John Keble's Parishes: A History of Hursley and Otterbourne

obtained a sufficient maintenance, which in those days of celibacy was not very expensive. The bishops and other patrons thus assigned the great tithes of corn o

, for the education of twelve poor boys by a provost and fellows, he endowed it in part with the great tithe of Hursley. The small tithes having been found insufficient for the

s relates the

of St. Elizabeth in Winchester. The small tithes which remained being inadequate to the support of the vicar and his necessary assistants, the church of Otterbourne was consolidated with that of Hursley, and the tithes of that parish, both great and small, were given to them to make up a sufficient

ll manner of tithes, great and small, with all offerings and other emoluments belonging to the chapel of Otterbourne, situated within the parish of the said church (viz. of Hursley). He shall also have and receive all offerings belonging to the church of Hursley, and all small tithes arising within the parish of the same, viz., the tithes of cheese, milk, honey, wax, pigs, lambs, calves, eggs, chickens, geese, pigeons, flax, apples, pears, and all other tithable fruits whatsoever of curtilages or gardens. He shall also receive the tithes of mills already erected, or that shall be erected. He shall also receive and have all personal tithes of all traders, servants, labourers, and artificers whatsoever, due to the said church. The said Vicar shall also receive and have all mort

vated that he has never yet derived any advantage from them, though his right to this species of tithes cannot, I suppose, be questioned, unless, indeed, they are comprehended under the term Bladum, and are conseque

ormerly under the patronage of the bishop. The advantages of this are, that it is not subject to the archdeacon's jurisdiction; that the minister is not obliged to atten

s required to pay annually, but he is exempted from the payment of the First Fruits. The land-tax with which the vicarage is char

lf and his successors by William de Edyngton; and so long as they kept possession of the Manor of Merdon, they continued patrons of the vicarage. This Bishop E

interests, seems to have had little

anklins, and peasants came out with all their local display, often a guild, to receive him, and other clergy gathered in; mass was said, difficulties or controversies attended to, confirmation given to the young people and children, and, after a meal, the bishop proceeded, sometimes to a noble's castle, or a convent, but more often to another manor of his own, where he was recei

the hold he kept on his subordinates. The great courtly bishops, like William of Wykeham, gen

a Latin epitaph, probably the work of a chaplain or o

atus, John Bowl

tus et ab omnib

m praestans qu

orum et Winto

s hinc octeni

entis custos

tis tempus fu

ntis annis Chri

ctis simul et c

ctis, protege,

ground, John Bowl

kindliness, and h

the excellent gua

ain lords of Merd

0 years-(8 being t

all the community was

Clement was hi

d four hundred after

four (?) (year

efriend with tho

many different possessors in succession, and is even at the p

over the east side of the hill. At the same time Sir Henry de Capella was possessor of the manor; but in 1265 it had passed, by what means we do not know, t

ext appears as "Sir Simon de Wynton." Indeed it seems that knighthood might be conferred on the possessors of a certain amount of land. Wynton in two more generations has lengthened into Wynchester, when, in 1379, the manor

inued in the Wykeham family till 1458, when William Fiennes or Fenys, Lord Say and Sele, the son of him who was

d that he had bought it for himself, and absconded with some of the title deeds; but eventually he died in magna miseria in sanctu

ing the name of the Moat House, was near the old church in the meadows, and entirely surrounded with its own moat. It must have been a house of some pretension in the sixteenth century, for there is a handsome double staircase, a rough fresco in one room, and in the lowest there was a panel over the fireplace, with a painting representing apparently a battle between Turks and Austrians

passed through several hands to John Colpoys in the year of Henry VI., and twenty-two years later this same John Colpoys agreed with the warden and fellows of Winchester College to enfeoff them of one messuage, four tofts, twenty acres of arable land, and eighteen acres of meadow,

chaplain, and likewise to the schoolmaster, twopence to each lay clerk, sixpence to the sacrist for wax candles, and a mark or thirteen and fourpence to be spent in a "pittance" extra course in the college h

on of the College of St. Mary, Winchester, though the

y was John de Ralegh, probably a k

mshouse of Noble Poverty at St. Cross as Hospitallers. They had unfortunately a reputation for avarice, and

Bishop of Winton, may now be seen what is there called the "Ordinatio Episcopi inter Rectorem et Vicarium de Hurslegh." It is therein settled that the vicar shall have a house as described and other emoluments, and that the rector shall pay to him forty shillings per annum. The vicar at this time was Johannes de Sta. Fide. The deed of sett

for true reasons they could scarcely be, since in all cases of appropriation and consolidation they appear to have been almost exactly the same, were the unfinished state of the college buildings and the insufficiency of the revenues for the maintenance of the society, owing to wars, sickness, pesti

ated Vicar of Hursley, on t

dleton was col