties of England W.A.M. Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine Ward. 2 Public Record Office, Court of Wards and Liveries, Deeds and Evidences INTRODUCTION A cartulary is a register in which an institution or a family has recorded the text of documents that have seemed important for its own welfare. The nature of cartularies and their various types are discussed in G. R. C. Davis, Medieval cartularies of Great Britain (1958), which also catalogues all known cartularies and their editions. The early conveyancing instruments of which cartularies mainly consist are explained in Volume III of this series, and the ‘final concord’ is described in Volumes I and XXIX. Useful information about forms is also in A. A. Dibben, Title deeds (Historical Assoc. Helps for students of history, lxxii, 1971). Important cartularies survive from seven Wiltshire religious houses: Bradenstoke, Edington, Lacock, Malmesbury abbey, Vaux college, Salisbury, St. Nicholas’s hospital, Salisbury, and Wilton abbey. Malmesbury's and Wilton’s have largely been published, and substantial extracts have been printed from that of St. Nicholas’s hospital, Salisbury. Lacock’s cartularies are published in the present volume. The house of Augustinian canonesses at Lacock was founded in the years 1229-30 by Ela, countess of Salisbury, widow of William Longcspee, a natural son of Henry II, and surrendered to Henry VIII’s visitors early in 1539. Its history is told in detail in V.C.H. Wiltshire, iii, pp. 303-16, and at greater length in W. L. Bowles and J. G. Nichols, Annals and antiquities of Lacock abbey, published in 1835. Although the abbey church has gone, more of the domestic buildings remain than of any other English nunnery. With additions of the 16th and 18th centuries, Lacock Abbey is now a great house, the property of the National Trust, but still occupied by descendants of Henry Sharington whose brother William bought the buildings from the Crown in 1540. A former member of the family, William Henry Fox Talbot, was inventor of the calotype process, the forerunner of all modern methods of photography, and Lacock Abbey and its occupants form the subjects of many of his earliest essays in the field. Outside the abbey gates the village of Lacock retains a barn and a few other buildings, as well as the parish church of St. Cyriac, which would have been familiar to the nuns of the 15th century. But even if most of its buildings are more recent in date, their materials and constructional techniques, and the whole scale and layout of the village, have perfectly preserved the aspect of a small medieval borough or, more properly, a village with a burghal addition; the old, pre-abbey village was centered on the church, while the borough street added after the foundation is the present High Street. Like the abbey, most of Lacock was given to the National Trust by the late Miss Matilda Talbot. The manor of Lacock formed part of the original endowment of the abbey, but the nuns were by no means the sole landowners within the bounds of the parish. Wick Farm, where another medieval barn is to be seen, was the home 2 INTRODUCTION of the Crok family, and Lackham of the Bluetsg both families occur as donors and vendors of property, and William .B1uet’s permission had to be obtained to conduct water from the springs on Bowden Hill over the land of his men of Bewley (where a 14th and 15th-century house, Bewley Court, still stands) to the abbey. The successor of the original conduit house can still be seen on Bewley Common; it was built by William Sharington. Besides the home property Ela endowed her foundation with the manor of Bishopstrow near Warminster, half the manor of Hcddington just to the east of Lacock, the Gloucestershire manor of Hatherop north of Fairford, and the advowson of Shrewton on Salisbury Plain. Her son gave the manors of Chitlernc, also on Salisbury Plain, and Upham in Aldbourne on the Marlborough Downs. Another early gift was in Gloucestershire, of land in the manor of Woodmancote in North Cerney near Cirencester. Farther away, and quite remote from their other property, the nuns also acquired the manor of Shorwell on the lsle of Wight. Smaller donations were largely limited to Wiltshire, consisting mainly of land and rents in Uffcott in Broad Hinton, Westlecott in Wroughton, Slade in Box, and Amesbury. Some small pieces of town property were also acquired, at the local market towns of Calne, Chippenham, and Trowbridge, and also in Bristol. The story of the foundation of Lacock abbey was told in Annals, apparently originally compiled by a chaplain of the house c. 1275, and continued, though with little relating to the abbey, down to the end of the 15th century. More details were to be found in the Book of Lacock, compiled about the middle of the 14th century. Both were among the Cottonian MSS. when they were severely damaged by fire in 1731. The Annals survive, badly burned but legible, as Cotton MS. Vit. A. viii, ff. 113 seq., in the British Library. The Book of Lacock, in the same volume, ff. 128v. seq., is almost entirely illegible, but a transcript of late-16th-century date is in the Harleian MSS. (5019, ff. 222 seq.), and parts of it were printed by Bowles and Nichols, Appendix, i-v, and Dugdale, Monasticon, vi(1), 501-2. Bowles also mentions a third manuscript, letters from Beatrice (the abbess who succeeded Ela) containing a eulogy of Ela. This was in Tit. B. xiii, and was completely destroyed. Documents relating to the abbey’s property survive, however, in some profusion. Besides the charters which form the subject of this volume, they include custumals and rentals of Bishopstrow, Heddington, Hatherop, and Lacock, which were printed by W. G. Clark-Maxwell in W.A.M. xxxii, and a number of miscellaneous documents of various kinds. Before describing the way in which the charters have come down to us, it will be necessary to trace the history of the abbey’s muniments. Passing to the Crown on the surrender of the house in 1539, they were presumably taken over by the Court of Augmentations. On the granting of the site of the abbey, with much other monastic property, to William Sharington in 1540, they were no doubt handed to him, although there is no record of a warrant for their delivery among the very incomplete class of Exchequer, Augmentation Office, Warrants for the Delivery of Records, in the Public INTRODUCTION 3 Record Office (E 324). William Sharington died in 1553 without issue, and all his lands passed to his younger brother Henry.